“He tore that place apart and ended in defeat. Which means the item he is seeking wasn’t there, Jasper.”

“Or well hidden,” he said with a shake of his head.

“Was there any other place where you put Solomon’s things after he died?” she encouraged softly. When he flinched, she already knew the answer. And hated that they had no time for him to ready himself.

He bent his head. “Yes,” he admitted after what felt like the most pregnant of pauses. “There is just one trunk left, which Reynolds brought to the attic. It’s filled with the most personal of my brother’s items. But they are not of much value.”

“Except to you,” she said.

He lifted his gaze to hers and held there. “I value nothing my brother left behind. You know that.”

“I know you tell yourself that,” she said, lifting his hand to her lips and brushing them across his knuckles. “Jasper, why don’t we look there? Please.”

He released her hand and paced away to stand at the still-open door. The rider he had sent with his message thundered past, riding hard toward the gate. Jasper speared her with a glance over his shoulder. “Fine,” he said, his tone harder than it had been toward her in a very long time. “We can waste our time with this. Come with me.”

She gathered her skirt in her hand and followed him. Something in that attic made Jasper turn himself away from her. Away from himself. And she feared that as much as she feared the discovery of whatever supposed treasure had been hidden from plain view.

The attic rooms had once been kept for servants, back in his grandfather’s day and before. Over time, they had been closed up, the servants moving into either lower level rooms in the estate or out to the dedicated servant quarters his father had built just after taking over the title.

Now Jasper stood at the door and felt why the family had made the change. It was bloody hot in the hallway. All the heat from the rest of the house lifted to fill this sloped ceilinged space. How generations of house servants had survived during especially warm summers, he didn’t know.

He supposed he had to give his father some credit for not abusing his staff by making them continue to live in such conditions. He frowned as he led Thomasina up the narrow hall and to a closed and locked door at the end.

He hated giving his father even the slightest credit for his behavior.

“Here,” he said, pulling the key from his pocket and taking a breath before he slipped it into the lock. There was a rusty click as the door creaked open slowly.

He stepped in first. Rude, perhaps, but after coming upon the ransacked remains of the outbuilding that morning, he wasn’t about to let the custom of ladies first put his wife in danger. Or at least further danger. He feared she was already in some peril just by being married to him and sharing the title that had brought so much shame to so many.