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“To get the box? Why?”
“Does it matter?”
He moved past her, stepping on the piles of books and papers as he went to an askew chair by the upturned, broken desk.
Her hand flew up. “Don’t—don’t mess up the papers.”
“The papers are already a mess.”
“Yes…but…but…” Her voice trailed off, her mind not up to the task of sparring with him.
Righting the chair, he kicked papers out of the way and set the chair down onto solid floorboards. He sat, leaning back as his dark eyes studied her.
Avoiding his glare, her gaze dropped down and she picked up a loose book with several pages torn from the binding. Flipping it wide open, she thumbed to the back of the book, her breath held.
Good, no pages missing from the back.
Counting to herself, she flicked thirteen pages inward from the back cover.
No note.
Nothing from Morton. Just blocks of text.
Her heart lifted and fell each time she picked up one of these blasted tomes. Falling harder each time.
She quickly checked the adjoining pages just in case she miscounted.
Nothing.
She went through six more loose sheets sitting atop the next book, tossing them into appropriate piles.
Wes leaned forward, the legs of the chair squeaking. “I can sit here and watch you all day, or I can help if you tell me how you need things sorted.”
Laney paused, looking about her. At this rate it would be dark before she would finish going through the papers and then she would be stuck here in London another day longer. She’d hoped to have time to deliver the box to Mr. Filmore today and then hire a coach to take her home.
She grabbed a piece of paper—an old letter to her father about a ship he’d invested in. With a sigh, she tossed it into the “not necessary pile”—Morton had long since lost any interests their father had in any viable investments.
She didn’t look up at Wes. “Fine, I would appreciate your help.” Her fingers waved above the piles. “All the papers I am sorting into piles—not necessary, numbers for the ledgers, old correspondence, investments, bills and debts, requests. All things I will need to attend to once I find the box and the funds are cleared. So it is the sorting of the papers, but most important, I must check each of the books.”
“What are you looking for in the books?”
Her gaze lifted to him. “A note from Morty. He wrote to me not too long ago that he’d left me the location of the box in a book. So I must go through all the books as well.”
“He wrote the location in a book?”
“Apparently.”
Wes’s eyebrows lifted. “Make it into a game—that sounds like something he would do.”
“Don’t you dare say anything about him, Wes. I’ll not hear it. I’ll not hear your judgements or your snide comments about my brother. You obviously came to some sort of peace with him since you spent so much time with him during the last seven months. So why you feel the need to disparage his memory in front of me, I don’t know.”
“To raise your ire.” Wes shrugged. “It’s simple enough.”
Her hands stilled on the next piece of paper as her glare centered on him. Blatant malice. He truly was out to make her suffer.
She’d thought, for just one moment the previous night, that his bitterness could possibly lessen. She was wrong.
He didn’t even blink at her glare. “You think too much of him, Laney. You always did.”
