Page 79 of The Countess Caper

They met at midnight, in the kitchen, as was their habit. This time it wasn’t just for wine or leftover cake. Holly was still in bed, but the others sat around the table in their shawls and night shifts. Rue poured thick brown ale into mugs.

“Ale,” Daphne said before taking a sip. “That’s never a good sign.”

“We have a weasel,” Rue said, finally taking her seat.

“We also have several feral cats, a badger, and a nest of starlings in the ballroom,” Daphne pointed out. “And a spider roughly the size of a donkey in the back hall.”

“Not that kind of weasel, I’m afraid,” Tessa said. She plucked the list of names off the wall where it was still secured by a rusty dagger salvaged from the attic. Lord Beville, Viscount Eastbourne, Lord Wrexham.

Bryony froze. “What do you mean?”

“Someone has been going through the house, rifling through the belongings.” Tessa helped herself to a biscuit with pink icing. Fergus had learned to color sugar icing with raspberry juice because Rue secretly liked pink. It was rather sweet. If she mentioned it, though, Rue was likely to pelt her with those same biscuits, and that would be a waste.

Daphne frowned. “Not the servants, surely.”

“No, I doubt that very much. But weasels also don’t move furniture and pry up broken floorboards.”

“That sounds as though someone is looking for a thing and not a person?” Bryony suggested. Her shoulders were still stiff, but they loosened slightly.

“I know you won’t tell us who you are hiding from,” Tessa said gently. “But could he be behind this? Or she? They?”

Bryony shook her head. “The house would already be burning to the ground if he were here.”

Daphne gulped. “Bollocks.”

Tessa lifted an eyebrow at her, trying to lighten some of the tension even as it wrapped around her. “You did not learn that word in a Mayfair ballroom.”

“I learned it here.” Daphne snorted. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.”

Rue frowned, brushing crumbs off her fingers. “I don’t think it would be the Earl of Wrexham after me, either,” she said. “It’s not his style.”

Tessa nodded. “I’ll make inquiries, just in case. Perhaps Summer has heard something about his current whereabouts.”

“And the viscount already knows where I am,” Marigold yawned. “He’s always known where I lived, and it did not matter then. I don’t know why it would now.”

Tessa winced. “Probably not.” She sighed. “It doesn’t make sense, then.”

“It might be nothing,” Daphne suggested. She sounded hopeful but not convinced.

“Mayhap,” Tessa said.

Rue snorted. “It’s always something.”

Unfortunately, she wasn’t wrong.

“We’ve dealt with worse,” Tessa said. “We don’t falter.” She toasted them with her ale. “Stand and deliver.”

They lifted their mugs in salute. “Stand and deliver.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

She was in her bedchamber when the knock came at the connecting door.

“Come in.”

The door handle turned, stuck. Turned again. There was a muffled curse and then a loud crash as Roarke used his shoulder to force it open. The frame splintered slightly, and the swollen wood and thick layers of paint protested.