Page 27 of The Housebreaker's Assistant
It would have been a hot and exciting kiss, had Greer not accidentally knocked the candle he’d just set down hard enough that it tumbled off the desk.
“Shit,” Greer hissed, stepping back from Penny in the sudden dark.
They both bent to retrieve the candlestick at the same time, and in the process, the lid of the crystal chocolate dish fell off the corner of the desk and clattered to the floor as well.
“Shit!” Greer snapped, louder.
It might have been nothing. The noise could have been anything. It might not have been loud enough to stir anyone in the house.
For a moment, the two of them held still, listening.
Then they heard it, the sound of movement from the room directly above the study. Then came a man’s muffled voice.
“Fuck,” Greer whispered. “Run!”
Chapter Eight
Dammit, this was precisely why Greer worked alone. One ridiculous lapse of judgment and his entire life and reputation were about to crumble around him.
“Run!”
He fumbled for Penny’s hand in the near total darkness, slamming his hand hard against Pennington’s desk as he did. He swallowed another curse as his fingers made contact with Penny’s, then made his way toward the shadowy outline of the door leading into the hall.
There was almost no light at all in the hall. Greer was desperate to light a match so they could find their way, but with the increasing noise upstairs, he didn’t dare.
“I can’t see,” Penny whispered just behind him, clinging to Greer’s hand.
“Hush,” Greer shushed him.
He racked his brain in an attempt to remember how far from their current position the stairs leading down to the servants’ hall and kitchen were. He could barely remember what that end of the house looked like. Were there parlors with windows they could escape through? A butler’s pantry they could hide in?
“We need to move,” Penny said, taking a huge leap of faith and moving forward, despite the darkness.
Greer grunted and followed, picking up his pace until the two of them walked side-by-side.
They made it halfway down the hall before light suddenly streamed down from above and ahead of them.
“I swore I heard something,” a deep, male voice said, likely from the top of a staircase that led down to the front hall.
Alarm jolted through Greer. He and Penny had reached an open doorway that led into what must have been the dining room, so he dashed to the side, tugging Penny with him.
“It was probably nothing, James,” a second, softer voice said. “You’re jumping at shadows.”
Greer’s brow inched up, but that was all the reaction he had time to allow himself. Pennington and another man? In the middle of the night, when the family was gone?
“I have to be certain,” the deeper voice said. It was followed by footsteps coming down the stairs.
Out of the hallway, Greer and Penny were bathed in nearly total blackness again. The only hint of light came through the windows to one side of the room. Not only were those windows a source of light, they could have been a means of escape.
He gestured for Penny to hurry around the long table with him. Blessedly, the young menace did as he was told for once and followed.
“Can we get out?” he whispered when they reached the windows.
“I tell you, it’s nothing,” the softer of the two male voices sounded from the hall, far closer than Greer would have wanted.
“I have to be sure,” the deeper voice said.
“Hide,” Greer hissed, pointing at the curtains.
