“I cleared away the dishes an hour ago with him in the room. He didn’t spill anything.”
Adrian frowned. “But—I was told most specifically…” He trailed off. Maybe it hadn’t been at lunch? But… Red wine at lunch. What a specific thing to say, if it hadn’t happened.
From the back of his mind, intuition pushed a thought forward: Something was off. He’d also been told the bishop was already waiting in the room, and he wasn’t.
Ridiculous. It was just a miscommunication.
“That’s odd.” He turned. “I’ll go see what this is about, then, and leave you—”
He reached for the door handle, pressing down. It resisted movement. He tried once again, yanking harder, but to no avail.
That thought came back: Something was off.
He frowned. No. There had to be an explanation.
He turned back to Miss Winters. “The door is locked.”
Her eyes widened; she shook her head. “Why ever did you lock the door?”
“I didn’t lock the door.”
“Well.” She took another step away from him; her back hit the wall. “Open it. Open it immediately. It’s one thing for two servants to speak in a room with the door wide open. It’s another for us to be locked in a bedroom together. It doesn’t look good.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t look good at all. What are you waiting for? Open the door.”
“I can’t,” Adrian said. “I don’t have a key.”
She shook her head. “Open it, open the door.”
He gave the door handle another frustrated wrench. “I can’t. I don’t know how to pick locks. Do you?”
“No, how on earth would I know that? You’re the valet!”
Ha. “What does that have to do with it!?”
“Valets are supposed to have a wide and varied skill set!”
“Not that wide!” The door wasn’t moving. “Not that varied!”
“Well,” she gestured. “Climb out a window, then. Do you know how this is going to look?”
He gave her an incredulous stare. “We’re on the third floor.”
“They already call me Half-Price Camilla.” She wrung her hands. Her breath was growing shallow. “If they catch me with a handsome man locked in a bedroom, do you know what they’ll call me?”
“Quarter-Price Camilla?”
He’d been trying to lighten the mood. Apparently, that was not the way to do it. Her cheeks flushed crimson.
“No!” She sounded close to tears. “They won’t call me anything at all, because I’ll be sacked. I have nobody. No references. No family. No money.”
Something’s off, Adrian’s instinct whispered again. But there was nothing to do except…
“Let’s be calm,” he suggested, “as the situation demands.”
Her nostrils flared. “I am precisely as calm as the situation demands.”
“You’re not calm at all.”
“That is what the situation demands!” She turned from him. “Very well—if you won’t do it, I will. I’m going out the window.”
She wrenched at the handle; it resisted.
“It’s stuck.” She looked over at him. “Help me, help me.”
He couldn’t let her go out the window. She was breathing shallowly, for one, and in skirts, for another. To make matters worse, there were no helpful climbing vines on the outer wall, no convenient trees.
She was going to break her neck. Damn it.
“All right,” he said calmingly. “I’ll help. But we should talk about a real strategy, don’t you think?” He came up beside her. She was in the throes of panic. He wasn’t entirely sure why—surely, if they were found together they could just tell the truth, and be believed?
“Stop talking,” she said, “start helping.”
She wouldn’t let go of the little crank that opened the window, so he wrapped his hands around hers. “Breathe,” he said. “On three. One—two—”
On two and a half, the door opened.
The other maid—Miss Kitty Shackleton, if Adrian recalled correctly—stood in front, a key ring in her hand. Behind her stood Albert, the footman, Rector Miles, and Bishop Lassiter.
A cold chill ran down Adrian’s spine. Something was very much off, his instinct told him again, and this time he listened. Why were they all standing there? Why had so many people come up just to unlock a room?
“There they are,” said the maid. “Holding hands.”
Miss Winters jumped two feet away from him. “The door was locked! We were trying to open a window to escape.”
“Really.” The rector strode into the room. “Were you.” It didn’t sound like a question, not the way he said it.
Miss Winters answered anyway. “Nothing happened. We’ve only been here five minutes.”
“You’ve been up here since you finished with the lunch things.” Kitty folded her arms. “An hour ago.”
“I’ve only been in here for five minutes,” Adrian said.
“But, Hunter.” It was Albert who spoke now. Albert who, a scant ten minutes ago, had claimed a red wine emergency. “Hunter, you told me you were coming up here to air out the bishop’s wardrobe…an hour ago.”
A sick feeling bloomed in Adrian’s gut. Wrong, this was wrong. So wrong. He should have listened to his instincts the moment they whispered that something was off.
“It’s not true,” Camilla whispered. “It’s just…not.”
Miss Shackleton stepped into the room, crossing over to stand by Miss Winters.
“This looks bad, Camilla.” The rector spoke in a low, soothing voice. “We all know your past. We know you have terrible impu
lses, that you often give into them.”
Miss Winters turned crimson in ugly blotches.
“Is there some innocent explanation for why you’ve spent an hour behind a locked door with a man?”
“It wasn’t an hour. And neither of us have a key.” Miss Winters sounded on the verge of tears. “We couldn’t have locked the door.”
“You asked me for the spare key this morning,” said Miss Shackleton.
“I didn’t, I didn’t!”
Miss Shackleton reached over, thrust her hand into Miss Winters’s pocket, and pulled out a single key on a ring. “What is this, then?”
It was like watching a farce play out—and not the funny kind, either. Adrian could imagine how all this might seem, but…
He knew for a fact that she could not have locked the door. She had been here when he arrived—clear across the room from the entrance, feather duster in hand.
She had been standing four feet from the lock when he’d first tried it. Adrian wasn’t sure who in this room was lying or why they were doing it, but he knew who wasn’t. What the hell was happening?
“Camilla,” the rector said in a sorrowful voice. “I trusted you when you said you would cease your immoral behavior. You’ve disappointed me.”
Miss Winters started crying. Adrian just felt even more baffled. What was happening? Why?
“She’s been flirting with Mr. Hunter since she first arrived,” Miss Shackleton said, shaking her head.
“I haven’t,” Camilla sobbed. “I’ve been trying so hard to be good.”
“The truth, Camilla.” The rector’s voice was calm.
“I flirted a little,” she admitted. “The first day. But I did what you always told me to do. I noticed my behavior and I corrected it. Really, I did.”
“The real truth, Camilla.”
She swallowed. Her eyes, shimmering with tears, shivered shut. “I flirted a lot the first day.”
For God’s sake. It hadn’t been that much.
But the rector shook his head. “Lying, deceit, licentiousness…”
She let out another sob, and something in Adrian’s chest snapped.