Chapter 8: Locked Out

The servants' stair began behind a linen cupboard on the third floor, and it was narrow, steep and smelled of mice.

Hester went first with a candle stub and her skirt hitched in one fist.

"Mind the fourteenth step," she said. "It's loose."

"How many times have you used this?"

"Only for emergencies. And once in 1893, for a lady who did not wish to meet her husband."

I stared at her back.

"Hester."

"I was twenty-seven," she said, with perfect dignity. "He was a duke, and she was a very good dancer."

I started to laugh, and clapped my hand over my mouth because the sound bounced.

She turned her head and I saw her smile in the dark.

"That's better," she said. "You have not laughed since the wedding."

"I haven't had anything to laugh at."

"You have had me," Hester said. "I am extremely funny. It is the great secret of my career."

We went down in silence for a long flight, and I was surprised to find my chest was a little lighter.

For six months I had thought I had no one in the keep.

I hadn't been looking at the woman who left a lamp burning in my room every night.

"Why didn't you tell me about the law?" I whispered. "Months ago. Why didn't you say he could be dormant?"

"Because I did not know it for a fact," she said. "And because the dukes took the book, and I could not prove it."

She stopped on the landing.

"And because he asked me, the day before the wedding, to look after you, if something went wrong."

I stopped, too.

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