There wasa long moment of silence before Elinor heard her own voice, as if from very far away, ask: “Whatever do you mean?”
“It can’t be a mask.” Sally was peering at Elinor’s face with open curiosity, now, in the reverse of her earlier submissive posture. “It’s too good to be a mask, no matter what that Carter says.”
Elinor closed the door carefully behind her. “Carter thinks I’m wearing a mask?”
“Oh, her.” Sally shrugged dismissively. “It was the only reasonshecould think of why you wouldn’t let her touch your hair. But where you’d find a mask that good,shecouldn’t say, nor where you’d find a wig so fine in only half a day’s journey from the Hall. That was why she gave up in the end and said you must be Mrs. De Lacey after all, only touched in the head by too much sun.”
“But you don’t believe that.” Elinor met Sally’s gaze as the maid stood up, still holding Elinor’s letters in her right hand.
Sally smiled ruefully. “You and your family might not know us in service, Miss Elinor, but trust me—weallknow you. Even if you hadn’t tried to walk right back into your old room as if you’d never been away, I haven’t ever seen any fine lady but you say please and thank you the way you do. Mostly, though…” She raised the packet of letters high in the air and waved it teasingly. “Everyoneknows you’d cut off your own hand before you left any of these behind, no matter how fast you were running.”
Elinor knew every swirl of ink from Rose and Harry on those pages, every story they’d related, every word of love. She’d read them a thousand times across the last six months, whenever she was safely alone in her room.
But servants went into every room in Hathergill Hall, as a matter of course…and there was no way to ever be completely private.
“I see.” Elinor drew a long breath. Sir Jessamyn was a warm presence on her shoulder, watching Sally with his head alertly cocked. She wished—as absurd as it would have sounded even to her a mere day earlier—that she could ask him for advice. She had no idea what to do next.
All she knew was that she couldn’t run again…because Sally had been correct. Elinor would never leave those letters behind.
“I haven’t any money,” Elinor said flatly, standing still. “I cannot pay for your silence.”
Sally’s eyes widened. They were a lighter brown than her hair, which was pulled back into a knot so tight, Elinor could barely see any of it beneath her cap; but after a moment of petrified surprise, laughter shook her whole body so hard that several strands of thick, dark hair fell loose from underneath her cap to dance around her shoulders.
“You think—you actually think I—!” Sally sank back down onto the chair and hung onto the back of it as she shook her head, still laughing.
Elinor crossed the room and sank down onto the bed. Sir Jessamyn crawled down her arm and sat down next to her on the bedcover, his neck stretched high and his warm body pressed tightly against her side. Together, they waited for Sally to stop laughing.
When she finally did, Elinor spoke before the maid could say a word. “Forgive me,” she said. “I’ve insulted you.”
“You have.” Sally shook her head, but she was still grinning. “Were you really afraid I’d try picking your pockets, Miss Elinor? I’m no fool. If I was going to blackmail anyone for money, I can promise it would be someone who had at least a penny or two to her name. Just abitof a waste otherwise, don’t you think?”
“A great waste,” Elinor said, and felt the last remnants of tension inside her relax into a sigh. “Howdoyou explain the way I look, anyway? It isn’t a mask, nor a wig, I assure you.”
“Well, you have a dragon now, don’t you?” Sally shrugged. “Jem the footman saw yours breathe fire in the sitting room not even an hour ago, so who knows what else it can do? Everyone knows they’ve got some magic in ’em.”
This time Elinor was the one who laughed, although it sounded broken to her own ears. “Everyone except the dragon scholars,” she said. “Mr. Aubrey didn’t believe me when I tried to tell him.”
“Scholars!” Sally’s tone was scornful. “What do they know outside their books? And why would all the old fairy stories talk so much about dragon magic if they didn’t have any?”
“Well…” Elinor bit her lip. She wasn’t thinking about scholars, though. Not anymore.
She was remembering the scene with Benedict Hawkins in the garden, and how angry his accusations had made her—how offended she’d been that he would even consider them as possibilities. He’d had far more evidence for his horrible assumptions about her than she had had about Sally, when she had accused the maid of attempting blackmail. Perhaps…
Then she finally caught the meaning of Sally’s earlier words.
“Wait,” she said. “You’re not blackmailing mefor money?”
“Well, of course not,” Sally said easily. “You’re as poor as a church mouse, aren’t you?”
Elinor looked into the maid’s amused, intelligent brown eyes, and felt something clench inside her. “So...what are you blackmailing me for, then?” she asked.
Sally smiled. It was an open, friendly smile—the smile of someone Elinor would have quite liked to be friends with, under any other circumstances. Just at the moment, though, it filled her with dread.
“Don’t you worry, Miss Elinor,” Sally said. “What I need should be no trouble to you…or no trouble forMrs. De Lacey, anyway.” She patted the packet of Elinor’s sisters’ letters as she tucked them neatly into the pocket of her apron. “And just so long as you help me with what I need, there’ll be no reason for me to tell Sir John what I know. So you can just think of me as a partner from now on, can’t you?”
Elinor’s eyes locked on the letters in Sally’s pocket. All she had to do was lunge forward to try to wrestle them away…
…But she couldn’t escape Hathergill Hall again. Not with Rose and Harry depending on her to keep her promise to Sir John and remain here all week. And if Sir John was given enough reason to start asking hard questions...
