This was tricky.
Kitchen staff and servants would be swarming this area all night replenishing the stock for the activity above. If she could find a way past them, get down to the wine cellar and out again then she would be home free.
Trouble was going by unnoticed.
And Amber was not the sort of girl to go unnoticed.
The seconds she spent staring at the kitchen entryway from her corner couldn't be going by any slower. There had to be a gap she could slip in between sometime!
Gloved fingers press against her lips in the attempt to keep the gasp that had slipped almost entirely from being heard.
There it was, and there was no time to lose.
Clutching skirts in hand and hitching them higher than would be considered proper in polite company, Amber takes off in a run, or as much a run as she could manage as she crouched. She slips round the doorframe without being spotted and takes position behind the first hiding space to be seen from gazing into the room: a pile of sacked potatoes.
The sound of pots and pans clattering against one another cause her to get close to the burlap. So long as she didn't knock anything over, she could have a moment to rest here and think about which direction to take. Anywhere away from the typical sounds of a kitchen would be for the best.
He purposefully walks in the opposite direction he had seen Amber take, his hands wringing together. As far as the ball was concerned, Desmond did not have any plans to return inside anytime soon.
And why should he anyway? He would only end up uncomfortably closed in by a gaggle of strangers. No, he was better off out here away from all that.
