Page 40 of The Countess Caper

“You said that the summer we went to Brighton.”

“I did.”

“And it was not fine.”

She shrugged. “But if was fun, wasn’t it?” Summer sailed away, laughing. She had already said her goodbyes to the rest of the household, and they had dispersed. Marigold was no doubt reading anatomy texts to Parsley like a lullaby. Rue went up to the attic to rummage, and Tessa decided she did not want to ask what the other woman was looking for. Sometimes it was best not to know. Holly was sitting outside in the sunshine, chatting with her sister. She was pale but happily eating through a jar of pickled radishes with raspberry jam. Shuddering, Tessa went up to her chambers.

She had settled on the peony-pink room, mostly because it was at the top of the stairs, and she liked to think she would hear any intruders before they got past her to the others. It was helpful that Rue did not seem to sleep; she just haunted the halls. Still. All hands on deck.

The bed was unmade. It was always unmade. It was her lasting, tiny act of rebellion. She had grown up in houses teeming with maidservants to make up the beds and feed the fires and take away the tea trays, but most of those servants were also instructed not to pick up after Tessa, not to talk to her, not to let her take one moment of attention from the family. At thirteen she had decided that making her bed as perfectly as possible was the key to not being sent away.

It wasn’t.

The habit remained, sharpened into a compulsion of sorts. It made her sweat the first time she left her sheets rumpled and half trailing on the floor. But they were her sheets and her floor and her house, and no one could make her leave. Not ever again.

Still, being a little tidier probably wouldn’t hurt her.

And since she felt oddly at loose ends, she wandered about plumping cushions, piling books, untangling ribbons. It was soothing, to ground herself in this room, with its peeling wallpaper printed with peonies, the larks painted along the ceiling line. Three cups stained with old tea that needed to be brought back down to the kitchen.

And her father’s pocket watch.

Fly away home, fly, fly away home.

She knew the tune better than she knew her own heartbeat. He had popped the watch open every morning over toasted bread so she could hear the music. He had hummed it to her when she couldn’t sleep, and she still hummed it to herself when the nights seemed particularly long. She had been his little lark then. She liked to think he had written the song for her.

It played now, the same snippet over and over again, as she sorted through her thoughts and her belongings. And realized that both were out of order. She knew she hadn’t left the basket of stockings that needed mending like that.

Perhaps someone had come in to borrow a book or a claim back the dinner plates from meals long passed and knocked it over. They found the oddest things under all of the beds.

She tucked it back where it belonged and then shut her father’s watch and slipped it back inside her green silk dancing slipper. She always kept it hidden in a shoe. No one thought to search them. Not her cousin, nor his mother, nor the butler who was convinced she was stealing. She had been, of course, but only biscuits and old snuffboxes because she thought they were pretty, all enameled and ornate.

She let herself feel hopeful. She projected an air of being absolutely certain that they could handle anything that came their way, but months of eating hard green apples and burned bread in a house with more holes than walls took a toll. But she could fix all of that now. She could truly see her dreams to fruition.

She would still play the highwaywoman. There were men who needed to pay, by fair means or foul. But in the meantime, she could take a breath.

She could hope.

She could release some of the panic that had begun to nibble at her heels.

But by morning, there were men at the front door.

When Tessa heard the hesitant knock, she thought nothing of it. Guests were rare, but the lock was engaged, and probably it was someone with a delivery. They were waiting on a special kind of glue for the decorative ceiling moldings that were falling apart, and deliveries did not always go around to the servants’ side entrance, mostly because it was still rather overgrown with brambles. She’d see to it. One day. Eventually.

She peeked through the thick Tudor glass, because she was not an idiot.

A woman stood on the stoop, a basket of what looked like radishes over her arm. It was raining again, and she was soaked through and miserable. Marigold was upstairs with the baby, Rue and Holly were attempting to make something palatable with potatoes and turnips in the kitchen, and Daphne was fighting weeds in the cabbage patch. Bryony was nowhere to be seen, as usual. It had been a couple of days, actually. Tessa would seek her out as soon as she dealt with the poor woman out front. She might need the kind of help they provided.

Tessa unbolted the door, and before she could utter a greeting of any kind, a man shoved the woman aside and nearly knocked Tessa over in his determination to get inside. She didn’t have time to stop him. She only had time to ring the bell, once, before two men followed him, considerably larger and rougher looking.

Tessa had no weapon to hand. She knew better. There was no time to curse herself for a fool. Instead, she stood her ground as best she could, glaring with all of the aristocratic displeasure of her ancestors. “What do you think you are doing?”

The first intruder was clearly in charge and clearly just as aristocratic. Blast. She would not be able to intimidate him. It did not help that he was a good foot taller than she was, and much broader with his padded coat shoulders. His cravat was starched into wicked points, his hair artfully tousled. Double blast.

“I’m here for Lady Henrietta Beville.”

Henrietta. He was here for Holly.

“You have the wrong house, sir.”