Michaels gave her a dubious look, but obediently turned to keep an eye on the house. Tiffany efficiently skinned out of the skirt and petticoats. She then cut off the tail of her chemise using Michaels’ belt knife which she shamelessly appropriated without asking, stuffing the remainder into the top of the stolen britches. Over this she threw the loose workman’s tunic. The rough material was nearly voluminous enough to make a gown, and somewhat disguised her figure.
“Ready,” she called softly.
Michaels glanced over his shoulder. “Girlie?”
“Don’t call me that,” she growled in a rough imitation of a boy’s voice.
“Come over here. What do you make of that?”
A troop of the Watch were hurrying up the walk.
“They are going toward Northbury Manor!” she whispered. “But why?”
“Maybe called on account of whatever happened that made Lucas send me out here for you. He didn’t say why.”
“All the more reason not to announce ourselves going in,” she said. “Give me just a moment . . .”
Tiffany made her petticoats into a bundle, grasped a low branch of one of the apple trees and swung up into it. Once there, she tied the bundle into the crook of two branches where it would be more or less unnoticeable and swung back down.
“Let’s go,” she said. “It will be getting dark soon, and we’ll need a little light to get started.”
They were able to move much more quickly now that Tiffany was not hampered by her petticoats. When they reached the manor house next to Northbury Manor, she led Michaels to a sturdy drain spout at the back of the house. Looking around quickly, she saw no one about.
Grasping the drainpipe, she started climbing up.
“You cannot expect me to climb that!” Michaels whispered harshly at her.
“Yes,” she hissed back. “I’ve done it before. You will be fine. Come on!”
Tiffany scampered up the drainpipe as nimbly as a squirrel, but Michaels made heavy weather of it. When he finally made it to the top, Tiffany whispered, “I thought you were a sailor. Don’t you have to climb up the masts and such?”
“I was the cook,” Michaels hissed back, breathing heavily. “I left the sailing up to the real sailors.”
Tiffany shook her head at him, and began creeping on hands and knees to where there two houses nearly met. From behind a chimney pot, she took out a coil of rope with a hook on the end. She swung it around her head a few times, then sent it sailing unerringly across the intervening space to settle around one of the chimney pots on the roof of Northbury Manor.
Michaels looked on in horror. “No. I can’t. I just cannot!”
“A little patience,” Tiffany mouthed at him. She then took a little rope ladder from the same place where the rope had been hidden, attached it securely to the chimney, and walked across the tightly strung rope as confidently as if it had been only inches from the ground, unreeling the rope ladder as she went.
Once she reached the roof of Northbury manor, she fastened the other end securely before beckoning to Michaels.
Michaels crept along the rope ladder. By the time he reached the other side, his face was white and his hands were shaking visibly. “Why didn’t we just go in the door?” he asked.
“Just listen,” Tiffany hushed him.
From the door at the front of the manor, they could hear voices.
“Do you have an appointment?” McClellan’s mellow, carrying baritone rang out into the night. The reply was muffled.
“Then I cannot admit you,” McClellan’s voice was again very clear. Again the other voice, then the sound of a blow, and McClellan cried out.
There was the soft pop of a pistol, and the sound of a falling body.
“That is why we did not go in by the door,” Tiffany said grimly. “But now we must determine where Lord Northbury might be if we are to assist him.”
“Quite so,” Michaels replied, still looking a bit green about the gills, but recovering his equilibrium now that he was on the solid roof. “How are we going to do that?”
“There’s an attic hatch that will let us into the house,” Tiffany said.
