The key turned in the lock, and we stepped back. The door opened.
It was not Tidwell on the other side, however. Instead, it was Crispin’s eyebrow that crept up his forehead as he took in my no-doubt disheveled appearance—the orange tree and yucca had both had their fingers in my hair, and of course I hadn’t bothered to refresh my lipstick before I left my room earlier—and Christopher’s less than formal dress, with open collar and no hat or tie. “Midnight stroll?” he drawled.
“Sod off, St George.” I pushed past him and into the house.
It was incredibly rude of me, of course. Aunt Charlotte would have been appalled. Aunt Roz might have been, too.
Crispin wasn’t. He grinned, and it turned him from haughty young man to malicious little boy as he turned to watch me go. “The experience wasn’t to your liking, I take it?”
“A snake slithered across my foot,” I said stonily, and the grin widened.
“Was it the kind with two legs, Darling, or the kind with none?”
“None,” I said. “Like you, St George. It slithered along the ground, and—”
At this point, Christopher nudged Crispin out of his way, none too gently. “Leave off teasing her, Crispin. Can’t you tell she’s about to blow?”
The corner of Crispin’s mouth turned up. “Of course I can, old chap. That’s why I’m doing it.”
“Well, don’t,” Christopher said, as I pulled open the door to the servants’ stairs. “What are you doing down here, anyway?”
“Waking the old man,” Crispin said, “what else?”
“There’s not enough liquor in your own room for that?”
Crispin shrugged, and I told them both, “It’s late. I’m going to get some sleep. You two can do whatever you want. Stay down here and drink all night if you want to.”
Crispin opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Christopher shook his head. “I’ll go up with you.”
He entered the staircase behind me, and so, a bit to my surprise, did Crispin.
“Would you like me to walk you to your room, Darling?” he asked when we’d come out of the staircase into the upper hall and were standing between his and Christopher’s doors. “Make sure the creepie-crawlies don’t get you?”
“Don’t be silly,” I told him crushingly. “Nothing’s going to happen to me between here and the west wing.”
“Then I’ll say good night.” He stepped up to his own door with a nod for each of us. “Darling. Kit.”
He ducked inside and we heard the key turn in the lock. If he stepped away from the door, I didn’t hear his footsteps, however.
Of course, there could have been rugs. There probably were.
But just in case, when Christopher asked whether there was anything else we needed to talk about tonight, I told him no.
“Will you be down for breakfast?”
He said he’d be down bright and early, so we could plan our return to London in the afternoon, and then he ducked into his room and pulled the door shut behind him, too, while I slipped my shoes back off for the trip back to my own room.
I had changed out of my clothes into pyjamas, and had walked over to the window to pull the curtains closed against the moonlight and clouds scudding across the sky, when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye, out there in the darkness beyond the house. I stopped, hands up and clutching the sides of the drapes, as I peered into the night.
At first I saw nothing. The moon was tucked behind a cloud, and the stars were not enough by themselves to illuminate the garden, and by now, Tidwell had turned out all the lights on the lower level, so the house was blanketed in darkness. But then the moon peeped out from behind the clouds, for just long enough to illuminate the apex of a fair head, gliding above the top of the hedge maze behind the Hall.
The next second it was gone again, so quickly I couldn’t be certain I’d even seen it.
Except I was. Certain, that is. So certain that I dropped the curtains like they had burned me, and bounded across the room and out the door into the hallway, where I proceeded to pelt down the length of the west wing into the central hallway, and from there through the door into the Duchess’s Chamber, and over to the window.
Or at least over to the bed, where I stubbed my foot on one of the ornately carved legs. I ended up hopping the rest of the way, biting back moans of pain, certain I had broken my little toe.
And it was all for naught. By the time I got to the window and could examine the view at my leisure, the moon had once again disappeared behind a cloud, and the garden maze lay quiet and mysterious under the changing sky. I gave it up as a bad job, and limped back to my own room and into bed without looking out the window again.
