Myrtle followed the maid’s descent to the marble foyer, where Hanes, the family butler, stood in wait, directing the maid amidst the commotion.

Another servant rushed past—this time a footman.

Myrtle stretched out a hand, almost wishing to catch him like a spotted trout in her family’s ponds and hold on so he’d have no choice but to look at her and answer. “Excuse me, I’m looking for my mother.” Her mother, who ruled the roost in this household and, according to Myrtle’s doting father, the world. “Can you point me toward her?”

He dropped his stare to the floor. “I cannot say, my lady.” A ruddy flush stained his cheeks, and he stepped quickly around her . . . and fled.

Myrtle rocked back on her heels.

He could not say?

He could not. Nor could any of the previous six young men and women to whom she’d posed her questions.

And though she prided herself on being quite clever and intelligent, it wouldn’t take much deduction from a person with even half her wit to gather that the staff had been instructed to avoid her.

Nay, more specifically, they’d been advised to hide their mistress.

Myrtle headed downstairs and attempted to wheedle an answer from four more servants before she caught sight of someone who could help.

No matter how inadvertently that may be.

“Aunt Leslie!” she called loudly, for her tiny, heavily rounded, bespectacled aunt and godmother was headed out one door and over to the adjacent chambers her eldest daughter was invariably assigned every holiday house party.

Bypassing a pair of servants with a trunk between them—with Myrtle’s trunk between them—Myrtle rushed to intercept her aunt. “Aunt Leslie. Have you seen my mother?” she asked without preamble when she reached the frizzy-haired woman.

“She is in your chambers, packing,” her aunt said and then let herself inside. “There you are,” she said to whichever one of her kin she’d been looking for. “I told you we must . . .” Aunt Leslie’s words faded as she shut the door behind her.

Knocked back on her heels once more, Myrtle stared at the panel. “Packing?” she repeated aloud.

Her mother?

Her mother, who delighted in having servants and wouldn’t be able to pick out a trunk from a valise, suddenly found herself actively engaged in packing those very items—and in Myrtle’s rooms, no less?

Though in fairness, it was also the last place Myrtle would think to look for her.

Sure enough, when she reached her rooms, Myrtle found her.

Them.

“Mr. Phippen is set to begin immediately,” her mother was saying to her husband as she sorted through an array of jewelry set out on Myrtle’s vanity, then instructed her husband to place the properly wrapped item in the valise.

Ah, they were hiding together.