The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,25
again to look into the larder where Laney had shifted away the false back, the panel folding onto itself on the right side. He stood and looked at the outside of the larder again, following the seam where it met the stone wall. Someone had even inset the sides of the hidden compartment so it sat deep in the shadows of the juncture behind the larder box. “Clever.”
Facing him, Laney leaned her shoulder into the larder box, partially disappearing. A smile cut across her face. The first real smile he’d seen on her lips since he’d arrived at Gruggin Hall.
She looked up at him as she pulled her arm free of the larder.
The Box of Draupnir.
Clutched in her fingers. Just as he remembered it.
The blasted thing had caused riches. Had caused deaths.
Cursed, along with anyone that held it.
And now Laney held it.
The relief he thought he’d feel at having it in his sights again wasn’t flooding him like he imagined it would.
Dread.
Only dread.
Dread that gnawed on the pit of his stomach. Dread that drowned the air in his chest, fresh breaths not able to break in.
She tugged the back of the larder box closed and stood up, the smile on her face even wider. “This is the box, isn’t it? Morty had only written me about it, but this looks like what he described.”
“Aye. It’s the Box of Draupnir.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
Wes nodded.
She twisted the small box around in her hands, her delicate fingers rubbing along the grain of the wood, swirls of madness making the box look alive. Moving. Furious.
His breath held in his chest. Waiting. Waiting for the glimmer of madness touching her eyes. The glimmer of madness he’d seen in almost every person he’d ever seen hold the box.
Her mouth pulled to the side. “So peculiar. All this fuss over a little box. I don’t see what is so special about it.”
He exhaled and forced a nonchalant shrug. He knew full well what was so special about the box, but he wasn’t about to tell Laney a speck of information on it.
She held it up to him. “I should deliver it to Mr. Filmore.”
Wes shook his head. “It’s too late.”
“It’s not.”
“It is. The man isn’t going to do anything for you tonight and will probably be so irate you woke him up that he will drag through the work tomorrow and delay you even further.”
She sighed.
“Come.” Wes held out his hand to her.
She looked at his palm, her look flickering back up to his eyes. “What?”
“Same thing as last night. You’re not sleeping here alone. It’s not safe.”
“You don’t know that.”
Wes stifled a sigh, his fingers twitching at her. “I do know you are safer at my residence than you are here. That and you haven’t eaten all day. I sent word this morning to have my cook stop by and leave biscuits, meats and cheeses.”
He could see in her amber eyes how hungry she suddenly was.
She groaned a wicked exhale, then pierced him with her gaze, her eyebrow raised. “Same thing as last night?”
His head jerked back. “What are you implying?”
She shook her head, her eyes going to the ceiling. “Not that.”
“Then what?”
The smallest smile came to her lips. “Another truce. You stifle your anger at me for the evening.”
Wes’s look dipped to the box and then to her face. There was no way he was going to leave her alone with the Box of Draupnir.
Not that she need to know that.
He shrugged his shoulders. “A herculean feat. But I’ll somehow manage it just the same as I did last night.”
A moment of hesitation and she set her hand in his.
{ Chapter 11 }
Clutching the box to her belly, Laney walked past Wes as he held open the wrought iron metal gate that led to the gardens at the rear of his house.
The street in front of his townhouse was busy at this time of the eve, a multitude of shiny black carriages pulling along and stopping at the side. With the activity, Wes had advised discretion and sent the hack driver to the cross street so they could enter his townhouse through the mews.
Laney glanced over her shoulder. Part of the street’s liveliness was courtesy of the townhouse located directly behind the back of Wes’s home. A ball. And by the sounds drifting down across the mews to the gardens and the light spilling out onto the balcony from the ballroom, the townhouse was packed to the seams.
Wes closed the gate behind them as Laney