“Then you will have the dubious pleasure of watching me see how much you can blush,” he said seductively and watched her skin come to life under his gaze. “Focus, Iris.”
The command was more for himself than for her. The sooner they finished, the sooner this awful prickle between her shoulders would ease.
Blaise searched the drawers behind the frames and under the rugs, but found nothing.
“Here,” Iris whispered excitedly from across the room.
Blaise glanced up from where he was crouched.
“Do not pull it out all the way,” he cautioned. “See if it gives any resistance at half.”
She eased the book forward. At about an inch free, it caught. Definitely not the simple grip of age.
“There is a spring,” she said excitedly, and Blaise could not help but smile. “Something in the binding, perhaps?—”
A drawer slammed behind her, and she jumped.
“Damn him,” Blaise hissed. “False backs. Every cursed one. If he had spent half as much energy on being a decent human as he did on building hiding places?—”
“Blaise,” she said softly. “Come here.”
He walked immediately behind her, close enough that he felt the heat of her breath against him.
“Push it in,” he murmured.
She pushed the book, and it slid back a fraction of an inch past where it had rested before. There was a faint, almost inaudible click somewhere in the wall.
“Good girl,” he whispered.
Heat sprang under her cheeks at the quiet praise, like a match struck to dry tinder.
This is not the time. Not the place.He reminded himself.
A panel to the right of the shelves sprang out a hair’s breadth.
“Well,” she said drily. “That is not even subtle.”
Blaise stepped around her and slipped his fingers into the gap, drawing the panel open. Behind the false wall, a narrow cavity yawned, barely wide enough for a man’s arm.
“Empty,” he said after a moment, his voice flat. “Damn him again.”
He withdrew his hand and held up… nothing.
“Perhaps he moved it,” Iris said. “If he was planning to act against you, he may have shifted things to be ready.”
“Or destroyed it at last,” Blaise said, and for the first time, worry truly darkened his eyes.
“No,” she said at once, with a confidence she could not defend. “If he truly destroyed it, he would have told you so when he offered his bargain. He would have dangled that over you like a prize. Men like Daniel do not waste an opportunity to be cruel.”
His gaze flicked to her for a heartbeat, and he felt grateful for her.
“Onward, then,” he said.
Iris moved to the corner where a large painting hung over the hearth: some stern ancestor glaring down his nose, hand resting on a hound’s head. The gilded frame was ostentatious even by Daniel’s standards.
“This is exactly where a villain would hide a blood-stained will in Moonlight on the Moor.”
“Read fewer novels, Iris,” he jested.
