“Were you terrified?” Elizabeth asked breathlessly. “I would have been. I would have swooned.”

“I wouldn’t have swooned,” Amelia remarked.

“Well, of course you wouldn’t,” Elizabeth said irritably. “You didn’t even gasp when Grace told you about it.”

“It sounds rather exciting, actually.” Amelia looked at Grace with great interest. “Was it?”

And Grace—good heavens, she blushed.

Amelia leaned forward, lips twitching. A blush could mean all sorts of things—all of them quite splendid. She felt a rush of excitement in her chest, a heady, almost weightless sort of feeling—the sort one got when told a particularly juicy piece of gossip. “Was he handsome, then?”

Elizabeth looked at her as if she were mad. “Who?”

“The highwayman, of course.”

Grace stammered something and pretended to drink her tea.

“He was,” Amelia said, feeling much better now. If Wyndham was in love with Grace…well, at least she did not return the emotion.

“He was wearing a mask,” Grace retorted.

“But you could still tell that he was handsome,” Amelia urged.

“No!”

“Then his accent was terribly romantic. French? Italian?” Amelia actually shuddered with delight, thinking of all the Byron she’d read recently. “Spanish.”

“You’ve gone mad,” Elizabeth said.

“He didn’t have an accent,” Grace said. “Well, not much of one. Scottish, perhaps? Irish? I couldn’t tell, precisely.”

Amelia sat back with a happy sigh. “A highwayman. How romantic.”

“Amelia Willoughby!” her sister scolded. “Grace was just attacked at gunpoint, and you are calling it romantic?”

She would have responded with something very cutting and clever—because really, if one couldn’t be cutting and clever with one’s sister, who could one be cutting and clever with?—but at that moment she heard a noise in the hall.

“The dowager?” Elizabeth whispered to Grace with a grimace. It was so lovely when the dowager did not join them for tea.

“I don’t think so,” Grace replied. “She was still abed when I came down. She was rather…ehrm…distraught.”

“I should think so,” Elizabeth remarked. Then she gasped. “Did they make away with her emeralds?”

Grace shook her head. “We hid them. Under the seat cushions.”

“Oh, how clever!” Elizabeth said approvingly. “Amelia, wouldn’t you agree…”

But Amelia wasn’t listening. It had become apparent that the movements in the hall belonged to a more sure-footed individual than the dowager, and sure enough, Wyndham walked past the open doorway.

Conversation stopped. Elizabeth looked at Grace, and Grace looked at Amelia, and Amelia just kept looking at the now empty doorway. After a moment of held breath, Elizabeth turned to her sister and said, “I think he does not realize we are here.”

“I don’t care,” Amelia declared, which wasn’t quite the truth.

“I wonder where he went,” Grace murmured.