Page 9 of The Secret Suitor

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room, Millie just behind him.

Sunlight streamed through the window panes, lighting the floor. Nothing seemed out of place.

“There are no nefarious beings hiding behind the drapes,” Wesley said, dropping the offending rose pink fabric.

“Very humorous,” Millie said dryly. “Clearly Betty⁠—”

Her attention was snapped up by the card propped on her mantel. No, not a card. A letter?

“What is it?” Wesley asked, all notes of humor vanished from his tone.

“A letter, I believe.” She lifted the folded paper and turned it over, reading her name across the front in elegant, looping handwriting. She looked it over, but there was no direction on the back, no markings from the post. “It must have come from someone in the house.”

Wesley leaned close, looking over her shoulder, and she could smell a whiff of pine. “I shall leave you to read it in privacy.”

Millie clutched it tightly. “Thank you.”

Wesley strode from the room, closing the door behind him.

Blue wax on the back of the paper had a floral symbol etched into the seal. That was odd. She had never before seen blue wax. Millie cracked it in half and unfolded the paper. A small note was penned in the center of the thick paper.

Miss Hollis⁠—

I have looked forward to this day for a long time. You are uniquely special, and I intend to show you precisely how I feel about you.

—Someone who deeply admires you

Millie blinked, rubbed her eyes, and read the note again. She had an admirer?

She had an admirer!

What did this mean? Could it be… She glanced at the door Wesley had disappeared through and inhaled. No, it wasn’t Wesley, or he would not have been surprised by the letter.

Unless he had been pretending. But no. He did not look at her that way. It was increasingly apparent by the way he mostly ignored her in company but gave other women his full and polite attention. Ladies such as Miss Stroud received the entirety of his focus when she spoke to him at dinner.

Not that Millie had been paying attention to Wesley or his dinner companion last night. Or Wesley and Miss Stroud this morning at breakfast. Millie’s tendré for him was laid to rest ages ago.

Folding up the letter, she tucked it into the pocket of her gown and fastened her pelisse. Now, where had she put her warm gloves?

There was something deeply troubling Wesley about the note Millie found in her bedchamber. The only thing that would appease him, and remove the possible threat from the situation, was if Millie reported that it had been left by her sister. No one else in the house—no one—should have entered her room without her knowledge.

Wesley stood outside her door, hands encased in his warmest gloves and resting behind his back. As the dearest friend to his younger sister, he had an inflated sense of responsibility over Millie he would, admittedly, not feel toward another young woman who was not Nell.

Helena, as much as she loved her sister, had never been the most attentive. Knowing Millie’s parents were not present, Wesley was left with little choice in the matter.

He could not walk away.

Millie opened the door and halted, hand on the doorknob as she looked into his face. “You did not need to wait for me.”

“I could not abandon my post without knowing if the note in your room was any sort of threat.”

Her dark eyebrows slanted up. “I can assure you it is not. How odd of you to consider it.”

He paused, pushing away from the wall. “You seem very confident about that.”

“You do not believe me?”

“A person entered your room without your knowledge. That does not inspire confidence, Mildred.”