She thanked Janey and sent her on her way before belatedly recalling she had no idea how to quit Moonseed Manor short of throwing herself from her second-floor window. No matter. She refused to sit in a cold, echoing bedchamber like a fairy-tale princess trapped atop a tower.
If she could escape her mother’s watchdogs long enough to make her way to the Frost Fair (even if that particular incident resulted in being banished from the only city in which she’d ever lived), then surely she could find her way out of a lonely country house in the middle of nowhere.
Spine straight and shoulders thrust back with resolution—or possibly due to Janey’s skill with laces—Susan pulled open the bedchamber door and stepped into the faded, lifeless hall.
Each passageway expanded endlessly before her. Myriad paths of pale nothingness.
Susan took a shallow breath. One of these identical corridors must lead to the spiral staircase. The spiral staircase led downstairs. And the downstairs antechamber led to freedom.
She just had to find it.
Several wrong turns later, Susan was forced to admit that at this point, she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the guest quarters. Nor had she stumbled upon the spiral staircase from the night before.
The upside, however, was that she now stood at the top of a very tall, very narrow, very non-spiral staircase that, while not being the precise staircase she’d hoped to encounter, still pointed in the desired direction. Down.
The only reason she was still hesitating at the top of said staircase instead of hurtling toward freedom was that at the bottom of the staircase, she could hear voices.
Male voices. Familiar voices. Angry voices.
Whenever Susan Stanton, undisputed queen of London gossip, found herself in a position where she could overhear conversation without being discovered herself—she didn’t move a bloody muscle. Particularly when the first words to waft upstairs were:
“Dead, you say?”
That deep, disinterested voice belonged to the giant who’d married his way onto the Stanton family tree.
“Shot between the eyes.”
Andthatrich, cultured voice had to belong to the dangerous “gentleman” from the night before. The one with the overlong chestnut hair, well-muscled figure, and devastating bow.
“Hm,” came the giant’s voice again. “That would do it.”
“Don’t provoke me, Ollie. I hate it when I have to kill friends.”
“Have you got a weapon on you, then?”
“Never mind that.” The smartly accented voice turned low, suspicious. “A better question would be: Why don’t you look surprised?”
“Of course I’m not surprised. You never have a weapon handy.”
A growl ripped its way up the stairs. “As luck would have it, I do not require one in order to commit murder. Stop dancing around the subject. What do you know?”
“Nothing.” Ice clinked, then sloshed. “Brandy?” Glass shattered against a wall. “I’ll assume that’s a no.”
“Dead,Ollie. Dead.”
“Right. My condolences.”
“Your con—ah, will you look at that. Idohave my pistol with me.”
Dead silence.
If there was one thing Susan Stanton had learned as a result of the regrettable circumstance that had gotten her expelled from Polite Society the Season before, it was when to keep listening at keyholes and when to flee the premises.
This situation clearly called for the latter.
Unfortunately, as she could neither find her way to the original staircase nor back to her bedchamber, the stairs before her remained the only possibility of reaching the front door. They also provided the highest probability of passing madmen with loaded pistols.
“Easy, Bothwick. Killing me won’t bring him back.”
