Free London Calling by Anna Elliott

spare the carriage‌—‌I believe I should like to take a drive to Russell Square tonight.”
    “Of course.” Ruth smiled again. “I will not wait up for you. But I shall ask Snell to leave the kitchen door unlatched.”
     
    #
     
    Susanna’s heart was pounding hard enough to resound through her fingertips when she alighted from the carriage in Russell Square. She swallowed and turned to the coachman.
    “Thank you. You need not wait for me.”
    The coachman, a ruddy-faced, grandfatherly sort of man of sixty-odd, looked doubtful. As well he might, leaving her alone on a darkened street at nearly twelve o’clock at night. But he clucked to the horses and rolled away, and Susanna let out her breath.
    She would prefer not to have an audience for what she was about to do. Especially, she reflected wryly, if she were to be proven wrong about the identity of M. de Castres, and broke into the home of a complete stranger now.
    Russell Square appeared silent and deserted. The warmth of the day had faded, and the night was now cold with the chill, biting wind of autumn. Despite her heavy cloak, Susanna shivered as she made her way towards the northern edge of the Square and Woburn Place.
    She had not, of course, obtained exact directions from Mrs. Careme. But there were only three houses near the corner of Woburn place. In the windows of two, she could see lights and figures moving to and fro‌—‌evidently the occupants were hosting late-night supper parties or other entertainments. The third house stood entirely dark, its windows not only without lights but shuttered against the outside world.
    A house, Susanna thought, that looked as though it might be guarding secrets.
    And besides, Miss Fanny had described the house as a white marble monstrosity. The other two houses were built of gray stone. Only the third house gleamed, white as pearl, in the moonlight.
    Teeth chattering, Susanna approached the house and began to edge her way around its perimeter, testing each of the shutters. All proved bolted, and by the time she reached the back of the house, Susanna’s nerves were prickling and she expected at every moment to hear the cry of some night watchman demanding to know what she was about.
    At the rear of the house stood a garden‌—‌scarcely more than a square patch of grass and a minute flower bed, dry and withered-looking at this time of year. But there was a tree, a spreading poplar with its branches growing quite close to the house. And as Susanna tilted her head back, following the tree’s outlines upwards with her gaze, she saw with a thump of her heart that a window on the second floor of the house was partly open.
    If she had stopped to consider, she might have hesitated‌—‌but she did not let herself stop. Grasping the lowest of the tree’s branches, Susanna scrambled up, encumbered by the folds of her cloak until she wrapped them about her arm.
    Once as she made her way upwards a branch cracked with a noise that sounded like a thunderclap. But though it swayed alarmingly, the poplar tree held her weight, and soon she was actually gripping the sill of the opened window.
    Susanna paused, sparing a moment for the devout hope that she was right about the house‌—‌and for that matter, that she was correct about the real identity of M. de Castres.
    Then she pushed the window upwards. It was awkward trying to balance on the uneven tree branch while lifting the sash, and she nearly lost her balance. But the window had been recently waxed; it lifted easily and almost without a sound. Heart pounding, Susanna hoisted herself up and over the windowsill, then dropped to the floor of the room inside.
    And then she let out her breath. She was in a bedroom. A large room, stretching away from her towards the front of the house in a long rectangular shape. A single candle had been left burning on the room’s mantlepiece, showing her the shadowed outlines of a big mahogany wardrobe and an old-fashioned