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Cecelia picked up a sheaf of pages from the desk, glanced over it, and set it down again. She rummaged in the basket. “These are all letters,” she said.
“Wonderful.”
“May I?”
James gestured his permission, and she opened one from the top. “Oh, this is bad. Your cousin Elvira needs help.”
“I have no knowledge of a cousin Elvira.”
“Oh, I suppose she must have been your uncle Percival’s cousin. She sounds rather desperate.”
“Well, that is the point of a begging letter, is it not? The effect is diminished if one doesn’t sound desperate.”
“Yes, but James…”
“My God, do you suppose they’re all like that?” The basket was as long as his arm and nearly as deep. It was mounded with correspondence.
Cecelia dug deeper. “They all seem to be personal letters. Just thrown in here. I suppose they go back for months.”
“Years,” James guessed. Dust lay over them, as it did everything here.
“You must read them.”
“I don’t think so. For once I approve of Uncle Percival’s methods. I would say throw them in the fire, if lighting a fire in this place wasn’t an act of madness.”
“Have you no family feeling?”
“None. You read them if you’re so interested.”
She shuffled through the upper layer. “Here’s one from your grandmother.”
“Which one?”
“Lady Wilton.”
“Oh no.”
Cecelia opened the sheet and read. “She seems to have misplaced an earl.”
“What?”
“A long-lost heir has gone missing.”
“Who? No, never mind. I don’t care.” The enormity of the task facing him descended on James, looming like the piles of objects leaning over his head. He looked up. One wrong move, and all that would fall about his ears. He wanted none of it.
A flicker of movement diverted him. A rat had emerged from a crevice between a gilded chair leg and a hideous outsized vase. The creature stared down at him, insolent, seeming to know that it was well out of reach. “Wonderful,” murmured James.
Cecelia looked up. “What?”
He started to point out the animal, to make her jump, then bit back the words as an idea recurred. He, and her father, had taken advantage of her energetic capabilities over the years. He knew it. He was fairly certain she knew it. Her father had probably never noticed. But Cecelia hadn’t minded. She’d said once that the things she’d learned and done had given her a more interesting life than most young ladies were allowed. Might his current plight not intrigue her? So instead of mentioning the rodent, he offered his most charming smile. “Perhaps you would like to have that basket,” he suggested. “It must be full of compelling stories.”
Her blue eyes glinted as if she understood exactly what he was up to. “No, James. This mare’s nest is all yours. I think, actually, that you deserve it.”
“How can you say so?”
“It is like those old Greek stories, where the thing one tries hardest to avoid fatefully descends.”
“Thing?” said James, gazing at the looming piles ofthings.
