Read Hounds of Autumn for Free Online Page B

parlor conversation, embroidery or other womanly pursuits. But she excelled at this.
    Ambrose closed the door behind him and looked curiously over her table. “It looks like it will take a great deal of time. I am glad that Alexander saw to it that you could get a few tools and materials.”
    She murmured an acknowledgment.
    “It will be better once your own things arrive, I’m sure.”
    She ignored him and he turned to his own desk by the window. He was never offended by either her silences or terse words when she was working. He looked over his desk, arranged a few things, selected a book from the shelf and bid her good night.
    Hours later, the robin was almost finished, and she was just fitting the chest panel back on when she heard a soft, distant snort. She paused, but there was no other sound. She moved to the window, pulled the heavy curtain aside, and looked out into the slowly swirling mist that had gathered around the house.
    Below, moving toward the main road was a horse and rider. If she listened closely, she could hear the muffled crunch of the horse’s hooves on the gravel drive. But had she not been paying attention, she would never have noticed the sound. As the rider passed below her window, she let the curtains fall mostly shut, holding them open just enough to peek out. She was glad that her lamp was across the room so the light would not attract the rider’s attention, should he look up.
    She could tell neither the rider’s height nor build as he rode away, presumably toward town. He was in no hurry, though she saw the indistinct shape move to a trot once it reached the main road.
    She let the curtains fall shut. There was no clock in the room, so she reached into her little bag beside her work table and pulled out her fob watch. Half-past midnight.
    She finished the robin and then fetched the doorway mechanical. She spent a short time lubricating its limbs and making a few minor repairs before sending it downstairs on the dumbwaiter . It was past two o’clock when she went to bed.

Chapter 6
    T he next morning, Chloe sat at her vanity as Miss Haynes pulled her hair into place. She combed the thick, frizzy tangle with a wide-tooth comb, working carefully so as not to cause her mistress undue pain. She need not have worried. Her mistress’s mind was elsewhere.
    “I want to ask you something,” said Chloe.
    “Mmm?” Miss Haynes had a mouthful of hair pins, but made brief eye contact with Chloe in the mirror.
    “I’d like you to keep your ears open around the house. Last night, when I was working in Ambrose’s study I heard a disturbance outside. When I looked out the window, down below there was a man on a horse. He rode slowly out to the main road, presumably to keep quiet, and then took off at a trot in the direction of town.”
    Miss Haynes’s eyebrows bunched together. She pulled the pins from her mouth. “Who was it?”
    “I haven’t any idea. I couldn’t tell his build from that distance. It was dreadfully foggy anyway. But it was half-past midnight and, barring the need to fetch a doctor, I can’t imagine any other reason to ride to town at that hour.”
    “I’ve been up since five o’clock, and no one called for a doctor at night that I heard. And if he were fetching a doctor, he wouldn’t have been trying to be quiet.”
    Chloe would have nodded, but moving her head at all during this stage in the process could mean disaster.
    “I’ll see what I can learn,” said Miss Haynes. “You know it won’t be so easy.”
    “The other lady’s maids?”
    “Yes, mum. Not the friendliest trio of women you ever met, if you know what I mean.”
    “They match their employers then,” said Chloe, smiling into the mirror. Miss Haynes looked up and then sighed as tendrils of hair broke free of their confines and fell. A furrow appeared between her brows as she started over on that section of hair.
    If Dora, Beatrice and Mrs. Malone’s lady’s maids were not on friendly terms with Miss