“It’s nearest to my room.”
“I actually think the door from the conservatory is closer to your room.” And there were lots of places to hide in the conservatory. Among all those plants.
He thought about it. “If we make it the conservatory, will you stay inside?”
“Of course.” It would be much easier for me to see what was happening through the panes of glass there. The passage from the study was stone, and ended in a heavy wooden door. I would have no opportunity to see anything whatsoever. So yes, I could agree to stay inside the conservatory while Christopher ventured outside.
“Knock on my door at quarter till eleven, then?”
I promised I would, and we went back inside for the game of whist that was shaping up in the billiard room after supper.
The house wassilent and dark when I left my room just before ten forty-five that evening. Most of the inhabitants had gone to bed, it seemed, or if not that, at least they were in their rooms being quiet.
My wing was the most deserted, of course. I saw no sign of life as I pulled my door shut, wincing at the sound the latch made as it broke the depth of the silence, nor as I tiptoed down the carpet runner in my bare feet, shoes dangling from my hand.
There was a faint stripe of light where the west wing dead-ended into the central wing, in the spot where Aunt Roslyn’s and Uncle Herbert’s room was. From this, I deduced that they—or one of them, at least—was still awake. From the faintness of the light, I further considered that Aunt Roz might be reading in bed. Uncle Herbert is not a big reader, but she enjoys a good mystery.
I held my breath as I tiptoed past, careful not to disturb the air too much with my passage. Aunt Roz raised three boys, and as such, has a well-tuned ear for noises at night.
The main wing was faintly lit by the light from the foyer on the first floor, that shined up the main staircase and illuminated the area right in the middle of the hallway. The Duke’s and Duchess’s Chambers were, of course, dark and silent, and I’ll admit to feeling the slightest frisson of discomfort as I passed the Duke’s Chamber, at the memory of what—or who—lay beyond the closed door.
Then I was past the door, as well as out of the glow of the light, and on my way down the hall towards the other half of the manor.
Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Harold kept rooms in this corner of the hall, and unlike Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, they had separate sleeping chambers. It seems a very archaic way of doing things. Especially in our day and age, when people not only admit to having congress, but admit to liking it. They must have been together as man and wife as some point, after all, or Crispin wouldn’t exist. But perhaps Uncle Harold snored and Aunt Charlotte had the sensitivities of the princess on the pea, and so separate arrangements worked better for them.
Now, I assumed, they would be moving into the Duke’s and Duchess’s Chambers, and wouldn’t even have to share a wall.
There were no sounds coming from either chamber, nor was there any light peeping out around the jamb. If Uncle Harold snored, he hadn’t yet gotten to that level of sleep, and Aunt Charlotte was not twisting and turning in her bed, at least not as far as I could make out.
Then I was past that corner, too, and on my way down the hallway towards Christopher’s room.
Here, there were a few more signs of life. Light shone under the door of what had to be Francis’s room, although when I stopped to listen, I heard no sounds from within. Not even the turning over of a page in a book or the scratching of a pen across paper. Christopher’s light was out, of course, but on the other side of the hall, I could see the outline of the door to one of Crispin’s rooms. He had a full suite, not that I had been in his rooms for probably close to a decade. But back in the days when we’d all been running around the Hall playing hide-and-seek, there had been a bedroom, a dressing room, and a sitting room for him to call his own. If I remembered correctly, the light was on in the sitting room, so perhaps he had just forgotten to turn it out when he went to bed.
Alternatively, he was sitting in there reading, or smoking, or contemplating the unfairness of his life, and that was certainly his right, as well, even if the unfairness of being Crispin St George couldn’t compare to the unfairness of being almost anyone else.
I didn’t go across the hall to check. Instead I stopped in front of Christopher’s door and turned the knob carefully. It made the slightest squeaking noise as it turned, of metal against metal, but someone must have oiled it quite recently, because it was a very small sound. It nonetheless sounded much bigger in the silence of the sleeping house, and I froze for a moment before Christopher’s voice hissed from inside. “Either get in or get out. The longer you stand there, the more likely someone will see you.”
That was certainly true, so I pushed the door open enough to slip through, and shut it again behind me. “Ready?”
“Almost.” Christopher was peering at himself in the mirror. “It feels a bit silly to put on a hat for a clandestine meeting in the garden just before midnight, but I glow like a beacon, don’t I?”
He didn’t. Not remotely. Although he would certainly show up a lot better than I would once the moon hit that head of fair hair.
My own bob is a sort of soft medium brown, and I hadn’t bothered to tuck it under a hat, since I didn’t think I’d be leaving the house.
“Put on a cap if you want to,” I said. “But if someone sees you through the window, it’s no big deal. You have every right to walk around the gardens at eleven-thirty if you choose to. You’re an adult now, and your parents or aunt and uncle can’t order you back to your room for being out too late. And it’s been a strange day, after all. Perhaps you couldn’t sleep and thought the fresh air would help.”
He gave himself a dissatisfied look in the mirror. “I suppose so. Although I’d feel better if I wasn’t so immediately visible from above.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about it,” I told him. “The lights were out in Uncle Harold’s and Aunt Charlotte’s rooms, and I figure Francis has better things to do than sit at the window staring down into the garden. Your parents have rooms on the other side of the house, so they won’t see you, and Crispin’s windows look out at the front drive and the courtyard. Nobody’s likely to see you if you just stick to this side of the Hall.”
“I suppose. Although if I had my wig…”
“If you had your wig and someone caught you wearing it, that wouldn’t be a good thing at all.”
“Perhaps not,” Christopher admitted. “Although Grimsby knows anyway.”
“Yes, but what if it wasn’t Grimsby?”
