I’ve just sent The Night Dancers back to the editor. One final proofread, and its done. Here’s a snippet to be going on with. Mel, dressed as a man, had infiltrated the tower from which her employers’ sons have apparently been escaping at will:
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The evening meal was delivered at seven o’clock—merely bread and water, as the previous investigators had told her. But, as they had also said, the brothers produced wine from somewhere. The pot of soup, too. It had been simmering on the stove all afternoon, but disappeared when the bell rang to announce the arrival of the bread, leaving nothing behind but its enticing smell.
It was magic, two of the agents had claimed. It was collusion with the servants, another hypothesized. The fourth had been too badly beaten to express an opinion, and it would only have been an opinion, for none of the investigators had discovered any evidence.
The marquess had found no wine nor any food when he had had the tower searched after each investigator reported. Indeed, many of the items she had seen in the bedchambers had apparently disappeared between when the other investigators saw them, and when the searches were made.
Magic was unlikely, in Mel’s opinion. She’d certainly never seen objects appear and disappear in a way that defied nature. The tower must have hiding places that the marquess knew nothing about, and if it had hiding places, it might also have hidden ways in and out.
Though if that is the case, why do the marquess’s sons stay? Why do they not just leave? Almost all of them are of age.
Mel accepted a glass of the wine, but made certain to spill it discreetly, for the other investigators must have been drugged somehow, no matter how they denied it. The soup was served from a common pot, so should be safe enough.
Mel returned to her room after dinner, and drank sparingly from the water she had brought with her. She then sat in the chair by the room’s little fireplace, for her intention was to remain awake and thoroughly search at least the public rooms once the brothers had all gone to bed.
Although I am feeling remarkably sleepy. That was her last conscious thought.
When she woke up, her head ached and her thoughts moved sluggishly, as if through a fog. Light was filtering in around the edges of her drapes, and she could hear the muffled hum of conversation.
She forced herself to sit up, hoping it would help. Pain stabbed at her temples, and the room seemed to reel around her for a dizzying moment, but then stabilized. In the dim light, she could see this was not the room at her sister’s house where she lived between assignments.
Oh yes. The tower. The marquess’s sons. They must have managed to drug her, despite her precautions! Well, then. From now on, she’d eat only what she had managed to bring with her in the hidden compartment of her bag, and drink only water.
She pulled back the curtain nearest the bed. From the light, it was early morning. What were the brothers doing out of bed?
Mel wasn’t at all certain she could walk across the room, so she crawled, and opened the door just a crack. Not enough to see, but enough that the voices from below floated up to her ears.
“Ought you to check on Black?” That was Lord Kemble.
“I won’t disturb him. I gave him enough of the drug to knock him out for the night, but he could be stirring about now.” That was Lord Baldwin—the one with medical text books and herbals on his bookshelf. “If we leave him alone, he might sleep as late as we do.”
“Then let’s all go to bed,” Kemble said. “A good night’s work, brothers.”
A night’s work doing what?
