Four days ago, while she had been sparring with Captain Archer in the library, Alice and Tamsin had gone down to St. Petroc’s for supplies. Though the food situation had improved ever since the macaroni incident—the staff seemed to have given up that particular gambit—Alice and Tam had felt it wise to procure biscuits and crackers and fresh fruit in case circumstances deteriorated once more.
They’d also acquired a host of supplies for the house’s refurbishment: whitewash, paintbrushes, rich brocade fabric—and, because Tamsin was Tamsin, practical items like soap and stockings and candles. They’d paid in advance and asked the shopkeepers to deliver the unwieldy parcels directly to Pomeroy House that afternoon.
This excellent plan had been foiled somewhat by the fact that none of the items had ever arrived.
The parcels’ disappearance was bizarre. Inexplicable. And, in light of the preceding month’s other peculiarities, decidedly suspicious.
Ruby and Alice had ventured down to the village yesterday evening to verify that the items had indeed been delivered as they’d requested. After confirmation from a variety of bemused shopkeepers, Ruby had hatched a new plan: one that involved creeping surreptitiously around the house in the middle of the night, her dressing gown belted tight around her waist and her ears attuned to every sound.
If the Pomeroy House staff had intercepted the parcels for some baffling reason of their own, the items were no doubt hidden somewhere in the house.
And Ruby was going to find them.
She’d begun the search hours ago and had found nothing of note in the conservatory or the library. Her clandestine hunt had then taken her to the ice house—cold, empty of lady-in-waiting paraphernalia—and now to the underground larder beneath the kitchen. She was busy riffling through jarred jellies and finely milled flour, curls clinging damply to her neck, when she heard a sound from somewhere up above her head.
It was long and low and unearthly. A hiss—almost a rasp.
The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Had that been...
No, she thought.Get hold of yourself, Ruby Ballimore.
The Scourge of St. Petroc’s wasnotreal. And even if it was, it had no reason to spend its night creeping about six feet above her head, trapping her underground until her bones disintegrated to dust.
As she stood motionless beneath the rickety wooden staircase, the noise came again: a long, creaking, drawn-out scrape. And then, to her surprise, a mumbled curse.
She put fictional sea monsters firmly out of her mind. It was not the Scourge. It was a person—and the sound resembled not a terrifying monster stalking young ladies, but a heavy object being dragged across a freshly mopped kitchen floor.
Herheavy object, if Ruby did not miss her guess. And whoever was up there was on the point of spiriting it away.
She took the stairs two at a time and flung open the larder door.
In front of her, in a patch of moonlight, stood Captain Malcolm Archer. His booted foot was braced on a wooden crate, and his shirt hung open at the neck. He had, perhaps, been up all night: His jaw was thick with black stubble, and his mouth was set not in his characteristic smile, but in a grim slash of handsome concentration.
An expression that shifted, when he saw Ruby, to one of dismay.
“Ha!” she exclaimed. “I knew it!”
He blinked at her. “You... what?”
“Iknewit. I knew you were up to something nefarious.”
He glanced at the door and the dark expanse of the stairs behind her. “Did you just emerge from the larder in the middle of the night?”
“I—well, yes, but that’s not—”
He smiled at her, a long curl of wicked amusement. “Fancied a midnight snack, did you?”
Devil take the man, it was as if he couldn’t help himself. She made herself scowl in the face of all that charm, despite the shivery sensation it seemed to set off inside her.
In truth, that smile only made him more suspicious. No one had ever flirted with Ruby like that without some ulterior motive.
“My whereabouts,” she said distinctly, “are none of your concern.”
He stepped closer, and she took a quick, shallow breath. Her eyes dropped helplessly from his mouth to the place where his shirt gaped open. His skin looked silvery-gold in the moonlight, his chest muscular and sprinkled with black hair.
“You are lady-in-waiting to my employer.” His words scraped out, sweet and rough, and she couldfeelthe warm proximity of his body. “And you are living in my house. Everything about you is my concern.”
Oh God. Her stomach flipped at his words, his tone—but she refused to let him have the advantage. She gritted her teeth and removed her gaze from his throat so that she might glare at his wooden crate instead.
