The Night Dance by Suzanne Weyn

bundled in a heap on her bed.
    Stretching wearily, Eleanore laid down on an empty bed and her eyes began to close. Just as she was about to fall asleep, a familiar noise brought her back to waking.
    The mouse that had guided them out of the passage scurried along a floor board, her earring still attached to the ribbon tied to its tail. The mouse stopped and regarded her, its pink nose twitching.
    She rose off her pillow and considered attempting to get her earring back. But she’d need Ione’s help for that and it appeared that she was already sleeping. Just then Eleanore desperately needed to sleep, as well. She lay her head back on the pillow and allowed the mouse to continue on its way, still bouncing the earring off the floorboards as it departed the room.

C HAPTER T WELVE
Sir Ethan’s Outrage
     
    “Stop right now!” Sir Ethan’s authoritative voice boomed in the kitchen hallway.
    Mary froze in front of the blazing fireplace with her arms wrapped around a straw basket containing twenty-three tattered, jewel-toned, ribbon-trimmed, silk slippers. Though it was barely dawn, she’d only had the chance to pitch one slipper into the flames before Sir Ethan appeared.
    “Why are these slippers going into the fire?” he demanded to know.
    Mary tried her best to smile casually at him. “Oh, they’ve simply been worn out,” she said as if it were quite normal.
    “Worn out?” he questioned, lifting one of the slippers from the basket and turning it in his hand. “These floors are polished marble, and the courtyard is covered in slate. How could they be wearing their slippers out so quickly on such smooth surfaces?” He ran his other hand along the scuffed, torn, dirty sole of the slipper he held, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.
    This slipper had obviously been worn outside over some kind of rocky surface. Apparently all theslippers had been worn outdoors, judging from the sight of them. He was not a fool. “Tell me, Mary. Last night when you told me that the girls were…indisposed…and could not come to supper, are you sure they were actually in their room?”
    Mary was not naturally inclined to lie, and at the moment it seemed fruitless to try. Her master was clearly on the trail of the truth. “I did not see them exactly,” she admitted sheepishly. “I simply assumed they were within and felt it likely that they might be down with womanly ills when they did not answer my call to dine.”
    Sir Ethan harrumphed unhappily. “I see. And were these slippers in such disrepair yesterday?”
    “I could not tell you,” Mary replied.
    Sir Ethan took the basket of slippers from Mary and headed out of the kitchen, striding purposefully to the bedchamber his daughters shared. He pounded forcefully on the door. “It is your father, open up,” he bellowed. When he got no reply, he banged on the door even louder.
    Still no reply came. Cracking open the unlocked door, he peered in.
    Ten of his daughters were asleep on one bed, heaped on one another in a tangle of arms and legs. Eleanore was sprawled on another bed, in such a sound sleep that she snored. And Rowena slumbered on the floor, slumped against the wall below the bedroom window.
    Not one of them wore a nightgown; all were stillfully clothed for daytime. “They look like a pack of drunken revelers passed out after a night of riotous merriment,” he said to Mary, who had hurried into the room and now stood beside him wringing her hands anxiously.
    She stepped beside Rowena and attempted to jostle her awake, but the young woman simply murmured incoherently and repositioned herself on the floor. “Let her be,” Sir Ethan told Mary.
    He left the room with Mary at his side. “Issue a new pair of slippers to each girl. Every morning the slippers are to be lined up outside this bedchamber for my inspection. In that manner I will quickly get to the bottom of whatever is going on with them.”
    “I’m sure it’s nothing of great concern,” Mary said.
    Sir