by Brenda Novak
She didn’t want him to know anyone else had been in the mine, but she didn’t have time to gather what she had brought.
It doesn’t matter. Go. She had to reach the surface. Fast.
Footsteps pounded toward her. Apparently, he had heard. She grabbed the rope attached to the pulley but was so filled with panic, she couldn’t lift the cage, didn’t have the strength for it.
A light appeared as someone rounded the corner, and she heard a shout: “Stop right there!”
It was Wythe. She had no idea what had happened to the others, but they didn’t seem to be coming.
Were they dead? She feared they were and knew this mine would be her grave too, if she couldn’t haul herself up.
Staring at the darkness above her as if she could fly toward it, she yanked on the rope. It took all of her willpower and every last ounce of energy, but the bucket began to rise, inch by inch.
“Come on,” she muttered, straining for all she was worth. She managed to lift herself another few feet and some more once again. But she wasn’t going nearly fast enough. Wythe reached the rope system she was using before she could get all the way to the top, and he began pulling her back down.
Truman sat on his horse, side by side with his butler, staring up at the brothel. Although they were gone now, the paintings had been there. He was sure of it. According to the girl who had let them in and allowed them to search, Elspeth had removed four large, rectangular objects from the attic two days ago. They had been loaded onto an old wagon and taken somewhere—she didn’t know where. Then, shortly after supper, Elspeth had packed her bags and left.
“For good?” he’d asked.
“She told me I could ’ave the brothel, my lord.”
He had no idea what Madame Soward had planned. But at least he had encountered some evidence that the Bruegels had existed after the fire. That alone made Truman feel as if a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. The mysterious objects she had removed, together with his memories, made him feel confident if they hanged him for Katherine’s murder, they would be hanging an innocent man. He wasn’t the one who had hurt her. He wasn’t guilty of starting the fire, even in his rage. He had merely shown up at the wrong time, and he had nearly lost his life, just as she had.
If not for Wythe, he would have died. So… who had started the fire?
“We had better hurry, my lord,” Linley said. Truman had encountered his butler while following Cutberth to the village after their meeting at the mine. He had wanted to see what the sacked clerk might do, wanted to make sure he wouldn’t visit some of the miners on his way home and stir up trouble. But just as he approached the outskirts of the village, riding well behind his quarry so he wouldn’t tip him off, he had found Linley plodding along the same road. And once he’d heard what his butler was about, he had eagerly accompanied him to the brothel, where they had searched every room—whether they interrupted what was going on inside them or not. Fortunately, it had been a slow night for business.
They had gone into the cellar and attic, too, and found the spot where something had been stored that was now gone.
“If we start off right away, maybe we can find Elspeth,” Linley said.
Truman finally turned away. He too wanted to go after Madame Soward, but it wasn’t realistic to think they would be able to find her tonight. She could be almost anywhere and, at this hour, she was probably holed up somewhere asleep, not out on the road. It wasn’t safe for a woman to travel at night, especially with such expensive cargo. Not only that but Mr. Linley wasn’t looking well. The many hours on horseback and the lack of rest had been hard on him. Truman needed to get him to the manse, where he could recover.
“Madame Soward has had plenty of time to make sure those paintings are in a safe place,” he said. “What would we do even if we found her?”
Linley acted surprised that he would ask. “We’d talk some sense into her. Offer her money in exchange for the paintings, more than she could get if she sold them.”
“I’m sure she has already heard about the reward. If she were interested, she would have come forward.”
“I’m guessing she’s scared of whomever asked her to store them in the first place. Maybe she’s only recently become aware of exactly what they are and what they mean. We could offer her protection, too.”
“And we will, if we have the opportunity.”
“What do you think she will do next?” Linley asked.
“I have no idea,” he replied, “but I know what we are going to do. I’m taking you home. You should not be keeping such hours at your age, and with your bad leg.”
“I’m fine, my lord. At last we have the break we have been praying for. We cannot let Elspeth slip through our fingers.”
Truman had to smile at his willingness to continue what would likely be a futile search. He was so exhausted he could hardly stay astride his horse and yet he wanted to go after Elspeth? And to think Mr. Cutberth had suggested that maybe Linley had been behind the fire! “We will do what we can come morning. I should get back to Rachel. This is her first night at Blackmoor Hall since she left Mrs. Tate’s. I don’t want to worry her.”
“Then I’ll send out a group to search for Elspeth at first light.”
“We will hire anyone with the time to look and have them search all the way to Newcastle. Surely she won’t be able to get far. Not with those paintings.”
“I hope that’s the case,” Linley said with a sigh.
They rode the rest of the way in silence, too tired to speak, especially over the distance that sometimes separated their animals. Truman couldn’t wait to drop into bed. For once maybe he could sleep without the nightmares that had plagued him for the past two years. What he had found out tonight hadn’t solved all his problems, but it should be enough to put his worst fear at ease: the fear that he might not be the man he’d always wanted to be, always thought he was.
What would it be like to sleep peacefully, with Rachel at his side, every night?
He was excited to find out. But when he hurried up the stairs and let himself into his room, he found his bed undisturbed. Her bed was the same. Her belongings were all there, but he couldn’t find her anywhere in the house.
It wasn’t until he went out to the stable to see if Geordie knew anything that he was told, by a sleepy stable boy, that she had taken a horse.
“She said you ’adn’t come home and she was goin’ out ter look for ye, my lord. I told her I’d go in ’er stead, I did, but she would ’ave none of it. She told me she would be back soon. An’ off she went.”
Truman grabbed his arm. “When? When did she go?”
The boy screwed up his face. “I was pretty sleepy so I can’t be certain, my lord, but… musta been a couple ’ours ago.”
Once he learned that, he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. She had to have gone to the mine, where he was meeting Cutberth. But why hadn’t she come back?
Chapter 25
Rachel was no match for Wythe’s strength. No matter how hard she pulled, the bucket went down. It didn’t happen quickly. It was a battle. But it was a battle she was guaranteed to lose. How would she save herself once he forced her all the way to the bottom? At that point he’d be able to do anything to her, anything he wanted. No one would know where she was. She would be stranded in the mine with him, and once he hid her body, there wouldn’t even be anything to suggest what had happened to her.
She thought of the earl and her fear for his safety. Had Wythe murdered him? She had heard him shoot at least one of the miners—very likely two—and was pretty sure he had killed the rest. He’d lured them here under false pretenses and then he had attempted to silence them for good. Maybe some were merely hurt, but she knew Wythe couldn’t leave them alive. They would tell everything they knew.
She heard no noise coming from the loading dock. Did that mean he had a knife or some other weapon, in addition to the pistol he had already discharged? Only two shots had rung out.
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br /> Help me. Lend me strength, she prayed silently. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t cried out. She didn’t want the earl’s cousin to know she was a woman. If he realized that he would also realize that he possessed easily twice her strength and, with such added confidence, he would reel her in that much faster.
Her muscles burned as she struggled. But the rope kept slipping through her grasp, tearing the skin on her hands with its abrasive, hoary fibers until the pain became excruciating.
If only she had a weapon. If only she had the pick she’d dropped on the ground with her Davy lamp—
Suddenly she realized that she did, possibly, have one weapon. She had gravity, didn’t she? If she acted at the right moment, the cage itself could harm him. It was made of steel. It would be traveling fast. And he was standing right underneath her. That left her vulnerable to injury too, but with any luck, she would hurt him worse than she would hurt herself. Maybe she would even knock him out.
Given so many variables, there was only a slim chance that her plan would be successful. But she had no better option. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she clung stubbornly to the rope, even managed to stop her descent for a few seconds. This angered him enough that he yanked that much harder, and she let go.
The exhilaration of free fall lifted her stomach as she dropped at least fifteen feet in a fraction of a second. She heard Wythe gasp in surprise. But he must’ve moved, at least a little, because when she hit him it was more of a glancing blow. The force didn’t knock him out, as she had hoped, but it did make him stumble and fall. At least it sounded that way.
She banged her shoulder on impact and, as the cage swung wildly away from him, tumbled onto the hard-packed earth. Maybe she had been in too much of a hurry to escape the confines of that metal bucket, but she knew if he grabbed her while she was still inside it, there would be nothing she could do to gain her freedom.
“Bloody hell!” he swore as he staggered to his feet.
The energy behind that curse gave her hope that he was suffering at least as much as she was. She could feel the sticky wetness of her own blood. But what scrapes and bruises she had sustained would be the least of her problems if she couldn’t rally quickly enough.
Get the pick, she reminded herself as she struggled to shake off the effects of that bone-jarring collision.
Fortunately, she could see the outline of that tool in the dim glow of her Davy lamp, which was still burning—and dove for it.
Wythe seemed to comprehend her intent about the same time she got her brain working well enough to execute such action. He tried to kick the handle out of her reach, but he hadn’t quite recovered from having the lift fly out of the darkness to nearly flatten him. He only managed to kick some dirt in her eyes before falling again, but that made it almost impossible to see.
Grabbing two handfuls of dirt herself, she threw them in his face before grabbing hold of the pick. But once she had it, she could hardly lift it. How had it gotten so blasted heavy in the last fifteen minutes?
“Get back, or I will put this through your skull,” she warned as he found his feet, cursing and spitting and wiping dirt from his eyes.
Her eyes were watering, too, which helped clean away the grainy particles, but she had to blink rapidly in order to keep him in focus.
“Rachel, what luck,” he said. “I was merely planning to turn you out when I become earl, but I can’t promise such leniency now. I’m afraid this ending will be far more permanent.”
It wasn’t only the dirt in her eyes that made it difficult to see. The light from the lamp didn’t carry far. When he’d come barreling out of the tunnel to stop her from escaping, he hadn’t been carrying any light with him. There was just the single lamp, so they stood mostly in shadow.
Fleetingly, Rachel considered running for her life. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely breathe, and her arms felt as if every muscle had been wrung out, like water from a damp cloth. She doubted she could make much of a stand. She wanted to believe she could somehow evade him long enough to hide until the miners arrived for work. But he was cutting her off from the section of the mine that contained all the tunnels. There wasn’t much at her back, except a couple of storage rooms. She wouldn’t last long heading in that direction.
“You killed the others,” she whispered, still barely able to comprehend what she had heard earlier and the fact that none of those men—none of four—had come out to see what was going on.
He didn’t argue. “How did you find me?” he asked instead. “I wasn’t followed. I made certain of it.”
Linley should’ve been there.…
“I came in search of Truman,” she said. “What did you do to him?” Fearful of what she might hear next, she swallowed hard. “Did you and Cutberth kill him at the office and toss his body down here?”
“Why would we bother? The Abbotts will see to him soon enough. Why not let it be someone else’s doing?”
He edged around the small clearing, trying to get close enough to gain some advantage over her. She maintained her distance, stepping to the left every time he took a step to the right. It gave her hope that he would eventually move out of the path she longed to take. “If you wanted him dead, why didn’t you let him burn?” she asked.
“Ah, the question that has nearly driven him mad.” He laughed as if he took great pleasure in knowing how deeply conflicted Truman had been. “Two years ago I was still trying to curry his favor. I wanted him to approve of me at last. A childish hope, when I think of it. Anyway, I would have taken the blame. No one else had any reason to murder him. Then I would be heading to the gallows myself, which would make it quite difficult to enjoy my inheritance.”
Her hands were growing sweaty on the handle of the pick. He was obviously trying to decide how he would disarm her; she could see the way he studied her. “Then… where is he?”
“How should I know?” he responded. “Maybe the Abbotts decided they were tired of waiting for the slow wheels of justice and decided to dispatch him to the next world straightaway.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it had anything to do with the Abbotts. But I wouldn’t put it past Cutberth.”
“Cutberth doesn’t have the nerve for murder.”
He crouched slightly as if he was getting ready to spring. She needed to stall, keep him talking. “He’s got the nerve to risk his job by starting a union!”
When he stepped more directly into the light, she could see that he had a knife. “A bunch of hot air. A way to gain favor among the men.”
“Stay back,” she breathed.
“Or what?” he taunted with a threatening jab.
“Or you will be the one who gets ‘dispatched’ next.”
He chuckled softly. “You think you can kill me, Rachel? With a pick? As soon as you take your first swing, you’re dead.”
“Then I had better make that swing count.”
The determination in her voice seemed to convince him that she intended to do all she could. “You have no chance,” he said.
He was right. If only she had more time. Dawn had to be near. It seemed like an eternity since she had left Blackmoor House. “So you were sitting back the whole time, laughing while Truman searched for the person who tried to hire my father? You were behind it? You killed Katherine?”
His lips curved into a self-satisfied smile. “No, I merely impregnated her. We had quite the debauched affair, the two of us,” he bragged. “I had her in the earl’s own bed while he was traveling. She came to me even when he was home.” His voice grew husky. “She said I was big as a horse. Does that excite you, Rachel?”
“It makes me want to vomit. How could you, or anyone else, murder their unborn child, not to mention the mother of that child?”
His face grew hard. “You’re not listening. I told you, I didn’t kill her! Why would I? As far as I’m concerned, it would have been a grand joke to watch the earl raise my bastard.”
“Until he found out that you were t
he child’s father. And you know Katherine would have told him eventually. From what I have learned, she couldn’t possess such a powerful weapon and not use it—against you both.”
“Sadly, that’s exactly why Mrs. Poulson said she had to die. She wouldn’t let Katherine destroy me.”
“And the paintings? Did she steal those, too?”
“No, that was me. I didn’t see why they shouldn’t be salvaged.”
“But you weren’t expecting Lord Druridge to arrive.”
“That was terrible timing, really.” He sounded quite wistful. “You should have seen Mrs. Poulson’s face,” he added with a laugh that indicated he was as out of touch with what he should be feeling as ever. “We thought we were done for—until he rushed straight to Katherine, oblivious of everything except his rage. Of course, the smoke was barely discernable at that moment. For once, fate was on my side and not his. And now Truman will hang for her murder, and I will spend the rest of my days with a title and more money than I know what to do with. How’s that for a reversal?” He gestured with the hand that held the knife. “Everyone will scrape and bow as I walk by.”
“So Mrs. Poulson set the fire? She’s the one who tried to hire my father?”
He crouched lower. “She hired Greenley and the boys to do it for her, but that was a mistake. It left us vulnerable and essentially got them killed.”
The path was almost clear. If only he would shift a bit more to the right. “I don’t understand. Why? Why would she kill Katherine?”
“She wants me to inherit the title as much as I do.”
“You won’t get it,” she said, in no uncertain terms.
“What’s to stop me?”
He had finally moved far enough.
“Me,” she said and threw the pick as hard as she could.
She saw the whites of his eyes as they flared wide. He hadn’t expected her to make such a bold move, hadn’t seen it coming. Instinctively he dropped the knife so he could protect himself, but the pick hit him far more solidly than the lift and knocked him down again. He got up as fast as he could, but she grabbed the Davy lamp, blew out the flame and made a run for it.
