She might as well watch the dancers from her favorite hiding place on the gallery above the ballroom. Mina was as invisible as a five-year-old girl could be. No one would ever know. No one would care.
Her ethereal-looking mother, Lady Anne Tindall, Viscountess Rumsford, now no doubt gliding in righteous beauty across the elaborate sand designs on the ballroom floor, was never so happy as when leggy, awkward Mina made herself invisible. And Mina wanted her mother happy, because when she was not happy, bad things happened to the people Mina loved. Like the kind, tall footman who’d been summoned by her maid to help Mina learn to tie the laces on her boots properly. The day after he’d patiently sat down on the rear servants’ stoop to show her how a left-handed person tied one’s shoes, he’d been sent away to their London townhouse.
Mina padded out the rear servants’ entrance to the nursery and faced down the dizzying narrow stone steps that spiraled through the darkness below to a similar entrance on the middle level of Montcliffe Abbey.
Even though the day had been sunny and warm, the steps she routinely used to evade her nurse were always as bone-freezing cold as the trout stream where her brothers fished. And she should know.
Every time she’d sneaked after them and they’d shooed her back home, she’d waded through the stream just to spite them. Their equally rude best friend, Julian, had always run after her, shouting warnings to not freeze her feet. For a young man home for the holidays from Eton, he behaved more like her maid Bridget, always fretting about her. She knew for a fact her own brothers cared not one whit about what she got up to.
She hadn’t brought a candle because her punishments were always worse when she sneaked off with a candle lantern.
She grasped the thick rope attached with metal rings along the wall. The darkness held no horrors or threats of monsters for Mina. She feared Nurse far more than anything that might accost her in the dark west tower staircase.
Only her father seemed to care about her midnight wanderings, and he was busy attending to guests that night.
It was his annual autumn masque. She loved to view the costumed dancers from the safety of the balcony that wound around the middling floor of guest bedchambers just above the glittering ballroom.
She’d no more than leaned over the railing and curled her bare toes around the polished wood trim, than a door creaked open before banging shut close behind her…blocking the escape path back to the nursery.
* * *
“Mina—.”The abrupt warning left no mystery as to the identity of the snoop.Julian. Her brothers’ ever-present, interfering friend topped a long list of elders who didn’t approve of her.
The full bear’s head mask he wore did little to hide the familiar accusatory tone of his voice. She couldn’t stand another lecture, so launched herself away from the balcony edge and attempted to race between his legs, taking advantage of his wide, judgmental stance. He snatched her neatly by the collar of her long nightdress and pulled her up by her arms to face him.
He growled in an imitation of the bear his costume portrayed and then lowered his voice. “Mina, you know you’re not supposed to be out of bed this late at night. Where in heaven’s name is your nurse, or maid?”
She stuck out her lower lip, refusing to acknowledge his censure.
Although she expected him to march her back to the nursery, or worse, tell one of her brothers, he instead did an odd thing. At that moment, the musicians below, after a short period of tuning their instruments, struck up a rousing dance air. Julian gently settled her onto the tops of his dancing slippers and whirled her in dizzying circles down the narrow balcony way.
Mina was paralyzed for a few moments by the shock of the feel of his warm hands through thin kid gloves. When she at last tried to jerk away and nearly slipped off onto the floor into an embarrassing heap, he grasped her arms more tightly. “Stay with me, Mina. I won’t let you fall. Ever. Nothing bad can happen to you as long as I’m around.”
His words felt like a warm summer breeze caressing her five-year-old ears. Someone besides her Papa might care about her.
* * *
Bridget’s heart dropped.Mina’s room was as cold as the iced-over pond she’d detoured across on her way to the Abbey. After her weekly half day, she had to be back in the nursery by midnight, and she’d lingered a little too long at the Pigwhistle Inn with her friends. She’d looked forward to the warmth of her station in the nursery while she slipped and slid across the pond surface, but now it seemed the nursery was not a warm haven.
Damn the crazy old nurse who’d opened all the windows wide in Mina’s room. Sometimes Bridget wondered if the real reason Lady Rumsford kept the nurse employed was to torture Mina.
And where was Mina? Her bed linens were tossed aside, but her tiny slippers remained on the floor at the side of the bed. With the sounds of music wafting up from the massive ballroom at the center of Montcliffe Abbey, she had a fairly good suspicion. The small girl was a light sleeper and frequently got up to mischief in her late-night meanderings. Bridget had chased her down the hidden rear staircase on many a night.
Lord Rumsford had interviewed her personally to make sure she had the stamina, and compassion, to watch over the smallest of his children. She suspected Mina was also his favorite. He doted on the urchin-like child whom everyone knew was not his own.
His tall heir and spare were the ones favored by their mother, the elegant Lady Rumsford.
And like most of theton, Bridget and her friends below stairs knew the truth. Mina was the natural daughter of the current head footman at the family’s London townhouse, John Taylor.
He’d been banished to the city after he’d helped Mina learn to tie the laces of her boots. Bridget had blamed herself for having gotten him involved. And so, she’d begun exchanging letters with the poor man whose pathetic interest in the child he could never claim had broken her heart.
Bridget looked longingly at the latest missive from Mr. Taylor he’d addressed to her at her mother’s cottage. She’d have to wait until she found the runaway Mina and had her safely beneath warmed sheets.
* * *
Mina could scarcely breathefor the excitement at being whirled up and down the balcony walkway. She giggled once only to have Julian touch his gloved fingers to her lips.
“Shhhh,” the tall bear warned her and then stopped so suddenly, she slid off the tops of his dancing slippers.
