Her Wicked Highland Spy (The Marriage Maker #10)(27)
The hall without was cold and dim, as the servants had already put out most flames for the night. She tugged her shawl closer. The office, for all its eternal darkness, was at least cozy. The rest of the ancient stronghold had soaked up so much mist and icy cold from long Scottish nights, the old stone never warmed. Not with fires blazing in every room. Not at the height of summer. Never.
Bridget left the candle on a hall table. With a nearly full moon, she didn’t need its light to wend her way to the staircase and up to her room. In twenty-six years, she’d learned every floorboard. Especially over the past four years. With Ollie away, her mother little more than a toddler’s memory, and her father’s need of her to be his eyes, Bridget’s feet rarely left the Sollier grounds. She hadn’t visited Inverness, the nearest town, in years.
She didn’t call for a maid when she reached her room. She wore no fancy clothes, and kept her hair in a simple braid down her back, so she had little need for assistance. Aside from which, she didn’t trust the new maid, Fiona Brown. Though ten years Bridget’s junior, Fiona demonstrated too-keen an attention to details. Her eyes were disconcerting, and definitely not soothing right before bed.
After she changed into a shift, Bridget climbed into bed and pulled the quilt up over her shoulders, but she soon found nothing soothed her. She was simply too aggravated to sleep. Why were Ollie’s missions not succeeding? She felt as if she must warn him, or help him in some way. Perhaps if she could glean more from the code he used with Lords Belview and Winston, she could formulate a plan.
Her thoughts went to the secret rooms below the keep. Aside from the swords, knifes, boxing gloves and whatnot that her father and Ollie used, there were scrolls, maps and books. As she knew from years of stealthy midnight visits, several of the books detailed and dissected codes and cyphers. Bridget had already read them, but she may have missed something useful. Aside from that, new additions to the collection sometimes appeared. They never arrived through the keep. Someone brought them in by way of the hidden tunnel that lead from the base of the crags Lomall a 'Chaisteil was built atop to the rooms concealed below.
She slid from under her heavy quilt. Forgoing her robe, for the silk brocade would whisper about her, far noisier than her light shift, she crept from her bedroom. Flittering between patches of moonlight that alternated with grim suits of armor, she placed each bare foot with precise care, aware of which boards would creak beneath her weight. One entire stretch of hall squealed like a piglet when her father or any of the more sizable staff crossed it, but Bridget could slip silently over even that.
She ghosted down the staircase with equal care. Outside, a night bird called, seeking or defending its mate, she knew not which. Within, all lay silent. In the foyer, a single candle burned. Bridget shielded her eyes from the glow least she be unable to see once she left its ring of light. She turned down the corridor leading to her father’s office, the stone floor of the main level icy under her bare feet.
Light flickered through the crack beneath the office door. She stopped. Who had entered her father’s office? He hadn’t passed down the hall. She would have heard him. Although, on occasion, she’d noticed her father could tread with near silence.
Her gaze left that unexpected glow and traveled the corridor. She could rouse the household, but what if her father used his own office? Or, worse, visited the rooms below.
She frowned at the suspicious flicker beneath the thick wood of the door. If she retreated to find a weapon, the intruder might disappear. The best course, then, was to peek through the keyhole and see who lingered inside, without them being any the wiser.
Less than a whisper in the shadows of the hall, Bridget crept to the office. She bundled the soft cotton of her shift so it wouldn’t pool about her and slip under the door, and knelt. Holding her breath, as if even that might be heard, she placed an eye to the keyhole.
A candle burned on her father’s desk. The slim figure beyond that glow quickly resolved into Fiona. As far as Bridget could tell from her vantage point, Fiona sorted through the drawer of clean sheets. Pursing her lips, she closed it and opened another, the one that held ink and trimmed pens. Fiona soon shut that as well. She pulled at the locked drawer, where Ollie’s letters were kept. Her eyes narrowed.
Bridget stood. Her papa paid well and deserved more loyalty than that. She pushed open the door. “Fiona, what the devil are you doing in Papa’s office?” Hands on hips, she glared at the maid.
Fiona gaped at her. She snapped her bowed lips shut and hurried around the desk. Bridget tensed, ready to make a grab for the maid if she tried to flee, but Fiona stopped in the middle of the room.
“Oh, Miss Sollier,” she cried. “I’m so sorry, Miss, but I need my letters.” Tears popped into her eyes.
Bridget frowned. Tears were easy to come by, but the girl’s tone rang with sincerity. “Your letters? Of reference? You need them now, in the middle of the night?”
“I do, Miss, or first thing tomorrow,” she said in the same weepy voice.
“Whatever for?” Bridget asked. Fiona seemed convincingly distressed. “Are you leaving us?”
“Oh no, Miss.” Fiona wiped at her cheeks. “But Mama said she’ll have at me with the rolling pin if I don’t bring them to her for safekeeping first thing tomorrow, and I didn’t get no chance to come ask earlier, and I was afraid Lord Sollier would say no, anyways, cause my Mama said, when she heard Lord Sollier kept them, she said a man would only do that if he was planning to force a girl to stay on, so he could—” She broke off. Her hands flew to her mouth as if she could shove the words back inside.