The Lady By His Side(50)

They both started forward, but chose different aisles—her to the left, while he went right.

“And there are more barrels here.” She halted, playing her lantern against the wall of the aisle in which she stood. “Gunpowder comes in barrels, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Check every barrel. Tell me if you find anything that’s not marked cognac, armagnac, whisky, or some other spirit you recognize. And tap every barrel—the sound will be different if it’s filled with powder rather than liquid.”

They spent the next minutes checking the barrels stacked at various places around the room.

Eventually, she joined him in examining the bulk of the barrels, those stacked along the rear wall to a height higher than his head. She placed her lantern at the end of a rack, as he had; the overlapping beams illuminated the wall quite well.

They peered at labels and tapped and listened.

At last, she stepped back; he was crouching by her feet, sounding out the lowest row of barrels. Her hands on her hips, she looked down at him. “I haven’t found anything but spirits.”

“The same. And that’s the last of them.” He braced one hand against a barrel and started to rise.

The wall of barrels creaked and shifted.

Half smothering a squeal, Antonia grabbed his shoulders and hauled, attempting to drag him away from the barrels. She caught him off balance and sent him and her stumbling and careening into the side wall.

He fetched up with his back against the cold stone, and she landed hard—body to body—against him.

And again, he fell victim to his slavering senses and reacted as those senses decreed; before he registered what he was doing, his arms had risen and locked her against him.

The impulse to crush her closer yet, to appease the welling, insistent ache, flared hotly.

“Oof!” She blew out a breath, fanning the fine tendrils of black silk that framed her pale face. Then she focused her wide eyes on his. “Sorry. I thought you were about to get buried.”

His gaze had locked with hers; feeling as if he was all but drowning in the silver of her eyes, he fought to compress his lips against a searing need to find out what hers tasted like. After a fraught second, he managed to reply, “No. The barrel I leaned against shifted a trifle—that’s all. The stack’s stable.”

Even to his ears, his voice sounded rough, deeper and more gravelly.

The battle to set her away from him was significantly more difficult to win than before.

He succeeded. Just.

He eased past her and turned to look up the room. He set his hands on his hips, drew in a tight breath, and pretended to survey the area as if searching for anywhere they’d overlooked, while inside, he wrestled his demons back into their cage.

He was supposed to be protecting her—even from himself. At least for now.

She, too, had fallen to studying the room’s contents again. “We haven’t found anything here, but regardless, might they have disguised the gunpowder? Perhaps put it into old brandy casks, for instance.”

He drew in another breath, forced his wits to function, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. That would increase the risk that someone—thinking it was brandy or whatever else—might steal it, or open it, find gunpowder, and raise the alarm.” He reached for his lantern. “And whoever brought the gunpowder here had no reason to imagine anyone would start actively searching for it. Better to just hide the gunpowder barrels somewhere—either somewhere sufficiently secret or among other barrels.”

“By the latter theory, this is the most likely place the gunpowder would have been hidden, but it’s not here.” She retrieved her lantern, and side by side, they started up the room toward the door.

He glanced back. “There’s no sign of any barrels being recently brought in or removed, either.”

“Well, the door is locked, and it’s a heavy old lock, so they—whoever they are—would have to have had access to the key.”

“If Ennis was directly involved, then they would have had no problem getting the key.” He held the door, then followed her through. “If by ‘here’ Ennis meant inside the house, then this was the most likely place to hide any barrels.” He hauled the door closed and relocked it.

After pocketing the key, he raised his lantern and played the beam into the surrounding darkness. “It’s possible they didn’t bother trying to hide the barrels among others, but simply hid them around some corner down here. We’ll have to search the entire area—even if you don’t see barrels, look for any sign that they might have been here. Any sign of recent activity.”

They spread out and quartered the cellars, which, once they moved away from the storage areas immediately around the bottom of the steps, proved to be largely empty. The floor was paved with stone flags throughout, and their footsteps echoed hollowly.