His body went stiff as a poker at her words. Taut seconds passed before he grudgingly released her. “Your temper is unbecoming.”

“Then you must take care not to rile it.” And clutching the heavy skirts of her silk dinner dress in her hand, she turned to climb the stairs.

Early the next morning, before the guests—or their servants—had risen from their beds, Maggie crept down to the Beasley Park stables. Made of stone, with strong wooden doors and red-clay roof tiles, they housed the Honeywell coach horses, riding horses, and what remained of her father’s bloodstock. As a girl, the stables had been her second home. Now however, there was a distinctly unwelcoming air about the place.

“What do you mean my carriage isn’t available today?” she asked, outraged.

The stablemaster, Mr. Tilley, shuffled his feet. He held his cloth cap in his hands in front of him. “Mr. Burton-Smythe says as how I’m not to allow any use of the vehicles unless it’s on his authority.”

Tilley had been employed at Beasley Park for only two years, the majority of which Maggie had been either ill or in mourning. No doubt he’d come to look on Fred as his master.

“That’s all very well,” she said, “but Beasley Park belongs to the Honeywell family. To me, in fact. And I need my carriage this afternoon.”

Fred and his guests would be lunching with Sir Roderick at Letchford Hall, and then driving down to view a neighbor’s collection of etchings. Their absence would provide the perfect opportunity for Maggie to embark on an errand of her own. An errand that required her maid and her carriage.

And perhaps one of Papa’s pistols.

He had a smallish one in his collection. An old Queen Anne that would fit nicely inside Maggie’s reticule.

Tilley fidgeted with his cap. “I’d like to oblige you, Miss Honeywell, but I did promise Mr. Burton-Smythe I’d do as he told me.”

Maggie’s blood commenced a slow boil. She endeavored to keep her temper. She wouldn’t have anyone accusing her of being as unreasonable as her father. Not after what Mr. Entwhistle had said to her. “Well then, I’ll simply have to take up the matter with Mr. Burton-Smythe, won’t I?”

With that, she strode from the stable, but she didn’t go back to the house. She was too angry. Besides, it wasn’t long past dawn. No one was up yet, save the kitchen staff. And frustrated as she was, she couldn’t condone waking Jane merely to complain to her about the injustice of it all.

Instead, she walked.

She crossed the drive and made her way out over the sloping lawn and down to the path that would take her to her sanctuary. The old meeting place she’d shared with Nicholas so many years before.