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Ah, some luck at last! By some miracle, the window lurched open the rest of the way. She braced her hands on the sill, heaved herself up, then somehow she managed to twist about until her belly was resting on the sill and her feet were braced on a branch of the Glastonbury thorn.
Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down …
As it turned out, scaling a castle wall was every bit as treacherous as she’d imagined it would be. She’d barely made it a quarter of the way down before her hands froze, and then her feet kept slipping. At one point she was hanging from her hands, her feet scrambling for purchase, and to add insult to injury one of her shoes slipped off her foot and landed with a muted thud in the snow far below her.
She cursed herself for a reckless fool a dozen times over as inch by inch, hand by hand and one foot after the other she made her way down until somehow, damp, shivering and with her heart threatening to beat out of her chest, her feet touched the ground.
She’d done it! Somehow, one small step at a time, she’d gained her freedom, and goodness, how glorious it was!
There was only one problem.
She had no friends, no money, an insufficient cloak, a lost shoe, and no place to go.
Very well, then. She had a multitude of problems.
What was she going to do now?
CHAPTER 8
There was something magical about snow at Christmastime.
Gabriel stood in front of the stained-glass doors in the conservatory, gazing out at the formal gardens covered in a downy blanket of new snow. The worst of the storm had passed, and the flakes drifted from the midnight sky like white rose petals floating on a summer breeze.
It was quiet in the conservatory this evening, the trickle of the fountain splashing gently into the pond the only sound that disturbed the silence. Behind him a dozen lamps glowed in the dim light, their golden halos hazy in the reflection in the glass.
It was perfect, but for one thing. Stella was missing.
He hadn’t been concerned by her tardiness at first. She’d been delayed by Lady Featherstone’s whims before, but she’d never been as late as this, and he’d seen Lady Featherstone and her daughters enter the ballroom earlier.
Stella was no longer attending them. What, then, could have become of her?
He abandoned his post in front of the doors and paced restlessly from the pond to the citrus trees and back to the pond again, his pocket watch clutched in his hand.
It was ten o’clock. The ball had started nearly an hour ago.
He’d waited long enough. Something was wrong.
He hurried toward the conservatory door. He’d check her bedchamber first, and if she wasn’t there, he’d see if any of the servants had seen—
“Good evening, sir! Why, what extraordinary luck that we happened to find you here!”
God above, what the devil were they doing here?
Not a dozen steps away was Lady Featherstone, standing between him and the conservatory door, her elder daughter by her side.
What was the chit’s name? Caroline, perhaps, or Cressida.
Of all the people he might have encountered at this moment, Lady Featherstone was the very last one he wished to see.
“This is a lovely conservatory!” Lady Featherstone edged closer, blocking his way out. “My dear Cornelia is excessively fond of plants. She’s made a thorough study of them, and insisted we come see your … er, that is, the Duke of Hawthorne’s lovely … tulips.”
“Tulips.” For a young lady who’d made a thorough study of plants, Cornelia’s expression was remarkably vacant. The girl looked as if she didn’t know the difference between a tulip and a violet.
“Oh, yes! Cornelia is excessively fond of tulips. Aren’t you, Cornelia?”
“Yes, Mamma.”
For God’s sake, what was the woman on about? “I beg your pardon, madam, but this isn’t a convenient time. I have an urgent matter to attend to.”
