We continued about the room as other guests came into the large room and others left to return to the saloon below.
“I have never been one to be put in my place.” She gave me a long look, and a smile. “I sense you are not either. Oh, do look at this creature, a lion. No doubt from foreign travels. He looks as if he might leap through the wall. A magnificent creature.”
“We saw several when Lady Antonia and I traveled to Africa,” I replied. “They are beautiful. We didn’t hunt them,” I assured her.
“A woman after my own heart,” Lady Blanche replied.
I liked her very much—for a titled lady. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind and didn’t give airs like some.
She reminded me of Lady Antonia and Mikaela, sure of herself, bold, and not at all concerned about what anyone thought or overheard, even as I saw more than one head turn at a comment she made.
“Let us explore the next room,” she suggested.
As we left the trophy room, there was a startling sound very near and shouts of alarm, then curses.
“Good heavens, what is this about?” the Baroness said as I turned and saw two men struggling only a few feet away.
One, quite young, fought his attacker, but he was thrown back across the railing. I watched, horrified as the young man was then thrown over the railing to startled screams from the floor below.
A blow caught me on the shoulder as his attacker ran past. His gaze briefly met mine, then I was roughly shoved aside.
The hallway that led to stairway was in chaos as another woman screamed and guests fled the corridor and down the stairs.
“That poor young man…!” Someone else exclaimed, as a woman who stood nearby suddenly collapsed in a faint.
I ran to the railing. The young man lay sprawled at the floor below, staring up at everyone who gathered round as a pool of blood spread beneath his head.
Shouts went out for the royal guards as someone else called out for a physician, the birthday celebration turning into a horrifying scene.
“Did you see it?” a gentleman nearby asked another. “There was a struggle… He pushed that poor young man over the railing…” Another exclaimed, “Young Anthony, the son of Sir Huntingdon,” as royal guards rushed into the saloon below.
And from another, “Did you see the man?”
“He fled toward the end of the hallway. That door…”
As everyone stood about blathering and a young man lay at the floor below, the culprit was escaping!
Baroness Waterford called after me as I gathered up my skirts and ran toward the end of the hallway and that door.
It opened onto the stairway that led down to the main floor below, not unlike the one at Sussex Square and no doubt to the kitchen, and the servants’ quarters.
I heard a door snap closed below and followed that sound down the stairs lit by overhead electric.
The door at the bottom of the stairs opened onto a hallway near the kitchens, where I encountered two servants with an enormous cake on a rolling cart, unaware of what had just happened.
“A man came this way…”
They stared at me in confusion.
“Did ye see him?” I demanded.
One of the servants pointed to a back entrance.
Who expected such a situation in such a well-guarded place? I grabbed the silver cake knife from the tray, then ran out through that entrance and onto the green.
Light from the windows of the mansion and torches along the driveway to the stables lit up the green, and I caught sight of a shadowy figure that fled there. He reached the edge of the green, then disappeared among the private coaches and broughams that lined the parkway.
I ran after him, across the green, then across the parkway and cursed. He could be hiding anywhere among the coaches, drivers, and horse teams. Or he might have already reached the throughfare beyond that stone wall.
