Page 52 of The Countess Caper

Every night.

Right now.

Back to tea. Back to polite questions and serene smiles. The closest she could get was to frown at Holly. Holly blinked at the sudden attention. “Have you lost your locket?” Tessa asked.

Holly reached up to touch the silver locket that Tessa had never seen her without. The ribbon around her neck was empty. Holly nodded sadly. “It was in my jewelry box, but the box has gone missing.”

Rue tensed.

Fergus popped his head in through the door, incensed. “What do you mean, it’s gone missing?”

He and Rue exchanged what could only be described as a murderous glance.

“I think the weasel took it.”

“Took my sewing basket too,” Daphne muttered.

“And does this weasel have a name?” Roarke asked quietly, but he was looking at Tessa. He clearly thought it was the same man who had attacked her. There was a thunderstorm in his eyes, the kind that came suddenly from the sea and took out everything in its path.

Holly frowned. “I beg your pardon, my lord?”

“The weasel. His name.”

“Weasels don’t have names.”

It was Roarke’s turn to look vaguely confused.

“It was an actual weasel,” Tessa explained, biting the inside of her cheek because she suddenly wanted to giggle. “We caught him upstairs. He’s made a nest somewhere, but we can’t find it.”

Roarke sat back. “A weasel.”

“Maybe a ferret?” Tessa allowed. “A marmot? Are there marmots in England? I can’t be sure.”

Bewildered, Roarke did not reply.

“Shall I make up your room, my lord?” Mrs. Pompadour asked. “Preferably one without a rodent of any kind?”

The women froze, each to one.

The first test of the Countess of Dartmoor.

Because this was her house. Roarke did not have a room of his own. But everyone would naturally assume the master bedroom belonged to him.

It was currently occupied by one very mean cat and her three kittens. And a cricket no one could catch, but you could hear chirping throughout the house in the dead of night.

They looked at Tessa first, then Roarke. Mrs. Pompadour merely waited. Fergus, joined by Lennox in the doorway, looked to Roarke.

Roarke, bless him, looked to Tessa.

“It’s your house,” he said simply. “You decide.”

She might have married him all over again in the very moment, with no deals to be struck or bargains met. Just because he was Roarke.

She cleared her throat, silently scolding herself for her moment of fancy.

“The Blackbird Room is the only one with any kind of reliable furniture,” she said.

“The Blackbird Room it is.”