Page 51 of Her Infuriating Earl
“Is it all left turns or right turns that take you back to the center?” she mumbled, wishing she had thought to bring a lantern with her.
The moonlight had offered enough illumination to see by when she had come out into the gardens, but clouds kept scudding by, and now they were blocking that precious, silvery glow.
She groaned, realizing her mistake. “What good will the center do me? I will just be lost all over again, back where I started.” She paused, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Ellen? Ellen, are you here? Are you lost?”
An owl hooted back.
“Ellen?” Phoebe shouted again, more to comfort herself than anything else.
She was not generally afraid of the dark, but the prospect of being stuck inside a hedge maze in the shifting light and shadow of the moon’s whim did not sit well with her. Anyone could be lurking in the corners.
She will be back in the ballroom, laughing with Joanna about how ridiculous I am.
She retraced her footsteps to a crossroads in the maze. Peering at the other three paths, she could not recall which way she had come from. Everything looked the same inside the maze, which was presumably the point.
“Goodness, I hope someone will think to look for me here if I cannot get out,” she told the prickly hedges.
Indeed, she realized she probably should have paused to let Matilda and Anna know where she was going.
And Daniel,she reminded herself, wondering if he had asked the entire ballroom about Ellen’s whereabouts yet.
The cedar tree…
A thought burst into her mind, prompting her to run down the path directly opposite, hoping it was the right one.
She careened around corners, cursed at dead ends, turned back more than a handful of times, her lungs ablaze with the exertion by the time she stumbled into the center of the maze. In the middle of the woodchip blanketed center, there was a small pagoda to shelter lost souls from any inclement weather.
The perfect spot for a secret kiss.
She scolded herself immediately, for though Daniel’s embrace and his soft lips on hers were impossible to forget, she could not lose sight of what was important: Ellen. Nothing else could be allowed to distract her from her purpose.
Running up to the pagoda, she barely paused to catch her breath before reaching for the ornately carved balustrade that ran around each pillar of the pagoda, aside from the entrance. She climbed up, leaning against the nearest pillar for support, and jumped upward to grab the lip of the pagoda’s roof. There was a gutter of sorts that preceded the actual slats of the roof—the perfect handhold.
With all the strength she possessed, she pulled herself up onto the roof and crouched there for a moment. It was not too high, but she figured it was unwise to look down.
“Now, where are you?” she whispered, shakily standing upright.
Taking hesitant steps, she ascended the diagonal slope to the topmost point of the roof. From there, she turned in slow circles, trying to spot the cedar tree, for that would give her a reference to find her way back to the exit. She could not find the tree, but she did see the manor itself, glowing warmly in the distance.
That way.
She sighed with relief, for even if she had to force her way through the tightly packed hedges, she would cut the straightest line back to freedom.
Realizing that trying to walk down a sloping roof might not be the best idea, Phoebe sat down and slowly shuffled toward the bottom edge of the slats, where the guttering began. Shaking with nerves and the cold that had begun to set in, she carefully turned around until she was on her knees.
“This is my worst scheme yet,” she grumbled, edging backward until one leg dropped free.
She stretched her foot down as far as she could, waving it around a little, but, for the life of her, she could not make contact with the balustrade. It was as if it had vanished entirely.
Suspecting that she might need to drop her body down further, she drew in an anxious breath, and, gripping onto the guttering with everything she had, she lowered herself slowly… only to end up dangling helplessly, the edge of the guttering digging into her palms.
Her feet could not—would not—find the balustrade. And when she looked down, her heart in her mouth, she understood that she could not reach it. She had jumped to grab the gutter, but she could not jump the other way, not without a hefty risk of missing the balustrade altogether and hitting the ground.
“Stay right there!” someone bellowed, followed by the crunch of hasty footsteps.
Phoebe gulped, recognizing the voice. “I do not have much choice!”
“Just hold on,” Daniel urged. “I will help you down.”
