Midnight Honor

in the next five minutes.
    Anne looked down. Her skirt was crumpled where her hands had crushed the fabric. While she absently tried to smooth the creases, she turned her head and glanced out the window at the panorama of stars smeared across the sky, wondering how everything could look so lovely and tranquil when her entire world had just been turned upside down.
    Something … a noise, a rustle, a soft squeak of a floorboard … intruded on Anne's thoughts and she frowned. She stared at the curtain for a long moment, then edged forward on silent toes to peer cautiously through the fringed edges, wondering if, unbeknownst to her, one of the officers had remained behind. Forbes had locked something in his desk, nervous that it was in his possession. Perhaps he had left someone behind to guard it.
    She heard the sound again and bit off a scream as something small and furry darted under the hem of her skirt and scampered out the other side.
    “Jesus God in heaven!” she gasped, clapping a hand to her breast. It was a mouse. A damned mouse!
    She lashed out with her foot, accomplishing little more than stubbing her toe and tangling a heel in the bottom hoop of her farthingale. Extricating it brought forth another muttered curse, after which she pushed one panel of the curtains aside and ducked back into the main room, happy to leave the rodent with sole possession of the alcove.
    The library appeared as it had before, though darker now that the outer doors were closed. A very faint undercurrent of sound filtered through the silence, indicating the ball was getting under way overhead. Musicians would be tuning their instruments. Footmen would be weaving their way through the guests, balancing silver trays laden with wine and punch. The chairs set around the perimeter would already be occupied by the crones and matrons, their fans cooling their faces, their heads tilting together over a choice remark about the fabric ofsomeone's gown, or another's shocking display of cleavage. The soldiers would be inspecting the women, trying to decide who would most likely accompany them into a shadowy corner and relieve a few lusty needs.
    Anne's gaze wandered down to the Lord President's desk. It was a massive, solid affair built with deep drawers on each side of the wide kneehole. The top two drawers on either side had small brass lockplates, as did the long flat one in the center; almost without thinking, she reached up and withdrew a thin steel pin from her hair.
    Running her fingertips along the smooth, polished wood, she glanced at the door again, then bent over and, with a steady hand, fed the end of the pin into the center lock. It was a simple, single ratchet mechanism not unlike the one in Angus's study, and it gave on the second turn.
    The drawer slid open soundlessly and Anne peered inside. There were papers—half-written letters, mostly; none of them seeming important enough to come from a late-night courier—several sticks of sealing wax, and two large gold stamps, one embossed with the Forbes coat of arms, the other with his seal of office. The drawer on the left opened as easily, and it contained a second locked box which took all of two seconds to work open. The sight of a sizeable cache of gold coins barely caused a twitch in the set of her jaw, nor did the contents of the third and final locked drawer.
    Frowning, Anne glanced over the top of the desk at the door before sinking down in a crush of silk skirts. She had distinctly heard Forbes turning a key in a lock, but the other drawers opened without effort.
    It was when she was pushing the last one back into place that she noticed the oddity. The drawers on the left pedestal were much shorter than those on the right; they were barely as deep as the length between her palm and elbow, whereas those in the other bank could accommodate her arm from fingertip to shoulder. She ducked down and searched again, finding nothing on the first pass of her hand. On the second, with the help of a candle hastily lit with flint and tinder, she felt the scar of a small keyhole embedded in the wood and, beside it, the faint line of a seam that, if one did not know where to look, would appear to be part of the grain.
    “Clever bastard,” she muttered, confirming her suspicion by peering at the outer side of the desk, where the ornate carvings and curlicues concealed two thin hinges discolored with a dark patina to blend into the carved patterns on the wood.
    Wasting no more time