They joined him at the dollhouse. His forefinger lay against the paneling of one of the rooms. When he saw that they both were watching, he pressed in on the paneling. It opened; inside was a small lever. He depressed it with his finger, and with a creak, the outer wall of the dollhouse opened a crack.
Gillian gasped. “What is it?”
Stephen pushed it apart. It wasn’t much. A series of small wooden corridors and staircases, but as Stephen further manipulated the walls of the dollhouse, it became clear that this hidden hallway opened into most of the rooms, honeycombing the west wing.
“It’s a servants’ hallway. A lot of large castles have them. My uncle’s largest castle is riddled with them.” Stephen was the bastard son of a bastard son of the previous earl of Irvine. The current earl, his uncle, had raised him, so he had lived in castles such as this his whole life.
“How did you know it was here?” Gillian asked, gesturing to the house.
“Och, just look at it. It doesna match. The walls are thick, aye? But there’s a good bit of room unaccounted for here; it made no sense to me.”
“That’s very clever, Stephen,” Rose said, handing him his walking stick. “But now we must find a ghost.”
“We can’t go to the cliff path until midnight. Why not look here?” Stephen indicated the secret passageways in the dollhouse. “Gillian said the west wing wasclosed off and no one goes there. Seems to me the perfect place for ghosts to lurk.”
Gillian eyed the chalk markings on the floor nervously. “We should clean this first.”
“Not yet,” Rose said. “Let’s test it first, to be certain. There are a few variations of the counter curse, so if this one doesn’t work, we’ll try another.”
When Gillian still regarded the floor uneasily, Rose took one of the discarded sheets and draped it over the markings.
After a quick inspection of the entrances to the servants’ corridor, they set off into the west wing, Gillian and Rose holding candles.
“We have to be careful,” Gillian whispered. “Sir Evan meets women here.”
“They’ll never see us,” Stephen said, entering a room, with Rose and Gillian trailing behind. “But we can watch them.”
He pushed on a panel, and it swung open, revealing a dark rectangle. He gestured for them to enter first. Gillian stepped in cautiously and held her candle high. There wasn’t much to see. It was a rough wooden corridor, just like in the dollhouse. It smelled musty and disused. They wandered through the corridor, popping in and out of rooms. Gillian neither experienced headaches nor saw any specters.
As they wandered, she noticed that every so often a slab of wood at about eye level was mounted on the wall. Thinking this odd, she pointed it out to Stephen.
“Not odd at all.” He found the catch to a door and sent Rose into the room. Then he slid the piece of woodaside to reveal two holes in the wall. “Spy holes,” he said. “Have a peek.”
Gillian pressed her eyes to the wall and watched Rose putter about the room. “Some servants’ corridor. They can spy on their masters.”
Stephen chuckled. “Well, I daresay they’re more for the masters to spy on guests or young ladies.”
Gillian’s jaw dropped. “That’s disgusting!”
Stephen laughed again.
“Come look at this,” Rose called.
They joined her. She gestured around the room, eyebrows raised. There wasn’t a sheet covering anything in this room. In fact, it looked inhabited.
“This must be Sir Evan’s tryst room,” Gillian said.
Rose opened the cupboards and wardrobe. “Someone is living here.”
Gillian wandered over. A half dozen gowns hung from pegs in the wardrobe, and slippers and shoes lined the bottom. Shifts and stockings were folded neatly in the cupboard.
“These are verra nice,” Stephen said, fingering the material of the shifts.
Their discovery made Gillian nervous. She wondered how often Evan and his lover met here. It made her worry that he would move the sheet in the solar and see the markings on the floor. Her stomach clenched tightly, and she wished she’d insisted that they clean the floor before going on this expedition.
“Come, let’s go.” With some urging Gillian induced Stephen and Rose to leave. On their way back to thesolar, Gillian noted that Stephen’s limp was more pronounced and lines of pain bracketed his mouth. She’d also noted how hard he’d worked all day to hide it, with his jests and amusing stories.
When they returned to the solar, Nicholas was there waiting for them. Gillian’s heart stuttered, and she nearly tripped over her own feet. He stood by the window, staring down at the circle drawn on the floor. The sheet dangled from his fingers.
