“Lady Evangeline,” a voice said by her side, and Evie nearly jumped out of her skin.
It was her maid Nellie, holding up a lamp.
Evie’s hand fluttered to her throat. “Goodness, Nellie. What a fright you gave me.” Her voice was breathless.
“Why are you waiting out here, m’lady?” Nellie pursed her lips in disapproval. “You know you are not supposed to come close to Miss Clara, on account of you never having had the measles.”
“Yes, yes.” Evie’s gaze flew back to the room. No doubt the woman inside must have heard them. But the place where she’d been standing only a second ago was empty. “That can’t be.” Evie pushed the door open and looked around, bemused.
“M’lady?”
Evie took her lamp and held it higher, and she would have stepped inside the room, if Nellie hadn’t held her back.
“Go, and check where the woman has gone.”
“What woman?”
“Just now, there was a woman standing next to Miss Clara’s bed.”
Nellie went inside, checked every corner, and returned, reporting, “There is no one here.”
“That is impossible. That cannot be. She was here only a moment ago.”
“Who is it you were looking for?”
Evie told her about the woman she’d seen, but Nellie shook her head. “There is no one.”
“I don’t understand it.” Evie rubbed the space between her eyebrows. “She can’t have just disappeared like that.”
Nellie’s eyes grew round. “Do you suppose…do you suppose…”
“Yes?”
“That she was a ghost?” Nellie grew pale. “They do say this inn is haunted.”
Evie forced a laugh. “Nonsense.” She was certain that that woman had been of flesh and blood as much as she herself was. But if so, where had she gone?
Nellie had looked miserable at the prospect of having to spend the entire night alone with Miss Clara in a haunted room, but after Evie had given her her lamp as well, she’d bravely swallowed. “I shan’t sleep the entire night,” she’d said.
“You’ll be all right. And remember, Miss Clara is to be me, now, and I am Miss Clara. No one is to know.”
The maid nodded. “Very well, my lady. I mean, Miss Clara.”
Evie had returned to the laundry room and found herself unable to sleep.
With a sigh, she lowered herself on the ground again to attempt to slumber, propping herself on her elbow to blow out the candle next to her, when her eyes caught somethingsticking out behind the laundry stack on the lowest shelf. She reached inside the shelf and tugged.
A piece of paper.
It was a list. Written with impeccable, bold black ink. Her eyes flew over the names.
Kasper Draskovic
Graf von Witt
Karl Ludwig von Schulmeister
Franz von Leykam
