She ached to rip into the paper, but she forced herself to painstakingly unpick the knot of one of the packages. Finally, the last strand gave way and the parcel fell open in Amy’s lap.

It was white muslin.

Amy stared stupidly at the cloth flowing over the dusty lap of her dress. It was nothing but yards and yards of white India muslin.

Of course! Amy’s face brightened. There must be pistols . . . or epées . . . or masks . . . hidden among the folds of the cloth! How very clever to wrap them in cloth in case they were intercepted!

Amy scrabbled through the material. There was nothing hidden within the India muslin except more India muslin.

Disappointed and perplexed, Amy settled back on her heels.

Ah, but there were still the crates to be examined! Amy fell eagerly upon one of the wooden boxes, tugging at the lid. Three splinters and one lost fingernail later, the crate remained obdurate. Whoever had hammered the lid shut had not stinted on nails.

“Drat!” Amy kicked the crate with one booted foot. The contents made an interesting swishing noise.

Intrigued, Amy knelt on the ground, grabbed the crate, and tried to shake. It was too heavy for her to do more than rock it slightly, but she could hear whatever was inside shifting. Something fine, like a leaf or a powder.

Gunpowder.

Amy staggered to her feet, clutching the lid of the crate. There had to be something she could use to pry that lid off, a stick or a poker. Or, maybe, if she knocked the crate over, she could jar the lid off. That struck Amy as infinitely preferable to leaving the crate to search for a poker. Kneeling, Amy wedged her fingers under the edge of the crate, ignoring the abrasion of wood against her palms. She heaved. The box tottered right back into place. Gritting her teeth, Amy wiggled her fingers back under the box, and heaved again.

The box toppled over onto the parquet floor with a tremendous crash. Lid intact.

Hands on her hips, Amy glowered at the crate. She would have to find a poker.

That was when Amy heard the sound. It was half a breath, half a groan. Like the sigh of a spirit in torment. A frisson of terror quivered through Amy. Oh, for heaven’s sake! She didn’t believe in ghosts. Muttering to herself in annoyance, Amy tottered towards the edge of the ballroom. It was more likely wind she had heard. A house of this age nearly always had drafts. Or rats. Ugh. Amy didn’t like to think of herself as squeamish, but she could definitely do without rats. Pulling her skirts close to her ankles, she peered along the floorboards on either side of the room.

Someone had left a boot dangling off the edge of a sofa. With a leg still inside it.

On a sofa by the wall, under a portrait of Mme de la Vallière, lay a sleeping man with a bloody bandage wrapped around his brow.

Chapter Eleven

“Jane! You’ll never believe what I found!”

Racing into Jane’s room without knocking, Amy slammed the door behind her and collapsed panting against the doorframe.

“Two skeletons, three ghosts, and a lunatic in the attic?” Jane suggested absently.

“A wounded man!”

“What?” Jane dropped the heavy tome she had been reading into her lap. “Oh dear, now I’ve lost my page. Amy, a servant with a scratched finger does not count as a wounded man.”

“Very funny. He had a bandage wrapped around his head, and—do you have smelling salts?”

“I do have smelling salts, but why do you need . . . ?” Jane put her book down on the coverlet next to her and fixed confused eyes on her cousin.

“Well, I wanted to wake him up to question him, but I didn’t want to shake him, because heaven only knows what that would do to a man with a head injury—oh, we don’t have time for this, Jane! We have to go back to the west wing!”

“It doesn’t sound as if he’ll be going anywhere,” said Jane mildly, searching in her reticule. She held up a small, green glass vial. “What were you planning to ask him?”

Practically dancing with impatience, Amy yanked her cousin out the door. “Where the Purple Gentian is, of course!”

“What makes you think . . . ?” Jane began, but Amy was muttering to herself about shorter ways to the west wing.

“If we go down the front stairs and to our right . . .” Amy suited action to words, running towards the stairs. Jane caught her hand.

“We’ll be less conspicuous if we walk.”

Amy cast her cousin an agonized glance, but admitted the wisdom of her words. She had been fortunate enough not to see any servants on her hectic flight back from the west wing, but the odds of escaping the staff twice were slim. Wait—she had seen Edouard’s valet, who had been emerging from her brother’s room with a pile of crumpled linen in his arms. Oh well, if he told Edouard, she could always explain that she had been looking at the tapestries when a rat jumped out at her, or something like that.

They descended the stairs at a sedate pace that made Amy dig her fingernails into her palms with impatience. At the base of the stairs, they checked quickly for servants. Although the candles were still lit in the foyer, nobody seemed to be about. To their left lay the rooms of the east wing, to their right, a seeming dead end.

Now that Amy knew what she was looking for, the entrance to the west wing was as clearly marked as though someone had slapped a sign on it. Edouard had hung yet another tapestry, this time one depicting the rape of Lucrece. As the entrance downstairs was more prominent than the one upstairs, Edouard had taken an extra precaution. In front of the tapestry, he had placed a bust of Julius Caesar on a marble pedestal.

Tense with excitement, Amy pointed towards Julius. “There. That’s the entrance.”

Jane picked up a small candelabrum from a marble chest designed to look like a sarcophagus. “Shall we?”

Together, they lifted the heavy tapestry high enough to clear the candles and slipped underneath. They found themselves in an anteroom, a pretty little chamber with gilded walls and dainty chairs that looked as though they would collapse if anyone so much as looked at them. The antechamber led into a music room, complete with a large pianoforte, painted with scenes of pastoral merriment. Jane looked longingly at the yellowed keys, but Amy hurried her onwards into the ballroom. At first, Jane couldn’t see anything at all. Her vision was entirely blocked by piles and piles of brown paper packages.

“There wasn’t anything interesting in them,” Amy whispered as they skirted around the piles. “Just muslin.”

“What an odd place to keep muslin.”

“Maybe they ran out of space in the airing cupboard. My wounded man is just down there, on the sofa underneath Mme de la Vallière.” Amy took the candelabrum from Jane and hurried forward. “I couldn’t get the lids off the crates, but I think—” Amy broke off as she brandished the flames above the sofa to illuminate . . . absolutely nothing.

“Where is he?” In her agitation, Amy forgot to whisper. She waved the candles about, peering under the sofa, running to the next sofa and the next. “I know he was right there! Right under Mme de la Vallière . . . He was fast asleep!”

“Amy . . .”

Amy whirled around to face Jane, flames swirling with her in a diabolical sort of halo. “Please, please don’t tell me I must have imagined him, Jane. I know I saw him!”

“I wasn’t going to,” Jane said gravely. “Bring the candle over here.”

Complying, Amy followed Jane’s gaze. Against the faded white silk of the couch burned a streak of fresh blood.

Jane experimentally reached out a finger. “He can’t have been moved more than a few minutes ago. It’s still wet.”

“But who moved him? And where?” Amy swiveled with the candle as though the malefactors might be hiding in the corners of the room.

“They likely took him out through the French doors into the courtyard,” Jane said thoughtfully.

Amy raced to the nearest door and pulled it open. For something so begrimed with age, it opened without a squeak.

“It’s been newly oiled,” commented Jane under her breath.

Thrusting the candles at Jane, Amy dashed down a shallow flight of three steps and out into the garden while Jane examined the doors. It hadn’t rained recently, so the earth wasn’t damp enough to hold footprints, nor was there mud to track along the stone paths. And there were doors, doors, doors on three sides. Doors into the east wing, the north wing, the west wing. Far too many doors. The man could have been carried through any one of them. Amy prowled the perimeter of the garden, peering through door after door. Unlike the windows and French doors to the west wing, the ones to the east and north were well scrubbed. Amy peered in turn into two drawing rooms, another music room, a breakfast room, and an immense state dining room that took up a large portion of the north wing.

“Amy.” Jane was whispering at her shoulder, the candles in her hand casting odd shadows on the stone of the balustrade. “Come back, I want to show you something.”

“They must have taken him out through one of these rooms.”

Jane considered. “And then downstairs through the servants’ quarters? I think you may have lost your wounded man, Amy.” They were making their way around the garden back to the ballroom doors. Jane paused next to an armless statue of Aphrodite. “None of this explains why he was lying in the ballroom with . . . what kind of wound was it?”

“On his head.” Amy gestured to her own head to demonstrate where. “I couldn’t tell exactly what it was since it was bandaged, but there seemed to be some sort of gash on the left side of his head, or at least that’s where the blood was on the bandage.”