Page 60 of The Heiress in Disguise
She blinked. It was Philip.
Or was it?
It didn’t make sense that it could have been Philip. That passageway wasn’t commonly used. No one outside the household ought to have known it was there. She must have seen wrong. It must have been one of her aunt and uncle’s staff members. She had simply believed she’d seen Philip because he was on her mind. It was as simple as that.
She made her way back to the kitchen.
Sure enough, Philip was sitting at the card table. He didn’t look as if he had just hurried back. He looked as if he had neverleft. She wondered what she could have seen that had left her so confused—but she had been mistaken. She must have been. There was simply no other explanation for it.
She returned to the stew and began to dish it into bowls. All the assembled card players smiled and thanked her as they accepted their dishes. She caught sight of Jane opening a bottle of inexpensive wine that someone must have contributed to the festivities. Her friend offered her a smile, and Angelique felt guilty. How could she have suspected that Jane would steal from her?
Jane had stood by her side through thick and thin. And perhaps she was a bit flirtatious tonight, but Angelique had no claim on Philip, nor could Jane possibly know how she felt about him.
It was unfair of her to be angry with Jane, and she knew it. She would simply have to control her emotions for now. Perhaps this was something she could discuss with Philip at a later date if she ever saw him on his own again, that was. For now, she simply had to accept that the night was a disappointment. It wasn’t turning out at all the way she had hoped it would.
Then again, Angelique thought with a pang of sadness, neither was her life.
Chapter 27
Angelique had seen him rushing through the passage, and Antoine knew it. It was by sheer good fortune that he had managed to hide himself there and sneak back into the kitchen without being noticed by her.
She had clearly been too distracted, but she had only looked away from him for a moment. He could tell that she now thought she might have been mistaken in what she had seen, for he was sitting here at the table doing his best to look as though he had never left at all, laughing along with the conversation.
She couldn’t see how his heart was pounding in his chest. She had no idea that he had just been racing down the corridor in an attempt to make it back here before she did, for if there was one person who would take note of his absence, of course it would be Angelique.
She would have no respect for the fact that he had gone snooping around the house. She would probably be furious with him. If he had done it in his other disguise perhaps it would be more tolerable to her, for she already saw the masked gentleman as someone who acted mysteriously and defied explanation.
But Philip was supposed to be someone easy for her to put her faith in, someone that she could trust. Philip wasn’t supposed to act suspiciously. She would lose all confidence in him if she saw him doing something that she couldn’t explain, or understand. She might even demand that he provide an explanation, and he couldn’t do that. Not yet.
He couldn’t let her know that he had taken Lord Leicester’s financial documents from his desk.
He hadn’t had much time to peruse them yet, he’d had to rush back there quickly, so he had gone over them quickly and then hurried back. The important thing was that he knew where they could be found now, so he could come back and look at them again when he wanted to. He could see more details of them and try to decide what he was going to do with the information he had found.
“Would you like some wine?”
He looked up at Jane, the maid who had been serving wine tonight. Antoine had brought the wine himself, knowing that he would be able to provide something of higher quality than the servants were probably used to having and wanting to thank them for including him.
He’d told everyone that the bottle he had presented was a gift from Lord Cambridge, which technically was the truth. Now Jane held out a glass to him and batted her eyelashes flirtatiously.
She had been rather flirtatious all evening, Antoine thought as he took the glass. He didn’t really mind. She was friendly enough, and he knew that he couldn’t show too much attention to Angelique, or he would attract notice and suspicion.
It was good that he had someone else to focus on, and he hoped that Angelique understood why he was doing what he was. He didn’t care for Jane at all, not in that way. It was all about keeping his attention away from Angelique. It was all about protecting her. That was the only thing that really mattered to him.
He accepted the glass. “Thank you,” he said, offering a smile. He wasn’t going to return her flirtations, for that would be misleading her. But he did want to be friendly to her.
He wondered if Jane noticed he had been gone. If she did, though, she said nothing about it. Her smile broadened and she returned to fetch more bottles of wine for the assembled players.
Antoine made his bet. He had been doing his best to lose every hand without being obvious about it, as he didn’t want to take money away from the servants when they had so much less than he did. That would have felt wrong. He had a good hand this round, so he folded and pushed his cards quickly back into the pile before anyone could grab them and see what he had been holding.
Peter, the stable hand who’d invited him to play, raised his eyebrows. “You’re not very confident with your bets tonight, are you, Philip?”
“Tonight hasn’t been my night,” Antoine said mildly. “And I’m rather new to this game besides. Perhaps if I’m invited to play with you all again, I may become more confident.”
“I think we ought to invite him every time,” said one of the footmen who had come off rather well in every hand so far. Antoine didn’t blame him for feeling that way, since he had won so much money tonight. Of course he would want to keep the fellow who seemed to keep losing at the table. Anyone would want that.
He didn’t take offense, in part because the losses had been deliberate, and in part because the footman’s desires aligned with his own. He hadn’t managed to steal very much time in Lord Leicester’s study tonight, but with more time, he would be able to really look at the papers he had found. What he’d seen was damning enough.
There was evidence that Lord Leicester had stolen his niece’s inheritance. Property deeds, banking details… it was all there, and if Antoine could get back into that room, this time with a notepad, he knew he would be able to copy down all the information he needed to move forward. This was the key, he knew it. This was what would allow him to rescue Angelique from her dire circumstances.
