The notebook lit up in the middle of the night.
Priscilla had not left the table. She had dozed sitting upright, the lamp turned low, and now a thin silver glow was seeping out from under the cover, along the stylus she had left lying across it.
She opened it to the page Idena had paired with her own. Ink was already crawling across it in the maid's small hand, a few streets away.
The glasshouse behind the old botanical wing. Third bell.
She will come alone.
That was all. Priscilla read it twice, looking for the word Idena had left out, and found it in the empty space below. A name on a page could be read by anyone who got hold of it.
Idena would have written more if it were anyone else. A different girl would have needed a warning, and a refusal would have needed a reason. Two short lines meant none of that had happened, so the one who was coming was the one on Priscilla's list, the girl who had stood in that corridor and counted doors.
'So it's her.'
