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Sarah wasn’t able to spend as much time getting to know Phoebe as she would have liked. Being around so many strangers made the baby fussy. “Have Hannah take Eve so that you can at least enjoy your supper,” Hazel admonished.
“I’d rather give her the time she needs to get used to you all,” Phoebe said apologetically. “I think I’ll just have a tray brought up to our room instead.”
“As you wish.” Mrs. Baldwin rang a bell and a maid appeared. “Prepare a tray to be brought to Mrs. Poplin’s room.”
“Yes, madam.”
Now was the time for Sarah to sneak into the kitchen and gather some food for Maddie. “I’ll join you all in the dining room in a few minutes,” she said. “There’s, uh, something I need to take care of.”
Derrick gave her a strange look but nodded. “All right.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
Not knowing exactly where to go, Sarah followed the savory scents of soup and roasted goose that wafted down a long corridor. When she came to a swinging door, she knew she had reached the kitchen, a room that Mrs. Baldwin probably rarely, if ever, stepped foot in. Sarah herself was unprepared for the chaotic scene that met her eyes upon entering.
“Careful now. Don’t scald yourself.” A woman in a black dress and white apron helped a younger maid arrange bowls onto a rolling cart.
“I need more rolls in this bread basket,” another maid said, talking to one of the cooks. The harried-looking cook reached over to a pan that had apparently just been removed from the cookstove because she quickly yanked her hand back. “Ouch! They’re still too hot.”
“Well, we can’t serve ’em cold,” scolded another cook. “What good does a cold roll do? The missus would have a royal fit. We’d probably all lose our jobs.”
“You have a point there,” the cook said and proceeded to remove the piping hot rolls from the pan and transfer them to the bread basket.
It was then that someone noticed Sarah. “Can I help you, miss?”
Several sets of curious eyes landed on her. Sarah swallowed a gulp before speaking timidly. “I just wanted to come in and gather a plate of food for Miss Maddie.”
“She not feeling well?”
“Uh, no, she isn’t.” Which was the truth, wasn’t it? Maddie had been holding back tears when her mother sent her up to her room.
“We’ll take a tray on up. We’ve also been asked to take one up to Mrs. Poplin, also.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather do it myself. Save you the trouble.”
The maid, regarding Sarah with understanding eyes, nodded solemnly, and in that moment, Sarah knew Maddie’s isolation was a common enough occurrence that her intentions hadn’t gotten past them. “All right, miss. We won’t say nothing to the missus, if that’s what you’re wonderin’.”
“Thank you.” She breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re the one that’s marrying Master Derrick?”
“Y-yes,” Sarah stammered.
The maid nodded then smiled. “Welcome.”
Just then, a maid near Sarah plunked a bowl down and Sarah asked, “Mind if I take this one to Miss Maddie?”
The maid’s eyes widened and she said, “Uh, no, miss. This one is . . . this one is for the missus.”
Sarah stared at her. She seemed flustered. And why did she look so familiar? “Oh. All right.”
Glancing down at the bowl again, she saw bits of red among the other ingredients in the wild rice soup. But she didn’t have time to wonder what they were as she needed to hurry and deliver the tray to Maddie and then get back to the dining table.
Thankfully, another maid came to her aid. Setting a bowl in front of Sarah, she said, “Take that one. And here.” She plopped two large, fluffy-looking rolls on top. “Wish I had an extra tray to set these on. Reckon you’ll just have to do your best.”
“I should be all right.” After all, she’d learned to walk holding a stack of books on her head at finishing school. “Thank you very much.”
And with that, she left the kitchen, walking very slowly, scooting to the side when maids came down the corridor to or from the kitchen. “Is there a back staircase?” she asked one of them.
“Yes, miss.” She hurriedly pointed it out to Sarah and then rushed away.
Sarah could see it now, halfway hidden behind a corner. Better to take this set of stairs than the grand staircase and risk running into Derrick or his mother, or spilling soup on the marbled floors and slipping and falling.
Maddie was very glad to receive the food from Sarah, although Sarah regretted that she couldn’t stay and view her drawings. “I’ve got to get back downstairs, pet. But tomorrow I’ll look at your drawings for sure, okay?” She tweaked Maddie’s nose for good measure.
The drooping of Maddie’s mouth lessened, and Sarah left, feeling good about what she had done.
That feeling only lasted until she got downstairs and ran right into a solid wall.
“Oof.”
Er, man’s chest.
When she looked up to see who it was, she jumped back. Mark’s face appeared like stone. “What are you doing back here?”
***
Mark stared at a startled Sarah and shot back, “I could ask you the same thing, but I’m kind of in a hurry right now.”
He dashed around her, ignoring Sarah’s gasp of surprise. Where had that woman gone?
“Who are you looking for?”
Drat! Sarah was following him.
“A certain maid,” he said over his shoulder just before barging into the kitchen. As soon as he did, all workers stopped to see what the interruption was about. “Did a tall maid with a long nose and pointed chin just pass through here?”
One of the cooks pointed to the back door, and he marched over to it and yanked it open. He knew he wasn’t thinking rationally right now. He should have waited for Felicia. She would be furious with him when she finally caught up to him, but that didn’t matter so much as finding that imposter did.
“Mark, what is going on?”
“Go back to the mansion, Sarah,” he whispered harshly over his shoulder, then picked up his pace.
“No. I’m going with you.”
He didn’t have time to argue with her. “Well, then, lower your voice and let’s go.”
His whole world seemed to have turned upside down. And this chase proved it. He had been sitting down to supper with the others, conversing with Derrick’s brother-in-law, James Poplin, when an army of maids appeared from a side door and began serving bowls of soup. One maid in particular had looked familiar, but Mark hadn’t been able to pinpoint where he’d seen her before until he saw the ring on her finger. It was such an unusual ring, he couldn’t have forgotten it if he’d tried.
The ring had a small brooch on top, surrounded by gold filigree. He had noticed the woman from Pennsylvania wearing it when she came to look at the Packard-Bryant horses. Then, too, her nose was of such a strange shape that it was indelibly imprinted on his mind. Her cold, beady eyes had been hidden behind glasses on that day, but they were the same ones that he’d seen in the maid who had set a bowl of soup, filled with red-topped mushrooms in front of Mrs. Baldwin at supper a few minutes ago. What was so alarming about those mushrooms was that he remembered a boy from the orphanage eating one that he’d found in the woods and then babbling incoherently about strange things he was “seeing”. After that, he’d suffered a severe stomachache for three days.
Mark needed to catch up to the woman.
The biggest problem with his plan at the moment was that he didn’t know where he was going. Still new to Denver, he only recognized the main streets. If the woman whose shadowy figure walking ahead of them suddenly turned down another street, he would likely lose her. She seemed to be moving at a decent clip, too. And Sarah . . . Oh, Sarah, why did you follow? He could hear the swoosh of her skirts as she tried to keep up with him. Or was that the sound of blood rushing through his ears?
He slowed down to let her come even with him. “We’re going to look like a couple out for a moonlit stroll,” he said in a low voice. “I think at this point if she looked back and saw us, that would be our best bet for not letting on that we’re following her.”
As best they could, they kept the woman within their sights as she walked down a hill and crossed to the other side of the street. Mark cursed under his breath. Now they would need to cross, too, which would make their intention more obvious.
“Hurry!”
“I thought we were trying to look like we were out for a stroll,” Sarah said breathlessly beside him.
“Let’s draw as near even with her as we can, only we’ll stay on this side of the street. Hopefully, she’ll still think we’re just passing by. When we do come even, though, keep your face turned toward me. There’s not much moonlight out here, but if it hits your face just right and she happens to catch sight of it, our cover will be blown. We’ll have to act like star-crossed lovers.”
Sarah gasped, causing Mark to wince again. Was the idea of them as a couple really so repulsive to her?
“Shh, now. We’re gaining on her.”
However Sarah felt about Mark’s idea, she thankfully did as he asked, keeping her hand on his arm and gazing up adoringly into his face as they drew abreast of the woman. From his vantage point, the woman cast a cursory glance at the two of them, who were hopefully still in enough shadow so that she couldn’t tell what they were wearing, then faced forward again.
“I just love it when you sing to me. Why don’t you sing to me, darling?” Sarah said loudly, but in a strange voice.
Sing? She knew he couldn’t carry a tune. “I’d rather kiss you.”
Now where had that come from?
A quick intake of breath was her first response, but then Sarah continued the charade. “Then why don’t you, darling?”
He was tempted. Oh, so tempted. Calling on his reserves, he said, “Let’s wait until we get home.”
“I can hardly wait.”
They were playing with fire. Surely Sarah knew that. Even in the cool night air, Mark’s face was reaching a feverish pitch and he had to pull in a lungful of air to get control of himself. “She’s turning the corner,” he said in surprise when their target changed course.
“What do we do?” Sarah asked from the side of her mouth.
“Pass on by so as not to raise suspicion.” At least, not more than we already have, he silently amended. This detective work was harder than it looked. “Then we’ll swing back around. Let’s make it sound like we’re moving on.”
“How do we do that?”
“By incrementally lowering our voices.”
From that moment, Sarah picked up a nonsensical conversation with him that supposedly faded away into the night the farther away they got from the woman. Again and again, they lowered their pitch until . . . nothing.
“All right,” he whispered. “Count off thirty seconds and then we’ll follow.” Waiting longer might provide more safety, but it would also make it harder for them to keep up with the woman. Suppose she suddenly turned into a dark alley somewhere? Then this chase would be for nothing.
Mark could just barely make out the shape of the woman’s upper body against the night sky as she walked farther down the street she’d turned on. Ordinarily, he was fleet of foot, and tonight was no exception. He found himself having to hold back because of Sarah. When Sarah finally said, “Go. I’ll catch up,” he nodded in relief and took off, hoping she would be all right walking by herself at night. He’d never forgive himself if something happened to her.
But he was determined to learn more about the mysterious woman.
He thought he’d lost his chance when she disappeared behind a tall juniper tree. However, when Mark reached that same spot, he discovered a house set back away from the street. She kept walking toward it. Soon he heard the creaking of the steps of the wooden porch she climbed, and then the sound of a key unlocking the front door. A rectangle of light fell upon the property and Mark jumped back behind the tree before he could be seen.
A man’s deep voice came through the doorway. “You’re back early.”
“Ack!” The woman placed her hand over her heart. “Don’t frighten me like that. What are you doing here, anyway?”
The man ignored her question and asked one of his own. “Were you able to get in?”
“Yes,” was all she said.
“How’d it go?”
“I did what you asked to do.”
“Close the door and tell me about it.”
