After her mother dropped Dahlia off at the school in the family coach—and sent the driver as a guard to ensure she made it safely from the street to the door—Dahlia sprinted up the abbey steps to her bedchamber and flung open her wardrobe doors.

It was nearly three in the morning. Mapleton’s dinner party guests would have long returned home, or set out in search of better parties. Mapleton himself wouldn’t be able to resist dropping in to every other ongoing soirée, just to casually mention how much better his had been. His staff would either be abed, or concentrated on the ground floor, where the party had been.

In other words, there would never be a better time to strike than right now.

She exchanged her evening gown for one of the threadbare day dresses she wore when doing menial tasks about the old abbey. In case one of the servants caught her poking about, she needed to look like one of them—not Robin Hood in ringlets. She yanked the combs from her hair and fashioned a messy bun to stuff inside a mobcap. A white apron completed the outfit. Perfect.

A glance in the looking-glass indicated she appeared perhaps a little too clean to be an overworked maid at the end of a long day, but tossing soot from the fireplace onto her cheeks and gown would only cause more questions than answers. If anyone enquired, she would simply have to act like a lazy maid.

While her mother had been busy giving heartfelt goodbyes to her friends in the queue of partygoers awaiting their carriages, Dahlia had managed to slip a shilling to one of the milling hack drivers, and extract a promise to follow her family coach to the school.

She tiptoed back downstairs and cracked the front door to glance outside. Good. He was still there.

The hack driver believed he was collecting one of Dahlia’s maids, who had been given a holiday to visit a sister who worked at another domicile. It had been the best story Dahlia could come up with. All the same, she wouldn’t have him drop her off too close to Mapleton’s townhouse.

She grabbed a small sack of rags earmarked for the morrow’s laundry and rushed outside to climb into the hack.

“Where to, miss?” asked the driver.

Careful to keep her cap low enough to hide her face, she murmured an address a short walk from where she needed to go.

Her attempt at an accent likely wouldn’t earn her front billing at the Royal Theater, but it was good enough not to raise the hack driver’s eyebrows. In no time, the cab rolled to a stop exactly where she had intended.

Doubt didn’t set in until she neared the rear staff entrance to Mapleton’s townhouse.

Her previous petty crimes had been far easier to execute, requiring no subterfuge at all. She simply walked a little too close to a certain shelf or table, and slipped a trinket into her reticule without anyone being the wiser.

If she would have been caught entering or exiting a chamber where she didn’t belong, absolutely nothing would have happened. No one would ever imagine the daughter of a baroness to be stealing from her peers. A ratafia-laced giggle of “Where did the retiring room go?” and she would be sent fondly on her way.

This time would be different. She wasn’t pilfering a palm-sized object in the midst of a chaotic party. She was sneaking in.

With determination, she marched up the unlit path to the servants’ entrance and pulled the brass handle.

Locked. Blast.

She stood frozen for a few moments. What was she supposed to do now? She couldn’t walk in the front door. Even if she’d worn trousers instead of a dress, she wouldn’t scale the trellis to an open window. Not because she wasn’t capable of such acrobatics, but because too much could go wrong if she were caught.

It was done. Her attempt to outfit the schoolroom with tools the girls could actually use was over before it could begin. Mapleton would keep the globe collection he didn’t care enough about to even look at, and the schoolroom would stay empty, just as is it was before.

The door swung open.

Dahlia jerked backward so fast, she nearly dropped the sack of rags.

A bleary-eyed scullery maid with a dishrag tossed over one shoulder stared back at her.

“Er…” Dahlia pointed vaguely at the sack in her arms, her heart pounding. “I have…”

The maid rolled her eyes and stepped out of the way. “You’re late. Way past curfew. All you upstairs maids are the same. Think your day starts with the sun instead of at midnight like the rest of us.”

Dahlia gave an apologetic smile and rushed inside before the chamber maid could change her mind.

“Go on, then.” The maid tilted her head toward a servant staircase. “If I got to work, you have to, too.”

Dahlia nodded quickly and dashed up the dark stairwell. Halfway up, she sagged against the wall and gasped. She closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart.

As terrified as she’d been, the truth was that her infiltration had gone far more smoothly than she would ever have guessed.

Had she been a perfectly acceptable debutante attempting to enter Almack’s assembly rooms without a voucher, she would have been interrogated and vetted within an inch of her life, and still denied entry to those vaunted dance halls.

As a maid, however, she’d been able to walk right through a servant entrance without so much as raising an eyebrow. Invisible, even to her supposed equals. She took a deep breath and climbed up the rest of the stairs to the second floor.

Twin rows of doors lined both sides of the empty passageway.

Behind one of those doors was the guest room with the boxes of globes. Behind another door was Phineas Mapleton’s bedchamber. Possibly with him in it. Dahlia gulped.

“Lost?” came a brassy voice from right behind her.

Dahlia spun around in surprise.

“Oh, leave ’er alone, Helen. Can’t you see she’s a new one?” said a world-weary chambermaid to a slightly younger copy of herself. Family, Dahlia imagined.

“Course she’s new,” Helen said with a roll of her eyes. “Pretty maids never last for more than a few weeks. Where were you sent to clean, honey?”

“I-I’m to straighten the guest chamber with piles of boxes,” Dahlia stammered in haste. “I’ve forgotten where it is. Can you point me in the right direction?”

Helen pointed a finger. “First door on the left.”

Dahlia nodded her thanks and slipped into the guest room. A row of wooden crates lined one wall. A somewhat ominous four-poster bed stood on the other side.

She would have to be fast. The last thing she wanted was for Mapleton to catch her now.

Heart pounding, she rummaged through each crate until she found one with a dozen Newton pocket celestial and terrestrial globes. They weren’t whatever rare vintage Mapleton had been referring to, but were rather the sturdy, serviceable variety like the pair she and her siblings had shared in their nursery growing up. Two sets ought to do.

Quickly, she wrapped the four smallest globes in rags and stuffed them into the small sack. They barely fit, but at least it was not obvious what they were. Time was running out. She shoved an ornate pen knife from the desk down the side of the sack before hurrying to peek out a crack in the chamber door.

No maids. No Mapleton.

With a deep breath, she raced across the hallway to the stairs and flew down the dark steps as swiftly and as silently as she could. When she reached the bottom, she didn’t pause to check if the scullery maid was back in the kitchen, but rather sprinted out the back door and into the night as fast as her legs would carry her.

By the time she was able to wave down a passing hackney, she was blocks away from fashionable Mayfair townhouses. She climbed up and sagged into the worn squab. Dahlia hugged the sack of pocket globes and soiled rags to her chest, not sure if she should laugh or cry. For better or for worse, now she really was Robin Hood with ringlets.

And there was no going back.