Mr. Wheatly arrived with the requested rope and lantern. The Duke tucked a pistol in his belt and then rigged up the rope over a large beam in the wall. He used the rope to climb down into the pit and shined the light around. Marybeth leaned over, taking advantage of his light to inspect the area below. “It is a tunnel and there are fresh tracks in the dirt leading away from the house.”
Marybeth grabbed ahold of the swinging rope and lowered herself down into the darkness beside the Duke. “Are they Oliver’s?” she asked coming up to stand at his elbow.
“I told you not to come down here,” he chastised.
“And I told you I would do it anyway.”
The Duke closed his eyes as if he were praying for patience and rubbed his temples in frustration. “How am I to keep you safe if you do not listen to me?”
“The ghost man had ample time to harm me when he was in my bedchamber and yet he did not. I do not expect him to do so now.”
“It is unwise to assume that because he did not harm you once that he will not do so in the future.”
“Perhaps, but I am here and that is that.” Marybeth moved forward with her candle in hand to follow what she hoped were Oliver’s footprints.
The tunnel was quite a bit wider and taller than the passageway had been. The Duke easily walked along its length without stooping or sidestepping. “Footprints means he is alive and relatively unharmed,” the Duke offered her in comfort.
“Yes, I draw great hope from that fact. He probably fell and was unable to climb back up.”
“Yes, it seems the most likely explanation.”
They walked side by side for a time in silence. The tunnel seemed to go on forever deeper and deeper into the earth. “Where do you think it ends?” Marybeth whispered, a bit frightened by the thought of being so deep underground with no apparent way out of the darkness that surrounded them.
“I do not know. I am concerned about having brought you so far underground.” He reached out and drew her closer to him as if he could somehow protect her from the earth itself.
“It was my doing, not yours. Remember?”
“Yes, I am not likely to forget such defiance.” The look on his face in the candlelight told her she had not heard the last of his thoughts on the matter.
They continued to move through the darkness searching for Oliver and any sign of a way out. The earth was hardpacked beneath their feet, offering them a sure footing. Timbers supported the walls and ceiling, much like those found in a mine shaft. The air was still and stale. Marybeth began to doubt the wisdom of her choice to enter the tunnel, but she would have done anything for Oliver no matter the danger, no matter the price.
Holding hands, the Duke and Marybeth walked until they began to see the faintest hint of light. Marybeth unable to contain herself, released the Duke’s hand and took off running. “Oliver!” she cried out.
“Marybeth, wait!” the Duke called after her, but she did not listen.
As she ran, she could hear the Duke’s footsteps pounding the earth behind her. “Oliver!” she cried out again as she emerged into the dawn’s early light searching frantically for any sign of her friend. “Oliver!
Chapter 10
“Marybeth?!” Oliver’s voice came from the opening above. He extended his hand down to her and pulled her up out of the tunnel. The two friends embraced and then turned to help the Duke.
“Where are we?” the Duke asked as he hefted himself up over the side.
“Blackleigh Castle,” Oliver answered, offering the Duke a hand up.
Marybeth looked around them and found that he spoke the truth. “How can that be? I know we walked for a long time, but never would I have guessed that we had walked that far. I have explored every stone of this castle and never once did I find a tunnel or any hint that it existed.”
“I had to push a stone up and out of the castle floor to climb out of the tunnel. We must have run across this floor hundreds of times as children without knowing of its existence,” Oliver remarked.
“The tunnel was directly under my own home and I did not know of it,” the Duke replied bewildered by the connection. “How is it possible that such a thing could have escaped the attention of my forefathers? One of them must have arranged for the digging of the tunnel when or before the manor house was built.”
“There did not appear to be an entrance from the tunnel into the manor house, but I did not follow the passageway in the walls to their completion. My progress was halted by my fall through the floor. Perhaps there was one further down, or one that had been covered over years before,” Oliver pointed out.
“Perhaps,” the Duke nodded thoughtfully as he turned around in a circle taking in the ruins around him. “It has been many years since I have been inside of these walls.” He moved over to the stone stairs that led to the top of the tower and began climbing. Marybeth and Oliver followed behind.
When they reached the top of the tower, they gazed out over the land they had traveled under searching for a sign upon the earth’s surface of what lie beneath but found none. “It is a marvel to be sure,” Oliver murmured, leaning against the tower’s stone crenellations. “You do not believe that the tunnel has anything to do with the legend of the treasure, do you?”
“It is unlikely in the extreme that there is any such treasure. It is simply an amusing tale told to children to scare them into behaving,” the Duke answered, shaking his head in amusement. “Though I have known many a man who believed it to be real.”
“It is intriguing to be sure,” Marybeth admitted.
“How did you follow after me, Your Grace?” Oliver asked, a confused look upon his face. “You were unable to fit within the space between the walls.”
“I tore another hole in the wall at the place where you fell through and then lowered myself down via a rope. Marybeth followed after me,” the Duke explained giving Marybeth a chastising look.
“I am surprised that Your Grace allowed such a thing,” Oliver noted, an amused light sparked in his eyes as if he knew the answer long before the Duke spoke it.
“I was given very little choice,” the Duke retorted with a raised brow in censure of her actions.
“I can imagine,” Oliver remarked winking at Marybeth.
“I had no way of knowing whether you were alive or dead. You could have been lying wounded and in need of my aid,” Marybeth explained her actions. “It was not my intent to be difficult, but I had to know of your wellbeing, Oliver. I do not know what I would do if anything had happened to you.”
“You would have carried on as always, my dear, but it pleases me to know that I would have been missed.” Oliver smiled, pulling Marybeth into another hug. The Duke stirred restlessly behind them, clearing his throat. Oliver chuckled, then released her. “It appears you have an admirer,” he whispered into her ear before letting her go.
Marybeth shook her head scrunching her face up at him in disbelief. Oliver grinned and nodded his head before turning back to the vista before them. Flustered, Marybeth moved forward to stand between the two men at the tower’s edge. It was a beautiful sight. The land sloped gently down toward the forest. The trees in all their green glory spread out before them for as far as the eye could see in either direction.
The castle’s grey exterior contrasted sharply amongst the green foliage. Marybeth was not sure how the castle had gotten its name as Blackleigh meant the black field, but she supposed that the clearing in the woods might have been considered such at one point in the castle’s early history. She wondered how much the landscape had changed over the centuries.
Standing at the top of the tower, the words to the legend whispered through her mind. She thought of how the woman from the story had thrown herself off of the top of one of the castle’s towers and she wondered if it had been the very one upon which they stood. She looked down to the ground below and shivered at the thought of the terror the woman must have felt to perform such a permanent act. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“You are thinking of the witch who killed herself in the legend, aren’t you?” Oliver asked from beside her.
Marybeth nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. “Yes, I am. Such a sad tale of greed, lust, and death.”
“It is for those very qualities that it is remembered. Happy tales seldom last the ages,” the Duke noted, gazing out across the trees to the rising sun just cresting the canopy.
“It is a shame, a terrible shame. What does it say about us as a people that we remember tragedy best?” Marybeth asked, not really expecting an answer but needing to put her feelings into words.
“Pain is memorable. It is instructive and acts as a preventative warning to us all,” the Duke answered, turning his head to study her face. “For some it is the only way they learn.”
“Not I,” she murmured shaking her head.
“Nor I,” the Duke admitted turning back to the horizon.
The three of them stood in silence for a time, watching the forest come to life. Squirrels darted in and out of trees. Birds flew through the air singing their songs. A fox darted across the clearing and disappeared once more into the trees. A stag called out somewhere in the distance. Marybeth sighed content in the world she was most familiar. “Do you miss it? The forest?” the Duke asked.
“Yes, very much. I know I have not been at Arkley Hall for very long, but the forest is my home. It is all I have ever known. It is where I was born and where my grandmother is buried.”
Oliver reached over and squeezed her hand in sympathy. Marybeth saw the Duke stir uncomfortably beside her upon seeing it and she wondered at his reaction. Surely, Oliver cannot be correct in thinking that the Duke admires me with any sort of romantic intent.
“See,” Oliver whispered from beside her releasing his hold on her hand. He smiled knowingly, pleased with his own deductive skills.
Marybeth shook her head in denial and turned away in an effort to ignore the look on her friend’s face.
The Duke and I are from very different worlds. I could no sooner give up the forest to go and live in a grand manor house than he could surrender his dukedom to live in a forest croft.
The Duke turned to descend the stairs. “Shall we?” he asked offering Marybeth his hand to steady her as they climbed back down into the castle’s interior.
“The legend speaks of the witch leaving a treasure below. Do you think it could have something to do with the tunnel?” Oliver asked. It was clear that he was interested in the idea of a great treasure lying in wait for someone to find, that someone preferably being him.
“I do not,” the Duke answered once more. “As I said before, it is naught but a story to scare children. A man could spend a lifetime chasing after a fairytale and it would all be a waste. Life is filled with enough excitement without adding fictional ghosts and witches.”
“You do not believe in witches, Your Grace?” Oliver asked.
“No, I do not.”
“That is most wise,” Marybeth murmured in appreciation for his lack of superstitious beliefs.
“It certainly simplifies things,” the Duke admitted.
“What is life without a bit of fantasy?” Oliver replied, caressing the tower’s stones, his voice taking on a dreamy note as if he were imagining himself the lord of the castle.
The Duke chuckled at his groomsman. “I suppose a bit would do no harm.”
Oliver smiled back and the three of them finished their decent of the stairs. Upon reaching the bottom, they began the long walk back to Arkley Hall. “Mr. Wheatly will be wondering what has befallen us. I would not put it past him to attempt to climb down in the tunnel himself if we do not return soon,” the Duke remarked pulling his watch from his vest pocket. “The entire household will be awake by now as breakfast is to be served shortly.”
“And us without a wink of sleep,” Oliver noted. “’Twill be a long day indeed.”
“In light of the night’s events I grant both of you the time to rest upon our return. It has been a long night. I will set men to repairing the holes in the walls immediately, but we are still none the wiser as to our intruder’s identity or method of disappearance. I presume he is using the passageway between the walls as he was a man small in stature, but I found no proof of that in the limited space that I could see.”
“I found no evidence of him either, Your Grace,” Oliver answered just as bewildered as his master.
“Nor I,” Marybeth agreed. “It is a conundrum to be sure. I am not at all certain I feel safe enough to rest with any great success,” she admitted remembering the feel of the man’s eyes upon her. The hairs on her arms stood up just thinking about it and she shivered.
The Duke reached out and wrapped his jacket about her shoulders. “I will keep you safe,” he promised, his eyes looking into hers with such fierce protectiveness that she nearly lost her footing. “Upon that you may depend.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to look away.
When she nearly stumbled upon a root in the path, the Duke reached out once more to steady her. His eyes turned tender with concern. “Are you well?”
“Yes, thank you,” she forced herself to turn away from him and watch the path in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Oliver smirking in self-congratulations for his previous insight into the Duke’s affections. Perhaps Oliver is right.
Chapter 11
When the trio of errant explorers returned to the house, they found Mr. Wheatly in a frantic state of worry. “Where have you been? I have been pacing the floor in fear and concern the whole night through. The Dowager Duchess is upstairs beside herself, Your Grace, out of worry over your wellbeing.”
“My apologies, Mr. Wheatly. I will go up immediately and reassure Mother. I would like for you to arrange for the repairs to the walls to be done today. I would also like to establish an around the clock guard for Mother and Miss Wright until this matter has reached a satisfactory resolution. Please see that Oliver and Miss Wright’s needs are cared for and then see that you find your own bed. As you have pointed out, it has been a very long night indeed.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Mr. Wheatly bowed and then scurried away ringing his hands and murmuring to himself. The poor man was in a fractured state. Oliver followed.
Felix climbed the stairs to his mother’s bedchamber with Marybeth in close pursuit. He knew that she would wish to see to her patient before retiring herself. He admired her greatly for her diligence, skill, and compassion. When he entered the Dowager Duchess’s room he found her sitting amongst her pillows, white as a sheet, her face drawn with worry.
“My apologies, Mother,” he murmured coming over to place a kiss upon her forehead.
“Where were you, Felix?” his mother asked taking in the state of his dirt smeared clothing. “What happened?”
“There is a tunnel beneath the house that runs from Arkley Hall to Blackleigh Castle,” he answered. He did not sit at the edge of the bed as he normally would have done for fear of dirtying her sheets.
Marybeth came around and began mixing his mother’s medicinal herbs. “How are you feeling, Your Grace?” she asked, handing her a cup of soothing tea.
“My nerves are in a state,” the Dowager Duchess admitted, gratefully taking the proffered cup of tea.
“I understand the feeling. It has been quite the eventful night,” Marybeth commiserated.
Felix and Marybeth took turns informing his mother of all that had transpired since leaving the manor house. Had he not lived it himself he would have doubted its veracity. The sound of hooves and carriage wheels upon the drive ended the conversation. “I had completely forgotten that Lady Cordelia was to come by for breakfast this morning,” he groaned, closing his eyes in fatigue of body and spirit. “I am not at all in a state to be receiving guests.”
“We are all exhausted and in need of sleep. Can she not be sent away to return another day?” Marybeth inquired. “Your mother is not at all up to having visitors.”
“It cannot be helped,”
the Duke answered resigned. Ringing for a maid, he gave instructions for a bath to be brought up to his room and for his valet to arrange a fresh set of clothes. “I will see to Lady Cordelia, Mother. You just rest. Thank you, Miss Wright, for seeing to my mother in spite of your fatigued state.” He bowed in gratitude for her selflessness.
He was not sure what had made him address her so formally, but he suspected it had something to do with how he had felt every time that Oliver had touched her. Their affection for one another had caused Felix to feel envious of their close relationship. He knew that they had been friends since childhood, but he found himself hoping that friendship was all it was. With every moment that passed, he felt himself more and more drawn to Marybeth, even when he was angry with her for her disobedience.
“Of course, Your Grace.” She curtsied in reply.
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