Henrik surveyed the house, his expression grim.“The back door will be locked from inside.We could try forcing it, but the noise would alert everyone.”
“What about a window?”Jonathan suggested, moving along the brick wall.
“All shuttered on this floor.”Henrik rubbed his jaw, thinking.“I could knock on the front door.Create a distraction while you find a way inside.”
Jonathan nodded.“It might work.Give me five minutes to circle round again and look for —”
He froze.Henrik followed his gaze upward.
A feminine leg, clad in a white cotton stocking, was emerging from an upstairs casement window, with the moon’s light making the stocking practically glow.Jonathan’s heart lodged in his throat until more of her appeared.
“Anna,” Henrik said, recognizing the maid’s plain dark skirts that followed.He started forward, but Jonathan grabbed his arm.
“Don’t startle her.She might fall.”They watched, scarcely breathing.
Anna twisted awkwardly, reaching her hands out for the thick branches of the mature linden tree growing close to the house.The ancient tree’s limbs seemed to stretch toward the window like welcoming arms.She grasped one, tested it, then pulled herself fully from the window and into the tree.
Jonathan didn’t relax until she found her footing on a lower branch.
“I think you should go to the front door.Be prepared to create a distraction,” he told Henrik, without taking his eyes from the maid.“If you end up indoors, speaking to Friedrich, keep your speech vague, and make sure you have a route to escape.”
“You sound like a soldier,” Henrik said over his shoulder before disappearing from view.
Jonathan crept closer, positioning himself beneath Anna’s downward path.She descended with surprising agility, her skirts caught up in her waistband.
When she dropped the final few feet to the ground, Jonathan moved quickly, clamping his hand over her mouth before she could cry out.
“Anna, it’s Lord Bowen,” he whispered urgently against her ear.“Don’t scream.Where is Lise?”
The maid’s eyes went wide with recognition.She nodded frantically, and he released her.She pointed upward, trembling.
Jonathan’s gaze shot to the window.His breath caught.
A shapely bottom appeared first, draped in blue, backing out over the sill.Then her legs, her waist.Lise.
“Good God,” he muttered.
She turned carefully, straddling the windowsill, half of her face in shadow.Reaching for the tree branch as Anna had done, her face came into the moonlight, and he imagined he could see her resolve.
Then she went still before turning her head swiftly back toward the interior of the room.
Jonathan’s blood ran cold.Someone was in there or trying to get in.
“Get to the horses,” he ordered Anna, already moving toward the tree.“Across the street and to the left.”
“But Fräulein Lise —”
“Go,” he ordered.“We will follow you directly.”
Jonathan positioned himself beneath the linden, every muscle coiled.He could hear it now, Friedrich’s voice, muffled but unmistakably angry, shouting something he couldn’t make out.
Lise suddenly lunged from the window with none of her earlier caution.Grabbing for the branch, she caught it, but her grip was precarious.Her feet swung wildly, and for one heart-stopping moment, Jonathan thought she would fall.Then her boots found the same lower branch that Anna had, and she steadied.
He remembered to breathe as she began climbing down, faster than was safe.Inside the house, the sound of splintering wood echoed through the night.He realized it must be her chamber door being forced open.
Sure enough, Friedrich’s head and shoulders appeared in the window.Jonathan was close, and the moonlight was bright enough to see his face contorted with rage.
In thick, heavy German, sounding utterly unhinged, he screamed, “I will ruin you and your family!”
