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Such a mess. Such a waste.
All those precious books. All the ledgers.
Where to even begin?
Morton had written to her months ago that he had left her the location of the Box of Draupnir on the thirteenth to last page of their father’s favorite book. She hadn’t shared that fact with Wes. The less he knew about her affairs, the better.
As she looked about the chaos of the study, she realized with sinking horror that she didn’t remember what her father’s favorite book was. Of the waning memories she had of their father—scant, fuzzy snippets of time—he’d always had a book in his hands, in his lap, on the table next to him—and she’d been too young or too disinterested to read them. Morton had been older and he and Papa had always been together—Morton learning everything about handling the estate from their father.
Not that it’d done her brother much good. Papa had never taught him how not to gamble. How not to drink.
Or maybe it was their father’s death when she was fourteen that had sparked to life those vices in Morton.
She could only guess at the cause—at the reason Morton saw fit to sink the Gruggin estate into such depths of despair.
Regardless, she’d never given the books much mind, as her young brain had been interested in much more exciting things than paper and ledgers and novels that didn’t have gallant knights in them. She’d spent most of her time in the stables in those years. Riding and grooming her small mare, Buttercup. Until Buttercup had accidently thrown her and she’d never touched a saddle again.
That was, not until Wes persuaded her to mount the gentlest mare in his father’s stables when she was fifteen. He’d told her it was the only way they could reach the pond that was hidden on the far end of his estate and be back before her governess began to question her whereabouts.
Laney shook her head, her mind wandering to past times and events it had no business creeping into.
She opened her eyes wide, staring at the mess in front of her.
Find the box. Be done with this place.
She sighed, nudging a black leather tome splayed flat on the wooden planks with her toe. After his note about the box, she hadn’t thought to ask Morton what their father’s favorite book was—she’d thought she’d never actually need to know the information, and he’d assumed she knew what book it was.
Nothing to do now but search.
She sank down onto the floor, settling herself with her knees tucked under her, and she started to gather up the loose papers crowding the floor. Some were torn from books, some from ledgers. Some were just loose pages jotted with notes in Morton’s hand. Plans. Ramblings of his madcap mind.
Hours slipped by as she looked at each page and set them into piles, sorting the sheets as she went, trying to keep the tears from welling in her eyes every time she saw an odd sentence written by her brother.
If she cried every time she thought of him, she’d never get back to Gruggin Hall.
“What are you doing, Laney?”
Wes’s voice made her jump and she twisted around to see him standing in the doorway.
Damn the bugger, he’d made it into the house without her hearing him. How was that even possible? She’d locked the front door.
“What are you doing here?” She spun away from him, her eyes bleary from staring at words on paper for the past several hours. Looking about her, her shoulders drooped. Hours had passed and she’d not even made it a quarter of the way through the mess of papers and books.
Wes moved into the room along the small path she’d cleared. “I’m here to make certain you arrived safely home.”
She craned her neck around and looked up at him with her right eyebrow cocked. “Hours after I left your townhouse? So entirely magnanimous of you.”
He shrugged and wagged his finger toward the floor around her. “Can I help?”
“No.” She turned from him, grabbing the next loose paper and quickly scanning it. Numbers, more rows of numbers. So many numbers in this room. She set it into the “ledger” pile.
His boots clunking on the floorboards, Wes took two steps toward her. “Why are you going through all these papers? Did you already find the box?”
She didn’t turn to look at him. “It’s not any of your concern, Wes.”
“I think you forget that everything you do is my concern. Your brother’s will quite emphatically stipulated that fact.”
Her shoulders lifted in a heaved sigh. “I have to do this to get the box, Wes.”
