Free Celeste Bradley - [The Liar's Club 02] by The Impostor

street this afternoon as he’d leisurely strolled the square.
    The panel did have hinges and a latch, but it was fixed from the inside with a simple drop hook. Reaching into his jacket pocket while clinging to the fog-dampened ledge one-handed sent his heart racing and made his grin stretch wider.
    The rush that danger sent through his blood made him long for more of this sort of adventure in his life. At that moment, he wished that he might never be forced to total a ledger book or examine a law proposal again.
    He closed his eyes and slid the flattened blade of the tool through the invisible gap between window and frame by feel. The blade slid freely upward for a moment, then caught in the drop latch.
    If he was lucky, the latch would simply flip up and unlock the window. If it was even slightly stuck, he would be looking at a very dangerous climb down the slippery stones of the building.
    The blade would not go further. Patiently, Dalton jiggled it, first slanting it this way, then that. The latch gave suddenly, and the window released toward him with a slight creak.

Chapter Six
    Clara shed herself as she shed her own gown, and settled into the persona of Clara Rose.
    Clara Rose was not the real Rose, of course, for Mr. Wadsworth’s battered chambermaid was entirely too mild and fearful to suit Clara’s mission.
    Her
Rose was a bit on the saucy side, at least in her own mind. She worked hard, but owed no loyalty past that of paid servant. She was brisk and opinionated in the way that Clara had never dared be. Rose would laugh in the face of Beatrice’s demands, and make faces behind Oswald’s back when he waxed overpompous.
    Clara felt the irreverent confidence of Rose seep into her bones. She needed to affect the scuffling fearfulness of the real Rose when others were around, of course. But that Rose would never dare to climb into a cupboard to overhear the master’s private conversations, nor would she make free with the drawers of his lordship’s desk.
    Only Clara Rose had the confidence to sneak a stub of pencil and a scrap of paper into her pocket to make a quick sketch of a visitor, or the crest on a carriage—though most of Mr. Wadsworth’s familiars came in anonymous hackney coaches in the dark of night.
    With quick motions, she tied her apron round her back and turned to dig in the trunk for her cap, searching by feel in the darkness. With her head deep in the trunk, she could hear nothing but her own scuffling movements.
    But the tingle of cool night air across her neck—when had she felt that exact sensation before?—caused her to jerk upright from her search.
    A man stood there, silhouetted against the dim light filtering through the grimy attic window.
    For a moment, she couldn’t grasp the image. It was a trick of the night, a shadow. Just another dark flicker in the corner of her vision, as had happened so often in her attic hiding place.
    But the shadow didn’t fade, didn’t transmute into an old hat-rack, or her own figure in a wavy looking-glass. It was a man, a very large man.
    Clara’s pulse froze still, then raced. She was alone. No one knew she was here. And no one would hear if she screamed.
    The man’s profile turned this way and that. He was listening for her, she realized. She made no sound, not even allowing her breath to rasp the way it most certainly wished to.
    She almost stepped backward and rang her heel into the trunk, but stopped herself just in time. The empty trunk would have boomed like a cannon in the silence.
    The empty trunk.
    Before she even truly completed the thought, she’d hiked her skirts and lifted one foot over the side. If he didn’t know she was there, if she could hide quickly enough—
    She carefully lifted her other foot over the high side of the trunk and lowered herself inside, never taking her eyes off the silhouette that stood mere yards before her. The bottom of the trunk was lined with an old bit of wool and she made no sound as she settled