But still nothing. She glanced at the driver, whose hat was motionless, face forward with the cultivated disinterest of all English servants to their masters’ whims.
And nothing. Not a sound nor a movement.
Lina’s fear dissolved as curiosity flooded her chest. She was carefully balanced in a most unladylike crouch, and she moved forward with her usual grace, one step at a time, searching through the thick bracken for clues as to the stance of the motionless visitor.
And nothing.
She crept closer still, eyes on the ground as she scooted her dress away to soil it as little as possible, biting her lip in concentration. When she looked up, leaning toward the bracken, she was startled thoroughly by the blink of one unfathomably light blue eye.
She inhaled, and fell back, her mouth open, her heart racing.
“Do you require assistance?”
The voice was calm, betraying very little by way of emotion or intent. The question was not friendly, or mean, or disbelieving, or compassionate: it was none of these things. Somehow, in its low, graveled purr, it carried an undercurrent of impropriety. Lina felt as though someone had plucked a chord inside of her, one that was tightly strung between her neck and her... unmentionable places. Naughty places.
“N...n...no,” she breathed. Her voice left in a whispery staccato, so low that she was certain she would have to repeat herself.
But the driveway crunched, and the black contours of the man moved through the sparse holes in the bracken, and the carriage shifted. The door closed, the motionless driver leaned back, and the horses began, as suddenly as they had stopped, to trot down the road toward the manor.
Lina let her breath escape her in a huff, with a sigh of relief. The sound of the carriage disappeared, and she struggled to her feet, started along the windbreak, and went back through the hole she had climbed through. When she looked down the road to assure herself that the carriage was far enough away to risk crossing the road for the grove, her heart was stabbed again by another pang of fear, and a thrill: the curtain in the back window of the carriage was, most certainly, dropping, from where it had been lifted in order for the occupant to look back on her.
“Merde,” she whispered.
And then she hiked up her skirts, noting that they were already soiled, and made haste for the chestnut grove, grabbing Anna by the arm as she passed her. The younger girl was staring, open-mouthed, but said nothing as Lina pulled her along behind her.
This was not the first adventure Anna had been on with Lina, though it was likely to be the strangest, perhaps for all time.
“And if we do not return with haste, Anna,” Lina said, finishing her own thought aloud, “it is likely to be the most consequential!”
Chapter Two
Lina rushed Anna throughthe decrepit west wing of the manor and through the attic, back to their own shared room, where they wintered together to save money on heat. With only two house servants, the affable, overworked, and unfailingly loyal Mr. and Mrs. Gray, it was impossible to keep fires in every room of the manor except to keep the home sufficiently heated as to prevent its complete destruction.
Her heart dropped when they burst through the door, dripping wet and mud-caked, to find Evangeline standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, a scowl already etched deeply enough in her features to indicate that she had been frowning with disapproval for quite some time.
“Anna!” she hissed, snatching her younger sister by the arm as though she wished to rescue her from a fire. Evangeline’s eyes, however, remained accusingly on Lina as she continued to speak to Anna. “You’re positively filthy, soaking wet, and cold as ice!”
