completely quiet, all the girls having long since been put to bed. Effie was likely still awake, doing paperwork in her office, as was her habit. That was typically how the latter hours of the evening were spent. Was that what had woken her? Had Effie stumbled in the hall as she sought out her own chamber? Were the girls out of their beds and up to mischief? No. Her experience was that the more a group of girls tried to be quiet the less successful they were at it.
Whether it was instinct or simply that the earl’s paranoia regarding the Duke of Averston had managed to invade the darker recesses of her mind, Callie was instantly on alert. Huddled in the chair where she’d fallen asleep earlier, Callie hunkered under the small throw that she’d covered herself with. The chair faced the window and the door was behind her. Peering around the edge of the winged back, Callie eyed that door as if it were about to grow teeth and snap at her.
But no, the truth was far worse. As she watched, the knob twisted and the door opened, just a crack at first, and then, very slowly, it swung inward. Ducking back until she was completely concealed, she made sure her feet were drawn fully into the chair and the edges of the throw concealed as well. From behind, no one would even know she was there. And if she were lucky, and they were stupid, they wouldn’t think to look further than the bed for her at this time of night. Squatting there, still and silent, in the corner of the chair, she made herself as small as possible. In truth, she willed herself not to even breathe.
“Where is she?”
The voice was low and gruff, masculine, unrefined. It was the voice of a man from the streets. A hireling, no doubt.
“Don’t bloody know, now do I?” the second man replied. His voice was rougher still, with a thick cockney accent, and he coughed after uttering his churlish reply.
“Bloke said she was ’ere!”
“The bloke was clearly wrong, John. Perhaps this ain’t ’er room… or perhaps she slipped out and is warming someone else’s bed instead!”
The clinking of crockery told her that her dinner was being raided.
“Dinner is cold and untouched,” the man he’d called John stated, his words muffled as he consumed food that had been intended for her.
“It was, anyway. You bloody idiot! Now she’ll now we was ’ere!”
“Don’t matter no way, does it, ’enry? If we find ’er, someone will know for certain we was,” John said. There was a hint of enjoyment at that, a veiled threat in those words that indicated he would have undertaken whatever task had been assigned to them with great enthusiasm.
“Bloody ’ell,” Henry muttered.
“We could check the other rooms,” John suggested hopefully.
“And wake up a passel of screaming girls? I won’t swing cause you fancy seeing a bunch of little girls in nightclothes! No. We’ll watch the ’ouse and see if she comes out in the morning!”
“What then?”
Henry let out a long-suffering sigh, as if he were beyond frustrated with his compatriot who was equal parts brutal and stupid. “Then we nab ’er on the way to ’er nabob employer’s ’ouse!”
“She’s gotta be ’ere somewhere,” the first man insisted.
They both went utterly silent as a door closed somewhere else in the house. Whether it was one of the children going to the water closet or Effie closing everything up for the night, the men seemed very aware of their threat of discovery. When no alarm sounded and the house settled once more into the routine silence of night, the wiser of the two spoke. “We’re going. Not paying us enough to swing for it, is ’e?”
“But ’e is paying us,” the other man insisted. “And we needs the money!”
“The deal was, find ’er in ’er bed, slit ’er bloody throat from ear to ear before she could even scream and be gone. If she’s awake, if she struggles, we’ll wake the entire ’ouse. If we go ’unting for ’er, the watch’ll be on us. And you ’eard ’im! Nothing is to lead back to ’im. I say better to not do it than do it wrong and get pinched. No. We wait.”
The two men crept out into the corridor. She could hear their footfalls, faint on the carpet that ran down the length of the corridor until they faded into the night. Even then, she exhaled slowly, her breath coming