An Adventure. If he was very quiet, Nicholas reasoned, he could creep through the whole house today without anyone noticing him.
They all thought he was asleep, tucked snugly into the little bed he had started sleeping in recently, or at most that he might have gotten up to play with his toys or look at the pictures in a book. Instead, though, he had walked over to the nursery door, and to his delight, it had opened, giving him a rare window of access to the wide world of Outside, Without Adult Supervision.
Of course, a problem had rapidly become apparent: not being entirely sure which way to go after a certain point. Just about the time he had considered sitting down and crying loudly until someone found him, though, and returned him to the safety of the nursery, he had heard footsteps on the stairs, and this had been followed by the appearance of May! She had been carrying a tray and had not seemed to notice him, and so he had begun creeping after her, being very quiet, thinking that if worst came to worst, he could hide inside the pocket of her robes and wait for a chance to slip back out when she was distracted again.
Unless, of course, he just got in her pocket to ride along for a while, because it turned out that his house was very big. He went on walks every day with May and his brother, of course, and sometimes with his mother or father or both, because he was a big boy and didn't need to be pushed about in a pram anymore, but those walks were never this long.
He paused when May did, in her case so she could open a door. She walked through it and nudged it almost shut with her foot. Almost, but not quite, and by creeping closer to the gap, he was able to hear her say, "Good morning, Mrs. Pierce."
Nicholas's eyes widened. He knew who Mrs. Pierce was. That was one of the things other adults called his mother. He and Alexander called her Mama or Mommy, and sometimes other adults did too if Alexander or Nicholas was in the room, but most adults called her 'Mrs. Pierce' and some of them sometimes called her 'Alicia'. He didn't hear 'Alicia' as much as 'Mrs. Pierce,' but he remembered that one because it sounded so much like his brother's name. However hard he tried to make his name sound like the name adults sometimes called Dad, though, it never quite did, which was a bit of a disappointment.
"Good morning, Maeve," said his mother's voice, sounding further away. "You can put that down right there, thank you."
There were more footsteps, and then, distantly, the sound of something being poured. Cautiously, he slipped through the door and found himself in the big room where his parents slept. It made sense to him that their bed was much bigger than his - they were, after all, both much bigger than him, and for some reason (Mama said it was because sometimes married people just did this, and when he had asked why, she had laughed and said that it was because he had to have something to ask questions about, despite knowing full well he had plenty of questions about other things, too) slept in the same bed, which meant it had to be as big as both of them - but he never could understand why it was so high up in the air. He and Alexander both had beds close to the floor, with rails around them to make sure they didn't fall out of them at night. Did married people have some special ability not to fall out of bed, too? And not to be a little nervous about being so high in the air all night? He couldn't even get onto their bed without help, it was too tall.
Somehow or other, however, his mother must have gotten out of it, because neither she nor his nanny were in the bedroom. Instead, they seemed to be in the room to the side where Mama kept her clothes and things. So he tiptoed across the heavy carpet toward that door and peered in, looking around for a moment before he found anything to look at other than the blue walls and the white, swirly legs of his mother's dressing table.
His mother, when he found her, was seated on the blue and white bench, wearing a shapeless, silky-looking garment with pink flowers all over it and sipping from a teacup. It must have been tea he had heard being poured, then - he assumed May had done the pouring, as she always poured things for him and Alexander. The sun was shining through a picture window and glowed against his mother's dark hair, making it as shiny as the perennially attractive (he might or might not remember gnawing upon them, once, which had made her very cross) pair of rings she always wore on the same finger; looking closely, he spotted those, too. He wanted to go to her and play with the rings and her hair, but Maeve's dark dress blocked his view for a moment and reminded him that he was supposed to be sneaking before May sat down on a chair facing Mama.
"Do you have the schedule for this week?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Okay, good." There was rustling, movement. "As far as I know the committee meetings are all still set, so we can count on those - if I don't mention it tomorrow, remind me that I need to ask Mr. Pierce if he wants to have this year's picture taken around my birthday or if he'd rather wait until his. I usually think the boys look better in their spring clothes than their autumn ones, but they're growing so fast at this rate...."
"I'm sure they'll look very handsome either way, Mrs. Pierce."
"Of course," said Mama, and he could tell she liked that May had said that. "Okay, so, what else...I need to make arrangements for a tea for the Horticultural Society ladies after the regional public greenhouses are reopened, so if you could get together those catalogues for me during the boys' nap, that would be fantastic. I'll work on that tonight after they go to sleep and post orders in the morning. Also, I..." something hit the floor, making Nicholas flinch, and then he heard rolling. "Dammit," muttered Mama, and she bent to the floor to pick up a pencil and ended up looking Nicholas straight in the eyes.
"Nicholas!" she straightened up and had crossed the room and opened the door before he could get very far away from it. She scooped him up off the floor, her hair falling into his face as she did. It smelled very sweet, the way it usually did when she came to oversee him and Alexander while they had breakfast; she smelled about the same way when she came to visit with them and read stories before they went to sleep, but the scent was always weaker then, mixed with warm skin instead of overpowering it. "What on earth are you doing here? How did you get - where is your brother?"
Nicholas shrugged. "I don't know. Bed maybe."
Somehow, this answer didn't seem to please his mother. She turned back toward her dressing room quickly. Nicholas laughed as the rapid movement made the glass bottles and tubs on the dressing table sparkle like rainbows, and turned their reflections, just for a second, into blurs. "Never mind the schedule - Nicky must have broken the wards, now we have to find Alexander!"