Page 68 of How the Earl Entices

He pressed his fingers along the edge where the tabletop met the base, feeling for any kind of mechanism—

His fingertip snagged on a piece of wood just barely protruding from the flushed edge. A smile crooked his lips. He pressed it, and a secret compartment sprung open.

His pulse pounded as he reached inside and pulled out a sheath of papers. He scanned them. Not the diary he sought, but a list of names and bits of information about each man. With a jolt, he realized what he held in his hands—the list of men working with Wentworth to trade secrets to the French, along with information that Wentworth could use to blackmail them. Or take them down with him if any of them ever decided to confess.

He folded the papers and tucked them inside his breast pocket, then closed the secret compartment and muttered a low curse. These papers were helpful, but he needed the diary. Without it, his only evidence for placing Wentworth in Le Havre was a single signature. Not nearly enough to prove the ambassador’s guilt and his innocence.

Finding no more hidden spaces in the table, he turned back to the room to begin a new search, and his gaze landed on a matching table sitting between two bookshelves on the other side of the room. He offered up a silent prayer that it also held a matching secret compartment, and matching evidence of treason.

As he started forward, a shout went up from the hallway.

The guard had been found. More noise, more shouts, now followed by the sounds of running feet and doors rapidly opening and closing—

Christ. He was caught.

With a longing glance at the table, he ran to the window and threw up the sash, just as the men reached the study. The door handle rattled, then fists pounded against the locked door as Ross slipped outside onto the narrow brick ledge supporting the window casement, two stories above the side garden. He eased down the sash and pressed himself flat against the house at the side of the window, out of sight. The toes of his Hessians jutted out over the edge into thin air.

“Wonderful,” he muttered sarcastically as he scanned the building’s flat façade.

There was no ledge connecting the windows that he could inch his way down and use to escape through another room. And of no use even if there had been. Wentworth’s men would be searching every room on this floor and standing guard at both ends of the hall, preventing escape down either set of stairs. No, there was no way back into the house, and no way back into the party to fetch Grace. She was on her own now.

So was he, with no means of escape. He couldn’t help a dark laugh at the picture he’d create when dawn came and he was discovered, a masked man standing on a window ledge two stories above London. He couldn’t think of anything worse, unless fate decided to punish him further by making it rain.

Rain.A desperate idea struck, and he slid his gaze to the side, holding his breath and praying…

He let out a heaving sigh of relief at the downspout that ran along the side of the house, from the roof all the way to the cistern in the cellar. Carefully, he inched his way to the edge of the casement ledge. His hand shook as he reached out to grab the downspout to climb to the ground. Suicide, most likely. But he had no choice. If he stayed here, death was certain.

He glanced at the ground in the darkness, thirty feet below him, and muttered, “Better to die in a flowerbed than by the hangman’s noose.”

But that sentiment gave little comfort as he swung over onto the downspout. The metal groaned beneath his weight, and he froze.Please, God, let the fastenings hold!After several deep breaths, with his hands gripped around the metal pipe and his feet pressed against it like a vise, he slowly lowered himself, yard by terrifying yard. The metal groaned and squealed as he climbed down as carefully yet as quickly as he could.

Above him in the study, he heard the door break open. The jamb splintered with a loud shattering as the lock popped and the door was flung open. Shouts and running boots filtered through the window into the night.

Christ.He moved quickly now, half-sliding down the downspout to move as far away into the darkness below as possible before the men discovered his escape route. But the metal length groaned beneath his weight and jerked sideways.

The last bracket tore loose from the brick. The pipe bowed out from the wall with a loudpop.

Ross jumped. He fell the last six feet into the side garden, his boots hitting the ground and throwing him forward. He tucked his shoulder and rolled, stopping just inches from a large blackthorn bush whose thorns were so big that he could see the thumb-sized spears shining in the moonlight.

He climbed to his feet, brushing the dirt and grass off his shoulders.

A surprised cry sounded behind him. He spun around. Among the shadows beside the house, a woman leaned back against the brick with her skirts bunched up around her waist. In front of her, staring at Ross with the same shocked expression, stood a man with one hand down her bodice and the other between her legs, his breeches down around his knees.

For a moment, none of them moved, all three simply staring in surprise. Then Ross cleared his throat and called out, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

He nodded a polite goodnight and sauntered away toward the street at the front of the house, leaving the startled couple staring after him.

Grace nervously tappedher fingers against the champagne flute and once more glanced toward the marble stairs. A half hour had passed, and there was still no sign of Ross. She waited in the stair hall and pretended to enjoy her glass of champagne while her heart ticked off the seconds growing closer to midnight.

Ross had told her to leave, but still she’d stayed as the clock grew closer to the unmasking. Leaving him behind was unbearable. So was the thought that he might have been caught, that even now he was being led away by the authorities. That she might never see him again.

Her hand trembled as she raised the flute to her lips. A drink was the last thing she wanted, with the champagne tasting like vinegar on her tongue. But as she tilted back her head to sip, her eyes darted to the gold clock hanging on the wall, once more surreptitiously checking the time—

Five minutes to midnight. Panic squeezed her chest. Oh God, where was Ross?

But she didn’t dare linger any longer. If her mask came off and someone recognized her, it would mean more than the end for Ross’s burglary—it could very well mean the end for her and Ethan. Even now, so close to obtaining the information that would exonerate Ross, she couldn’t put her son in jeopardy. With no other choice, she turned to leave the party.

A hand clasped her elbow from behind, stopping her.