Julius's Passion (Regency Club Venus #4) - Carole Mortimer Page 0,24

course the desk had a hidden drawer!

Julius sighed. “It seems I will need to search those two rooms again sooner rather than later.” This was why he had never before allowed a woman to distract his attention the way Bethany did.

“The safe is under the floorboards beneath the bed. The earl’s bedchamber was my own for a very short period of time after my father died,” James explained when Julius frowned. “The four-number combination to open the lock used to be my mother’s birthday, the thirty-first of December, but my uncle has probably changed it since then.”

Julius somehow doubted that, if his suspicion was a correct one. “And the hidden drawer in the desk?”

“My father discovered it twenty years ago,” James announced proudly. “It took him a while to realize how the mechanism worked, but he finally recognized it was a combination of numbers carved into the side of the drawers. Once the drawers are pulled out to the level of that number, and in the correct sequence, another drawer appears beneath them. My father showed it to me once I was old enough to understand.”

“Did your mother know of it too?”

“My father had no secrets from her, so yes.”

Julius wondered if the countess had kept one particular secret from her husband. “Did your father show it to your uncle too?”

James’s brows rose. “I have no idea.”

“Did you look in that drawer after your parents were killed?”

James shook his head. “My uncle took us both off to London within weeks of their deaths. I confess I was too distracted at the time, dealing with my own and my sister’s grief, as well as accustoming myself to being the new earl, to give that drawer so much as a second thought.”

“So it’s possible Metford does not know about the drawer or its contents?”

“It is possible, yes,” James confirmed slowly. “Although, if he does not, then I fail to see how what is inside is going to help prove my uncle paid to have me murdered.”

It wouldn’t, Julius conceded. But it might help confirm exactly who Bethany’s father was: David Metford or his brother, Adrian.

Chapter Nine

Bethany bathed and changed out of her riding clothes as she waited for Franklyn’s eventual departure from his employer’s rooms. She then waited another five minutes before leaving her own suite to move silently down the hallway and knock softly on the door of Julius’s bedchamber.

She stepped back in surprise when she immediately heard the sound of swearing coming from inside the room. A clear indication Julius did not welcome this further interruption.

The key turned in the lock, Julius starting to speak the moment he opened the door. “Damn it, can’t a man be left in peace to continue pleasuring himself— Oh dear God!” The angry flush in his cheeks deepened to embarrassment, and his grip tightened on the front of his unfastened pantaloons until the knuckles of his hand showed white. “This is so much worse than when Ja—Franklyn walked in on me a short time ago,” he groaned.

Bethany was aware of her heart pounding loudly and the heat coloring her cheeks.

Not because of what Julius said, but because he looked debauched. His hair was in disarray. His eyes were feverish. There was that unnatural flush in his cheeks. His lips were slightly swollen, as if he had been biting or chewing on them.

What had he said before he realized it was her at the door and not his valet returning? Oh yes. Can’t a man be left in peace to pleasure himself…? She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but she wished to know.

Bethany moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Is pleasuring yourself what you were doing when I knocked on the door?”

Julius opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again. Before opening it again. “Yes,” he finally managed to mutter in a strangulated voice.

The warmth increased in her cheeks. “Is that why your pantaloons are unfastened?”

“Yes.”

“How does a man go about pleasuring himself?”

Julius gave a slightly dazed shake of his head. “This really is not a suitable conversation for an unmarried young lady.”

Her gaze met his steadily. “I have no mother, nor am I comfortable asking my uncle about such intimacies, so how else am I to learn if someone does not explain it to me?”

He scowled his frustration. “No doubt your guardian would say you should not be learning about those intimacies!” He felt sure that her brother would second that opinion.

Her brows rose. “Then I am to go to