Which he did, halting directly before her.

She was conscious of Christian drawing nearer, stopping by her shoulder. She searched Dalziel’s uninformative face. “What is it? Justin?”

Dalziel answered with a sharp shake of his head. “He’s safely hidden where no one will think, or dare, to look for him.” He held her gaze. “I’ve heard from Hexham.” His voice low, he went on, “There’s only one family called Randall in the area, or was-a farmer who had a decent spread outside the town. He and his wife are both dead, but he was warm enough to spare his only son from the farm when the boy was awarded a governors’ scholarship to Hexham Grammar School. There, the lad did well enough, apparently, but the school lost track of him after he left.”

Letitia held his dark gaze; she knew what he was telling her, but she couldn’t-simply could not-take it in. After a blank moment, she said, “You’re saying…” Then she shook her head, briskly dismissing the impossible. “That couldn’t have been Randall. I couldn’t have been married to a farmer’s son.”

Dalziel’s lips compressed, then he murmured, “George Martin Randall. According to the school and parish records he would have turned thirty-four in April this year.”

She stared, jaw slackening. “Good God!” Her voice was weak; she literally felt the blood drain from her face.

“Sit down.” Christian grasped her arm and eased her back and down into the chair he’d set behind her.

Once she was seated, still stunned and shocked, he glanced at Dalziel. “That explains a few things.”

“Indeed.” Dalziel nodded curtly. “It also poses a host of new questions.”

“But…how could…?” Letitia gestured at nothing in particular, but they knew what she meant.

“Precisely.” Dalziel glanced around the study-at the polished wood, the heavy desk, the books and curios on the shelves, the elegant chairs. “The ‘how coulds’ are endless. How could a farmer’s son have achieved all this? More, although he was only thirty-four, he’d been wealthy enough, for long enough, to have simply become accepted by the ton.”

“Wealthy enough to rescue the Vaux from gargantuan debts,” Letitia said. “And so marry me-and through me become connected with and have the entrée to the highest levels of society.”

Dalziel blinked.

Christian realized he hadn’t known about the debts that had led to Letitia marrying Randall. Letitia, Justin, and their father had kept that secret well.

It was on the tip of Dalziel’s tongue to ask-to confirm and inquire about the forced marriage-but then he glanced at Christian, his look plainly saying, Later?

Christian nodded.

Somewhat to his relief, a frown replaced Letitia’s stunned expression.

“But why?” She looked up at Dalziel, then swiveled to look at him. “Why, why, why? It makes no sense.”

After a moment, Dalziel said, “Yes it does. Just think-a farmer’s son rises to live as one with the highest in the land.” When they looked at him, he continued, “That has to be a dream, a fantasy many farmers, laborers, and the like indulge in. Randall didn’t just fantasize, he made it happen. Found ways to make it happen.”

“I don’t understand.”

They all turned to Hermione. She was leaning against the desk, arms folded, a frown identical to the one on Letitia’s face darkening hers.

“Why would he want to become one of us? Why not just be a very rich farmer?”

Dalziel answered. “Status. It’s something we take for granted, that we rarely if ever think of. We’re born to it-we assume its mantle as our norm. But although we’re barely aware of it, others are. They envy us what we barely notice-all the privileges we enjoy by right of birth.” He paused, then went on, “While there are many who-out of our hearing-rail against our privilege, the truly clever…they try to join us.”

Letitia hauled in a huge breath, let it out with, “In which endeavor Randall succeeded excellently well.”

She was a part of his success.

She looked up, met Christian’s, then Dalziel’s, eyes. “That fits. Very well. It explains a lot of his attitudes that I never understood.”

Dalziel nodded. “Very likely, but the most pertinent point for our investigation is that having succeeded so excellently well, Randall kept his success a secret. A very, indeed amazingly, closely kept secret. Who knew of his background? So far, we’ve found no one. No one even suspected. One might have thought that, having succeeded, he might crow-at least to close friends. But he didn’t have any-something that now makes sense. Yet nothing we’ve uncovered suggests even secret gloating. He might have inwardly preened, but he didn’t celebrate his success.”

“He wasn’t finished.” Letitia met Dalziel’s dark eyes, then looked at Christian. “He was set on taking Nunchance from Justin. And he wanted children.” Her lips curved cynically. “Unfortunately for him, he forgot to specify that as part of our agreement. I believe he thought it simply followed as a natural outcome of my duties in the marriage bed, and strangely-perhaps because he was in fact a farmer’s son-he never realized that I might have some way of preventing that.”

The depth of her aversion for Randall showed in her eyes, then she turned back to Dalziel.

Who had started to pace. “Even so, his secrecy might well have been the reason behind his murder. His continuing plans, which made maintaining that secrecy even more important, only add weight to the thesis.”

Letitia frowned. “I can understand him murdering someone else to preserve his secret, but how could such a secret have killed him?”

Dalziel halted. “I don’t know, but such secrets are always dangerous.” He frowned, then glanced at the paneling, as if only then registering what they’d been doing when he’d entered. “What were you searching for?”

They told him.

He hesitated, clearly weighing what else he had on his plate against the challenge of finding a secret door. It took him all of five seconds to decide. “I’ve got some time-I’ll help.”

Which made four of them, which, as Letitia remarked, was just as well. The study was a cornucopia of carved wood. They divided the room into quarters and settled to their search.

Starting in one corner, she poked and prodded, mindlessly working her way along the paneling’s upper rail; inside, her mind was awash with a litany of exclamations, all escalating versions of “a farmer’s son?” It was, simply, unbelievable-unacceptable. For a lady of her rank and birth…it was more than shocking.

More than scandalous.

If it ever became known she’d stooped so low as to marry a farmer’s son…

Halting, raising her head, she sucked air into suddenly parched lungs.

Farther along the wall, Christian glanced up, caught her gaze.

She looked into his eyes, into the unwavering, unshakable gray, and felt her reeling world slow, steady.

Her catastrophic secret would only be a disaster if it became known.

He arched a brow at her, plainly asking if she was all right.

Drawing in another breath, she nodded, and returned to her examination of the rail.

Later. She would deal with the potential for catastrophe later. At the moment, it was all she could do to get her mind to accept Dalziel’s truth.

Ten minutes later she found a catch hidden in the moldings around one of the windows. Energized, she told the others. They came to look, then, while they all scanned the room, she depressed the catch.

A bookcase in the center of the opposite wall popped free of the stonework.

“My God!” Hermione breathed. “There really is a secret door.”

Christian and Dalziel had already crossed to the bookcase. They didn’t need to expend any huge effort to move it back-it swung open easily, and noiselessly, on well-oiled hinges.

Standing in the opening revealed, Christian, in a voice tinged with awe, said, “It’s not a secret door-it’s a secret room.”

Letitia and Hermione joined the two men, then followed them down the three steps that descended into what truly was an amazing find.

“Trust Randall to have a secret room”-Letitia slowly pivoted, taking in the space-“to store all his secrets in.”

That certainly appeared to be the room’s purpose. In contrast to the study, which was neat and tidy, with no papers on the desk and a pristine white blotter clearly for show rather than use, this room was full of papers-stacked on both sides of the massive but well-worn desk and bulging from pigeonholes behind it-and a blotter that was crossed, recrossed, and rather tattered.

All of the available wall space was covered with shelves housing ledgers, stacks of files, document boxes, and tomes that appeared to be accounts, their spines marked in Randall’s schoolboyish hand with dates and initials. The shelves stretched all the way to the high ceiling; a wooden ladder stood in one corner.

There was an old, serviceable lamp upon the desk-a large one of the sort clerks favored, that shed a wide pool of light when lit. The glass lamp-well was half full of oil, and the wick was charred, needing to be trimmed. There was hardly any dust anywhere. The room appeared to be in frequent use.

The desk, with its well-padded revolving chair behind it, sat halfway into the room, its back to the shelves covering the wall the room shared with the main body of the house. Letitia glanced back; the wall with the hidden door in its center was likewise covered in shelves, outside the space of the door itself. The wall opposite, abutting some deeper part of the house, was also covered in shelves.

The fourth wall-the one facing the desk-was the one of most immediate interest to them all. Both sides housed more ledgers, but between were two narrow windows flanking a wooden door.

They’d all been standing silently, pirouetting as they took it all in. Their gazes came to rest on the closed door. Christian walked forward, grasped the knob and turned; the latch clicked.