The Dragon's Bride by Jo Beverley

it would have killed her, moment by moment, to watch him in danger. Bad enough to have known he was at war, to pick up each newspaper fearing to see his name.
    She hadn’t been able to help following Con’s career through Fred Somerford. He’d entered the infantry. He’d made lieutenant, then captain, and once been mentioned in dispatches. He’d been at Talavera and wounded at the taking of San Sebastian—
    Wounded!
    —but not seriously.
    He’d changed regiments three times to see more action.
    Trying to pretend only polite interest, Susan had wanted to scream, “Why? Why not stay safe, you stupid creature?”
    Her Con, her laughing gentle Con, had no place in fields of cannon fire and slaughter.
    Yet it had made him the man she saw today….
    He was opening and closing drawers in the desk, glancing at the contents. “The curate had better go through everything,” he said. “In fact, perhaps you shouldn’t get rid of the bed. Just the hangings and mattress. There’s a dearth of money in the coffers, so I can’t afford the grand gesture of throwing away solid furniture.”
    Susan worked at keeping a bland expression but was jabbed by guilt. She remembered Con saying years ago that his branch of the family was the poor one. It had sprung from the first earl’s younger son, and what modest wealth the Sussex Somerfords had accumulated had been wiped out by royalist sympathies during the Civil War. Since then they’d lived comfortably enough, but more as titled gentlemen farmers than as members of the aristocracy.
    Times were hard for farmers now, however, even gentlemen farmers, and the old earl had run the earldom’s coffers almost dry with his crazy pursuits. And she must try to take what little coin might be left….
    One idea stirred. “What of the contents of his sanctum, my lord? The … specimens and ingredients. I believe some of them are valuable. Certainly the earl paid a great deal for them.”
    He looked at her. “So I shouldn’t consign them to the fire? Hell. Is there an expert nearby who might be willing to organize the sale of them?”
    “The late earl dealt with a Mr. Traynor in Exeter. A dealer in antiquarian curiosities.”
    “Is that what they call them? Well, waste not, want not. Give the details to de Vere and he’ll summon Traynor. And the various peculiar objects in this room might as well be put in the sanctum for his assessment. Perhaps crocodile heads have mystic powers. We wouldn’t want to deprive the world of such valuable artifacts, would we?”
    A smile was fighting at her lips as she glanced at the withered objects hanging around the bed. “And those?”
    “By all means.”
    But then he worked his way over to a sideboard and gingerly extracted something from under a pile of old magazines. It was a pistol. He carefully checked it, then tipped something out. The powder in the firing pan, she assumed.
    He turned to her. “He feared invaders?”
    “I don’t know, but he liked to keep in practice.”
    “What did he practice shooting on if he never went out?”
    “The birds in the courtyard. He was quite good.”
    He turned to look out at the courtyard. No birds were flying now, but the busy chirping and twittering was audible. “Not so safe after all,” he murmured, and she wondered what he meant.
    He put down the pistol and headed so quickly for the door that he bumped into a set of rotating shelves, sending it spinning and books tumbling.
    “Hell!” He stopped to rub his thigh.
    She hurried over to pick up the books, but he said, “Leave them,” and continued out into the gloomy corridor.
    She followed, wondering what was suddenly so wrong.
    “How many keys are there?” he demanded.
    “Just two. Mine and the earl’s, which should have been sent to you.”
    “A large bunch of keys, yes. I thought they were symbolic.” He pulled the door shut. “Lock it. We’ll let this Traynor loose on all of it before touching anything.”
    As she turned the key in the lock, he spoke again, however. “Are there anymore firearms in