The Heiress - Lynsay Sands [26]
Grinding his teeth together, Daniel eased the door almost closed and stood peering through the narrow crack until the maid who had been sleeping in the bedroom connected to the master bedroom appeared. Christiana’s maid was his guess, and he watched impatiently as she walked by in the direction of the stairs. She moved as silently as a sylph and Daniel frowned to himself as he realized he wouldn’t know when she had cleared the stairs and it was safe to exit. Sighing, he leaned his shoulder against the wall beside the door and started to count slowly to one hundred, sure it couldn’t take longer than that for her to reach and descend the stairs and then make her way up the hall toward the servant’s section of the house.
Daniel grew tired of the exercise by the time he reached fifty, but made himself continue to seventy-five before pulling the door open and easing his head out to peer about again. A gusty sigh of relief slipped from him when he saw the way was clear, and he hurried out into the hall, making for the stairs. He even reached them, but it was as far as he got before the sound of a door opening in the hallway below made him freeze. Adrenaline rushing through his veins, he peered over the railing in time to see Suzette appear below him. She was alone and walking at a quick clip.
Cursing under his breath, Daniel turned and hurried back up the hall wondering why the devil Richard hadn’t kept the woman preoccupied longer. He almost went to a different room than the one he’d just exited, but didn’t know which room would offer a safe haven. Daniel suspected the room he’d been in was the one Lisa was occupying while here, but that meant Suzette’s could be any of the other rooms and with his luck that would be whichever one he chose to duck into. In the end, he decided to return to the original room as the only relatively safe haven at the moment. Once Suzette went into her own room, he would then have to get out of Lisa’s quickly though, because with his luck, she would soon follow her sister upstairs.
Cursing George and even Richard for this ridiculous predicament, Daniel ducked into the room he thought was Lisa’s and eased the door almost closed so he could watch to see which room Suzette went into. It simply wouldn’t do if he started to leave, needed to find a new hiding spot to avoid Lisa and ducked into Suzette’s room by accident to escape the girl.
Daniel had the door open a bare sliver, just enough to see the length of this end of the hall to the top of the stairs. He found himself smiling for absolutely no reason he could think of when Suzette’s head came into view as she mounted the stairs. It was replaced with surprise when her upper body came into view and he noted the large damp patch on the front of her pale muslin gown. But that surprise was replaced with interest as he noted the way the apparently damp cloth was clinging to the curves of her breasts and her belly. Dear God, it was indecent . . . in a hell of an interesting way. The cloth had gone a little transparent with the damping, so that he was sure he could see darker circles where her nipples would be. Damn . . .
Daniel was so taken with the sight that it took him a moment to note that she was coming up the hall, and heading straight for the door he was peering out of. She would walk past, he assured himself, but couldn’t help noticing that the angle she was taking was pointing her straight to the door he held cracked open. Daniel stayed put for one more moment, but when she stopped at the table next to the door to pick up the candle holder resting there, and leaned up to the sconce on the wall to light the candle he realized she wasn’t going to bypass the door for another after all. It wasn’t Lisa’s room he was in, but Suzette’s.
Sure he couldn’t escape before she took the step that would allow her to reach and open the