The corridor outside Miriam's room was very quiet.
Isabella stood in front of the door, the loaded plate balanced in both hands, and did absolutely nothing for a solid fifteen seconds.
She had walked up the stairs with great purpose and arrived here with considerably less. Now she was standing in a hallway holding someone else's breakfast and trying to remember why she had thought this was a good idea.
She shifted the plate to one hand and knocked with the other. What followed was not a response so much as an explosion.
"For the love of—" Miriam's voice came through the door like water through a burst pipe. "How hard is it? How absolutely difficult is it for the people in this house to understand plain English? I said I wanted to be left alone! I said I was not hungry! I said—"
There was the sound of something being knocked over inside the room, followed by a word that would have made Lady Sarah reach for her smelling salts.
