Outside her door, Henrietta growled, then her nails scrabbled, clicked; the sound faded as the hound headed for the stairs. Leonora registered the fact, but distantly; she remained focused, undistracted.
Accept Tristan, or live without him.
Not a choice. Not for her. Not now.
She was going to take the chance—accept the risk and go forward.
The decision firmed in her mind; she waited, expecting some pulling back, some instinctive recoil, but if it was there, it was swamped beneath an upwelling tide of certainty. Of sureness.
Almost of joy.
It suddenly occurred to her that deciding to accept that inherent vulnerability was at least half the battle. Certainly for her.
She suddenly felt lighthearted, immediately started plotting how to tell Tristan of her decision—how to most appropriately break the news…
She had no idea how much time had passed when the realization that Henrietta had not returned to her position before her door slid into her mind.
That distracted her.
Henrietta often wandered the house at night, but never for long. She always returned to her favorite spot on the corridor rug outside Leonora’s door.
She wasn’t there now.
Leonora knew it even before, tugging her wrapper around her, she eased open her door and looked.
At empty space.
Faint light from the stairhead reached down the corridor; she hesitated, then, pulling her wrapper firmly about her, headed for the stairs.
She remembered Henrietta’s low growl before the hound had gone off. It might have been in response to a cat crossing the back garden. Then again…
What if Mountford was trying to break in again?
What if he harmed Henrietta?
Her heart leapt. She’d had the hound since she was a tiny scrap of fur; Henrietta was in truth her closest confidante, the silent recipient of hundreds of secrets.
Gliding wraithlike down the stairs, she told herself not to be silly. It would be a cat. There were lots of cats in Montrose Place. Maybe two cats, and that was why Henrietta hadn’t yet come back upstairs.
She reached the bottom of the main stairs and debated whether to light a candle. Belowstairs would be black; she might even stumble over Henrietta, who would expect her to see her.
Stopping by the side table at the back of the front hall, she used the tinderbox left there to strike a match and light one of the candles left waiting. Picking up the simple candlestick, she pushed through the green baize door.
Holding the candle high, she walked down the corridor. The walls leapt out at her as the candlelight touched them, but all seemed familiar, normal. Her slippers slapping on the cold tile, she passed the butler’s pantry and the housekeeper’s room, then came to the short flight of stairs leading down to the kitchens.
She paused and looked down. All below was inky black, except for patches of faint moonlight slanting in through the kitchen windows and through the small fanlight above the back door. In the diffuse light from the latter, she could just make out the shaggy outline of Henrietta; the hound was curled up against the corridor wall, her head on her paws.
“Henrietta?” Straining her eyes, Leonora peered down.
Henrietta didn’t move, didn’t twitch.
Something was wrong. Henrietta wasn’t that young. Greatly fearing the hound had suffered a seizure, Leonora grabbed up her trailing night rail and rushed down the stairs.
“Henriet—oh!”
She stopped on the last stair, mouth agape, face-to-face with the man who had stepped from the black shadows to meet her.
Candlelight flickered over his black-avised face; his lips curled in a snarl.