CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I have a word or two respecting manners in the study.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
Amelia peered into the candle’s quivering flame, its deep saffron fringe melding into gold, then white.
And listened.
As ever, when one deeply listened, the silence was not silent at all; it seemed to thrum, a pulse of something vast and immutable beneath the everyday blare of life.
She closed her eyes. Still saw the flame.
But not a murmur came from within the Cadwalader house.
Not a rustle or sigh or footstep.
The master was ensconced in his quarters on the floor above. The servants abed. Phoebe sound asleep.
Not too long past, the mantel clock had chimed one of the morn.
So Amelia opened her eyes, slipped her discreet knife into its sheath, lit her special lantern from the candle and drew open her bedchamber door.
No sconces glowed so she half-shuttered her lantern and crept down the pitch corridor.
Despite the elegance of this modern house, it still felt eerie to be wandering so. A moonless night, the dark was like a theatre curtain, drawing closed on the misdemeanours of Amelia.
She needed to write her report for her superior and prepare to leave. Mr Cadwalader was suspicious and although Amelia felt as though she was coming to know the household, had gleaned many a fact about the master, she’d no written document that could confirm or refute if he was a traitor.
The staircase neither creaked nor groaned as she descended to the hall and crossed to the study where she’d first been interviewed.
With care, she tried the handle.
Locked.
So, she reached for the pendant nestling in the hollow of her bosom. A butterfly in gold and blue enamel, it glittered in the faint light of her lantern, but Amelia did not pause to admire. Instead, she slid a small button on the abdomen and a hollow cracksman’s key glided out.
She kneeled before the lock and inserted it, lightly twisting and turning.
“Open for me…” she whispered. A click.
The pendant fell to her décolletage and she stood, was about to push open the door when she paused.
Mr Cadwalader was no fool but a proficient spy for the Crown.
So she opened it a smidgeon and felt along the inside edge of the door frame.
Naught to the side but she stretched on tiptoes…
At the top was a cord.
Pulled taut.
Doubtless some form of pulley system that rang down to the footmen if the door was opened. She felt further along and…on the frame of the door was a hook – the daytime resting place for the cord.
She pressed herself to the door, scraping her arm in the narrow gap as she delicately unhitched the cord from the door, and as her stretched toes quivered, she looped it to its daytime hook.
