“Then what makes this plan the lesser evil?”
“Invitations have all but dried up for me.” Susan looked genuinely miserable. “I must marry at once or die a spinster. At home. With my mother.”
Evangeline stared at the crackling fire. “Mr. Lioncroft is a last resort, then?”
Susan shrugged, although her eyes were cloudy. “You don’t see anybody else chasing him, do you? I’m sure to be his last resort as well. And just think: the idea would never have occurred to Mother had Lady Heatherbrook not stopped by with an invitation.”
“One of the many things that makes no sense,” Evangeline murmured. “Why would he want to host a house party in the first place?”
“I don’t suppose he wanted one at all. The look on his face when he first saw us…” Susan shivered delicately. “I thought surely he’d kill us all, right there in the anteroom.”
“So did I.” Evangeline didn’t want to imagine what he would do if he knew what the scheming Stantons had planned. “He seemed…powerful. Like he might pounce upon his prey at any moment.”
“That about sums it up,” Susan admitted. “It’s also why I don’t wish to be compromised until the very last day. No matter what Mother says, you won’t rush things, will you?”
Evangeline shook her head. She wouldn’t participate in their schemes at all. She wasn’t eager to play games with a lion. Besides, to catch the two of them alone she would have to be present as well. And she was fairly certain two young ladies were no match for a monster like Mr. Lioncroft.
“There’s the bell again,” Evangeline said. “Shall we dine?”
In fact, now that suppertime was upon them, perhaps she ought to see what else she could learn about the man and his house, to better prepare herself against him. She reached for her reticule on the floor next to the bed and pulled out two matching gloves of lace and silk, hemmed to allow her bare fingertips through.
“Oh!” cried Susan from right behind Evangeline, causing her to jump. “Your mitts are positively antique. Wherever did you get them?”
Evangeline smoothed the thin material up over her forearms without responding. Mama had worn these very gloves the night Evangeline’s father exercised his marital right to lock his wife in a tiny moldering attic. Evangeline shuddered. There was nothing she hated more than being locked in small dark spaces. Nothing.
“My mother gave them to me,” she answered finally, unable to avoid Susan’s curious gaze any longer. “These mitts were hers, and my grandmother’s before her.”
“Then they’re lucky gloves.” Susan slapped her hands together. “How lovely.”
Lucky? They’d accompanied her mother through two husbands, one who took her freedom, and one who took her life. Could scraps of silk carry such “luck” with them?
“I hope not,” Evangeline muttered and followed Susan into the hallway toward Lady Stanton’s chamber. The door banged shut behind them, extinguishing a nearby sconce. Evangeline shivered, nervously rubbing her mitts.
The last thing either of them needed was luck like that.
Chapter 4
“Ihave no sense of orientation,” Susan announced as she strode from Evangeline’s chamber. “All the endless hallways and twisted corridors vanished from my head within seconds of Lady Heatherbrook pointing them out. I shall die of hunger before I recall the location of the dining room.”
Evangeline felt in control of her surroundings for the first time since their arrival.
“Follow me,” she said, and set off down a series of spidering passageways, each as dark and ill-lit as the last.
Evangeline had been born with an innate sense of direction, and being left to her own devices in a sprawling country village for hours at a time had eradicated any fear of finding her way on her own. In fact, the serpentine corridors of Blackberry Manor did not instill alarm at the thought of becoming lost, so much as a general dread of stumbling across someone or something she had no wish to find.
At one shadowed intersection, she stopped so suddenly that Susan barreled directly into her.
“What is it?” Susan asked, peering over Evangeline’s shoulder. “Dead body?”
Evangeline shook her head. “Voices. I’m positive we’re to turn left, but I think I hear Lady Heatherbrook down the hallway to the right.”
Before Evangeline could stop her, Susan darted down the hall and peeked around the corner. She glanced over her shoulder, motioned to Evangeline, and then returned her focus to whatever Lady Heatherbrook was up to.
With a sigh, Evangeline followed. Susan reached out one gloved hand and yanked Evangeline closer until they were huddled together like frightened rabbits.
At the other end of the darkened hall, Lady Heatherbrook was deep in discussion with an elderly man turned out in expensively tailored clothing. Although his spine curved and his cane trembled and his thinning hair sprang from his head in dry white curls, the scowl etched in his wrinkled face gave Evangeline the impression of someone very, very angry. She wished Lady Heatherbrook’s back was not to them, so they could gauge her expression.
“Is that her husband?” Evangeline whispered once she’d ducked back out of view.
