Love and Larceny by Regina Scott

move.” She lifted her
skirts to clamber up the steps to the main passage.
    Immediately, the darkness closed around her,
and she realized Wynn and his candle had remained behind. Glancing
back at the glow below, she called, “Wynn? Is something wrong?”
    “No.” She could hear the sigh in his voice.
The space brightened as he climbed up to join her.
    “I can refuse you nothing,” he said, and for
once he didn’t sound all that pleased about the matter.
    “That’s because you’re a good friend,” she
assured him, reaching out to take the candle from his grip.
“Perhaps we should remain here in the west wing, as that is where
Emily is concentrating her efforts.”
    “Indeed,” he said, still with that defeated
tone. “Lead the way. You can count on me to follow. That seems to
be my role.”
    Daphne frowned at him, then held out the
candle. “Do you want to go first? You can have the light.”
    “No,” he said. “I need to find the light
inside me.”
    Daphne shook her head. “You’re in an odd
humor tonight. Perhaps we’ve stayed up too late. I’ll try to get
you back by a reasonable hour.”
    “I’m no invalid,” he snapped.
    “Well, certainly not.” She turned and raised
the candle high so they could both see their way. “But everyone
needs a good night sleep now and then. You can’t expect to be at
your best if your brain is muddled.”
    “There isn’t anything wrong with my brain
either,” he said behind her. “What I seem to lack is
conviction.”
    “About what?” she asked, remembering to lower
her voice. They were passing over her mother’s room, and she
doubted she could be convincing as a dream two nights in a row.
Then she felt Wynn’s hand on her shoulder, pulling her to a
stop.
    “The only place I lack conviction is about
you, Daphne.”
    Balancing carefully, she turned to face him.
“About me?”
    In the candlelight, she could see that his
dark brows were down, those sea-green eyes intent on her face.
Indeed, every part of him seemed tense, as if he were about to jump
a fence or shoot a bow.
    “Daphne,” he said, “there is so much I want
to tell you, but I know how difficult it can be for you to stand
still and listen. Perhaps it’s better if I show you.”
    He pulled her close and kissed her.
    Once again her world exploded, and she found
herself trembling with the sheer wonder of it. The sweet pressure
of his lips, his arm stealing about her waist, made her head spin
in the most delightful way. Was this how all young ladies felt when
they were in love?
    Wait. She wasn’t in love. This was Wynn.
    She broke from his embrace and shoved him
away from her. “What are you doing?!”
    He teetered on the beam, off balance and
leaning hard on his bad leg. As she watched, horror dawning, he
toppled to one side and crashed through the plaster to disappear
into the darkness below.
    A cloud of dust billowed up behind him,
choking her, but she managed to shield the candle. Waving the grit
aside, heart hammering, she peered down into the hole, afraid of
what she might find.
    From the great bed below her, her mother and
Wynn gazed back, side by side, and it was a question who looked the
more shocked.
    *
    Wynn blinked past the dust sparkling in the
light from the candle Daphne held as she gazed through the ceiling
at him. His spectacles must have been knocked off in the fall, for
his vision was blurry, but it seemed to him her face was
stricken.
    “Get back,” he warned. “I don’t want you
falling through too. Stay on the beam. You know the way back to
your room.”
    She nodded. “Are you all right?”
    He refused to acknowledge the pains shooting
through him until he was certain she was safe. “I’ll be fine. Now
go.”
    Again she nodded, but she still didn’t move
away from the hole. “Mother?”
    Mother?
    Wynn’s head jerked to the right. He’d been so
rattled by the fall, so relieved to have landed on something soft,
that he hadn’t bothered to look around him. Now in