Free The Misfit Marquess by Teresa DesJardien

wedding ring. It could be that she and her fellow could not afford a ring, but Elizabeth suspected she knew the truer story here: that the baby must be that of the master of the house. Why else would a bachelor tolerate the girl's employment despite her obvious state?
    There was nothing extraordinary in a man having his way with a chambermaid—it happened all the time—but drawing attention to the evidence .. . ! Well, that was just another sign of how bizarre this household was.
    Elizabeth shook her head, and the gesture caused the sticking plaster on her forehead to pull a bit. She reached up. finding it was coming loose. She worked the edges off, making a few small noises of discomfort until it came loose and she could place it on the table next to the bed. The maid rose and left the room.
    What to do with the rest of her day? Elizabeth settled back against the pillows, frowning at the lump under her covers that was her bandaged foot. If not for it, she could be on her way, establishing a new life, a new way of going on until such time as she read the announcement of Lorraine's wedding in the papers.
    In the way sound sometimes does, Elizabeth realized that a noise had tiptoed into her conscious understanding. She held her breath until she was assured that, yes indeed, she had heard something. Was it. . . humming? But if it was. it was a strange, muffled humming. She slowly turned her head toward the tapestry, gooseflesh lifting the hair on her nape as she realized the sound came from behind the tapestry, from behind the wall the maid had shown her.
    It was too much. Elizabeth could not remain sitting in the bed, transfixed by an uncomfortable mix of dread and consternation. She must touch the wall for herself.
    She slid from the side of the bed nearest the tapestry, grimacing at pain and a nervous tightening in her stomach that made her breathing rapid and shallow, and balanced on her good foot. Working her way along the mattress, she took small hops down the bed's length, until she could grasp the post at its nether end. She swallowed hard, her ears still tuned to that disembodied, vaguely harmonious humming, and let go of the post. Spreading her arms wide for balance, she hopped once toward the tapestry. She nearly put down her injured foot as she teetered dangerously, but balance was restored, and she dared attempt another hop. The exercise made the heel wound scream with pain, but pain could be overridden by fear.
    Completing four hops away from the bed brought her within reach of a high chair back, which she grasped with relief and a labored sigh. A few more hops forward brought her to the tapestry, which she pulled back from its left side, same as the maid had done.
    Nothing—no window, no door, just as before. There was a line where two strips of wallpaper met, but one slightly lifted edge proved there was nothing but wall behind them.
    Elizabeth shrugged the tapestry over her shoulder, splaying her now free hands against the wall. She inched along the wall's length, scarcely able to see except where combined light from a branch of candles and the fire on the grate barely crept past the edges of the tapestry, but feeling with her fingertips.
    "Ah!" she cried as her fingers found an edge, a crack perhaps, halfway along the wall's length.
    She needed more light by which to see, so she gathered up the heavy tapestry, folding it in her arms, atop her shoulders, piling it on her head. She scrambled to make it stay in place, but it kept insisting on falling from her grasp, its weight and awkward size nearly unmanageable. Perspiration dewed her upper lip and forehead, and a trickle of moisture ran down her back, but the humming just on the other side of the wall persuaded her to try again and again.
    At last she realized she need not hold up the tapestry, but instead turned and pushed against it, hopping forward until she had it extended so far out into the room, nearly to the bed, that light could flood around the