The Night Dance by Suzanne Weyn Page A

Ethan was not as sure. If his daughters were going out into the world through some route he did not know, any manner of harm could come to them. He would not have it and could not even bear the thought of it.
    “I’m going into town,” he told Mary abruptly. “I will return with the locksmith and have him fit the entire manor with new, stronger locks. The bolt on the girls’ door will be the first to be changed. No longer will it lock from within, but rather every night you will be charged with the duty of bolting it from the outside.”
    “As you wish, sir,” Mary said as he dashed away toward the front door.

C HAPTER T HIRTEEN
Rowena Meets Millicent
     
    The boy who tended the geese in the yard always left his muddy dung-caked boots outside the kitchen door, so Rowena was confident they’d be there when she came to find them. With a quick check to see if she was being observed, she lifted her hem and slipped her stocking feet into them—a nearly perfect fit.
    She had arisen an hour earlier, stiff limbed from sleeping on the cold floor, and looked outside just in time to see the boy pass through the front gate with her father, who had no doubt recruited the servant to attend him on some errand in Glastonbury. It would be hours before he had need of these rough boots again. But she needed them.
    She had awoken to find her only footwear, her slippers, gone. Then she recalled that she’d given them to Mary for burning. No replacements had yet been delivered to the room. On the previous days she’d found it difficult to walk barefoot through the rocks and sticks, which was why she hoped to borrow these boots for today’s trip into the forest.
    “Going somewhere?”
    Looking up sharply, Rowena faced the womanwho had spoken. She’d never seen her before, and as she took in the sharp features, sunken cheeks, and beady, peering eyes, her first impression was overwhelmingly negative.
    The woman offered her something small and glittering, holding it out in the palm of her hand. “I found this,” she said, and Rowena saw she held Eleanore’s earring. “I’ve just started here, and I don’t want to be accused of stealing. Take it.”
    Rowena plucked it from her hand, inwardly recoiling at the touch of the woman’s cold palm. “Thank you,” she said as she recovered from her initial revulsion. She remembered that Eleanore had told her there was a new kitchen servant, Millicent. Rowena assumed this was she.
    “Where are you headed in the goose boy’s boots?” the woman asked with a swaggering insolence and hint of menace that put Rowena further on her guard.
    Rowena forced a smile. “Where is there to go?”
    Millicent responded with a tight, joyless grin and nodded toward the boots.
    “Millicent!” Helen shouted from inside the kitchen. “Where have you disappeared to now?”
    Millicent’s eyes darted toward the kitchen door, but she made no move to go as she stubbornly awaited Rowena’s answer.
    “I was simply wondering what they felt like,” Rowena told her, stepping out of them.
    “Millicent!” Helen shouted again, this time in a more exasperated tone.
    Millicent reluctantly moved toward the kitchen door. Rowena snapped up the boots and thrust them at her as she opened the door. “These need to be cleaned,” she said in her most imperious tone.
    She did not want this woman with her bullying manner to think she was afraid of her. And she needed to prove that she did not intend to go anywhere wearing the goose boy’s boots.
    With a hate-filled glower, the woman took them from her and went inside.
    Rowena glanced at Eleanore’s earring and put it in the pocket of her gown. She no longer felt sure it was a wise idea to go out into the forest as she’d intended. Was Millicent watching her? She struck Rowena as the kind of angry, resentful person who might delight in causing trouble for her.
    But the trees were swept by the spring breezes and rustled above the manor wall. Her sisters were asleep; her