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“Lord Kershaw’s,” Moulder replied promptly. “’Tis said to be one o’ the biggest o’ the season, what with him marrying that foreign heiress couple o’ years back.”
Godric stared at his manservant for a moment. When had Moulder become such a font of gossip? He must’ve been listening at doors all day. Godric shook his head. Kershaw. That was one of the names Winter Makepeace had given him. Perhaps his investigation into the lassie snatchers would be better served at a ball. He deliberately ignored the small, dry part of his intelligence that whispered it would mean spending the evening with his beautiful wife.
“Get out my good suit and then make sure the carriage waits for me.”
“Wise o’ you, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Moulder said as he did as instructed.
Godric pulled on a fresh white shirt. “What do you mean?”
“Well, no telling who she might meet there, is there?”
“What,” he asked very slowly, “are you talking about?”
at end, after she’d taken leave of her morose gardener, Megs went in search of Sarah.
“There you are,” she exclaimed rather unoriginally when she tracked down her sister-in-law in a room nearly at the top of the house.
“Here I am,” Sarah agreed, and then sneezed violently. With the help of two of the four girls from the home, she’d been taking down the curtains from the windows.
Mary Evening, a child of eleven or so with a freckled face and mouse-brown hair, giggled. Mary Little, the other girl, was rather more solemn with fine, flaxen hair.
Mary Little shot Mary Evening a chiding look before saying, “Bless you, miss.”
“Thank you, Mary Little,” Sarah gasped, then winked at Mary Evening. “Why don’t you girls finish pulling down the curtains while I chat with Lady Margaret.”
“Yes, miss!” The girls scampered over to the windows, apparently unperturbed by the quantity of dust.
“What is this room?” Megs asked, glancing around. It looked like a bedroom, but not one for a servant.
“I’m not entirely sure.” Sarah hesitated, then said, “But in any case, it needs a good cleaning.”
“That it does.” Megs watched as one of the curtains fell to the floor in a billow of dust.
“You seemed to want to talk to me when you came up,” Sarah prompted.
“Oh, yes.” Megs remembered the matter that had sent her in search of her sister-in-law in the first place. “Didn’t you say last night at dinner that we’d had a quantity of invitations?”
“Well, most of them were Godric’s,” Sarah said. “You wouldn’t credit it, but I found a great stack going back at least a year piled on his desk. I really ought to get my brother a secretary.”
“No doubt.”
“But some were indeed for you and me and your aunt,” Sarah continued, “and we’ve only been here two days! I’m not used to how fast word travels in London, I suppose.”
“Mmm. Was there one from the Earl of Kershaw?”
Sarah’s brows knit as she rubbed at a smudge of dust on the apron she’d pinned to her dress. “I believe so, but it was one of the invitations addressed to Godric. It was for a ball the earl and his countess are holding tonight.”
“Perfect!” Megs beamed. Kershaw had been a friend of Roger’s, and she’d heard in the awful months after Roger’s death that the earl had searched for the Ghost in St. Giles. She’d go tonight and see if she could quiz the earl about the Ghost. “We can take one carriage, I think. I’d better go see if Great-Aunt Elvina would like to join us. She does like a ball, you know, and even if Her Grace is close to whelping, I think—”
“But …” Sarah’s mouth had dropped open.
“What the hell are you doing?”
They both started and turned toward the quietly ominous voice.
Godric stood in the doorway, his face still—so still, in fact, that it took Megs a moment to realize he was white with rage. “I did not give you leave to enter this room.”
Oh, dear.
