Possibly preemptive triumph. All the stairways were spiral, and there were nearly a dozen of them, stretching from down in the dungeon all the way up to Stephen’s topmost turret.
Her joints were going to love this.
After trading her sword stick for her sturdiest cane, Elizabeth approached the problem methodically, starting with the staircase closest to the nursery and working her way around the castle clockwise from there.
“Probably this would be easy for the earl,” she grumbled as she searched. “He would have bounded through the castle on spry legs,knowing at once that the code referred to a specific spiral staircase tucked away behind—”
She stopped so suddenly she had to fight for balance. She’d made it through half the staircases in the castle and was currently ascending the narrowest and most uneven of all: the one on the south side of the servants’ quarters. Toward the south, like Brighton, one of the most popular seaside resorts in England. The one likely depicted in the countess’s murals.
There, on the cylindrical center stone column just above the next step, was a tiny sliver of graffiti. A double “W” had been etched into the cold gray stone, its notched crevices filled with whitewash. Maybe the double “W”stoodfor WhiteWash, and had been carved there by one of whitewash’s most ardent fans.
Or maybe it symbolized the waves of the sea, as a child might draw them.
Elizabeth lowered herself to a seating position—no more crouching fortheseknees until they’d had a full night’s rest—and ran her finger over the tiny ocean wave.
The stone fell inward with a thud.
She jerked back in surprise. Not a brick at all, but merely a thin façade, thick enough to stand upright when wedged properly into place, and light enough to give if someone poked at it at just the right angle.
Carefully, she lifted the inch-thick stone slab out of the hole and peered into the opening.
Nothing. Not even dust.
Was she too late? Might some unsuspecting servant have cleaned out whatever had once been in this cubby, after knocking the covering off with a broom or mop?
“Damnit.” Urgently, she pressed her hand all through the interior,digging at it with her blade, her fingernails, anything that might reveal the secret.
There was none.
With a sigh, she lifted the stone slab to place it back where she’d found it—and discovered the step it had been resting upon now glittered in the sunlight.
Quickly, Elizabeth flipped over the slab, facing the “WW” side down toward her lap.
The rear of the stone slab was covered in a thick layer of… solid gold? Who the devil would gild the unseen inner side of a secret panel?
“The countess would,” she muttered. “Probably another breathtakingly easy clue. If I were her husband.”
Elizabeth suddenly realized she took the innumerable inside jests she shared with her siblings for granted, and wondered what it must be like to share that sort of history and closeness with a romantic partner. The thought made her wistful.
“How is it going?” came a low, familiar voice.
Stephen! Elizabeth jerked her head over her shoulder to glance down at him and couldn’t help but grin.
He was up to his old tricks. A pair of molded buckskins clung to Stephen’s muscled thighs, and nothing but the flimsy panels of a purple silk waistcoat fluttered uselessly on either side of his wide, chiseled chest.
“Lose your shirt again?” she asked.
He snapped his fingers. “I knew I forgot something.”
“You forgot to take off your goggle helmet.”
He slapped his hand to his head in alarm, then glowered at her when his grasping fingers encountered only tousled brown hair.
She cackled unapologetically. “I thought that only worked on my sister Marjorie! She’s covered in paint so often that she believes useven on the rare occasions when she’s clean. Do you sleep in that helmet?”
“No.” He crossed his arms, hiding his chest from view to punish her for her jest. “And you just lost your opportunity to find out in person.”
“Liar.” She shook her dagger at him. “I don’t even need to threaten you with this blade for you to drag me upstairs to your bedchamber if I should wish it.”
