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“One of the footmen,” Clara replied.

“That lot,” Mrs. Meadows grumbled. “I don’t mind saying, I don’t know how they train them in London, but this is not how we do things here. This looks better suited to the servant hall. My apologies.”

“Are there many new footmen?” Clara asked.

“We’ve had to hire dozens of new folk from the village and the town,” Mrs. Meadows replied. “For such a big party.”

“Of course.” Something about that would not stop knocking inside Clara’s head. “Thank you, Mrs. Meadows.”

Clara immediately put down her tea in favor of prowling through the garden like a child searching for hidden presents. She knew she must look ridiculous, crawling between the hedges, crouching in the bushes. She found footprints in the mud, still damp from the storm, but they did not lead anywhere interesting, not even to the grotto. Frustration simmered in her belly. She knew she was close to something. She could feel it. She just did not know what it was.

Girls go missing at Eastbourne Hall.

Chapter Twenty-Three

In the evening, the ladies gathered in the yellow drawing room for whist and wine after supper.

It was exactly as dismal as Clara expected. Mostly because she despised whist. The ladies did not trouble her much. She did not know if that was because she was simply too busy to bother with their disdain or if her slowly burgeoning confidence lent her an extra shield. She had created her persona and perhaps leaned too far into the acerbic, disapproving aspects. She could hardly expect people to befriend her when she would not befriend herself. No one wanted to be judged.

But whatever it was that sent a bit more starch into her spine certainly was not her dress, exactly as plain and serviceable as all of her others.

Useful, though, as it turned out. Very, very useful.

She took a turn about the room and, glancing into the hall, could see directly into the servant stair. Someone had left the door open as well, with a basket of fresh laundry on the step.

It was nothing for Clara, in that perfectly plain dress, to dart out, scoop it up on her hip, and climb up to the family wing.

A footman—a proper footman—that was, even rushed past her and took no notice. A nod of the head and on to work. He didn’t stop long enough to question whether or not she was actually a maid. There it was again, that thrill of success, the lure of accomplishing some secret quest under the noses of those who judged most harshly: fortune hunters, powerful men looking for biddable wives, dowagers trying to secure any measure of control over their lives as the expense of others.

She understood now why Peony raced horses, why Sybil leapt into every experience, why Matilda stole ball invitations. Sneaking up the servant stair might not be akin to climbing down the outside of a mansion in Mayfair, but in this case it was just as dangerous. Certainly more practical.

And it wasn’t raining on her head, which was most helpful.

The family wing was laid with plush carpet runners, painted oil lamps, busts of Roman ladies on pedestals. Rococo plasterwork and rose details marched across the ceiling, all of it converging in the master bedroom. It was easy to pick out the marquis’s chamber. The door was painted the same famous blue of his coats.

Clara’s basket contained fresh bed linens and what might be bathing towels. Nothing that would be out of place being delivered to his chamber. She knocked once, and when no reply was forthcoming, she cast one last look down each hallway and ducked inside.

The marquis’s chamber was far less ostentatious than she would have assumed. It was luxurious, of course, but nothing like the mess of textures and colors preferred by her father. There were no gold swans holding up the bed curtains, for one thing. Her father had loved them dearly. More than he loved her mother, to be sure.

Mahogany chairs circled the marble fireplace and a chaise longue waited under one of the windows. Thick blue brocade curtains fell to the floor. There were gold candlesticks everywhere, a table for decanters of brandy and port, a bathing room set back behind a door painted with a frieze of the Roman countryside.

Clara went straight to the bathing room to make certain no one was being kept inside. It was empty. She knocked on the walls for good measure, listening for hollow spots. She peered under the cushions and the mattress and discovered more than she ever wanted to know about the marquis’s bedsports, along with two debt vowels crumpled in the back of the fireplace. There were books, some naughtier than others.

And then, finally, under the false bottom of the drawer of his washstand: a key.

Clara was amassing quite the collection.

She added it to the ribbon of keys around her neck and tucked them all into the safety of her stays.

Just as the door opened.

Panic seized her.

Selene waltzed in, dragging the marquis behind her. “My lord, you are terrible.”

She froze, spotting Clara. They stared at each other for a moment that felt like a hundred years. Clara dove behind the nearest curtain, heart hammering in her throat.

Selene turned to the marquis, leading him toward the bed, keeping him facing away from the rest of the room. He was a little inebriated, but not nearly enough to forget anything he might see. For instance, the basket of laundry he nearly tripped over. “Who the devil left this here?”