Julius's Passion (Regency Club Venus #4) - Carole Mortimer Page 0,36

your uncle know of it?”

She considered. “He has never mentioned it, so probably not.”

Julius knew that meant one of two things.

Either Metford had no idea Bethany already knew of the drawer’s existence, and he hoped to keep that knowledge from her…

Or the older man really had no idea there was a secret drawer in the desk he had inherited first from his brother and then nephew.

The first meant there might be incriminating evidence from the attack and “murder” of James. The second that there might be papers or letters in connection to his suspicions regarding Metford being Bethany’s father. He still hoped, for her sake, that wasn’t true, but—

“There.” Bethany looked across at him expectantly as she stepped back from the desk.

Julius glanced down to see that a small drawer, totally at odds with the other deeper ones, had sprung forward on the left-hand side of the desk.

As far as he could see, it contained letters.

Half a dozen of them, tied together with a piece of blue ribbon.

Love letters from Adrian Metford to his sister-in-law, the Countess of Ipswich?

Julius was almost afraid to pick them up and find out, especially with Bethany standing beside him with an expectant expression.

“Are these letters what you were hoping to find?” Her voice sounded reverently hushed in the otherwise silent room.

Still, Julius hesitated to pick them up and look at them.

If they were love letters sent from Metford to his mistress, and with a date of seventeen ninety-nine or eighteen hundred, the latter the year Bethany was born, then it would be impossible, with her in the room with him, to keep that truth from her.

Or, knowing how forthright Bethany could be, stopping her from confronting her uncle with that knowledge at the earliest opportunity.

Chapter Thirteen

“My uncle will be back soon.”

Julius glanced at Bethany and then out the window, as if he expected to see Adrian Metford arriving home on horseback this very minute. He didn’t, of course, but Bethany’s reminder was a timely one. They couldn’t continue to remain in her uncle’s study indefinitely.

Julius still hesitated to pick up the letters. “Did the mechanism of the drawer seem well oiled to you or slightly stiff from lack of use?”

“I do not… It was perhaps a little sticky,” Bethany allowed when Julius frowned at her.

Which might or might not mean that Metford hadn’t opened the drawer in years. If at all. Possibly because he didn’t know of the drawer’s existence or its contents. If that were the case, then Julius could take the letters with him and read them at his leisure rather than glance at them here and now and risk possible discovery. Or conceal an expression of shock if his suspicions regarding Bethany’s birth should prove to be correct.

It was a risk Julius would have to take.

“Close the drawer again,” he instructed Bethany once he had picked up the letters and pushed them out of sight in the top of his waistcoat.

“As a visitor here, you will be the first to be suspected of taking those letters if my uncle should decide he wishes to look at them and discovers them gone,” she warned even as she reversed the mechanism and closed the drawer.

Julius briefly admired the way in which the carving on the back of the desk made it impossible to detect that mechanism or the secret it contained. “We have already lingered too long for me to read the letters in here,” he dismissed briskly. “I will return them to the drawer as soon as I have done so.”

“But—”

“We must leave.” Julius took a firm grasp of her arm and pulled her with him toward the door after glancing at the time on the long-case clock in the corner of the room. “Your uncle intends to return and take afternoon tea with you, and it is almost that time now.”

“I want to see what’s in the letters too—” She broke off when Julius swung her round to face him, his expression fierce.

He bent and thrust his face close to hers. “I am not your uncle to be swayed by a little pouting from you into always giving you what you want,” he hissed.

“I do not pout!” she protested indignantly.

He gave a humorless laugh. “You are doing so now.”

Bethany winced at the realization she was, indeed, pouting. An unattractive trait at the best of times, but one which she knew certainly wouldn’t sway the arrogant Julius Soames into doing as she wished.

He had already indulged her far more than she would