by Gaelen Foley
She shook her head in frustration. I’m getting nowhere. Blast it, this whole effort is probably daft.
But having come this far, she wasn’t leaving empty-handed. Glancing over with a frown to make sure the door was still closed, she grew even more brazen and began searching the big oak desk in the middle of the library. Quickly, she sifted through the few items sitting out on the desktop, then tested the drawers, rifling about inside the ones that would open.
Nothing.
Impatience welled up in her. How much longer can I do this? I’m going to get caught. I should get out of here.
It was then she noticed something else odd in this altogether eccentric house.
The brass sphinx statue on the corner of the large oak desk was lined up precisely with the pyramids in the background of the duke’s portrait.
Why a sphinx should be included in a gothic-style house, she could no more guess than unfortunate travelers could answer the sphinx’s riddles in ancient legends of the mythic beast.
Intrigued, she tried to pick the statue up in order to inspect it more closely, but to her surprise, it wouldn’t budge.
It was attached to the corner of the desk.
Knitting her brow, she fingered the statue in confusion and promptly discovered that the head could bow, bending at the neck like a lever—and then she gasped.
For when the sphinx’s head moved, a bank of bookshelves across from her popped away from the wall, revealing a dark, door-like opening.
A secret passage!
She drew in her breath and stared at the gaping black opening, her eyes wide, her heart thumping.
I knew it. She bit her lip, staring into the tunnel’s beckoning darkness. Instinct made her absolutely certain that whatever it was she had come here to find, it was that way, somewhere in there.
Dare I?
Suddenly, she heard voices in the corridor approaching the other side of the library door. She glanced swiftly over her shoulder, then ahead again at the secret passage.
Ignoring her misgivings, Serena paused to lift one of the hollowed-out turnip lamps off the nearest bookshelf.
Lantern in hand, she hesitated only for a moment at the threshold, then swallowed hard and stepped through into darkness.
The sphinx lifted its head again as Serena pulled the bookcase-door shut behind her, and disappeared into the walls of Rivenwood House.
CHAPTER 2
Cat and Mouse
Why in the hell did I ever let Netherford talk me into this?
Azrael Chambers, the Duke of Rivenwood, was not used to so much noise inside his house. Normally, it was as quiet as a graveyard, and that was how he liked it. He was not accustomed, moreover, to so many people pressing in on all sides of him.
It made him intensely uncomfortable, but this was his own fault.
He was the one who had invited this throng of strangers into his home. Indeed, he had spared no expense.
Alas, at the end of the day, there was no bloody point in any of it, since the one person he was most interested in meeting hadn’t bothered to come.
Or, more bluntly, rejected him.
Eh, it served him right. He had no business being interested in Dunhaven’s daughter in the first place.
His little Staring Girl, who’d watched him like some predatory species on the hunt for the past five months.
God only knew why. He could not figure that girl out.
Meanwhile, a bizarre cast of creatures peopled his house in a dizzying array of showy costumes—strange animals, devils and gods, a large chess piece, numerous ghosts.
He sipped his drink, feeling out of place, but it rather amused him to think that, for once, he was the normal one.
A jolly medieval knight traipsed by with a papier-mâché horse molded around his waist. The knight could not control his mount, and knocked a glass vase off a low table in the drawing room when he swung about to greet an acquaintance.
The poor knight was mortified, but Azrael brushed off the mishap while his servant fetched a dustpan and broom.
“Not at all,” he said in answer to the guest’s profuse apologies, then he gestured to his annoyed butler, Grimsley, to bring the fellow another drink.
Azrael also indulged. Savoring a lemon macaroon, furthermore, saved him the trouble of having to think up another topic of conversation.
Frankly, this was agony for him.
It was not just that he did not really know any of these people, but his full understanding that he could never know them.
Or, at least, they could never know him.
Not really.
It was also their morbid curiosity about him. He could feel it swirling around him: the prying, the probing, the pools of hushed gossip gathering in the corners of his house here and there.
But let them talk. He was used to it. It did not signify.
Of course he knew his family’s reputation ranged into the shadowy side of life. Half from defiance about it, Azrael had opted, sardonically, to play right into the ton’s expectations with his spooky, Hallowe’en-themed masquerade.
It seemed fitting, after all.
Still, he couldn’t help wondering as he studied the crowd how many of these people had known his father. Had crossed to the other side of the street whenever they’d seen the previous duke coming.
Not that he could blame them.
The mad bastard had terrified him, too.
Which was precisely why Azrael wasn’t sure it had been wise of him, opening up his house to this invasion.
Considering that the one soul he had hoped to lure in hadn’t deigned to come, it was all for nothing, and he feared he was drawing too much attention to himself with this.
There was always the danger that those he specifically hadn’t invited would be tempted to drop by. Just to keep an eye on him, as they had all his life, ever since he was orphaned.
The rogues’ gallery of his father’s corrupt minions.
Meanwhile, to add to his annoyance, his damned mask was digging into his cheekbones and probably leaving grooves in his forehead.
As if he needed it to camouflage himself. Not he, no. On the contrary, Azrael had long since mastered the art of hiding in plain view, concealing himself behind his many layers of carefully cultivated eccentricity.
It was the only way he’d managed to survive his damned childhood.
“Your Grace, what a pleasant evening! Thank you so much for inviting us,” an older couple greeted him.
Azrael smiled politely and nodded in answer, but went blank on their names. Damn it. He knew they lived down the street. Nice people. The ones with that whole pack of red-haired daughters. Viscount…something.
Made uneasy by his uneasiness, the middle-aged couple awkwardly hurried on before he could recall their names, and he floundered, standing there alone.
The cloud of talking and laughter, chitchat and life throbbed around him, while the orchestra he’d hired sawed away at their violins in the ballroom upstairs. The air was close and stifling, the great hall a stew of smells from the paint and powder of so many different costumes, and the greasy spiced pomade that allowed the more imaginative among his guests to sculpt their hair into weird and whimsical shapes.
His throat felt constricted, but the cool draft wafting in through the open door touched his cheek in reassurance.
It carried in the alluring smell of autumn leaves, a hint of winter, maybe even a whisper of snow, mixed in with the smoky scent of the bonfire, all of it tempting him to escape outdoors.
Back out into solitude and freedom and darkness.
He would much rather have been out walking his cat by moonlight.
It was then that Azrael spotted, with some relief, his singular new friend sauntering toward him—the great instigator, former king of the rakehells—Jason, the Duke of Netherford, and he couldn’t help but smile.
The large, dark-haired rogue was aptly dressed as Julius Caesar in Roman regalia, complete with a bay leaf crown. He processed throu
gh the crowd in his robes like he had been born to the role of emperor, smiling at all his subjects, as it were.
People gladly stepped out of the towering fellow’s way, as usual, while his celestial young bride followed him.
Felicity looked charming, arrayed as a swashbuckling lady pirate with an eye patch and cutlass. The golden-haired duchess paused to exchange greetings with some friends while Jason came over to him.
“Still alive, I see,” Caesar greeted him.
“Barely,” Azrael drawled.
Jason flashed a grin, his dark eyes twinkling with amusement and whiskey. “Well? What do you think?” He held up his arms at his sides.
“I think that you look fit to be stabbed to death by thirty of your peers.”
Jason flashed a scowl of mock indignation. “Et tu, Brutus?”
Azrael wryly offered his glass, and Jason clinked his own against it with a chuckle.
“It all seems to be going smoothly enough,” Azrael admitted as Felicity joined them, smiling at him as she took her husband’s arm.
“Well done, Your Grace! I do believe your masked ball will be remembered as the event of the year,” she declared. “And if anyone disagrees, I shall make him walk the plank.”
Azrael bowed to her in amusement. “Thank you, captain.”
Then Jason elbowed him. “Spot any interesting quarry here tonight?”
“Miss Burns threatened to come,” Azrael answered discreetly.
“Did she, indeed? I should probably hide, then,” said Netherford.
“Humph,” said Felicity, propping a hand on her waist and giving her husband a skeptical look.
Jason shrugged, more than happy to pass along his expensive ex-mistress to the next man.
Apparently, the voluptuous songstress Bianca Burns only accepted dukes for her protectors. She had set her greedy cap at Azrael after Jason had sent her packing. But in truth, for all her talent and curvy fame, the diva did not interest Azrael as much as the girl who had just crept by in the black domino.
Who was that? he wondered. He looked around in lingering curiosity. She had vanished, but a small, persistent uncertainty about her niggled at the back of his mind.
He could have sworn it was Staring Girl, even though she had RSVPed that she would not attend. Might she have changed her mind?
Hope flickered, but he was probably mistaken, seeing her everywhere, that one he could not have.
The one he continually insisted to himself he did not want.
It probably wasn’t Lady Serena, anyway. He’d only hoped for a moment that it was, because then all his efforts this night would not have gone to waste.
The more he thought about it, though, the unknown lady, whoever she was, had certainly gone sneaking past him in a most suspicious fashion.
God, maybe his enemies—Lord Stiver and the rest of Father’s henchmen—had sent some woman in to spy on him.
He wouldn’t put it past them.
When he looked over and found Jason and Felicity swept up in their own private world once again, the formerly womanizing duke adjusting his pirate girl’s eye patch for her with a tender little motion, Azrael turned away, abashed by their intimacy, so alien to him.
Leaving the newlyweds to linger in their portable paradise for two, he decided to track down the girl in the black domino.
He was suddenly as wary as he was intrigued about her, but figured he’d better investigate now, for once the very determined Bianca Burns arrived, she’d be on him like a leech and he wouldn’t get the chance.
Azrael stepped up onto one of the stairs and looked around the crowded great hall, but the girl in black was long gone from this room.
Careful not to get drawn into conversation again, he jumped back down, then prowled through the crush of guests, nodding here and there politely, feeling increasingly restless.
What if it was Lady Serena? he thought, his pulse quickening at the possibility. What if she had come? What might that signify, then?
Did she like playing games?
The thought made his stomach tauten with excitement.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d first suspected it was she. The pert angle of her chin beneath her black half-mask, perhaps, the alluring plumpness of her lips, the graceful stealth with which she moved? Or perhaps the sable lock of hair falling over her shoulder.
The more he thought about it, aye, the more he suspected that it truly might be his Staring Girl and not some spy sent by his father’s former devotees. But why would she do such a thing?
Why refuse his invitation, then sneak into his home? Just to be more of a pest than usual?
A smile tugged at his lips as he considered the possibility. And if it was her, what exactly was the luscious little minx up to?
Determined to find out, Azrael wandered through the various rooms where the party was underway, pausing only to answer a question from a servant.
There was no sign of the lady in the dining room, the entrance hall, the sitting room. Perhaps she had gone up to the ballroom, he thought, though he had not seen her ascend the staircase.
He went up anyway and made a circuit of the state rooms on the upper floor. The ballroom was packed, the music room noisy, the drawing room a clamor of laughter and activity with various silly games in progress, but still, he saw no sign of her.
Had he missed her or was she hiding from him, he wondered, keeping away when she saw him coming?
If so, well then, Azrael thought, it probably was Serena.
God knew they had been at this all Season.
And he’d enjoyed it, even though he knew he shouldn’t.
His pulse ticked with anticipation. Brow furrowed, a half-smile dancing on his lips, he went back down the steps, scanning the entrance hall from the landing as he descended. He walked through the rooms on the ground floor one more time.
But there was one room he had not checked.
Brimming with curiosity, he walked back to the library and stepped inside.
It was empty.
He gave his father’s portrait a cold glance, then looked around, rested his hands on his waist with a sigh, and almost left—when suddenly, a dire thought occurred to him.
His stare homed in on the sphinx.
Oh, God no…
His gaze swept across the desk and he saw a book lying there. Certain he had not left any book lying on the desk, he fairly leaped across the room to pick it up.
His eyes narrowed when he read the title: A Collection of English Folklore, by Lord Tobias Guilfoyle.
“Damn it! I knew it,” he whispered. At once, he threw the book down and ran.
He could not be absolutely certain that the mechanism that opened the tunnel had been triggered, but if there was any chance that meddling little minx had found her way into the secret passage, she was in more danger than she knew.
A curse on his lips, Azrael flew out the library door—and promptly barreled into a curvaceous blonde strutting down the corridor.
“Rivenwood, darling!” Bianca Burns melted against him with a breathy laugh, laying her white-gloved hands on his chest.
Whether his more respectable guests recognized the famous songstress or not, he knew it was she, her famous face concealed by a jeweled white satin half-mask.
Her voluptuous body was arrayed in the highly unlikely disguise of a scantily clad angel in white, with a plunging décolletage and white feathered wings.
She was indeed made to take a man straight to heaven, but Azrael had no time for this.
“Miss Burns, you must excuse me.” He tried to step past her, but she swept in front of him, giggling. “I have to go check on something a-at once.”
“But I only just got here!” she said playfully.
“Sorry—it’s a bit of an emergency. If you’d…make yourself comfortable, I-I’ll be right back!”
He ran.
“Rivenwood! What’s wrong? Can I help?”
He waited not a heartbeat more to answer her questions, and pounde
d up the nearby backstairs, taking them two at a time.
“Rivenwood!” Bianca followed, but he paid her no mind.
He might be wrong about this. He hoped to God he was.
Perhaps no one had entered the secret passage.
But if so, he had to get there first.
Especially if it was Serena who had ventured in—and really, who else would dare?
One hand on the newel post, Azrael swung around the quarter landing and vaulted up the next flight of stairs, racing faster.
For only he knew what waited for the unsuspecting trespasser on the other end of that tunnel.
# # #
Serena ventured on through the darkness. Up, up the secret passage went, winding through the house, concealed behind the mansion walls.
Sometimes it ascended on cramped, narrow ladders, sometimes on ramps. Other times it rose on twisting wrought-iron stairs that were such a tight squeeze she had to be careful not to bump her head.
Serena followed the route in fascination, the tiny glow from her turnip lantern flickering in the pitch blackness. All the while she wondered where it led and why on earth Azrael should have this in his house.
But maybe it hadn’t come from the current duke. Maybe it had come from his steely-eyed father.
There were small, half-sized doors along the way leading to various rooms throughout the mansion. Since the house was full of guests, Serena did not dare venture out. She was taking enough risks just being here.
She moved on, lifting the hem of her domino to avoid tripping when she had to climb again.
The passage continued on its wandering course past the ballroom; a peek through the eyeholes confirmed it. She slid the small rectangle of wood aside and found herself peering out from the wall behind the orchestra. Well, that explains why the music got so loud.
You’re enjoying this too much, her better sense accused her.
She slid the spyhole shut and moved on.
After coming to a corner, where she had to climb another cobwebby ladder, she had now, by her best estimate, reached the third floor. It was much quieter up here, probably around the bedrooms.
Having reached the private quarters of the house, perhaps now she could really begin searching for clues about the previous duke’s nefarious club.
