There were no cobwebs, and all surfaces—tables, floors, and shelves—were clean.
“I sent in the maids this morning.” She met his gaze as he turned to her. “I’m not particularly partial to spiders.”
He noticed a pile of dusty letters stacked on the bench beside her; his levity faded. “Have you found anything?”
“Nothing specific.” She closed the book; a cloud of dust puffed out from the pages. She gestured to the wooden rack, a cross between bookshelves and pigeonholes covering the wall behind the bench. “He was neat, but not methodical. He seems to have kept everything, stretching back over the years. I’ve been sorting bills and accounts from letters, shopping lists from drafts of learned papers.”
He picked up the old parchment topping the pile. It was a letter inscribed in faded ink. He initially thought the script a woman’s, but the contents were clearly scientific. He glanced at the signature. “Who’s A. J.?”
Leonora leaned closer to check the letter; her breast brushed his arm. “A. J. Carruthers.”
She moved away, lifting the old tome back to the shelf. He squelched a flaring urge to draw her back, to reestablish the sensual contact.
“Carruthers and Cedric corresponded frequently—it seems they were working on some papers before Cedric died.”
With the tome safely stored, Leonora turned. He continued flicking through the letters. Her gaze on the pile of parchments, she moved closer. Misjudged and moved too far—she brushed, shoulder to thigh, against him.
Desire ignited, flamed between them.
Tristan tried to breathe in. Couldn’t. The letters slipped from his fingers. He told himself to step back.
His feet wouldn’t move. His body craved the contact too much to deny it.
She glanced fleetingly up at him through her lashes, then, as if embarrassed, eased fractionally back, creating a gap of less than an inch between them.
Too much, yet not enough. His arms were rising to haul her back, when he realized and lowered them.
She reached quickly for the letters and spread them out.
“I was”—her voice was husky; she paused to clear her throat—“going to sort through these. There might be something in them that will point to a discovery.”
It took longer than he liked for him to refocus on the letters; he’d clearly been celibate for too long. He breathed in, exhaled. His mind cleared. “Indeed—they might allow us to decide if it’s something Cedric discovered that Mountford’s after. We shouldn’t forget he wanted to buy the house—it’s something he expected would be left behind.”
“Or something he could gain access to by virtue of being the purchaser, before we moved out.”
“True.” He fanned the letters over the bench top, then looked up at the large pigeonholes. Stepping away from temptation, he turned down the room, following the bench, scanning the shelves above it, searching for more letters. He pulled out all he saw, leaving them on the bench top. “I want you to go through every letter you can find, and collect all those written in the year preceding Cedric’s death.”
Following him, Leonora frowned at his back, then tried to peer around at his face. “There’ll be hundreds.”
“However many, you’ll need to study them all. Then make a list of the correspondents, and write and ask each one if they know of anything Cedric was working on that could have commercial or military significance.”
She blinked. “Commercial or military significance?”
“They’ll know. Scientists may be as absorbed in their work as your uncle and brother, but they usually recognize the possibilities in what they’re working on.”
“Hmm.” Gaze fixed between his shoulder blades, she continued following at his heels. “So I’m to write to each contact he made in his last year.”
“Every last one. If there was anything of significance, someone will know.”
He reached the end of the room and swung around. She looked down—and walked into him. He caught her; she looked up, feigning surprise.
Didn’t have to fabricate her leaping pulse, her suddenly thudding heart.
He’d focused on her lips; her gaze fell to his.
Then he glanced at the door.