by Thea Devine
The deep resonant note sounded again. The brass doors cracked open. From either side of the brass doorway, figures approached, and paused, two from either side, each swathed in long, enveloping hooded robes that totally obscured their bodies, their faces, their identities.
A rustling from above, from the stairwell landing.
Shit, hell. Kyger motioned to Angilee. He should have known: there was nowhere to hide, and the curtains were no protection at
all; the figures on the other side would see the movement of the brocade and know someone was spying on them.
Angilee's heart swooped to her toes. No other hiding place. No protection anywhere.
Seconds now to dive on the floor or throw themselves on the mercy of whoever was beyond those curtains ...
And then suddenly, silently—a seemingly disembodied pair of hands parted the curtains in concert with a humming sound from above.
Kyger motioned to her urgently; they had seconds now to enfold themselves in the rustled curtains. Seconds to conceal themselves flat against the archway molding and hope no one noticed.
Seconds as the humming came closer and closer and a line of three shrouded figures, the first carrying the circular symbol on a pole, came marching down the stairs.
They didn't dare breathe, so tightly wrapped were they, each against the archway molding. If she so much as drew a breath, they'd find her. Angilee was sure of it, her body was boneless with terror because of it.
But even so, she was so much more slender than the bull— they would see him instantly, and they would kill him. That large a man could not squeeze himself that flat against the molding. He just couldn't. He'd be obvious. He'd be dead, and then what would she do?
She didn't know how she could stand it, listening to the hum, feeling the sense of bodies close to her, passing her, and not knowing if they had found him.
How could she not peek?
It was impossible not to look. She had to know. Keeping the fold of curtain wrapped around her, she eased herself downward by increments, until she was just lower than eye level where any movement would be less likely to be noticed.
Now she could risk it—she didn't know if she could risk it— she had to risk it. She eased the edge of the curtain back from the molding.
Just a peek ...
A quick glance—
She froze.
There were seven figures—three lined up between the curtains, two on either side of the brass door. A low, golden glow from beyond the open doors, and limned in the entrance, an ornately decorated bier. No coffin, just the bier.
And the pulsing hum. The deep musical note that resonated in her vitals each time it was struck.
And eerie, amorphous, anonymous figures, moving—floating—slowly, the figure with the symbol leading the way, moving through the curtains, and pushing the bier through the brass doors, followed by the others in slow, sonorous steps, each of them intent on the ceremony, not in the least looking for intruders and infidels.
Who was the infidel after all? It was not the bull, still safely hidden.
Her heart pounded painfully. She knew. She would never tell.
She watched with increasing apprehension as the last of the figures turned and pulled the curtains together, and then vanished beyond the brass doors, which then closed emphatically behind him.
The low musical note sounded again.
And then silence. That flat, dead silence of the damned.
She didn't know if she should move. If some other one of the hooded robed figures might still be on the stairs or guarding the doors, keeping the secrets somewhere that she couldn't see.
And where was be?
Who was he?
Minutes ticked by. Not a sound. Not a breath.
And then suddenly—a touch—she jumped; she stifled a shriek-he was right there, his hand on her arm, pulling her out from her hiding place and motioning her to be quiet.
She hated not being able to talk, not being able to try to make sense of what had happened, what they'd seen, what they thought, but perhaps it was better this way. It was still too spooky, unnatural, macabre.
She nodded, and he motioned for her to follow him. He did not go through the curtain. Or perhaps it was too dangerous to chance it.
Rather, he led her into the dark shadows under the curve of
the stairway, pulled her close against the wall, and whispered tightly, "Doorway over there. Just found it. Not safe upstairs ..."
She nodded, and he moved her aside, and there magically, was a small arched doorway. He took a deep breath and opened it, and they stepped onto a small landing leading to a narrow, metal circular staircase.
Circles again. Circles and sevens. What the hell had that all been about?
"No moving walls," Kyger whispered. "Maybe storerooms ..."
Or maybe a coal chute or door out where stores were delivered ... an exit from which no one could find them or follow them.
He could only hope.
Especially after seeing those grown men dressing in costumes, playing boys' games and pushing around a bier in the most expensive whorehouse in the country. Surely this wasn't one of the sacrosanct secrets of Bullhead Manor. God, he hoped not.
There wasn't any way to investigate that now in any event. And his time had run out: he had to get the intractable virgin out of there and fast.
He started down the steps with her following carefully behind. They heard that low, sonorous musical note sounding in the distance above them as they went downward toward yet another low flickering light.
The basement storerooms, but in which part of the house Kyger couldn't tell. Stone walls. Dirt floor. Icy cold. Bins and storage areas as far as they could see in the dim low light which petered out a couple dozen yards farther down.
"Talk?" Angilee mouthed.
He shook his head. "Come .. ."
Swiftly, toward the dark, and beyond, they followed the wooden supports, toward the cold air seeping in toward them, blowing colder as they got closer to a different kind of oblivion.
What if there were no way out?
There was always a way out.
Was there?
What if every which way you could escape was designed to confuse and confound? What if someone were waiting for them on the outside?
It was so cold, there was no light; there was only the blowing air and the wooden supports and Kyger's certainty that they would eventually get out of there.
No wavering now.
Angilee followed blindly, tripping over her skirts, so exhausted she felt like crying. This was not how this adventure was supposed to have ended. She was supposed to have left by the front door with the hired bull in tow, a willing accomplice to her scheme to marry him.
If she ever got out of this .. . but that was for consideration later. The reality was the cold, the damp, the dark. Always the dark. And the mystery and the hovering sense of danger, and the underlying terror of the watching eyes.
And the endless hallways and basements of Bullhead Manor.
Closer and closer they came to the spewing air, moving carefully and cautiously, wooden post by wooden post.
It was a curiously empty section of basement and storage rooms. Nothing was kept here, not food, fuel, or fodder.
Because... ?
Kyger's step quickened.
... because it was the entrance for that concealed stairway into the house .. . ?
It had to be ... he started running .. . but he didn't know what it meant; he didn't care ... it had to be, and it meant that somewhere farther down in this maze of an empty basement there was a way to get outside—
Angilee sprinted after him as he ran toward the blowing air. And so, they nearly crashed into a rustic door in a far wall that was just slightly ajar. The wind was whistling through almost as if it were human, and he had a moment's pause before he yanked it open all the way, and they burst through the doorway into the safe night air.
They ran i
nto the wind, and they didn't stop running until they were far and away from the house, away from the danger and the eyes and entryways that were made for sin and secrecy.
Angilee collapsed first, and Kyger followed, burying his face in the freezing dirt of the field, both of them panting, gasping for breath.
"Oh, my God," Angilee whispered. "Oh, my God."
Kyger levered himself to his feet. "We don't have time. We have to get off the grounds and get back to London somehow." Oh, God—how insurmountable a task was that? Only Kyger knew. He turned and looked at the gleaming lights of the Bullhead. As innocent as sin. A fine family could have lived there. Lives could have played out there, happy and moral. Instead it was a monument to vice and voluptuaries. And duplicity and intrigues that had yet to be laid bare.
"Let's go," he said brusquely, holding out his hand. "I can't." "You have to."
"I'm cold." She felt as if the wind was cutting through her clothes.
Cold and windy in the fields, and she had no cloak or cape, and her boots were in no way made for walking. And yet she knew he would make her walk no matter what she wanted or how she felt.
And then he'd just abandon her.
"Take my coat, then. We need to get farther away from here." He stripped off his frock coat and put it around her shoulders.
"But you'll be cold ..." she protested faintly, but she put her arms through the sleeves and was immediately suffused with the residual heat from his body.
"That's of no consequence. Come, we'll go as far as we can, whatever that will be."
She looked up at him even though she couldn't really see him. He was a dark bulk standing over her. He was such an odd lot of contradictions—greedy and considerate, aloof and kind—but he represented safety for the moment, and she wished he would take her hand in marriage as well because she just might feel safe with him.
But those were stupid things to be thinking right now. They could freeze in the early morning wind, and probably it was better to keep moving even if they did not progress all that far. She took his hand, got to her feet, and they began walking. The only vestige of light was behind them, coming from the house. Before them, dead darkness. No sense of any direction. No road. Thick, hard frozen dirt under their feet.
Angilee stumbled now and again as she stubbed her toes
against a rock, an odd branch, and Kyger ruthlessly hauled her up and pushed her forward.
He was so strong, so certain. Almost superhuman in that he didn't feel the cold, and he had the stamina to keep going.
The stamina to—
Don't think about that. ..
Where were they going? It seemed to Angilee that the darkness outside was every bit a void of nothingness as it had been inside. And she couldn't take much more. And she was weighted down by the money, which she had so cleverly inserted into the lining of her skirt.
She was so tired. She wanted to stop, to rest. He was holding her hand, pulling her after him, and she wanted to protest, but she didn't because, it came to her again, she didn't even know his name.
Exactly. All of a piece in this god-awful adventure. She didn't know his name. Why should she know the name of a hired penis who didn't think she was good enough to marry?
It was too much he knew hers.
She never wanted to see him again if and after . .. after—
A sound. Her heart leapt. It was a thick, dull sound coming from behind them. It sounded like horses racing through the fields. It sounded like escape was what it sounded like.
She yanked on his hand, signaling him to stop. He turned and looked into the wind, saw what she saw: movement coming toward them, the bulk of what could have been a carriage, horses, making toward them, targeting them—knowing they were there.
Goddamn.
He turned and started to run, pulling her after him, knowing full well there was nowhere to run because whoever was driving that carriage at that ferocious clip knew they were there.
Someone was coming after them. And there was nowhere to run. They were out in the open, with no bushes, copses, haystacks to hide behind. They were too out in the open. It was futile to run.
Finally, he slowed, he stopped, and caught Angilee as she pitched into him. They stood and watched as a carriage came barreling toward them in the dimming shadow of light from the house.
Watched as it slowed, as it stopped precisely in front of them. As the coachman leaned down, tipped his hat, and said, "Do you care for a ride, mate?"
Kyger opened the carriage door so that Angilee could climb in. This was something he couldn't fight, couldn't win.
And he knew that voice. He knew it.
How?
"Whereto, mate?"
Not back to the Bullhead? This was passing strange—God, he knew that voice.
"Going back to Town, are you?"
He knew that voice. His own voice was rusty as he answered, "Yes," and climbed in beside Angilee.
"As you wish."
Kyger closed the door. He felt exhausted and outmaneuvered. For the moment at least, the forces he was fighting had won.
Why had they let them go?
The rock and roll of the carriage as it bumped its way through the field and onto the road was lulling. Angilee slumped against him, utterly fatigued. He closed his eyes—just for a little while— while he tried to unknot the problem of where he had heard that voice.
Whose voice?
He slept.
And then suddenly, he jolted awake, and he wasn't certain if it was because the carriage was curiously still or because he remembered.
He remembered: the informant all those days ago, the beating, being left in Cheapside.
Oh, God—the Good Samaritan. A wad of pound notes—he could almost feel them in his hand. Promising to repay the man's skepticism, in his delirium.
And he hadn't gone back; he'd totally forgotten.
Where had he said to go? Seven? Seven . .. Goddamn always sevens ... Swans—? S .. . ters .. . Sisters—
Right. And then that coach suddenly appearing out of nowhere.
Not this coach which, strangely, wasn't moving now—
But that coach, suddenly looming down the street like the Samaritan had conjured it, or signaled to it?
No, he had to have dreamt that. He had been half conscious that night; he wasn't remembering things right—
But he was nearly certain about this: the coachman that night had been the same coachman as tonight, their most accommodating driver...
Chapter Eight
He erupted out of the coach into the dead flat nothingness of a soupy gray fog, with barely the flicker of street lamp visible. But this much he could see: the coach was parked by the side of a road, and their driver and the horses were gone.
Hellfire. He whirled around. He couldn't see a foot in front of him. They could be in Cheapside for all he knew, or, but for the little flick of light, stranded on Brompton Moor.
Shit—and if they were in Cheapside—?
They'd get a cab at daylight. That couldn't be far off. Except he couldn't tell what hour it might be, and he couldn't wait for a solution to present itself.
He felt his way around to the opposite side of the coach, and then he cautiously started forward.
Wait—his boot nudged into a curb. Curbs were in the city. Curbs presumed walkways. They weren't in the center of London because there was no traffic, no noise.
So—The Gardens? Why not? The driver knew exactly where to take him .. .
To hell and over. Damn. Shit. He inched up over the curb, his hands out, reaching through the fog for something to grasp on to.
A fence. Ah, more like it. He inched along the fence until he came to the gate. Everything familiar. Goddamn. He wasn't steps away from his own flat.
Why had he been returned home?
He made his way back to the carriage, hoisted himself inside, and roused Angilee.
"Come."
She awakened with a jolt. "What? Where?"
&nbs
p; "My flat," he said flatly. "It's the best I can do right now."
She was aware enough to know she didn't want that. "No— no—tell them to take me to ..." She peered out the window. Oh, God. It was hell all over again, all foggy smoke, and there was no exit and they were doomed.
"Shhh—" He wrapped his arm around her. She was shivering; his coat was still on the seat, and he reached to retrieve it. "Come."
She came, blindly holding on to him, clambering awkwardly out of the carriage because she was still half asleep and disoriented, and because his arm was so warm around her shoulders and he just compelled her to move forward when she hit the ground.
The fog was so dense, it seemed to swallow them; he moved her gently around the carriage—something about the carriage wasn't quite right, she thought dimly—up onto a walkway, edging forward slowly, slowly, slowly, not a thing visible, everything fuzzy, and with big and bulky things rising up suddenly like ghosts out of the fog—
And then—a turn, the faint glow of gaslight, stone under her feet, and up a small stoop, and into—oh, blessed warmth. A hallway, lit by a banister lamp, dark woodwork, wainscoting, papered walls, a runner up a flight of steps, a door opening, and into a room. A parlor kind of room, she saw fuzzily, when Kyger turned up the gaslight just a flick.
"Come." Into a bedroom—oh, no, no no no—"shhhh. .." onto the bed, his bed?
She wasn't going to be bedded ever again unless there was marriage in the offing, and really, she needed to get to that hotel and make her arrangements and find that chaperone—she resisted even as she toppled into it—but oh, the bed was so soft, so comfortable, and suddenly there was a blanket being tucked around her so gently—
Maybe she could stay—just for a while, until she rested and the cold seeped out of her bones and ... and—
She was sound asleep, almost instantly, looking as innocent as a child. Not a child, Kyger thought mordantly. Not quite a woman, perhaps, but as sensual, alluring, and fascinating as the moon.
Help me . ..
He had to withstand her plea. He could watch over her tonight, he thought. He could get her wherever she wanted to go tomorrow. He couldn't do anything else for her, though God knew—no.
