It tasted like ash, but she chewed and swallowed because starvation was a luxury she couldn't afford. By midnight, the stifling heat of the day had finally broken, leaving the manor draped in a heavy, humid darkness. Norah couldn't sleep. The walls of her small room felt like a coffin. She needed air.
She needed something to read, anything to stop her mind from calculating the bleak, terrifying mathematics of a life spent as a disgraced governess. She slipped out of her room. The corridors of Foxwood Hall were silent, lit only by the pale moonlight spilling through the tall mullion windows. Norah moved like a shadow, barefoot on the cold floorboards, down the servant's stairs. Her destination was the library on the ground floor.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and paused. A sliver of light was bleeding out from beneath theavy oak door of the steward's office. Norah frowned. Croft was a man who prized his sleep and his port. He was rarely awake past 10.
She crept closer, holding her breath. The door was slightly ajar. She pressed her eye to the crack. It wasn't Croft. A man stood by the large mahogany desk.
He held a single shielded candle in one hand, casting harsh shadows across the room. With his other hand, he was rapidly flipping through a thick leather-bound ledger. He wore a dark shirt and canvas trousers. It was the laborer. The man from the trench.
Norah's heart slammed against her ribs. He was stealing. He had to be. Breaking into the steward's office meant a mandatory sentence on a prison hulk or a hanging. If the judge was in a foul mood, she should have screamed.
She should have run to the night watchman. Instead, she pushed the door open. The hinges gave a soft whine. The man froze instantly. He didn't drop the book or panic.
He just went perfectly still, his eyes darting to the door. When he saw her standing there in her plain white night gown, her hair falling loose over her shoulders. The lethal tension in his frame dropped slightly. "You walk very quietly for a lady," Gabriel said. His voice was a low, rough whisper that seemed to scrape against the walls of the small office. "You break into houses very loudly for a thief," Norah replied, stepping inside and gently pushing the door closed behind her. Gabriel looked at her.
He placed the candle on the desk. "Are you going to call the guard?" "No." "Why not?" "Because Mr. Croft is a cruel man," Norah said simply. If you are stealing from him, I am inclined to look the other way." Gabriel let out a short, quiet breath that might have been a laugh. He closed the ledger and slid it into a burlap sack resting on the chair. "I am not stealing, I am reading," you read. It slipped out before she could stop it. It was a prejudiced assumption, and she instantly regretted it.