As Mercy moved along the second floor it became clear that Silas Masters’s private rooms were not on this level.
There were retiring rooms for both ladies and gentlemen and more rooms where private card games were being held. She knew the house boasted three stories and she suspected his rooms were on the third floor. It was an easy matter to deduce which door led upstairs. The one marked No Entry felt like a good choice.
The merry sounds of the revelers faded as she opened the door and ascended the steps. With a racing heart, she turned the latch of the door at the top and stepped out onto a thickly carpeted corridor.
It was quieter up here, far away from the world below. Her muffled tread whispered on the air as she tried first one door, peering inside. Then another door. Nothing. Darkened bedchambers both with minimal furnishings.
She tried yet another door. It opened to a well-stocked library. No desk though, so she doubted any important papers or documents were kept there.
The next door opened to another bedchamber, this one more opulent with double doors leading out onto a balcony. Those doors were open. An evening breeze came through, gusting the curtains in great billows of fabric, like sails on a ship.
The bedchamber touted not only a colossal four-poster bed, but a large fireplace, too. A wingback chair and sofa were strategically positioned before the hearth that crackled with a low-burning fire.
The sofa loomed invitingly with a fur blanket tossed haphazardly over one side as though someone had cast it off when interrupted from a nap.
Her gaze skipped away from the tempting scene, scanning the rest of the chamber, landing on a mahogany desk. A bookcase crammed full of leather-bound volumes occupied the wall behind it.
She approached the desk in a rush of whispering silk. It was not simply for appearances. It served a function. There were papers and correspondence organized on its surface. An ink pot and quill. Letters opened and unopened, arranged in stacks.
Circling the desk, she eyed the surface for a moment before setting her hands to it.
She was systematic in her search. She did not want anyone to know someone had been here, rifling through items.
Every pile of papers she touched, every ledger or journal she examined, she made certain they all went back in their proper place, as though she had not been here at all. She was, in effect, hopefully, a ghost.
At the start of this mess she had conceived a plan that would run smoothly and without complication. She envisioned that she would drift in and out of The Rogue’s Den undetected, no one the wiser.
Meeting him had not been in the plan. Already her scheme had not gone as intended. She was supposed to be invisible. But that did not mean it was ruined. That did not mean things could not go smoothly from here out.
From what she had gathered, Silas Masters made a lucrative business accruing debts from men like her brother—foolish and reckless men. Men who doubtlessly had dependents: wives and children. Or, as in Bede’s case, sisters.
Her indignation burned anew—not just at what Bede had done, but at the mercenary Mr. Masters. Where was his honor? His sense of culpability? Had he no shame over ruining innocent lives?
Finished examining the top of his desk and finding nothing that resembled what she was searching for, she eased into the great leather chair and turned her attention to the drawers.
She opened one and flipped through stationery and envelopes.
It had not even been a week since her brother gambled away the family farm beneath this very roof. Certainly Masters still had Bede’s voucher in his possession. She winced. Unless he had turned it over to someone else. An agent or a secretary. Someone to begin the process of confiscating her home . . . her life.
“No,” she whispered fervently to herself with a hard shake of her head. That was not happening. “It’s here. It has to be here.”
She could not consider the alternative. The alternative led to homelessness. Penury. Aloneness.
The bottom right drawer was deeper than the others. It stuck a little as she tried to open it, forcing her to give the knob a hard tug.
It opened with a rattle, revealing a small lacquered chest inside.
She lifted the box out of the drawer and set it carefully on the desk before her. Hope hummed over her skin.
She anxiously flipped the clasp and lifted the lid. A dozen pieces of paper filled the box. She picked one off the top and scanned it, releasing a relieved gust of breath as she registered it was a voucher for a racehorse owed to one Silas Masters, dated three days ago.
She tossed it aside and quickly began rifling through each and every slip of paper until halfway through the pile and she stopped flipping.
With a shaking hand and a sinking stomach, she raised the paper to eye level.
She recognized her brother’s familiar looping scrawl at once. They actually had very similar penmanship. She had always credited it to a condition of sharing a womb together. She scanned the words confirming that he had signed over all their property, land and house and objects therein.
She should feel only elation at the discovery of it, but this was irrefutable proof. No more holding out hope that it was all a mistake, that her brother was less than perfidious. There was no denying it now. Seeing this evidence of his recklessness in bold ink fired her ire all over again.
“Blasted fool,” she muttered as she folded the document into tiny fourths and tucked it into the reticule dangling from her wrist.
With no voucher bearing her brother’s signature, no court in the land would honor Mr. Masters’s claim on her home.
A satisfied smile curved her lips. She had done it.
Now, however, was no time to relax her guard and revel in her relief over her triumphant find. She had to get out of this place posthaste.
After securing the chest very correctly back inside its drawer, she eyed the desk one final time, assuring herself that all was in order and it appeared as it had upon her arrival to the chamber.
Nodding, she rounded the desk and advanced a hard, swift line toward the door, ready to escape through the house and out into the night, so that she could return home knowing it was still her home and it always would be.
Mercy was approximately three feet from the door, from freedom, when the latch started to turn.
She froze.
Everything seemed to slow even as her heart took off like a galloping horse in her chest.
Pressing a hand over her pounding heart, she looked frantically to her left and right, searching for an escape, a place to hide.
The bureau was on the far side of the chamber. Much too far. She doubted she could reach the drapes in time. And hiding beneath the desk seemed like a bad idea. What if he decided to take a seat there?
Helplessness rose up inside her. A thick sob threatened to spill out of her throat, but she forced it down. She held back the sound, and held herself together . . . just as she made the decision to stand her ground.
She lifted her chin and waited for the door to open. It only took moments, a mere blink, but time crawled interminably as she waited for him to cross the threshold.
It would be him. She knew that.
The door swung inward and Silas Masters stepped inside his private rooms. His rooms. Except she was here. Standing where she should not be—in the middle of his room with no explanation for her presence.
No explanation yet.
Her thoughts churned feverishly, seeking a reasonable story to give.
He hesitated when he saw her. One of his dark eyebrows lifted, but he otherwise gave no reaction. He seemed very . . . calm. No outrage over confronting a veritable stranger in his room.