Too Sinful to Deny by Erica Ridley

in the mirror, but her face was hidden as always behind a cascade of tea-colored frizz.
    “Lady B-beaune,” Janey stammered when she returned at last to the daunting task of Susan’s hair, “never did have too many of what one might call . . . friends.”
    Susan all but purred at this bit of knowledge. Persons without friends were persons with Stories.
    “And why is that, if I might ask?” She bit back a yelp as several strands of hair snapped from her scalp.
    “Begging your pardon, mum. Pardon. It’s just I—well, I can’t rightly say why that is, mum. Imagine only Lady Beaune herself keeps the wherefores of all that past history.”
    Susan could scarce sit still in her chair. Unless her gossip senses were mistaken (and her gossip senses were never mistaken), her lady’s maid had just delivered a barefaced lie.
    Janey knew the truth good and well but was clearly unwilling to part with that information. Susan would have to uncover the sordid details herself. Which, as it happened, was one of her favorite activities. The best source of information was always . . . well, the source itself.
    “Where might I find Lady Beaune, would you say?”
    “F-find Lady Beaune?” Janey echoed faintly.
    Susan gave her most encouraging nod, which succeeded in divesting her of another strand of hair, but she no longer felt the sting. All she felt was the blood-warming allure of a scandal to be uncovered.
    “I suppose . . . she might be found . . . out in the gravesite.”
    “Out in the—” A chill shivered along Susan’s flesh. “What gravesite? Where?”
    Janey swallowed audibly. “Out back.”
    “Out back? What do you mean, out back? By the rock garden?”
    “In it, rather. That is to say, some of those rocks are more rightly called . . . graves, mum.”
    Susan shot to her window and jerked open the sash. A gravesite. Here, at Moonseed Manor. She herself had walked through that very “rock garden” when she’d followed Mr. Bothwick to the trail at the cliff ’s edge. Had she stepped on the final resting places of the dead? Was that who—and why—they plagued her? Perhaps if she apologized, begged them to stop . . .
    “Shall I . . . shall I finish your hair, then, mum?”
    Susan turned around as if in a trance, her mind moving too quickly for her eyes to process what they were seeing. “No, no, I don’t think so. I think I’d best go right now and see these graves for myself. And speak to Lady Beaune, of course. Why does she tend the gravesite? Isn’t there a gardener with that duty? Not that it’s my business. I daresay—”
    She caught sight of her reflection, and her limp mane of half-straight, half-curled hair. She twisted it to the nape of her neck and secured it with the first comb in hand’s reach, never mind that the pearls didn’t quite match the flowered sprigs embroidered on her morning dress. She tried to ignore the pang of guilt at Janey’s strangled squeak as she watched her mistress undo all her hard labor with the single turn of a wrist.
    “It’s lovely, Janey, truly,” Susan assured her. She’d have left the maid a sovereign if her parents hadn’t left her penniless. Come to think of it . . . “Has a letter arrived for me, perchance? From London?”
    If Janey blinked at this change in topic, it was impossible to tell beneath the mass of trembling hair. Her tone, however, could only be described as wounded. “No, mum. Nothing’s come for you, or I’d have brought it with me.”
    “Oh. Of course you would’ve.” Susan mentally chastised herself for her second gaffe in as many minutes. She needed to keep as many allies as possible, and it was probably still too soon for mail. “Pardon my distraction. I’m just eager to hear from my parents . . . and to speak with Lady Beaune at last.”
    “Family is important,” Janey agreed after only the briefest of pauses. “There is that.”
    Susan had the impression her lady’s maid had wanted to say something quite different. But Janey