In which our heroine ventures forth at night

The bright glare of a full moon penetratedCorinna's room, spreading a swath of white light across the floorboards. Somewhere in the woods, an owl hooted. Tree tops sighed softly in the night breeze, and the world was at peace.

Corinna was not. Exhausted from her journeys, she dropped into a dreamless sleep almost immediately after going to bed, but a nameless terror dragged her out of slumberland at what felt like only a second later.

The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece pointed out the fact that she had been dead to the world for over four hours.

She sat up and strained her ear at the silence. The rustle she heard was more a disturbance of air than a proper sound. That wouldn't have been what woke her up.

Mice? Unlikely, not in a place as well-maintained as this. Sending out her consciousness was a possibility, but it was dark outside, so her vision would be clouded.

The softest of scratching noises reached her ear. No, she wasn't imaging things. Someone was on the other side of her door.

She reached for the pistol—she'd only taken one—hidden under her pillow and swung her legs over the side of her bed.

There it was again. A soft rustling and scratching right outside the door to her room. It was followed by a brief knock.

Mice didn't knock.

She cocked her pistol, crept to the door, and placed an ear against the panel.

Two creaks were swallowed into the silence of the night. Another one followed, fainter than the first. That must have been the floorboards, which meant her nightly visitor had most likely walked away—or wanted her to think that way, while lurking in the corridor, waiting for her to open the door.

She had better ensure that this wasn't so. Her heart fluttering wildly, Corinna rubbed her thumb over the door panel, ready to extend her consciousness, when her gaze fell to a white rectangle half in the room, half under the door.

A letter.

She picked it up and went to the window.

The text scrawled over the page, blotched by inkstains, as if the hand that penned the message wasn't used to doing so. Even in much better light than this, the missive would have been hard to read.

The Stone portalle at the drive way in halve an hour. It now is 3.30 in the morning. Be their, or you will regrette it.

Yes, the author of this remarkable document would benefit from a few lectures in penmanship. It was therefore unlikely that either his lordship or the Dowager Marchioness were involved.

Of course, the flawed grammar and spelling might be a fake.

Corinna, experiencing a sudden and highly unwelcome tightness in her chest, reached for her clothes. Her plan had relied on rising much earlier and find a convenient tree stump or other hiding place for the jewels. Exhaustion wreaked havoc on that plan, and now she was on the defensive again. As if that wasn't enough, she couldn't sneak through the nightly gardens with the baubles in her pocket. Not until she knew what was afoot, anyway.

She squeezed her arms into Mrs. Tuckles' old fawn pelisse, which was both too short at the hem and too wide in the body for her. However, Mother only had the one coat, which she needed for herself, and Corinna's own, fashioned in Paris and presented to her by Agatha as a birthday present, was totally unsuitable for her current post.

She wound a sash around her waist and slipped the pistol inside. Since she wished to arrive before the writer of the mysterious note, there was simply no time to dress properly and she didn't bring a holster. Her nightgown was sheer muslin, and given the current fashion, it might pass muster as a dress, especially when worn with slippers. The note she left behind. 

Outside, the breeze carried along the scent of moist air and warm pine needles that reminded her of sunnier climes she once enjoyed. Those memories were helpful, since they calmed the frantic beating of her heart, and lifted some of the leaden dread that weighed on her chest.

Such a night time caper was worse than taking to the High Toby. When waylaying coaches, she knew what she'd been about, knew the risks and could calculate her chances. Here, she was in a strange place, among strangers where nothing was as it seemed, and so many things went contrary to reason.

Demoral Park harbored a dangerous secret at its heart, and it appeared she was about to find out what it was.

She rushed over the grass, headed for the stone pillars with the strange beasts crouching on top. Seen at night, dappled by moonlit shadows, they appeared larger and so much more menacing than at daytime.

The owl hooted again and something took flight in the nearest tree. Corinna swung around, but the lawn she had just crossed lay empty. Arrived at the portal, she found the gate closed and barred, the gatehouse unpopulated. No one would come to her rescue, that much was for certain.

She scanned her environs. Behind the gatehouse grew a cluster of rhododendron bushes, an excellent shelter for what she had in mind. Behind it stretched a dense coppice of tall pines with ivy and bushes hugging their lower parts. While that too would cover her person, it was too far away from the entrance, so Corinna pushed her way into the thicket and stilled. Now, all she had to do was wait and see who came to visit.

She didn't have to wait long.

Measured footsteps crunched along the gravel as a massive shape lumbered into sight. The light was bright enough to see every leaf in the bush, but it was not so with the intruder. Where she was expecting the white of a face, there was only darkness.

Was the person wearing a mask over his face? What if there was no face? In the small hours of the morning, everything seemed possible.

Fear fluttered at the base of her throat until she called her wayward imagination to order.

A cloud pulled over the moon, and the light winked out. Of all the times this could happen, of course it happened now.

"Miss Wolverstoke?"

Corinna took a step back. Dried leaves under her feet crunched in betrayal.

What the...Haversack. That had been Haversack's voice. What was the butler doing out here at this time of the morning?

"Miss Wolverstoke, you have nothing to fear," the butler said in soothing accents, his soft lilt more pronounced than ever. "We have apprehended the traitor."

He came to a halt in front of the rhododendron and bent over. "Miss, are you in there?"

If she wanted answers—and she wanted those very much--she had better show herself.

"Eh, yes."

Poky branches and leathery leaves getting in her way, Corinna exited from her hiding place.

"Some dried flowers appear to have caught in your hair, Miss Wolverstoke," Haversack said calmly, as if inviting her to take another cup.

She tugged at her locks and, having removed the offensive items, she addressed the butler. "I was woken up and found a note slipped through my door, telling me to come out here."

"We found it."

Corinna's stomach cramped. "You entered my bedroom?" 

"Well, the person we apprehended told us he summoned you outside. I went up there, and since you didn't respond to the knock, I was forced to enter." He cleared his throat. "There are two of them, you know? One we have, the other is still at large."

"Two of what? Notes? Oh, traitors, you mean."

This conversation was surreal. Here she was in the small hours, discussing cloak and dagger scenarios with the butler. Nothing like the current situation had ever featured in one of her favorite novels and if it did, she would have had a fit of laughter over the ridiculous plot.

Surreal, however, was better than dangerous.

"Tell me something. Why did you come to this place, Miss Wolverstoke?"

Did she imagine the note of menace in his voice?

"You know that very well. I came to lecture Amanda. Why do you ask?"

Haversack returned the letter. "It isn't quite good ton, Miss Wolverstoke, for a governess to follow an invitation for a nightly ramble. You will have your reasons, but I wonder what they might be."

"Do you expect me to stay in my bed and pull the sheets over my head?"

The moon chose that moment to shed the clouds, and in the sudden burst of brightness she could see Haversack's lips twitching in a very un-butlery grin.

"Yes, I would expect a governess to do just that, but I saw already you're cut from a different cloth. It still makes me wonder why he propositioned you like that."

"It makes me wonder, too. Who are we talking about, by the way?"

"I'm not quite ready to tell you that, Miss Wolverstoke."

Something crunched in the trees growing on the other side of the gravel path. A twig cracked as something or someone beat a hasty retreat.

Someone other than Corinna and the butler was walking the grounds at night.

https://youtu.be/ydKwY0tqAXQ

1532 words (14376 so far). 

This chapter is dedicated to fellow ONC author @carolyn_Hill whose "Golden Hour" is a very cool tale about a very modern relationship (only complete with lotsa swearwords). You'll love it.