The Outrider - A Paranormal Regency Romance ONC 2022

Chapter 10

In which our heroine ventures forth at night

The bright glare of a full moon penetratedCorinna's room, spreading a swath of white light across the floorboards. Somewhere in the woods, an owl hooted. Tree tops sighed softly in the night breeze, and the world was at peace.

Corinna was not. Exhausted from her journeys, she dropped into a dreamless sleep almost immediately after going to bed, but a nameless terror dragged her out of slumberland at what felt like only a second later.

The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece pointed out the fact that she had been dead to the world for over four hours.

She sat up and strained her ear at the silence. The rustle she heard was more a disturbance of air than a proper sound. That wouldn't have been what woke her up.

Mice? Unlikely, not in a place as well-maintained as this. Sending out her consciousness was a possibility, but it was dark outside, so her vision would be clouded.

The softest of scratching noises reached her ear. No, she wasn't imaging things. Someone was on the other side of her door.

She reached for the pistol—she'd only taken one—hidden under her pillow and swung her legs over the side of her bed.

There it was again. A soft rustling and scratching right outside the door to her room. It was followed by a brief knock.

Mice didn't knock.

She cocked her pistol, crept to the door, and placed an ear against the panel.

Two creaks were swallowed into the silence of the night. Another one followed, fainter than the first. That must have been the floorboards, which meant her nightly visitor had most likely walked away—or wanted her to think that way, while lurking in the corridor, waiting for her to open the door.

She had better ensure that this wasn't so. Her heart fluttering wildly, Corinna rubbed her thumb over the door panel, ready to extend her consciousness, when her gaze fell to a white rectangle half in the room, half under the door.

A letter.

She picked it up and went to the window.

The text scrawled over the page, blotched by inkstains, as if the hand that penned the message wasn't used to doing so. Even in much better light than this, the missive would have been hard to read.

The Stone portalle at the drive way in halve an hour. It now is 3.30 in the morning. Be their, or you will regrette it.

Yes, the author of this remarkable document would benefit from a few lectures in penmanship. It was therefore unlikely that either his lordship or the Dowager Marchioness were involved.

Of course, the flawed grammar and spelling might be a fake.

Corinna, experiencing a sudden and highly unwelcome tightness in her chest, reached for her clothes. Her plan had relied on rising much earlier and find a convenient tree stump or other hiding place for the jewels. Exhaustion wreaked havoc on that plan, and now she was on the defensive again. As if that wasn't enough, she couldn't sneak through the nightly gardens with the baubles in her pocket. Not until she knew what was afoot, anyway.

She squeezed her arms into Mrs. Tuckles' old fawn pelisse, which was both too short at the hem and too wide in the body for her. However, Mother only had the one coat, which she needed for herself, and Corinna's own, fashioned in Paris and presented to her by Agatha as a birthday present, was totally unsuitable for her current post.

She wound a sash around her waist and slipped the pistol inside. Since she wished to arrive before the writer of the mysterious note, there was simply no time to dress properly and she didn't bring a holster. Her nightgown was sheer muslin, and given the current fashion, it might pass muster as a dress, especially when worn with slippers. The note she left behind.