“What’s wrong?” Cassie followed Eliza’s gaze. “I don’t see anything amiss.”
“Over there. Just outside the yew hedge.”
Cassie squinted, trying to identify the figures partially hidden behind branches. “Is that Lenora and…Asquith?”
Lenora, they both knew, had harbored unrequited feelings for her guardian and their godmother’s son for years.
Asquith, for his part, appeared oblivious. But he had never, to Cassie’s knowledge, allowed himself to be alone with Lenora. Millie,yes…Eliza, too, as both had enjoyed riding as much as he did, but never Lenora.
Cassie didn’t think he held Lenora in contempt; she’d assumed he was being cautious.
She might have assumed wrong.
Eliza stepped closer to the sash. “Whatisshe doing?”
“I don’t know,” Cassie replied. “Is it me? Or does Asquith look particularly harassed?”
Just then, both figures disappeared fully into the maze.
“Who is looking harassed?” queried Millie from behind them. “And what has the two of you looking so intent?”
Both Cassie and Eliza turned. Behind them Millie stood arm-in-arm with Lady Emily, Adrian’s sister, and their youngest sister Nettie, all of them with wide-eyed expressions of curious innocence.
“Where is Lenora?” whispered Eliza.
“Headache,” Nettie replied, at the same moment Millie said, “Resting.”
“Lenora,” Lady Emily clarified, “is resting because she has a headache.”
Vigorous, simultaneous nods followed.
Eliza folded her arms. “And the two pairs of shoes visible beneath the yew?”
Nettie stood on her toes. “I don’t see any shoes.”
“Lenora,” Millie murmured her sister’s name like a curse. “Itoldher to go all the way into the maze.”
“A much better place to—” Emily stopped herself. “Converse,” she finished with a guilty blush.
“Millie, what’s going on?” Cassie demanded.
“Nothing,” they answered in unison.
While Cassie and Eliza exchanged a glance, Neville sauntered over to the group.
“Why is it,” he asked Millie, “you always appear to be up tosomething?”
Millie cast him a withering gaze. “What you perceive as ‘up to something,’ Little Lordling, is, in fact, the exercise of wit and imagination.” She smiled sweetly. “Two things beyond your experience.”
Lady Emily snickered. Nettie bit her lips as she did whenever she wanted to keep from smiling. Cassie and Eliza sent Millie identical warning glances.
“Lacking in imagination, am I? Well…” Neville cast his gaze about the room. “Asquith is missing. As is Lenora.” He turned his gaze back to the sisters, looking from one to the other. “I can imagine a few reasons why that might be so.”
“Lenora has a headache,” Nettie repeated.
“And has gone—”
“And,” Cassie interrupted Millie, “has gone out with Asquith to take a turn about the garden, in hopes a little air would help improve her condition.”
