Eloquence managed to temper his excitement for just a second, forcing him to give a sensible, sensitive nod at the advice about not snooping around the servants’ quarters. His first instinct might have been to go nosy around the servant’s bedrooms or the kitchen itself, but she was right. Besides, Belfor might have been even more cautious than that.

Still, he grinned behind Loq’s back as she jumped up quite as keenly as he had, and then fashioned his face into something more serious and thoughtful for her benefit as he considered where to start, looking left and right down the hallway. The house couldn’t have changed all that much since those days - redecorated, maybe - but nowhere was leaping to Nelson’s mind as obvious hiding-place-for-a-footman’s-things. Maybe they needed a new point of view.

He put up a hand to beckon his sister after him, and then carefully pulled open the doorway that led to one of the servants’ back staircases. He looked at her with wide eyes in case she protested, trying to put forth the innocent idea that a staircase wasn’t anywhere so private it was snooping. And probably no one would be around in the time it took them to go up and down them - at the very least, it might put them in a footman’s mindset, going about his day.

---