For instance, in the States, Mira has probably never seen a rabbit wearing an apron and bonnet. And yet, there it is, bouncing through the streets of Oxford carrying a little basket. 

It takes a large antique pocket-watch out of its apron pocket, checks the time, and jumps about a foot in the air.

"Oh no! I'm going to be late!" it cries in a tiny, high-pitched voice. 

--Yep that's weird.

She has a moment of--divisiveness--in reaction, but they both agree that following it is the right option.

No-one else seems to have noticed anything unusual. 

The rabbit hops away down a narrow, winding side-street. It seems to be unaware of Mira. 

As it bounds along - at quite a speed - it mutters to itself, "I'm late, I'm late I'm late I'm late..." and occasionally tugs at one ear with its free paw. 

Late for what? Well, they'll see when they get there.

These streets are narrow and twisty, and it's not easy to keep up, but Mira can stay a few seconds behind the rabbit if she tries. 

That is, until it turns an unexpected corner and disappears into an alleyway.  

She follows it into the alleyway.

She's just in time to see it jump down a manhole-sized opening in the ground at the end of the alley.

It was in such a hurry that its bonnet flew off, and is now lying crumpled in the mud near the hole.

There is no-one else in sight. 

This is probably not the wisest thing ever.

She does it anyway, grabbing the bonnet and jumping down the hole.

She falls.

Very quickly, however, the fall turns into a slide, the hole becomes a spiralling slope beneath her. She can see the rabbit, further down the same tunnel. 

Every so often, there are things attached to the walls of the tunnel. There's a painting - oops, it's gone, here's a bookshelf - 

What on Earth...?

After less than a minute of this, the tunnel opens up, without any warning whatsoever, and dumps her out to start falling again down a much wider passage. This one still has random objects stuck to the walls, like that chair sticking out sideways, and those stuffed toys arranged in various gravity-defying poses. 

The rabbit pulls out a parasol from...somewhere...and opens it, floating down rather more sedately.

"Hello?" she calls out to it.

"Eeep!" is the response.

The rabbit, now drifting level with Mira's feet, twists around to look at her. 

"H-how did you get down here?" She sounds alarmed. 

"Followed you."

"Oh no."

The little rabbit tugs on her ear again with the paw not holding her parasol; the basket is looped around her elbow. 

"Oh dear oh dear oh dear - "

"...And I found your bonnet," she offers.

"Oh! Thank you!" she squeaks, now level with Mira's waist and able to see the bonnet in her hand. 

"I didn't even notice I'd dropped it, where - "

"Right outside the hole."

"Oh, well, thank you!"

The rabbit blinks up at her.

"Um, I forgot to introduce myself - I'm the White Rabbit, messenger to the Queen," she says, bobbing a curtsey, which looks rather peculiar in mid-air. 

"Mira Xavier. What queen?"

Slooow blink.

"Huh, I guess you wouldn't have heard of - " she realises, before drawing herself up officiously into a formal posture, and adopting a much more confident tone than she has been speaking in. 

"Her Gracious Majesty, Queen Marcella the First, sovereign by right over all Wonderland," she pronounces grandly, and looks at Mira for a response. 

"Wonderland?"

She points downwards, into the darkness below them.

"That's where we're headed right now - where I come from. You jumped down the hole and you didn't even know where it led?"

She sounds equal parts impressed and scandalised. 

"What was I going to do, see a talking rabbit and not find out what was going on?"

"Huh. Most people don't notice me at all."

They are still drifting gently downwards through the strange tunnel. This section seems to be a cylindrical library, the walls entirely lined with books. 

"I have no explanation."

Below them, the darkness opens out into Mira's first view of Wonderland.

It looks, from above, like a giant chessboard, with alternating darker and lighter squares of forests and fields separated by roads, rivers and hedges. In the centre rises what must be the Queen's palace, a shining spire of black and white marble surrounded by a labyrinth. 

Their course looks to be landing them just outside the labyrinth, near one of its gates. 

"--Whoah."

The White Rabbit nods. 

"Impressive, isn't it - whoops!"

A gust of wind catches her parasol and attempts to sweep her up and away from Mira, but she manages to grab onto Mira's hair.

"Sorry! Oh my gosh I'm so sorry did that hurt - "

"Only a little, it's fine," she says, wincing slightly.

They are still quite a long way above the ground, and could easily be blown apart if they were not connected. 

"Um - maybe if you - hold on to my basket?"

She grabs the basket.

As soon as it's clear she has a good grip, the White Rabbit lets go of her hair.

They are now level with the top of the palace, and drifting downwards at a pace that will have them on the ground in a minute or so. The White Rabbit pulls out her pocket-watch to check the time.

"Oh no, I'm ever so late!" Putting the watch away, she fumbles with her parasol and manages to close it, speeding up their descent a little. 

"Late for what?"

"I have to report to Her Majesty," she explains. 

"I wish I could stop and help you find somewhere to stay, first, but I really can't spare the time - "

She frowns, wiggling her nose as she thinks. "You...could come with me, I suppose..." 

"Would that get you in trouble?"

She thinks about it, and is still thinking as they land lightly on the grass. 

"I'll be in trouble anyway, if anyone finds out you followed me here," she says, thinking aloud as much as talking to Mira.

"But if I bring you straight to the Queen, it won't look like I was trying to hide it. So, I might be in less trouble?"

"--Okay."

"Okay."

The White Rabbit straightens her apron, tucks her parasol away in her basket, and holds out a paw for her bonnet.

"Um, it's this way." She gestures with one ear in the direction of the nearest labyrinth entrance.

She hands her the bonnet and starts walking towards the entrance.

She fusses with the bonnet as they walk, finally getting it placed and re-tied just as they approach the gate.

It does not appear to be guarded, but the sections of hedge sticking out on either side are cut into the shape of two large horse's heads, much bigger than life size. The White Rabbit pulls out a card from her pocket and - shows it - to one of the horse heads. 

"This is, um, Mira," she says to it. "I'm, er, taking her to see the Queen?"

The head nods, leaves rustling and branches creaking.

This seems to set off a chain reaction in the labyrinth, with creaks and rustles spreading out through the hedges and growing fainter into the distance. 

"Fascinating," she murmurs.

"Huh, really? I'm used to it."

She puts the card back in her pocket and hops forward between the two horses, preparing to enter the labyrinth. 

"Um, you should probably stick fairly close to me? Otherwise you might get lost. And that would be bad." 

"Got it."

They set off through the labyrinth.

It's fairly dark, and a little claustrophobic; the hedges are much higher than Mira's head, and there's probably only just room for three people to walk side by side. The path twists and turns, with the palace sometimes appearing on the left, sometimes on the right. 

"So, um," she says after a while.

"Do you have any questions? About what's going to happen when we get there, or anything?"

"Yeah, what is this place? Besides 'Wonderland'."

"Uh..."

She stops for a second, then remembers she's late and starts walking again.

"I...what? Sorry, I - don't understand the question?"

"...What's it like? How did we get here? What was that tunnel thing?"

"The tunnel is, um, it's a way between the worlds?" She scratches her ear.

"Uh, people call it the Rabbit's Hole, because I'm the one who uses it. I go up to the surface world and collect - things. For the Queen."

"What kinds of things?"

The rabbit's ears droop.

"I probably shouldn't tell you. It's supposed to be secret," she says apologetically. 

"Huh." She'll leave that be for the moment, then. "So is this place literally underground?"

"I think so? All the passageways we've found lead up, at least."

Walk walk walk. This sure is a big labyrinth. It's hard to tell how close they are to the exit, what with all the turns. 

"The sky looks the same in both places, though." And indeed it does, if Mira decides to look up at the narrow strip of sky she can see between the hedges. 

"The fact that sky can be seen at all is interesting."

"Yes, that's - what I meant to say." 

She hops along in silence for a few seconds.

"Um...did you have more questions? I feel like you had more questions."

"I'm not quite sure where to start! I think some of them are probably insensitive--but you have magic here?"

"Yes!" she confirms, bouncing slightly more than usual.

"The Queen has a lot of it, and she gives it out to her favourite servants. I don't have any, it's too dangerous for it to be taken out of Wonderland."

"Is the Queen the only source of it? Why is it dangerous to take it out of Wonderland?"

"Her Majesty is the only one who knows how to get magic out of Hearts," the rabbit explains. 

"It's dangerous because we don't know if it would work the same outside Wonderland, and even if it did, there's a risk I might drop a Heart and it would get lost. If that happens here, the Queen can just send her servants to get it back."

"What do you mean by Hearts?"

"They're kind of - hard to explain?" 

She thinks. "You'll see some when you meet the Queen; she's always wearing a few round her neck. They're called Hearts because of their shape - they're jewels, not actual hearts. That would be disgusting!" Shudder.

"If you touch one, you can cast a spell from it, then it takes a while to come back, I don't know exactly how long. I think different Hearts do different things, but I don't know much about them? I've never used one."

"Huh. Where do they come from?"

"I'm not sure." 

She looks slightly worried, ears going almost flat.

"I've...never asked?"

"I...guess I could see you wouldn't really have a reason to."

"Exactly!" Her ears perk back up with relief that Mira understands. 

"I don't really need to know, do I, if I'm not using them? I'm sorry I can't answer more of your questions, though..."

Up ahead, a gap is visible in the hedges, through which the palace can be seen. 

"And if you've known about all this all your life it wouldn't seem an obvious curiosity."

"I suppose," she agrees.

"Oh - there's probably a lot of stuff I'm leaving out because I think it's obvious - " 

She tugs at one of the ribbons on her bonnet, not quite pulling it out of its bow. It seems to be a nervous habit. 

"Well, of course. I'm the one who wants to know, that makes thinking of the right questions my problem."

"Um. Alright." 

The White Rabbit doesn't seem to know what to say to this.

"So...what else would you like to know, before we get to the palace?" They do seem to be approaching the end of the labyrinth, now. 

"What's the Queen like?"

"Oh, well...she's the Queen?" the White Rabbit begins.

"I'm not sure what you want to know about her. She's beautiful, by all accounts, and she's very good at magic... She's supposed to be a better ruler than the Red King, but I'm not old enough to know if that's true."

"I meant more in terms of personality."

"Well..." 

She seems a little hesitant to answer, but gives it a go.

"She's - not nice, that's not the point; it's not...'nice' isn't what a queen's for? I'm not explaining this very well." Her ears flap as she shakes her head.

"Um...she likes being shown respect, I guess? She - it's not that she's not emotional, I'm sure, she just never shows it - "

They've reached the edge of the labyrinth, and are about to pass through another gate like the one at the entrance. This one is guarded by a pair of topiary dogs. 

"Huh. Alright."

In front of them, a path leads from the gate up to the base of the palace steps. The palace itself gleams in the inexplicable sunlight, accentuated with the glints off the guards' helmets and spears. 

These guards, one on each side of the massive double doors, appear to be human, and are dressed identically in white tabards and steel helmets, the only difference being the number of the symbols on their chests. The one on the left has two of the symbols, which look like little stylized black trees, and the one on the right has three, in both cases arranged in a diagonal line from shoulder to opposite hip. 

"I'll come with you as far as the throne room," the White Rabbit explains, "since I'm going there anyway. But we can't talk much more now, when there'll be guards or servants around the whole time. Someone might overhear part of something, and get the wrong idea."

"Makes sense."

She hops up the steps towards the guards, checks over her shoulder to make sure Mira is following, and tells them, "This is a surface worlder who fell through the Rabbit Hole by accident; I'm taking her to the Queen."

They nod in unison, and open the doors. 

She goes in, barely pausing. 

Mira follows.

The inside of the palace is just as impressive as the outside. It continues the theme of black and white marble, with the addition of red as an accent colour in the form of rich satin wall hangings and a strip of plush carpet. 

They pass through corridors lined with pillars and frescoes and tapestries, the latter of which provide a greater variety of colour although red still features prominently. A common subject is a red-haired woman with a crown, defeating various monsters and other evil-looking foes. 

Hmm. Not very creative.

Fortunately, the decor is unaware of her opinions.

After not too long, they arrive at another set of double doors, these ones flanked by two unarmed servants. Their white tabards have differently-shaped black tree symbols: these ones look like more like upside-down hearts. The one on the left has three, in the same diagonal pattern, and the one on the right has four arranged in a square. 

The White Rabbit gives them the same explanation as the last set. They glare suspiciously at Mira. 

...Playing card suits? Interesting.

Apparently satisfied, the servants haul open the doors, revealing a grand room bustling with people. It's the most colour she's seen so far in Wonderland: every figure is richly dressed in bright fabrics and festooned with glittering jewellery. They are dancing to music provided by a small group of musicians in the corner. 

At the far end of the room, fleetingly visible through the crowd, is a raised dais draped in scarlet. As Mira stands in the entrance, a figure stands up from the dais and raises a hand.

The music stops. After a few moments of confusion, so do the dancers. 

The White Rabbit hops fearlessly into the room, weaving through the assembled humans to find the shortest path to the dais. 

People move out of her way a little, when they notice, and a few more move to let Mira follow her. 

Oookay this is. Fancier than she was expecting. 

She follows.

Standing atop the dais is a tall woman in a fur-lined cloak. The train pooling on the floor looks like a puddle of blood.

Her crown is set with a heart-shaped red gem a little smaller than a clenched fist, and more like it are strung about her neck and around her belt. 

"Welcome, stranger," she says to Mira. "I am Marcella, Queen of Wonderland. What brings you to my realm?" 

She bows deeply, sliding to one knee as she does so. Overdoing the formality is probably safer than underdoing it. 

"My name is Mira Xavier, Your Majesty," she says carefully. "I noticed your emissary while she was returning, and followed, overcome by curiosity."

"You may rise," she allows, with a hint of amusement in her voice. 

"Come, sit with me," the Queen continues, snapping her fingers for a servant to bring Mira a chair, "and tell me what you have seen of my kingdom. Oh, and bunny dear?" she says to the rabbit. "You may report to me in my study tomorrow morning."

The White Rabbit nods vigorously, and bounces away. 

A chair is found and placed next to the throne. The Queen resumes her seat, and gestures that Mira should take the other. 

She sits. "I haven't seen much," she admits. "A view of the landscape on the way down, mostly, and the labyrinth between where we landed and your palace."

"And what do you think of them?" the Queen asks, smiling.

Her manner suggests that she personally created every inch of the place, and is looking for compliments on her work. 

"The landscape is very regular. You get a sort of--patchy effect--sometimes, on Earth, but mostly just with farmland, and it's not that neat. The labyrinth was visually interesting; I'm certainly not qualified to comment on the magic behind it."

"The labyrinth has been a pet project of mine for some time," she admits, "although I am not responsible for all of its innovations. What did you see of its magic?" 

"Just the topiary guards, but those are impressive enough to someone who didn't know magic existed yesterday."

"Ah, yes. I'm fondest of the knights at the outer gate, myself." 

The music has tentatively resumed, and the whispering of the crowd grows to a contented buzzing as the dancers begin anew. 

"I confess, I find myself at a loss as to how any society could possibly do without magic. Would you mind indulging my curiosity a little?"

"Oh, well--I don't really know what you use it for, but we have all kinds of nonmagical technology."

"Perhaps an example," the Queen muses. 

"How would your world deal with...some new sickness, say? A plague, or an epidemic?"

"Vaccinations, mostly. That means taking dead pathogens and injecting them into people so their bodies learn to fight the disease off. Surprisingly effective, from the description."

"How bizarre," is her only comment for a moment or two.

"And - what is a 'pathogen'?" She mimics Mira's pronunciation, dropping out of her British accent for a moment to do so. 

"Pathogens are tiny creatures smaller than the eye can see that cause diseases."

"Curious. But let us not become mired in detail," the Queen says. 

"Tell me, if you would, about...transportation. What distances must one cross, on the surface, and how is it done?"

"Must? It depends on one's lifestyle. Most people need travel only a few dozen miles or less, most days, and for that you use a car or a bicycle or a bus or a subway; sometimes you have to cross hundreds of miles and use a train or an airplane, and sometimes you have to cross an ocean and then you need an airplane or a boat."

"Fascinating. An 'airplane' is some kind of flying thing, I suppose, but I fear you will need to explain most of the others."

She adds a slight self-deprecating twist, as if ashamed of her ignorance.

"May I have pen and paper with which to draw them?"

"But of course. In fact, we should retire to my study, where I keep such things," she decides.

She starts to rise from her seat...

...and the doors swing open, hitting the walls with a bang. 

The music falters and dies; the dancers sweep hastily out of the way, clearing a path between the doors and the throne.

A black-cloaked figure strides into the room, glancing neither left nor right as he makes his way directly to the foot of the dais and kneels.

...Okay. She will also make sure to be out of the way, then.

She is sufficiently out of the way that neither the Queen nor the newcomer is paying her any attention. 

"Well?" is all the Queen asks.

Apparently this is enough of a prompt. The kneeling man pushes back his hood, revealing a face not much older than Mira's own, and begins to speak.The room is silent, every ear straining to catch his words. 

"My Queen, I have failed you." His voice is utterly emotionless, his face similarly blank. 

"I lost the trail in the Hall Woods, three hours ago, and could not regain it. The renegades escaped." 

He bows his head, and waits for the Queen's response.

Well.

"Oh, my dear." Her voice practically drips with sympathy. 

"How unfortunate. But I am entertaining a guest just now," she continues, "so you shall have to give a full report later."

She makes a show of taking out her pocket-watch and checking the time.

"I shall expect you in the green room in three hours' time."

"Yes, my Queen."

He bows his head in acknowledgement, but makes no other motion.

"You are dismissed." 

He leaves.

"Now," says the Queen, turning back to Mira. "Where were we?"

"--Uh. Retiring to your study, if I recall correctly?"

"Ah, yes. You wanted paper with which to draw your world's strange transportation devices."

She rises, flicking her train into place with a careless wave of her hand. 

"Follow me." 

She follows her.

The Queen's study goes lighter on the black-and-white theme than the rest of the palace. Instead of marble, what can be seen of the walls between the bookshelves is panelled in dark wood. The floor, although it has the same chequered pattern as elsewhere, is mostly concealed beneath dark, luxurious rugs. 

In the centre, dominating the room, is a large desk covered in paperwork, with a high-backed chair behind it. Other than a wooden stool in the corner, there are no other chairs in evidence.

Hm. Fine, she'll just stand, for the moment.

Looking around from her desk, where she has been trying to find a pencil and some blank paper, the Queen reaches out a hand and mimes in midair the motion of pulling a book off the shelf and placing it on the floor. Several large, solid-looking books float off the shelves as if there were a giant hand mirroring her motions.

They settle on the floor near the desk, and shortly have another stack placed on top, bringing the whole to the height of a chair. 

"I apologise for the improvised furniture, dear," she says to Mira, "but I do not often have visitors to this room."

She sits. "It's quite alright, thank you."

"Ah, here we are." 

Sweeping a pile of letters out of the way, Marcella places a few sheets of blank paper in front of Mira and offers her a pencil. It looks hand-carved.

She gives the pencil a slightly curious look but takes it without asking and starts drawing a diagram of a bicycle.

The Queen watches curiously, and does not interrupt.

After a minute, she paces around to the far side of the desk, and sits behind it in what must be her customary place. Somehow, probably through a lot of practice, she avoids knocking anything over with her train.

Seems likely. 

She finishes her diagram and explains how it works.

She nods along. 

"It seems a logical development of simpler wheeled vehicles. And simple enough to produce. What of the others you mentioned?"

"Well, I don't know as much about how the others work..." She draws a picture of a car and an airplane. "These are much more complicated and burn strong oils for fuel."

Marcella asks a few more questions, until she feels she understands the uses, if not the workings, of the machines.

"The prospects for reproducing these, unfortunately, seem much lower. Was there no intermediate stage before cars, which might be easier to construct?"

"Not recently enough for me to be especially aware of them. I mean, wagons and carriages and so on, but the earliest actual cars still had enough of their internal workings inside the chassis that one can't figure them out on casual inspection, and I didn't anticipate ending up somewhere the knowledge would be useful."

"A pity," says the Queen, rising from her seat to pace around the room absently. 

She thinks for a minute or so.

"Were you the ruler of Wonderland," she starts, every word slow and deliberate, "and you knew of the surface world and its innovations, which would you think the most pressing to adopt? Where would you begin?"

"Well, that depends a lot on things I don't know about Wonderland. What are the most pressing problems, the most common causes of death? If people frequently die of diseases I would say vaccines, if people go hungry very often I would say agricultural technology..."

"Why don't you tell me about agricultural technology?" she invites, sitting back down. 

"There are fancy fertilizers but I think mostly it's machinery to make various aspects of farming more efficient."

Marcella takes out paper and a pen of her own, and starts making notes based on what Mira has already told her.

"I realize you are by no means an expert in this field, any more than you are in transport, but it would be helpful if you could provide me with as much detail as you can remember," she requests.

"There's machines that plow fields easily and quickly, which means you can have much bigger fields, and machines that sow seeds, and machines that help harvest things--called threshers? Or maybe threshing was something else. Uh, tractors are a thing, they work sort of like cars and replace horses for farm work, I think."

"And all of these are powered by the same complicated mechanisms and oils as those which power cars?"

She sounds disappointed, but continues to make notes. 

"I think some of it's electricity. ...Which is lightning that goes through wires and makes things do things, usually via magnetism."

The Queen leans forward, fascinated. 

"What kinds of things, exactly, can 'electricity' accomplish?" 

"I know more about this than about agriculture! Okay, so to start with, what do you know about magnetism?"

Marcella favours her with a wide, pleased smile.

"I have heard of the concept, I believe..." she muses. "A property of certain ores, which makes them attractive to some types of metal?" 

"Okay--can I see the paper again?"

"Certainly."

She passes it back, still smiling. 

"Okay, so this is a standard bar magnet," she says, drawing a rectangle and labeling the ends "North" and "South". "The metal doesn't naturally come in this shape but it's convenient. So the short version is that any magnetic metal has two "poles," north and south, and either end will attract nonmagnetic magnetically responsive metal, or the other pole of a magnet, but repel the same pole."

She listens. 

"What it is which makes some metals magnetic, and others magnetically responsive?"

"I don't know what makes some metals magnet-relevant and others not, but the difference isn't 'this kind of metal is magnetic, this kind is magnetically responsive,' it's 'this kind of metal is magnetically responsive, and this piece of that metal is a magnet.'"

"Ah, I see. There is presumably, then, a way to create one from the other?" 

She's started making notes again. 

"If you stick a piece of metal to a magnet--" she draws another rectangle attached lengthwise to the first "--then it acts as a magnet while attached. I...think if you leave it attached long enough it stays like that for a while but I'm not sure. Another way of doing magnets is electricity. If you wrap a piece of metal in wire and then run electrical current through the wire then the metal is a magnet while that's happening; that kind of magnet is called an electromagnet."

"And we are back to the question of electricity," Marcella remarks.

"How does one generate or harvest this...substance?"

"...Usually with magnets."

The Queen frowns. 

"This seems rather circular, although I am certain there must be a way to begin the process, if your world managed it." 

"Yeah...there are naturally occurring magnets..."

"And how does one go about using these to generate electricity?"

Her patient tone is beginning to wear a little thin at the edges. 

"Remember there is no shame in admitting ignorance, dear; I would rather that than have my time wasted with half-explanations."

"Right. So, remember what I said about current around metal making it a magnet? It works the other way, too. If you have a magnet, wrapping it in a coil of wire and then turning the magnet fast enough generates electricity." She starts drawing another diagram. "Most electricity is generated by having a spooling plane around a magnet like so, and then boiling water--by burning things or through other methods--and then the steam pushes the magnet to turn like so. You can also turn the magnet with wind power, much like a windmill, or with water. It's also possible to draw a little electricity from chemicals in--potatoes and lemons? But that's much weaker."

"Fascinating."

She reaches for more paper, and starts asking questions about the diagram.

Mira can answer most of the questions! Those she cannot, she will admit to and not dissemble.

After a while, Mira might notice that she is getting rather hungry.

A servant timidly knocks on the door, and suggests that perhaps it might be dinner time. 

"Oh, how silly of me," the Queen says, with a laugh.

"We shall have to return to our discussion later, dear. For now, let us rejoin the court for dinner."

Stacking her papers neatly, she rises from her seat and gestures for Mira to walk with her.

Does this have implications...? Worry about that later, walk with the Queen now.

Indeed. 

Passing through more hallways - the same decorator seems to have been allowed free rein over the entire palace - they enter a large, warmly-lit room with a long table down the centre. Standing behind most of the chairs are the courtiers Mira saw earlier in the throne room, clearly waiting for them.

Marcella takes her place at the head, and invites Mira to sit at her left. Everyone else sits down as soon as the Queen has.

Mira takes her seat, examining the courtiers' faces.

They range from relieved through bored to disgruntled. Listening to the conversation will make it clear that the cause of their disgruntlement is that dinner was delayed. 

One rather portly gentleman two seats away from Mira is loudly and passionately insisting that he was in danger of dying of starvation. In the course of his spirited argument with the person opposite, one wildly gesticulating hand brushes Mira's shoulder, tangling in her hair for a second before he pulls away. 

...Creepy???

She smooths down her hair where he touched it.

There's a bit of paper caught in it. The white doesn't show up terribly well against her hair, so no-one else has noticed, but it's obvious to the touch. 

Lord Grosvenor - which is, apparently, the name of the large gentleman - goes right on arguing cheerfully with his dinner companions as if nothing happened. 

--Hm.

She discreetly detangles it from her hair and slips it into her sleeve so it won't fall out without her noticing.

Dinner proceeds through a series of delicious courses. Lord Grosvenor eats an astonishing quantity of every single one. Fortunately, the cooks seem to be accustomed to this habit, and there is plenty left for everyone else. 

A few people are interested in Mira and ask carefully polite questions about her life, under the watchful eye of their Queen. 

And she will give them polite, truthful but generic answers!

Marcella listens, although she mostly gives the appearance of paying more attention to her food. 

Eventually, when even Lord Grosvenor proclaims himself satisfied by the fare, dinner ends. The Queen rises from her seat, everyone else hastily following suit.

Mira copies them.

The court disperses. Marcella excuses herself to freshen up, with a hint that Mira might like to do the same. 

The servants will show her to a bathroom if she asks. 

That sounds like a great idea.

She is shown to a bathroom tiled in gleaming white marble.

There are almost certainly guards outside the door, but she is - however briefly - alone. 

Okay, good.

She takes out the scrap of paper.

The note, which seems to have been written rather hastily judging by the handwriting, reads as follows:

I apologise for the subterfuge, but it seemed urgent to speak with you as soon as possible.

Meet me in the Green Drawing Room after dinner. Do not tell the Queen!

Ooh, political intrigue.

She peeks outside the door.

That sure is a suspiciously beefy-looking servant.

The symbols on his chest are the clubs worn by the guards, rather than the spades worn by the domestic servants Mira has seen around the palace. However, he appears to be unarmed, and there are no other people in sight. 

How much attention is he paying to his surroundings?

Almost none. He doesn't even seem to have noticed her opening the door; his gaze is fixed blankly on a patch of wall opposite. 

It's not even a particularly interesting section of wall. This area is panelled in plain dark wood, left bare and polished rather than covered with tapestries or paintings. 

...She's just going to attempt to sneak past him, low to the floor so as not to accidentally interrupt his line of sight.