Fanning the Flame Read Online Free PDF Page A

chambermaid," the butler said sourly.
    Another harrumph and the housekeeper turned and stalked away.
    "Tell us what happened," Adam pressed.
    Atwater didn't hesitate, caught up as he was in the importance of being interviewed by a duke and an earl. "It was getting quite late, but his lordship and Miss Whitney had not yet retired. Most of the staff had already been dismissed, but I was feeling a little out of sorts. I thought I would enjoy a glass of warm milk before I hied myself off to bed. As I passed down the hall, I remember quite distinctly hearing Miss Whitney in the study in conversation with the earl. A few minutes later, I heard the shot. I raced down the hall and threw open the door and there he was, poor Lord Fenwick, lying in a pool of blood."
    "Go on," Adam urged, trying to absorb the news that Jillian had been in the study before the shot was fired, not gone in after, as she had told him, and wondering if he had been duped by a woman yet again. Anger flooded through him. He calmly tamped it down, banking it until later.
    "As I said, the earl was lying there covered in blood and Miss Whitney was standing beside him. It was obvious what had occurred."
    "And that was. . . ?" Adam prodded.
    "There is a set of stairs at the rear of his lordship's private library, just there." Atwater pointed toward an open door in the north wall of the study. "If I hadn't arrived when I did, Miss Whitney would have escaped upstairs to her room and no one would have been the wiser."
    "But instead you rushed in and saw her standing over the body."
    "That is correct."
    "Was Miss Whitney holding the pistol?"
    "No. She had dropped it on the floor a few feet away."
    Perhaps she had. Since she hadn't bothered to mention the gun, it was more than possible she had been the one to use it. "Did you confront her at that time?"
    He nodded. "I said, 'Oh, dear, what have you done?' She denied it, of course, said she had no part in the shooting. That's when I started shouting for help and Miss Whitney took off running. She ran out through the door at the back of the library, down the hall, and out through the garden."
    Adam remembered it well. He could still feel her surprisingly full breasts pressing into his chest when he had captured her in the alley. Her struggles instantly aroused him and he'd been hard all the way back to the house.
    Now, as he replayed the story she had told him, making no mention of the pistol or her presence in the study before the murder, fury at her deceit tightened a muscle in his jaw.
    Clay spoke up just then. "Were the windows in the study kept locked?"
    "Not usually. The earl always liked a bit of fresh air, especially in the evenings."
    "So it's conceivable someone might have stood outside the open window, shot him, and tossed in the gun."
    "In theory, I suppose that could have occurred."
    "Did you check for footprints outside the study?" Adam asked.
    "The beds beneath that window are gravel, and at any rate, it rained just before dawn."
    "Can you think of any reason Miss Whitney might have wanted to see Lord Fenwick dead?" Clay asked.
    The butler shrugged narrow, sloping shoulders. "Who can say? Perhaps it was a lovers' quarrel."
    Adam ignored the rush of disgust brought on by those words. "Would you mind if we took a quick look around?"
    He didn't wait for an answer, just strode toward the ornate door leading into Fenwick's private library. A brief perusal of the wood-paneled, book-lined room showed a mahogany table gleaming beneath a green glass reading lamp and two leather-seated chairs. A chessboard set up with exquisitely carved medieval ivory pieces sat in the corner. Noting the set of stairs at the back of the room, he returned to the study.
    "You've been extremely helpful, Atwater." Adam passed him a sizable vowel for his trouble, the coins jingling as the butler curled his thin fingers around them.
    "Thank you, my lord."
    "Hopefully we'll see the villain—whomever it may be—arrested in very short