The Lady Risks All Read Online Free PDF

Presumably the party, the gathering, whatever it was, was being held in a reception room on the ground floor. She strained her ears for some sound to show her the way, but heard nothing.
    Puzzled, she started along the corridor. Roderick must have gone that way; other than the occasional room to either side, all silent, their doors shut with no light showing beneath, there was nowhere else to go. She followed the corridor toward the front of the house, step by step growing more aware of an omnipresent sense of quality and solidity. The house wasn’t old. Roscoe had had it built for him, which presumably explained the workmanship she sensed more than saw; there was an understated elegance in every line, complemented by luxurious finishes and furnishings. She didn’t have time to stop and peer, but the paintings on the walls, each perfectly framed, looked to be originals, and not by any back alley artist, either.
    She wondered if the solidity of the house explained the lack of noise. That, and the furnishings; the runner on which she was walking was so thick she couldn’t hear her own footsteps.
    The corridor opened into a wide semicircular space, a gallery of sorts circling the well of the main stairs. Pausing inside the corridor’s mouth, she peeked right, then left. Three other corridors gave onto the gallery, but silence prevailed. No lamps were burning, either, the space lit only by weak moonlight washing through a domed skylight high above and a large window directly opposite; through the latter she could see the tops of the trees in Dolphin Square and the distant shimmer of moonlight on the river.
    Directly ahead, in front of the large window, lay the head of the wide staircase that swept elegantly down.
    Drawing in a breath, she raised her head, walked calmly toward the stairs, and finally heard the rumble of male voices. Those speaking were somewhere on the ground floor, but deeper in the house, still some way away.
    The clacking of hooves on the cobbles outside drew her to the window. Looking out and down, she saw a gentleman, fashionably dressed and hatted, alight from a hackney. The man carried a silver-headed cane. He paid off the jarvey, then walked toward the front door of the mansion, a little further along the façade from where she stood.
    She didn’t recognize the man, but his style, the way he moved, suggested he belonged to the upper echelons of the ton.
    A bell pealed within the house. Almost immediately the measured tread of a butler’s footsteps crossed the tiles in the front hall below. She debated going to the head of the stairs and looking down, but the risk of being seen was too great; she stayed where she was and listened.
    “Good evening, my lord.”
    “Good evening, Rundle.” The visitor stepped inside; the door shut. “I fear I’m late. Are the others here?”
    “Yes, my lord, but the master has yet to join the gathering.”
    “Excellent.” Rustlings reached her as the visitor divested himself of his overcoat, gloves, hat, and cane. “I won’t have missed anything, then.”
    “Indeed not, my lord.”
    “The library, as usual?”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    “No need to bestir yourself, Rundle—I know the way.”
    “Thank you, my lord.”
    Two pairs of footsteps strode away from the hall, going in different directions. She hurried to the head of the stairs; she was too late to see which way each man went, but a door at the hall’s rear was still swinging. The butler must have gone that way, which meant the visitor’s footsteps were the ones fading down the corridor leading away from one corner of the hall. The library and the “gathering” lay in that direction.
    Drawing in a breath, she reached for the stair rail—
    A frisson of awareness streaked down her spine.
    She froze. She hadn’t heard anything, but she’d just proved that it was easy to move silently through the house, even without trying. And her senses, previously focused on the hall below, were belatedly screaming