Chapter Eleven #3
She peered through the keyhole, but it was so gloomy inside that she could only make out vague movement in the cell.
At least there seemed to be no one else between there and the outside door.
Crossing the fingers of her free hand for luck, she inserted the key, turned it, and went in.
Hastily, she closed the door behind her and leaned against it, for the singing was much louder inside.
It was also enthusiastic and unexpectedly harmonious.
It cut off like a tap.
*
Sir Colin Nye was disappointed not to see young Lady Ambrose at dinner. Frankly, she was all that made this tedious party bearable.
Well, she and the pretty maidservant everyone was pretending had never existed. That was, everyone was pretending except Lady Ambrose, who, interestingly, was prying in her own, endearing way. Though not tonight.
Tonight, there were no females under the age of forty to look at. Except Margaret Newman, and she seemed to have eyes only for her foolish husband.
Lord love us, what a tedious set of people! Trusting, too. It was like taking sweetmeats from a child. Incompetent, self-righteous jaw-me-deads.
He smiled amiably at Lady Chadbon, who’d lost her figure decades ago and was now growing jowls and wrinkles in place of the pert, rosy cheeks of her youth.
Women aged badly. Sometimes he was grateful he had never married again, never felt obliged to waste time with someone who no longer pleased him.
In truth, he hadn’t missed his first wife much at the time she died, and he still didn’t.
What was old Lady C. going about now? The damned bill again.
He nodded sagely. “Quite, Lady Chadbon, quite. I see nothing in it that my own party could not support wholeheartedly. Apart from the cost, of course, but let me see what I can do.”
He was quite prepared to support their bill.
Lots of his party would, and he could probably claim credit for swaying them.
It would give the opposition a small victory, in return for the masses of information he was quietly gathering here about their plans—which would be much easier to counter now—and about their members in both Commons and Lords.
It was, after all, why he had allowed himself to be persuaded to come. Well, that and Lady Ambrose, whom he had met in London. The maid had been an unexpected, if short-lived, bonus.
“You say Lady Ambrose is indisposed?” he said solicitously. “I hope she has not caught a chill from riding out in all the wet this morning.”
“So do I,” Lady Chadbon said. “She has definitely drooped, poor thing, but she assures me she will go to bed early tonight and join us refreshed in the morning.”
Nye almost licked his lips at the thought of Kate Ambrose in bed. He refrained, for he had a much better idea.
After dinner, Chadbon again hurried the gentlemen through their port and into the drawing room with the prattling women. At Newman’s suggestion, some of them got up a game of cards.
Nye, taking advantage of his elder statesman reputation, excused himself and retired early.
Although he tried to avoid her, his sister Sophie caught his eye with her own suspicious glare.
God, why did she keep tagging along with him?
He supposed she was useful for notes and things, and she did organize everything from travel to the summarizing of important government documents he couldn’t be bothered to read himself.
But devil take it, she was one disapproving bore too many.
Ignoring her, he went directly up to his room, where he examined himself in the looking glass. He was showing his fifty-plus years a little, but he liked to think of it as character, and he was still quite a handsome devil.
A virile, handsome devil. Ambrose was very trusting, sending his young wife to dull parties without him…
Nye was still smiling when he sauntered out of his bedchamber again and along the deserted passage to the room he already knew belonged to Lady Ambrose. Just as he’d thought, a light still shone beneath the door. Casting a glance down either end of the passage, he scratched at the door.
Getting no response, he lifted the latch and whisked himself inside. The light was from a lamp on the desk, which cast a pleasant glow on the woman sprawled on the sofa, sound asleep.
Most assuredly not Lady Ambrose. This woman was a few years older, with a snub nose and hair of undistinguished mouse brown, and she wore a dull, gray, respectable dress with a starched white collar. A lady’s maid.
Damn it, what was she doing here? He would rather not be seen by her, but she would have to be dismissed—and silenced—by her mistress.
He glanced around the room. Where the devil was her mistress?
Certainly not languishing in bed, which had clearly not even been sat on.
No, unless she was hiding in a closet, the supposedly indisposed Lady Ambrose was not here.
A frisson of unease crept up his spine. He did not suspect her of another liaison, for everyone else was still in the drawing room.
No, he knew instinctively that wherever she was, she was still asking the questions he could not afford to have answered.
The blasted housemaid again.
Kate Ambrose had to be stopped.