Kathy made no attempt to hide her movements. She knew she was being followed. Damn but those Peelers were clumsy. but she simply drove home. Her groom took care of the horse and buggy and she dismissed him for the evening.<br/><br/>Lake House had an interesting history. In the 16th century it was a parsonage. The church itself was burned during the reformation and never rebuilt, but one of the interesting aspects of the Protestant and Catholic monarchies' persecutions of each others' religions was the building of a lot of secret escape tunnels in parsonages.<br/><br/>Of course, this information had been carefully hidden and when her grandparents had purchased the house there had been no record of the secret passage anywhere. Kathy had stumbled upon it quite by accident one day when playing.<br/><br/>And so, she went about her normal evening routine, eating supper, having a brandy and reading, and then when it finally grew dark, she retired to bed. Any observer would see her oil lamp move from room to room, she even went to the bedroom window at one point, to open it slightly. It was a hot, muggy evening and she hoped the watchers were being plagued by mosquitoes coming off the lake in the grounds.<br/><br/>She moved to the bed, lay down and blew out the lamp. and rolled out of bed the other side. She dressed again in her "working clothes". Soft black shoes, black socks, black breeches, a black sweater of the type favoured by men who played that strange new sport of Rugby Football, and topped with a black cap. She took soot from the fireplace and rubbed it on her hands and face.<br/><br/>Then moving by touch alone, made her way carefully and quietly down into the library. The bookshelf at the far right was the one, furthest from the window. The book at the far right of the bottom shelf, "An exigency of convolutions pertaining to parallelism of the Schism", concealed the switch. The bookcase swung silently inwards and she stepped past it, allowing it to close behind her without a sound.<br/><br/>The other end of the tunnel was concealed within a disused barn - disused that is except for Nightmare, stabled there during the day. She smelt her mistress and snorted softly. "Good girl!" Kathy grinned. "We're going to our other place for a while. Would you like that?" She whispered softly to the black mare.<br/><br/>She muffled the horse's hooves with rags, something the mare was well used to. Her black leather pack was concealed within the straw and she pulled it onto her back, then cautiously pulled the barn door open. "Anyone about, girl?" she whispered. The horse snuffed softly, a sign that all was well, and Kathy mounted her bareback and rode silently off into the night.