Bridget’s lips pressed closed, effectively cutting off the narration of her lilting voice. She leaned forward, angled Oliver’s letter nearer the candelabra’s flickering candlelight, and reread the sprawling script. The words remained the same. Unease whispered through her.

“Well, lass, what does Oliver say next?” her father demanded from the other side of his large mahogany desk. His eyes, piercing even if they could no longer make out words on a page, narrowed. “Nothing amiss, is there?”

“Oh, no, Papa,” she said quickly. “Ollie doesn’t sound his usual cheerful self is all. I was taken aback.”

Her father nodded. He drummed thick fingers on the desktop. “Read on. Let me judge.”

“I did not enjoy the gaming hall Lord Belview recommended,” she read. “In fact, it was no longer in the location he said it would be, which strikes me as odd. Lord Belview’s information is generally quite accurate. As I spent my time seeking it, to no avail, I haven’t had opportunity to contemplate the name Lord Winston suggested for his new hound. Please forward my apologies for that and ask him if he’s settled on that name or awaits my viewpoint on the matter.”

The agitated tap of her father’s fingers halted. Her gaze snapped to his downturned mouth. His deeply lined face and ponderous jowls gave him an ominous look by candlelight.

“He then goes into the usual adieu, Papa,” she concluded, lowering the letter to the desk. The sweet honeyed scent of the costly candles, normally a source of pleasure, mingled with her worry to form a queasy knot in her gut.

“Couldn’t locate the gaming hall?” her father repeated. He slapped his hand flat on the desk.

Bridget jumped.

“That’s three times now,” her father said. “In a row.”

“Yes.” Bridget forced lightness into her tone and subdued the desire to shift, for the hard wood chair would creak and reveal her unease. She mustn’t let her father suspect she realized Ollie’s words were a code. He would find someone else to read for him and she would lose her tenuous glimpse into what her brother did for the Crown. “I daresay it’s been so long since Lord Belview toured the continent, many of the places he once visited have changed.”

“Hmm?” Her father blinked, focusing on her. “Yes, of course. You’re a smart lass.” A hint of satisfaction ghosted across his features. He levered his still powerful form from his chair. “Write Belview and Winston before you retire, will you? Tell them what your brother wrote.”

“Yes, Papa. Should I reply to Ollie?”

He shook his head. “Wait to see what their lordships have to say.”

She stood as her father crossed the candlelight-filled office. His dragon-topped cane pounded a sharp rhythm, even through the thick carpet. With a parting nod, he left. He closed the door behind him.

Alone in the intricately paneled room, Bridget tossed her thick blonde braid over her shoulder and went around the desk. After taking her father’s chair, which was considerably more comfortable than her own, she pulled out clean pages, ink and a pen. She slid her brother’s letter across and read the lines a fourth time.

She wasn’t meant to, but she knew Ollie spied for the Crown. It had started years ago, when they were both quite young. Her father and Ollie had spent hours locked in this very office, or so it had seemed. Not until Bridget, a child of four, squeezed under one of the massive, hard-backed sofas, did she learn of the secret door.

Her eyes traced the decorative millwork along walls, cabinetry and mantelpiece. A complex pattern of corbels and rosettes opened the indiscernible secret door beside the fireplace. That door led to an entirely different world. One of hidden chambers, carved from the rock below the keep.

Chambers Bridget wouldn’t be visiting that evening.

She brought her attention back to the page before her. Careful to convey Ollie’s precise words, she penned a note first to Lord Winston and then to Lord Belview.

She didn’t know exactly what Ollie did for the Crown, only that he’d trained for such service his whole life. Their father had instructed him in secret, in the hidden rooms below their ancient keep, Lomall a 'Chaisteil. Having been warned by Ollie to stay away, Bridget had never witnessed that training, but sometimes the bruises were visible above Ollie’s collar or if he took off his socks and rolled up his pants to splash in the garden pond. Occasionally, there’d even been a black eye or broken nose, always blamed on a riding accident, but she’d never once seen Ollie lose his seat.

Bridget slid a candelabra nearer and double checked her letters before she sealed and addressed them. She wished she knew what Ollie’s code meant. She suspected Lord Belview’s continuous recommendations were locations and Lord Winston’s obsession with the nomenclature of his prize hounds a code for people’s names. Usually, Ollie wrote back that he’d visited the place and approved of the new name. Bridget suspected that meant he’d found the person and done, well, whatever it was he was meant to do. If so, her brother was very successful.

Until the last few months, that was, and again in his new letter. Even not knowing what success meant, given the secrecy surrounding her brother’s profession, she could imagine the danger of failure. How long could things continue to go wrong for Ollie before they went very, very wrong?

She let out a sigh, aware of her helplessness. She could only assist their father, whose eyes were too old for reading and writing. She placed the letters to one side and returned the pen, ink and paper to their drawers. Lastly, she pulled a key free of her bodice and unlocked a different drawer. She put Ollie’s letter inside with the others and turned the key in the lock.

Bridget tucked the key back into her bodice and went to collect a candle from the candelabra. The others she extinguished, licking her fingers before snuffing out each wick to save her soft skin from burns. The office, windowless paneled walls rendering it lightless even at noon, was plunged into deep shadow, punctuated by the sooty, honey-touched smell of the snuffed candles.

The hall without was cold and dim, as the servants had already put out most flames for the night. She tugged her shawl closer. The office, for all its eternal darkness, was at least cozy. The rest of the ancient stronghold had soaked up so much mist and icy cold from long Scottish nights, the old stone never warmed. Not with fires blazing in every room. Not at the height of summer. Never.

Bridget left the candle on a hall table. With a nearly full moon, she didn’t need its light to wend her way to the staircase and up to her room. In twenty-six years, she’d learned every floorboard. Especially over the past four years. With Ollie away, her mother little more than a toddler’s memory, and her father’s need of her to be his eyes, Bridget’s feet rarely left the Sollier grounds. She hadn’t visited Inverness, the nearest town, in years.

She didn’t call for a maid when she reached her room. She wore no fancy clothes, and kept her hair in a simple braid down her back, so she had little need for assistance. Aside from which, she didn’t trust the new maid, Fiona Brown. Though ten years Bridget’s junior, Fiona demonstrated too-keen an attention to details. Her eyes were disconcerting, and definitely not soothing right before bed.

After she changed into a shift, Bridget climbed into bed and pulled the quilt up over her shoulders, but she soon found nothing soothed her. She was simply too aggravated to sleep. Why were Ollie’s missions not succeeding? She felt as if she must warn him, or help him in some way. Perhaps if she could glean more from the code he used with Lords Belview and Winston, she could formulate a plan.

Her thoughts went to the secret rooms below the keep. Aside from the swords, knifes, boxing gloves and whatnot that her father and Ollie used, there were scrolls, maps and books. As she knew from years of stealthy midnight visits, several of the books detailed and dissected codes and cyphers. Bridget had already read them, but she may have missed something useful. Aside from that, new additions to the collection sometimes appeared. They never arrived through the keep. Someone brought them in by way of the hidden tunnel that lead from the base of the crags Lomall a 'Chaisteil was built atop to the rooms concealed below.

She slid from under her heavy quilt. Forgoing her robe, for the silk brocade would whisper about her, far noisier than her light shift, she crept from her bedroom. Flittering between patches of moonlight that alternated with grim suits of armor, she placed each bare foot with precise care, aware of which boards would creak beneath her weight. One entire stretch of hall squealed like a piglet when her father or any of the more sizable staff crossed it, but Bridget could slip silently over even that.

She ghosted down the staircase with equal care. Outside, a night bird called, seeking or defending its mate, she knew not which. Within, all lay silent. In the foyer, a single candle burned. Bridget shielded her eyes from the glow least she be unable to see once she left its ring of light. She turned down the corridor leading to her father’s office, the stone floor of the main level icy under her bare feet.

Light flickered through the crack beneath the office door. She stopped. Who had entered her father’s office? He hadn’t passed down the hall. She would have heard him. Although, on occasion, she’d noticed her father could tread with near silence.

Her gaze left that unexpected glow and traveled the corridor. She could rouse the household, but what if her father used his own office? Or, worse, visited the rooms below.

She frowned at the suspicious flicker beneath the thick wood of the door. If she retreated to find a weapon, the intruder might disappear. The best course, then, was to peek through the keyhole and see who lingered inside, without them being any the wiser.

Less than a whisper in the shadows of the hall, Bridget crept to the office. She bundled the soft cotton of her shift so it wouldn’t pool about her and slip under the door, and knelt. Holding her breath, as if even that might be heard, she placed an eye to the keyhole.

A candle burned on her father’s desk. The slim figure beyond that glow quickly resolved into Fiona. As far as Bridget could tell from her vantage point, Fiona sorted through the drawer of clean sheets. Pursing her lips, she closed it and opened another, the one that held ink and trimmed pens. Fiona soon shut that as well. She pulled at the locked drawer, where Ollie’s letters were kept. Her eyes narrowed.

Bridget stood. Her papa paid well and deserved more loyalty than that. She pushed open the door. “Fiona, what the devil are you doing in Papa’s office?” Hands on hips, she glared at the maid.

Fiona gaped at her. She snapped her bowed lips shut and hurried around the desk. Bridget tensed, ready to make a grab for the maid if she tried to flee, but Fiona stopped in the middle of the room.

“Oh, Miss Sollier,” she cried. “I’m so sorry, Miss, but I need my letters.” Tears popped into her eyes.

Bridget frowned. Tears were easy to come by, but the girl’s tone rang with sincerity. “Your letters? Of reference? You need them now, in the middle of the night?”

“I do, Miss, or first thing tomorrow,” she said in the same weepy voice.

“Whatever for?” Bridget asked. Fiona seemed convincingly distressed. “Are you leaving us?”

“Oh no, Miss.” Fiona wiped at her cheeks. “But Mama said she’ll have at me with the rolling pin if I don’t bring them to her for safekeeping first thing tomorrow, and I didn’t get no chance to come ask earlier, and I was afraid Lord Sollier would say no, anyways, cause my Mama said, when she heard Lord Sollier kept them, she said a man would only do that if he was planning to force a girl to stay on, so he could—” She broke off. Her hands flew to her mouth as if she could shove the words back inside.

Bridget studied Fiona’s distressed countenance. Was that the source of the girl’s keen gaze, a life already filled with too much knowing? “I didn’t realize Papa had kept them.” Undoubtedly, her father had assumed Bridget would see them returned, the task passed to her even though he hadn’t permitted her final say in hiring the maid. At least he’d let her interview candidates with him. “Your mother is correct, your letters of reference are your own, and very important.”

Fiona nodded, eyes wide. She pulled her hands away from her mouth. “So, I may have them?” she whispered.

“Certainly, you may.” Bridget crossed to stand behind her father’s desk. She shot Fiona, who’d turned to watch her, a hard look. “You didn’t search the correct drawer is all.” Bridget pulled it open and leafed through the pages.

Not finding the girl’s letters of reference, Bridget took the pages out and sorted again, nearer the candle, to no avail. She shook her head. They simply weren’t there. She put the stack back in the drawer.

She looked up to find Fiona watching with keen, watery eyes. “I can’t seem to find them.”

“You mean, my letters are gone?” Fiona squawked.

Bridget frowned. “I’m sure Papa put them in the wrong drawer.” Perhaps that was the real reason behind his forgetting to return them. “I’ll ask after them first thing. For now, let me write you a letter to give your Mama, so she won’t have at you with a rolling pin.”

“But you can’t ask Lord Sollier, Miss,” Fiona pleaded. “He’ll think I don’t trust him, or I’m complaining, and he’ll let me go without a reference.”

“But if I don’t ask him where he put them, you’ll have no references at all,” Bridget pointed out.

Fiona nodded miserably, ringing her hands.

Bridget felt a stirring of pity for the girl, for her father’s temper was often uncertain. “How about, instead of asking Papa, I make a search myself in the morning? I’ll do it quite early, and excuse you from your morning duties, so you can take either my letter or your references to your Mama.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Miss,” Fiona said, her hands stilling.

“Now, come along. We both need sleep.” Bridget circled back around the desk. She lifted the candle and handed it to Fiona, who took it with a steady hand. Arm outstretched, Bridget ushered the maid from the room to the sound of the girl’s babbled thanks.

Bridget didn’t immediately go to bed. Instead, she retrieved the key to her father’s office and locked the door. She always woke earlier than he did, so it shouldn’t inconvenience him, and she would sleep better with the key under her pillow.

She was very surprised, the following morning, to find Fiona’s letters of reference right where she’d sought them the night before.