Have I learned nothing about snooping?
The floorboard beneath me gives an almighty creak. My breath stops, and I grimace in the darkness, my plate of sad little cookies clutched in both hands.
For a heartbeat, I think maybe he didn’t hear me. Maybe I got away with it.
Two heartbeats. Three.
Then: “Who’s out there?”
The lord’s voice rumbles from the study, rough with irritation, and my knees knock together in my sweatpants. Busted.
Well. Unless I’m gonna sprint through the manor like a madwoman, cookies flying left and right, there’s nothing else for it.
He already hates me, right? So what have I got to lose? Squaring my shoulders, I twist the door knob.
Five
West
I’m no stranger to the odd creaks and moans the manor house makes as it settles through the night. What with the ocean wind constantly battering the windows, the tapping pipes and creaking floors, the ticking clocks, and the soft, exhaled breeze between rooms, this building is never truly silent. Not even when I’m the only soul awake.
But I also know the sound a floorboard makes when shifting under a person’s body weight, and my hind brain recognizes when there’s another human nearby. Unseen but undeniable. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle to attention, and I pause in scribbling my notes on the Iceland expedition to collect rare mosses.
Nothing. No words, no sounds of shifting clothing, not even another person’s breath.
Christ. It’s past midnight, there’s a vicious headache stabbing my left eye, and I don’t have the time or energy for this nonsense.
“Who’s out there?” I call.
But of course, on some deeper, sedimentary layer of my brain, I already know who will push the door open and enter the study. I’ve been hyper aware of Madeleine Price and her presence since the minute she set foot on my island, and tonight is no different. When she cracks the door open and peers inside, her cheeks flushed with nerves, there’s not a single cell in my body that is surprised.
“Madeleine,” I rasp.
She blushes harder. “It’s Maddy, actually.”
I jerk my head toward the center of the room, irrationally muddled by the idea of calling this young woman by a nickname. It’s the name she uses with everyone, surely, and yet it feels so intimate. “Come in, then. You’re letting the warm air escape.”
Madeleine—Maddy—clears her throat and slips into the study, closing the door carefully behind her. For a moment, I can only look at her and blink. It’s surreal enough to have this late night visitor, when I’ve never had company here after midnight before. Hearing her move around outside the room, seeing her poke her pretty face around the door frame—these things already have a certain dreamlike quality. Can I be sure she’s real?
But as I get an unobstructed view of my most troublesome housemaid, that surreal feeling tips over to the absurd. She’s dressed like someone who just raided a lost property box, in black sweatpants, an over-sized men’s red sweater, and a pale blue knitted scarf. The ends of her sweatpants are tucked into the sort of chunky hiking socks that we used to wear on our winter expeditions. Her caramel hair is swept up in a messy topknot.
She looks ridiculous. My mouth twitches, a trapped laugh bubbling in my chest.
“I made you these.” Maddy thrusts a plate of cookies in my direction, though she’s still standing all the way over by the door. “Mrs Ainslie said you missed dinner.”
My stomach growls right on cue, as though agreeing with my bad-tempered cook. It’s loud enough that Maddy clearly hears it, and now her mouth tugs up on one corner as she fights a laugh too.
As thoughI’mridiculous.
Perhaps I am.
Honestly, look at the pair of us. On paper, Madeleine Price and I have absolutely nothing in common—not our upbringing, our education, our careers, our personalities—and yet here we are, staring at each other across this fire-lit study, trying not to laugh at how nonsensical the other is. Maybe we’re more alike than I thought.
Leaning back in my desk chair, I beckon Maddy over. Suddenly, my shoulders are loose and my chest feels light. The headache from earlier has dulled to a vague throb, and I feel expansive. Genial.
After all, what harm could a few baked goods do?
“They’re still warm,” Maddy says, setting the plate carefully on one of the few patches of my desk which is not already strewn with papers. “Would you like coffee with them? Hot chocolate? Milk? I could run back to the kitchen—”
