His wife arrived silently, lighted taper in hand. She wasn’t the kind of woman who wore fluttery negligees over her nightdress; she was swathed in a sturdy piece of blue linsey wool that covered her from neck to toe.

“Well?” Eloise asked rather belligerently. And then, much more urgently: “George, George, what is it?”

Her husband raised his head and looked at her. “She’s gone. Carroll says that Sophie has eloped, our little Sophie.”

Eloise’s mouth fell inelegantly open, for perhaps the first and last time in her life.

“No!”

“The ladder’s at her window and the window’s open,” George said miserably. “I suppose there’s no way to hush this up, is there?”

Eloise snapped her jaws shut. “It’s impossible,” she whispered. “She would never do such a thing to me, to us. The shame … a daughter who eloped …”

“I don’t think we were too lenient with her, do you?” George’s face was pinched. “I thought a few times of saying something ‘bout her gowns, but I thought it was just me getting old and outmoded in my notions.”

“Nonsense,” Eloise said uncertainly.

She turned about and started down the hall. Then she swiveled and looked back at her motionless husband. “Come on, George. We must see if she left a note. Perhaps she hasn’t gone very far. If so, we must catch up with them tonight.”

Obediently George fell in behind her as they climbed the stairs again. Husband and wife made their way down the hallway shoulder to shoulder, neither aware that it was the first time they had walked so closely in exactly twenty years.

Eloise paused, then pushed open the door to her daughter’s bedchamber. To be sure, the window was open, and the delicate muslin curtains were billowing slightly in the night breeze. The room was dark, but Eloise could just barely see two black points poking above the windowsill—obviously the top of a ladder.

“Do you see a note?” George stood behind her, peering into the room.

Eloise held up the taper she carried in her hand and walked to the dressing table. There was nothing. No note perched on the marble fireplace either. She was just turning about to survey the room as a whole when George loomed up at her shoulder. Eloise stifled a scream. George huffed, and the candle burned out, leaving them in nearly pitch darkness. The only light was a flickering glow from the hallway sconces, which Eloise had lit on her way down the hallway.

“Eloise, we need to go after them as soon as possible!” George’s voice had a queer, hurried tone to it. He grabbed her shoulders and hustled her toward the door. Eloise felt as if she were an awkward bundle of laundry, particularly when George knocked her against the door frame in his eagerness to get out.