door as she dared. The door had been left ajar: inside, the room was quite dark, but Miss Carter had lit a small lamp, and as Anna peered in, she saw that it had cast out a circle of light, illuminating her like an actress on a stage.
As Anna watched, she saw Miss Carter open the Count’s desk, and begin rifling through his letters and papers. The governess’s lips were moving as though she was muttering to herself, though Anna couldn’t hear what she was saying. After a few moments she took out a single sheet of paper, and laid it flat on the desk under the light.
Anna stared and stared as the governess took out the object she’d dropped into her dressing-gown pocket. It was small and round, and looked rather like a silver watch. But as Anna watched, she held it close to the paper. There was a loud, distinct click. Miss Carter wound the watch and held it out again. Click went the watch, the mechanism loud in the night. Except it wasn’t a watch at all, Anna realised. It was a camera. The governess was photographing private papers from inside the Count’s desk!
She let out a little gasp of surprise, and Miss Carter looked up sharply. She couldn’t see Anna standing in the dark of the hallway, but at once she turned out the lamp, plunging the room into blackness. Frightened now, Anna darted as quickly as she could back along the passageway. But before she could reach the safety of her room, she collided with someone coming the other way, someone tall and solid. She looked up in alarm to see that she’d slammed into a footman, a new one, whom she’d never spoken to before. He looked down at her with an unpleasant sneer on his face.
‘Why are you here, running about in the dark?’ he hissed. ‘You ought to be more careful by yourself at night, Princess.’
Anna stepped back at once, alarmed. Footmen never spoke to her like that – they always bowed respectfully and addressed her as ‘Your Highness’. They certainly would never say ‘Princess’ in that contemptuous way. She was so surprised she couldn’t say a word: meanwhile, the footman only gave a mocking little snigger.
Just then, to Anna’s enormous relief, Karl appeared around a corner. ‘Your Highness! What are you doing out of bed in the cold, and without any bedroom slippers? Whatever would Her Ladyship say?’ he clucked. He gave the new footman a doubtful look. ‘You can go – I’ll take care of Her Highness,’ he informed him. Then, more reassuringly to Anna: ‘Come along. Back into bed for you.’
But even when Karl had brought Anna back to her own bedroom, and she was tucked up safely in her own bed again, sleep felt very far away. There was no doubt about it, she thought as she lay wide awake in the dark. There were strange things happening at Wilderstein Castle. Strangest of all, she was now quite sure that the new English governess was a spy.
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