Miss Honeywell last night? Was it the White Lady? If so, I don’t see what use Duncan will be. I’ve never heard of a ghost who’s afraid of a footman.”
Lord Darlington crossed his arms over his chest. “I didn’t say a word about a ghost. What I was about to say is, where I can be certain Isabella’s taken proper care of.”
“I always take proper care of—”
“Are you questioning me, Cecilia? Because I assure you, I’m not in the habit of explaining myself to my servants, and I don’t intend to start now.”
Cecilia eyed him. His hair was a tousled mess, and purple smudges shadowed the skin under his eyes. Something was amiss at Darlington Castle, and whatever it was, it had caused Lord Darlington a sleepless night. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to protect Isabella, and there was no sense in arguing with him about Duncan.
Not when she was certain she could find a way around him.
“Well, of course I’ll do just as you say, my lord.” She would, too. Right up until the moment it proved inconvenient. Then she’d do what she pleased.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he said only, “Yes, Cecilia, you will.”
* * * *
Lord Darlington and Lord Haslemere remained closeted in Lord Darlington’s study for the rest of the day. Meanwhile, Cecilia was occupied with Isabella, who’d woken in an ill humor, then spent the rest of the day driving Cecilia nearly as mad as her uncle did.
That evening she was obliged to sing to her until her throat was raw. By the time Isabella’s big hazel eyes closed at last it was past dark, and Lord Darlington and Lord Haslemere had long since left the castle.
They could be anywhere by now.
Cecilia hurried to the window and peered into the darkness, even as she knew catching a glimpse of them was a futile hope at best. She could only see a small part of the grounds from her window, just the rose walk, part of the kitchen garden, and the edge of the tree line—
There! Cecilia pressed her nose to the glass, a gasp on her lips. Just there, on the other side of the glass, as if she’d conjured it herself from sheer determination, was what she’d been searching for. A light in the darkness, just at the brink of the forest beyond, weaving its way through the trees, bobbing as it would if it were a lantern held in someone’s hand.
Cecilia whirled away from the window, snatched up her cloak, and, with one last peek at Isabella, hurried to the door, threw it open, and…
“Oof!” Ran smack into a man’s broad back.
She bounced off the wall of muscle. Her hand flew to her nose, which had taken the brunt of the impact, and she would certainly have stumbled to the floor if the man hadn’t steadied her with an enormous hand around her shoulder. “Aw right there, Miss Cecilia?”
Cecilia stared up into a fair-skinned, freckled face. A shock of curly ginger hair hung over a wide forehead, and a pair of startled blue eyes gazed down at her. “Beg yer pardon, Miss Cecilia. I didna think ye’d come running out so wild.”
Dash it, how could she have forgotten Lord Darlington had assigned a night watchman to her door? Not just any night watchman, either. No, he’d given the job to Duncan, the largest footman at Darlington Castle. Cecilia hadn’t a prayer of fighting her way past him.
“It’s not the wee lass, is it?” Duncan’s brows pulled together in concern.
“No, the wee lass is fine,” Cecilia muttered irritably. “It’s the big lord who’s causing the problem.”
Duncan gave her a blank look. “Beg yer pardon?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing. Isabella is perfectly well, sleeping peacefully, and I thought I’d just going down to, er…fetch a book from the library.” There, that sounded plausible enough.
“Yer taking your cloak to the library with ye?” Duncan glanced down at the cloak clutched in her hands, then back at her face, his red eyebrows lowered.
“Well, it does get rather chilly in the library at night, so—”
“Nay, Miss Cecilia. His lordship warned me ye’d try to sneak past. He made me promise not to fall prey to any tricks.”
“Tricks!” Cecilia’s usually mild temper began to burn, and she grew more determined than ever to discover what was happening on the castle grounds. If Lord Darlington would go to such lengths to prevent her from leaving her room, it must be wicked, indeed.
“Aye.” Duncan nodded, but he was fighting back a