The Season (Season Series #1)

Chapter 10: Broken Latches and Secret Messages

Finding a mouse (or anything suitably creepy-crawly, really) proved difficult in the middle of the day. Finding my way around the service corridors, however, proved easier than I'd anticipated. Some brilliant palace staff member had placed name cards outside the service entrances to each of the debutantes' suites. Sadly there were no peepholes - for understandable reasons, given that the rooms were those of young ladies - but it was easy enough to overhear any chatter if one crouched near the door.

I very nearly got discovered myself, huddled down next to Ashley Mayfair's door as I attempted to pick up some useful bit of gossip from her ladies in waiting. Jane, Maybelle, and Rosemary prattled on about Hattie Hensley, one of Penelope Roxton's ladies in waiting who had been escorted back to Penelope's suite a few minutes before last night's curfew by none other than the extremely eligible Dorian Fletcher.

I had been so intently listening to the ladies debate whether or not Penelope ought to send Hattie home or use her proximity to Dorian to her advantage that I almost didn't hear the maid approaching with a tea tray. Scrabbling against the wall to rise, I ducked around the corner and jogged as fast as my skirts and the narrow corridor would allow back towards Ella's room.

I tumbled into my shared bedroom, my dress snagging on the door as I hastily attempted to close it. With an almighty rip, a wad of fabric tore free from the seam Audra had just pinned up in a bustle, the dark fabric snagged on the latch bolt. I let out a moan as I inspected the gash, certain Audra would never forgive me after destroying her dresses for a second day in a row.

I racked my brain for some way to fix it on my own, attempting to pry the fabric from where it had caught on the door. When it didn't immediately come free, I crouched to examine it, moaning anew when I realized that one of Audra's tailoring pins had jammed itself into the latch mechanism. I tugged at it a few more times before I gave up and rewarded the infernal door with a kick, sending it slamming into the wall in frustration. I expected it to spring back open thanks to the broken latch, but when it didn't I cursed my luck, figuring that now I had jammed the darned thing closed.

I gave the door handle a little shake before I prepared to pull with all my might, only to have the door slide open easily, the fabric now wadded up to only partially block the latch. I tried opening and closing the door a few more times before I realized that my mishap was in fact a blessing. Thanks to the torn piece of fabric and the pin attached to it, the bedroom-side door handle no longer locked closed when the door swung shut.

I couldn't help the devious grin that lit up my face as I cast a look around, relieved that I was alone in discovering such a useful little access point to the service corridors.

"What is all the ruckus in-Libby?"

I hastily kicked the door the rest of the way shut as Rosanna poked her head into the room.

"However did you get in here?" she asked, frowning as she looked around.

"The, ah, seamstress' apprentice showed me back through the service corridor," I lied. Rosanna's frown turned into an outright scowl.

"Of all the ways to treat a lady in waiting! Really, we're not maids!" she sniffed, "See that it doesn't happen again, it would not do for you to be seen wandering among the servants!"

"Of course," I lied again, my fingers crossed behind my back.

Now that I had my own personal, secret access point to the service corridors that ran throughout the palace, I really had no choice but to eventually go exploring.

******

My revenge for Ashley's harlot comment took a back seat the moment Ella returned from tea with the queen, bemoaning the seating arrangement for the opera outing the next evening. It seemed that news of the so-called elite events had leaked and Ella was beside herself that she wasn't one of the three debutantes that would share Andrew's row in the royal box at the opera. Instead, she, Harriet, Emmie, and Penelope would be sitting in the row just behind him, doomed to watch while he chatted with Sarah, Ashley, and Mary, the ladies Ella now considered to be the queen's top choices.