Free Candace Camp by A Dangerous Man Page B

much quieter.”
    “Thieves are not usually the routine in any household, I imagine,” he replied mildly. He glanced around the room, taking in its spaciousness and comfort, the glass-doored shelves and locked cabinets, the pile of ledgers upon the desk and its well-used look.
    “This is, um, your office?” he asked. Certainly he could not imagine Edmund in a place such as this.
    Eleanor nodded. “Yes, it is where I work.”
    She looked down at the desk, somewhat distractedly arranging the pencils in a row. The discovery of her ransacked room had disturbed her more than she cared to admit. “Why did he tear apart my bedchamber that way? Nearly everything valuable is down here.”
    “Doubtless he did not realize that. Perhaps he simply started in your room, expecting to find jewels, and then he planned to work his way downstairs. He wasn’t counting, I’m sure, on your, um, maid discovering him.”
    “Amah,” Eleanor corrected. “Kerani looks after the children for me.” She looked up at him, her gaze hardening a little, offering him a challenge. “No doubt you find us a rather unusual household.”
    He shrugged. “Somewhat.”
    He found himself wanting to ask who were all the people whom he had seen—why her household contained an African man who spoke perfect English and wore a gentleman’s suit, as well as an Indian woman, two children, and a butler who looked as though he would be more at home in a dockside tavern than in a butler’s pantry. And what did a woman do in an office like this? Why had someone ransacked her bedroom—surely not the pattern of a common thief, no matter what he had told her?
    But Anthony knew that such thoughts were entirely beside the point. There was no reason for him to be wondering about this woman and her life any more than there had been any reason a moment earlier for him to want to kiss her. So he said nothing, and silence stretched between them.
    “Well, that is not why you came,” Eleanor said briskly, turning away and going to a cabinet and unlocking it. “You want to know about Edmund’s death.”
    She picked up a piece of paper inside the cabinet and turned, bringing it back and laying it down on the desk close to where Anthony stood, turning it so that he could see it. It was an official-looking document, complete with stamps and seals, written in Italian.
    “This is the death certificate the Italian authorities wrote for Edmund. Can you read Italian?”
    “A little,” he replied, picking up the document and perusing it. He felt uncomfortable, almost embarrassed.
    “It says that his death was due to drowning,” Eleanor told him flatly, pointing with the tip of a pencil to the appropriate line. “Of course, if one believes that the Italian officials are corrupt and lied on the death certificate, I suppose that is not proof enough. There was also an article in the Italian newspapers about his death, since it was an accident.” She handed over a folded piece of newsprint, again in Italian. “There.”
    Anthony’s eyes ran down the story. His Italian, never fluent, was rather rusty, but he recalled enough to see that the article was indeed about Sir Edmund Scarbrough and his drowning.
    “His health improved so much in Naples that Edmund was much more vigorous than he was here. I am not sure why he grew interested in sailing. I think it had more to do with his friends being interested in it than anything else. Usually he sailed with Dario Paradella or one of his other friends. Dario had been supposed to go, but he had to cancel, and Edmund went by himself. He said he needed to think. When he did not return by nightfall, I grew worried, and I sent a servant to the docks, but his boat was not there. I grew increasingly worried, of course, and I sent notes around to his friends. I sent servants to the various places that he might have stopped, but he was nowhere to be found. So, eventually, I contacted the authorities. Two days later, his…” Eleanor paused,