Free A Good Rake is Hard to Find by Manda Collins

brother’s collection of jeweled stickpins remained intact, though they’d been scattered across the carpet before the wardrobe where their case had been kept. So, it was clearly not money the culprit was after.
    The thoroughness of the disarray seemed to indicate to Leonora that whoever had done the searching had not discovered what he was looking for. Otherwise, he’d have stopped as soon as he’d found it. Wouldn’t he?
    â€œJonny,” she said aloud, shaking her head in bewilderment. “What were you involved with?”
    Whatever it was, she thought, rising with a renewed sense of determination, she meant to find out.
    She briefly considered asking one of the maids to come assist her in putting the room back together, but something stopped her. And moving from mess to mess, she tidied the room of a brother who would never come through the doorway again.
    She was placing the books that had been dumped out of their neatly arranged rows on the built-in bookcase, when her hand brushed against a protrusion along the underside of the second shelf. Curious, she ran her fingers along the wood and with her heartbeat quickening she realized it was a lever. With shaking fingers, she pulled the metal arm toward her and, with a click, a recess was revealed in the back of the shelf.
    Not stopping to consider the consequences of putting her hand into a darkened cubby, Lenora reached in and pulled out what looked to be a journal, and a faded length of crimson ribbon.
    This was it, she thought, glancing around the empty room, as if someone were there to take the hidden treasure from her. This was what the intruder had been looking for. She knew it with every bit of her heart.
    And, because some part of her felt unsafe in her brother’s recently searched rooms, she hurried out, shutting the door firmly behind her.
    Once she’d reached her own bedchamber, she was relieved to find her maid was elsewhere. Carrying her prize to the chair before the window, she opened the leather-bound volume and saw the first page was inscribed with her brother’s name, in his own hand. It was dated April, two years previously.
    Her breath coming faster, she began to read.
    *   *   *
    â€œThat was fast work,” Mainwaring said with a wry grin as he and Freddy drove through the park in the curricle Freddy had borrowed from his brother Archer, who was in the country with his very pregnant new wife. “I sincerely thought Miss Craven would have nothing to do with you. It is a testament to your charm that I have been proved wrong.”
    â€œMore a testament to her own desperation to know more about the Lords of Anarchy, I’d say,” Freddy replied as he expertly steered them along the path. A jaunt in the park was something akin to riding a racehorse on a country amble, but though Freddy was comfortable enough behind the reins, Mainwaring was not fond of speed or daring when it came to transportation. So in a nod to the other man’s preferences, Freddy was tooling them around the park. “She was none too happy about the engagement, but was convinced of its necessity for her to gain access to Sir Gerard and his coterie of followers.”
    â€œIt shows the lady’s strength of character,” Mainwaring said with a nod. “That a lady would be willing to risk future marriage prospects—which could mean the difference between a comfortable life and a life of indentured servitude as a poor relation—is admirable.”
    â€œDon’t ever let her hear you say that,” Freddy said with a frown. “Leonora has some very strong ideas about ladies and marriage and such. She’ll have flayed you alive before you even realize she’s made the first cut.”
    Mainwaring chuckled. “Don’t be absurd, she’s a lady, not a mercenary.”
    â€œTrue enough,” Freddy said with a laugh. “But I promise you she will not take it kindly if you