Chapter Twenty-Five
“Well?” Ethan asked five minutes later, but Eleanor’s family barely looked up from their plates. The breakfast dishes were
gone, replaced by trays full of sandwiches and tureens full of soup, and almost no one paid attention to Ethan. Which just
proved there really is a first time for everything.
“Well, what?” The duke poured himself a fresh cup of coffee.
“Has anyone found Eleanor?”
“Obviously we haven’t, Wyatt,” Sir Jasper said. “She’s not here.”
“I can see that.”
Maggie shouldn’t have relished the way he looked at the ceiling and shook his head, frustration coming off him in waves. It
was all she could do not to giggle.
“What?” He sounded more annoyed than offended.
“I didn’t say a thing.” But Maggie had to bite her lip as she went to the sideboard and started ladling herself soup, suddenly
ravenous. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she’d been too nervous to eat the night before and she hadn’t had anything
for breakfast, and then she’d had a very busy morning of running up and down staircases, outsmarting Ethan Wyatt.
And Maggie was just getting started.
“What’s going on with you?” Ethan whispered near her ear.
“Who? Me?” She took a tiny bite of a tiny sandwich, then added it to her plate.
“Yes. You. The president of the Eleanor Appreciation Society—”
“Oh, I’m only treasurer. The presidency has term limits.”
“—is standing there with mustard on her mouth.”
Maggie darted her tongue out and swiped at her lips. Ethan’s gaze dipped and darkened and, for a moment, he looked like a
man who couldn’t quite remember why he was angry.
“You were saying?”
“I...”
She picked up another tiny sandwich and took an even tinier bite. “Ethan, are you unwell?” she asked with exaggerated patience.
“Me?” He shook off whatever he’d been thinking. “I’m fine. Unlike Eleanor. Who is missing .”
Maggie slipped into a seat, unsurprised when he took the one beside her.
“I’m sure she’ll show up. It is a big house, after all. Excuse me, Sir Jasper, would you pass the salt, please.”
“It would be my pleasure, Ms. Chase!”
“Thank you.” She gave him her brightest smile and Ethan made a sound that resembled a groan.
“Margaret Delphina Chase.” Ethan kept his voice low. “What is going on?”
“I’m eating lunch. Want a bite?” Maggie held a sandwich out for him, then she turned her thoughts back to her meal and her
mission.
She had almost forgotten about the sprig of mistletoe until he gently tugged it from behind her ear.
“You know, I think this has to be over your head, but I can make an exception,” he teased. At least, she was 90 percent sure
he was teasing as she snatched it back and laid it on the table.
“That’s what I get for trying to be festive.” There was a time when that little sprig of mistletoe would have reminded her
of jingle bell earrings and red BMWs and a million other ways in which she’d never be Emily. But that was okay. Because Maggie
was going to be someone infinitely better. Maggie was going to be Eleanor.
“Oh, you’re trying something .” Ethan narrowed his eyes, like a man who couldn’t decide if he should be intrigued or annoyed. “And I’m going to figure
out what it is.”
She dipped her spoon into her soup, then oh-so-gently blew and his jaw ticked. Maggie wasn’t sure what it meant, but she liked
it—the uncertainty in his gaze. It was the first time in a year that she’d felt like she was playing a game. And she was winning.
So she did it again.
“Who was on the phone, Maggie Mae?”
Maggie’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth. Had he heard her? Impossible. Not with the roaring wind and stone walls and creaking
floorboards.
“Phone? I thought the phones were down?”
“So you just climbed to the top of the highest tower and had a conversation with yourself?”
“You know, hearing voices is a bad sign. You may want to see someone about that.”
She reached for a roll, but Ethan’s arms were longer and he tugged the basket away.
“No! No bread for you. Not until you tell me who you were talking to.”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone.” She raised her right hand. “I swear.” She wasn’t even lying, which made her even happier. She
was giddy. Bubbly. She was going to rise out of her chair and float away. She was even enjoying Ethan, the hard glint of his
eyes and deep scowl on his face as he glanced around at the others and then lowered his voice.
“Listen up, buttercup. I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but you’re not going to win.”
“Oh yeah? And who’s going to stop me?”
Maggie wasn’t teasing anymore.
I’m not surprised he left her.
Ethan had said that. And he’d been right. Maggie had had a lifetime of being left. A lifetime of being alone and unwanted
and unchosen. But Eleanor Ashley had invited three authors to her home for Christmas: Ethan, the best-selling juggernaut.
Sir Jasper, a staple of the genre. And Maggie.
Three authors. One contest. But Maggie was the only one who’d found the clues.
Ethan was right about something: it was a game; but no one else even knew they were playing.
She glanced at Sir Jasper on the other side of the table—tweed jacket with an unlit pipe in his pocket—droning on to Dr. Charles,
who appeared to be half asleep. “Well, I told those chaps at the Yard—that’s what we call Scotland Yard when you’re in the
business. Just the Yard , you see...”
It almost wasn’t fair.
“Just tell me this, Margaret Amelia—”
“That’s cute.” Maggie smiled over her sandwich. “How you decided that, even though you know my name now, you’re still going
to get it wrong every time because I’m so beneath you.”
Maggie licked some mustard off her index finger and Ethan drew a ragged breath and closed his eyes for one long second. Then
something in him seemed to snap and he shook off whatever he was thinking and asked, “Are you still going to feel like smiling
if we find Eleanor at the bottom of a rotten staircase or in a snowy ditch or—”
“We won’t,” she said before she could stop herself and he pulled back. Just a little.
“What do you know?” The words were cold and hard and sounded like a dare and Maggie couldn’t help herself, she looked at the
sprig of mistletoe. It was pressed flat but still green—still fresh.
I know Eleanor.
Ethan was right beside her, putting off heat and pheromones and that omnipresent gravity that kept the whole world in his
orbit. But Maggie was immune. She didn’t need Ethan. She just needed a plan and a strategy and about five hundred Post-it
notes. She needed whiteboards and reference materials and maps.
And time. What Maggie needed more than anything was time.
“I know...” The room was full of laughter and chatter, the scrape of forks and spoons. And Ethan—with his broad shoulders
and even larger presence. For one brief moment, Maggie actually felt guilty because he did seem to be genuinely worried about
Eleanor. But—
I’m not surprised he left her.
“Maggie...”
When she spoke again it was louder, and to the group. “I know they’re making one of Ethan’s books into a movie! Did you know
that, Kitty? A movie!”
“They are?” Kitty squealed. “Which one?”
“Knight of the Living Idiot.”
“ Dead of Knight .” Ethan shot Maggie a glare as the room turned into a madhouse.
Questions like “Well, who’s going to star?” and “Do you have a role for me?” and “Who’s writing the screenplay?” were flying
around so quickly that no one seemed to notice when Maggie stood and walked back to the sideboard.
“Well, why don’t you just play the lead?” Cece tittered and Maggie slipped out the door and across the empty foyer.
The little sprig of mistletoe was practically burning a hole in her fist and the collective works of Eleanor Ashley were ping-ponging
around in her mind.
Roses Are Dead, Violets Are Blue took place in February, so there was only one reason for a sprig of fresh mistletoe to be in that particular book—on that
particular page: it was a clue. Maggie was certain. Now all she had to do was follow it.
But follow it where?
Eleanor had written at least ten different stories set at Christmas, but Murder Under the Mistletoe had been her breakout hit. She’d even named her home Mistletoe Manor. So it all had to be connected. It had to matter. It
had to...
Maggie was halfway up the stairs when she saw something out the window. The snow wasn’t falling quite so hard, and something
about the endless stretch of white that blanketed the grounds made her think about her fourteenth birthday. She’d only asked
for one thing: a custom-order stamp that pressed words right into paper.
From the private library of Margaret Elizabeth Chase.
She’d spent all afternoon on her bedroom floor, sitting cross-legged and pressing those words into the title page of book
after book, running her fingers over the letters. Wishing she could press them into her skin.
That was how the ground looked. Embossed. Like a pattern had been pressed into the earth. White on white, with long lines of shadows and bits of leafy green hedges
standing out starkly against the pure white snow. A labyrinth.
“A maze.”
It looked exactly how Maggie had always imagined it—exactly how Eleanor had written it in her very first bestseller. And for
the first time in a long time, Maggie knew exactly what she had to do.