‘When you get married, of course, Miss Hester.’ Jethro was bending over a book, which was lying on the covers, and missed Hester’s blush of confusion.
Bless the boy, who does he think is going to marry me with my reputation and lack of a fortune?
‘And see what Mr Parrott lent me, it’s called the Household Vedey Meckum or some such and it’s all about everything you need to know to run a big household.’
‘Vade mecum.’ Hester took the big book and opened it at the title page. ‘It’s Latin, Jethro, it means it’s a useful companion full of all sorts of knowledge.’
His eyes widened in awe. ‘Will I have to learn Latin to read it, then? He didn’t say anything about Latin.’
Hester set his mind at rest and left him doggedly ploughing his way through page one, his tongue protruding slightly in concentration.
Susan, nodding over her needlework, confessed that she had left the butler and the boy together and had gone to have a bread and cheese luncheon so she had no idea what they had talked about. Seeing her suppressing a yawn, Hester packed her off to bed and went to make a meal for herself and Jethro which he ate with one hand while precariously balancing the book on his knees.
When Maria emerged looking the better for her nap Hester showed her the sleeping draught. ‘It is Dr Forrest’s handwriting, I recognise it from the notes he left me on making up a saline mixture. It says one wineglass before retiring, but that was for a grown man. Perhaps it wouldn’t do him any harm just to have half a glass, the sleep would do him good, Hester. When he’s so restless he tosses and turns and that can’t help his back and shoulder.’
In the event, by bedtime Jethro was looking flushed and uncomfortable and put up only a token resistance to the medicine. His three weary nursemaids gathered on the landing outside his room, each with their chamber stick in hand, and exchanged relieved looks at the sound of heavy breathing from within.
‘I’ve double-checked round all the locks and catches,’ Susan said. ‘The groom from over the road has been to see to Hector and the lanterns are safely out in the stables.’
‘What are you holding?’ Hester peered at the object Susan was attempting to conceal in her skirts.
‘The kitchen poker. I’d like to see any headless ghoul get the better of that!’
Smiling faintly at the puzzle of where one hit a headless apparition with a poker, Hester took herself off to bed. A thin line of moonlight fell across the floorboards and she went across to look at it out of the window. ‘The waxing crescent,’ she murmured, looking out at the pure beauty of the sickle of white pinned on the black velvet of the sky. ‘What nonsense to attribute evil to that.’
She paused, her hand on the crumbling silk curtain, looking across at the darkened house opposite. Strange that it should be so quiet so early. Perhaps Guy had gone away. That would be a comfort, she told herself stoutly. No one to endanger her reputation in the eyes of local society, no one to lure her into behaving in an immodest and reckless manner, and it would certainly remove the only person who wanted her house. The only person I know who wants it, she corrected herself.
Not that physical proximity would stop whoever it was; whatever she might suspect Guy of, it was not personally creeping about the Moon House depositing dead roses.
Hester climbed into bed and settled herself to sleep by watching the faint shimmer of twigs from the climbing roses outside her window thrown into silhouette on her bedchamber walls by the cold moonlight.
She woke some hours later feeling uncomfortably thirsty. The baked gammon at supper had been rather salty and she had not thought to bring a glass of water to bed with her. Hester lay half-dozing, hoping she would go back to sleep, but the discomfort persisted and, as the longcase clock in the hall struck two, she gave up and scrambled out of bed and into her dressing gown.
It did not occur to her to trouble lighting her chamber stick; the old house was so familiar now that she could have walked around it with her eyes closed, and, in any case, the moonlight cast the faintest of light through uncurtained windows.
Her bare feet were on the lowest step of the stairs before her sleepy brain roused sufficiently to suggest to her that this was not a sensible thing to be doing. Hester took another, cautious, step down so that she was standing on the cold hall floor and listened intently, thirst forgotten.
Silence. Or at least, as her ears strained, the silence of any house at night. A stair creaked where she had just trodden on it, the longcase clock ticked heavily, outside an owl hooted and the ivy scratched against a window pane. Then the lightest of draughts touched her cheek, and with it came the suggestion of the scent of roses.
Hester smiled, then became still at the realisation that all the windows downstairs should be closed. Where was that stir of air coming from? Even as her mind formed the question and her hand tightened on the newel post, she heard the breathing.
It was right beside her, the faintest whisper on the air, the sound of someone keeping very, very still. Waiting. Watching her from the shadows in the drawing room.
She had already made a mistake in standing still for so long, surely they would suspect she knew they were there? Could she make it to the kitchen before they attacked her? There were knives there, the rolling pin-but not the poker, which Susan had taken to bed with her.
And there was also, she recalled with a sudden flash of relief, her father’s sword propped up by the front door. She had put it there that morning to remind herself to drive a nail in to the long wall opposite the clock and hang it up.
To reach it she would have to leave the stairs and cross in front of that half-open door. The breathing was so faint she wondered if she was imagining it, then a board creaked as though someone had shifted their weight. No, that was not imagination.
Fighting the urge to run upstairs screaming her head off, Hester stepped briskly into the hall, half-turned as though to go towards the kitchen then spun round, reaching for the sword. Her hand found the hilt and her fingers closed round it with the ease of long familiarity. How many times had she cleaned it for Papa? She dragged the blade free, letting the scabbard clatter to the marble, and swung round to face the door.
The sword was heavy and she had to use both hands to hold the point up at waist height.
‘Come out. I know you are there.’ Her voice sounded surprisingly level and determined in her own ears.
The door swung wider, slowly revealing a tall silhouette. Hester raised the sword. ‘Out.’
The shadowy man stepped forward, then with a speed that completely wrong-footed her, side-stepped the blade, caught her wrist in one hand and dragged her into the room and against his body.