7
* * *
Mina had decided the best time for theft at the Abbey was under cover of darkness, but Bridget was causing her to wait overly long that night. The sound of a scratching pen continued to emanate from her maid’s adjoining chamber for over an hour, and candlelight still shone through the crack beneath the door.
She suspected her maid must have someone courting her from afar, considering all the letters she’d been sending to London over the last month. She was itching to find out and considered intercepting one of them before a footman took the missive to the village for posting. She knew how to hold the wax seal over a boiling pot in the kitchen until the folded page loosened enough for her to slide a fingernail beneath and… She shook her head hard.
She knew Bridget would be upset, even hurt, if she did such a thing, but she wanted to know. What if her maid left Montcliffe Abbey to go to London and marry her beau? What would happen to Mina? Then she wouldn’t have anyone she could trust, except her papa, who was rarely in residence at the Abbey when Parliament was in session.
Her new governess seemed a good sort of person, but she couldn’t trust her fully yet.Wait. The light beneath Bridget’s door finally went dark. Mina’s heart pounded. How long should she wait to be certain her maid had slipped into a deep slumber? She doused the candle stub she’d left burning on the small table holding her water pitcher and sat back on her bed, barely daring to breathe. She pulled the curtains shut around the edge of the bed, just in case Bridget decided to look in on her.
She waited many long minutes with no sounds or signs of movement before creeping toward Bridget’s room and putting her ear to the crack beneath the door. The only sound escaping was the nearly silent flutters of her maid’s slight snoring. Yes. Time to race down to her father’s library.
She wore her softest slippers and floated noiselessly through the dark of the upper-level hallway and staircase leading down to the library level. She was an expert at traversing the ancient halls of the abbey in complete darkness, a skill she’d developed over the years to outwit her caretakers.
The two front hallway footmen, Pence and young Robert, had become accustomed to seeing her sneaking about at night, and would simply nod when she scooted through the library hallway across from where they stood at post. She’d come to think of them as friends who wouldn’t tattle on her. But she knew if she did anything dangerous, like wandering outside in the dark, they’d notify her father immediately.
After she’d passed the two young footmen without disruption, she raced down toward the library, bursting through the door before she realized too late she was not the only late-night visitor.
* * *
After Julian had returnedto Edgewood earlier that day, he’d helped Beesley catch up on the documents piled high on the estate desk. After a supper of good beefsteak, potatoes, and root vegetables, he’d become restless and his thoughts had returned to the books on the Templars in Lord Rumsford’s library.
He’d ridden back to the Abbey in the moonlight and clapped the front hallway footman on the shoulder on the way in. Old Halsey, the Tindalls’ aged butler, retired early these days.
Julian had rationalized with himself that he had limited time left before the term started at Oxford, and shouldn’t miss an opportunity to cull through the collection to see what he could use in his studies. The silence of the ancient Abbey was so profound in the still night that he’d nearly forgotten he wasn’t the only person in the old pile.
He nearly fell off the rolling ladder where he clung when someone creaked open the heavy library door. “Mina—.”
Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes grew round in surprise, followed closely by a narrowing when she realized the identity of her fellow snoop. “Julian—what are you doing in my father’s library in the middle of the night?”
He said the first thing that popped into his head. “I couldn’t sleep. What’s your excuse?” His tone turned accusatory.
“I don’t need an excuse to be in my own family’s library.” She stuck out her chin, her tone defiant.
“Mina, you do realize you’re only ten years old?”
“Eleven next month.” She drew out her pretense at defiance and planted her fists firmly at her hips.
“And you’re a little girl, for heaven’s sakes. Go back to bed before you give your maid a fright.”
“She knows I’m here.”
“No, she doesn’t.” Julian hooked his ankles around the long sides of the ladders and slid down to the floor the way he and Mina’s brothers had done since they all were even younger than Mina. He stooped to her height so that he could look directly into her saucer-blue eyes, which no doubt was a mistake. Once she’d trapped you into that unblinking gaze, she could convince you of the veracity of any number of wild tales.
Instead, she caught him off-guard with the truth. “I want to know what you know.”
All the air suddenly whooshed out of Julian’s lungs. “Why?”
She bowed her head, refusing to meet his gaze, and toed an imaginary circle on the Turkey carpet with her slipper. “Because I want to be able to talk to you…like a grownup…not a little girl.
Julian swiveled a look around the library, hoping someone, anyone really, could come to his rescue. He ran his fingers through his already wild hair. “Mina, I can assure you the maneuverings of a secret society hundreds of years in the past is the last thing a young lady would find interesting.”
She suddenly stared back, daring him to quiet her. “But you find them interesting. There’s never anything interesting here for me. It’s the same every day - French lessons, needlework, piano and voice lessons and then more needlework.” She spread her arms wide. “Where’s the interesting part in that?”
A sudden thought interrupted the panic racing through Julian’s brain at being trapped with Mina in the Abbey library in the middle of the night. She was truly bored. And therein probably lay the problem. Her father had been right when he’d reasoned she needed a governess.
Julian held up a finger and moved it near her nose. “I have an idea.”
