“You must be more kind,” chided Bridget.
“And you must be more severe. Are you always good and perfect?”
A laugh. “Yes, of course you are. That is why I adore you so.” This time, Isabella went to fetch a pillow, but Bridget denied need of it and sat up in her chair with such a look of distress that Isabella frowned. “Pray, do not be unhappy. What can I do to make you comfortable?”
“Please, do nothing more for me. I should not have you waiting on me this way.”
“Through many a sickness, you have sat by my bed and cared for me all night. I can fetch you pillows and blankets if I wish to.”
Bridget sighed. “If you truly wish to help me, please go downstairs to the ball.”
“Would it truly ease you?”
A nod.
“Very well, but you must promise to rest.” With Bridget’s insistence that she would, Isabella checked her hair again in the looking glass, pinched her cheeks, then went downstairs to find the ballroom already loud with music.
As couples were forming together for the boulangere, Isabella joined Lilias and both accepted the offer to dance from two brothers who had been good company to them during their stay. The rapidity of movement, the endless beeswax candles, and the heat of twenty-some guests all warmed her cheeks.
At the end of the dance, she laughed and accepted lemonade, half listening to Lilias complain about her partner’s ferocious speed.
Across the ballroom, a pair of eyes snagged hers.
Isabella hurried her focus back to Lilias. Even exaggerated complaints were better than Lord Livingstone’s unnerving gaze.
She danced two country dances, then excused herself to hurry upstairs and see how Bridget fared. The poor girl. How uncomfortable this would make her for their journey home. Unless, of course, she worsened in the night. Heaven forbid such a catastrophe, for then they would be forced to remain here at Rockingham Hall even longer than—
The marble floor echoed more than her own footsteps.
Isabella whirled around. Gilded candlesticks, glowing on stands along the hall, had lightened her way down the hall just seconds ago. Now the candles were doused.
Quiet blackness stared back at her.
Shivering, she reached the stairs and ascended with speed, listening for any footfalls not her own. Who had been behind her? Why had they blown out the candles?
A servant of course. But why go through the trouble of lighting them all, only to blow them out before the ball was finished?
Never mind. It did not matter.
Isabella found her chamber and discovered Bridget asleep in her chair, resting as faithfully as she’d promised. With her head on her own shoulder that way, the poor dear would have the most dreadful pain in her neck when she awoke. Perhaps another pillow—
The door slammed open.
Isabella jumped back, legs hitting the edge of the bed, a scream fizzling into a gasp.
A stranger leered in the doorway. Tall, angular, pockmarks on his weathered face. “Git over there with th’ other lassie.”
Her breath caught. Who was he? How had he gotten on the grounds? Past the servants?
“Go on with ye.” His drawn pistol shimmered in the room’s candlelight. “Now.”
Isabella moved to the chair, curled her hand around her maid’s shoulder just as aboomexploded in the distance. Isabella jerked at the same time Bridget squirmed awake.
“Miss Gresham—”
“Shhh. Stay still.”
The stranger kicked her trunk lid open with his boot. With one hand steadying the pistol, he rummaged through the clothes, tossing them to the rug, before snarling and reaching for a valise. “Where is it?”
