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the massive bed and dozed, her long hair strewn around her, a cozy warmth in her body from the wine. She rested her head back on her arm, gazing into the flickering hearth fire, waiting with growing impatience for Mr. Godfrey to bring Caro to her.
    She was beginning to worry. Maybe the butler had forgotten about her request or had chosen to ignore it.
Alice knew her sister-in-law. If Caro was at a costume ball, she would drink too much and have too sore a head to leave tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn, as they must if they were to make it back to Hampshire by nightfall, as promised. Well, she thought, pushing up to a seated position with a determined look, if Lord Lucien’s servants were not going to fetch Caro for her, she would simply go to the masque and collect the baroness herself. Clad in an unadorned morning gown, with her hair flowing freely over her shoulders, she knew she was not dressed for any sort of gathering, but the domino would hide that fact. Besides, she would only go for a few minutes, she reasoned, just long enough to find Caro.
    Moments later, she slipped out of her room, her blue eyes glowing from the shadowy depths of the hooded brown robe. In perfect anonymity, she stole silently down the hallway in the direction the other guests had gone, her heart pounding with the fun of her adventure, leavened a bit by the wine. She wished her friend, Kitty Patterson, were with her, for they would have laughed like errant schoolgirls every step of the way, and truthfully, the mazelike house was rather eerie.
    Venturing on alone, she explored the web of dim corridors, making several wrong turns before she found the second, smaller staircase that Mr. Godfrey had led her up earlier. She went down the steps and peered into several hallways until she spied the grand staircase of dark-colored oak, where the marquess’s painting hung over the landing. He seemed to wink at her in sly complicity as she crept down the staircase, biting her lip to hold back a nervous giggle. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. I’m never going to find my way back. In the entrance hall at the bottom of the stairs, a footman in maroon-and-buff livery looked at her attentively. She withdrew deeper into the voluminous hood, shielding her face.
    “The Grotto, ma’am?” he asked politely, failing to recognize her.
    She nodded. He pointed a white-gloved finger toward the hallway on the left. Spying Mr. Godfrey chastising one of the servants in the adjoining salon, she hurried on before her escape from her room was discovered. Another footman waited at the end of the next hallway and again pointed the way. The third footman she came to opened a modest-looking wooden door for her and gestured to the darkness within.
    “This way, ma’am.”
    Nervously,
Alice approached the pitch-black vault. She looked at the footman in doubt. Surely he was jesting, but his obliging smile did not waver.
Alice peered in.
    Beyond the door, a narrow staircase led down into what she surmised were the wine cellars beneath
Revell Court
. Then a few hollow snatches of laughter echoed up to her from the bowels of the house and she realized this was indeed the way to the Grotto. Lord, this was getting stranger and stranger. A small voice in her head warned her to turn back, but she was determined to find Caro. She braced herself and stepped inside.
    Instantly, the dank chill in the air licked at her skin like the clammy kiss of a frog prince. Holding onto the banister,
Alice descended into the ebony gloom. She had only gone down a few steps when she became aware of a constant, soughing whisper like soft breathing; the sound was familiar, but she could not distinguish it. By the time she reached the packed-earth floor of the cellar, there was no sign of the laughing people she had heard, only another obliging footman in livery posted beside the yawning mouth of a cave. He bowed to her and swept a gesture toward the cave’s mouth.
    She paused with prickling