The Lady Unmasked

by Ava Stone

  “My ribbon!” Patience nearly shrieked with joy. “Where is it, Bendle?”

  “Mrs. Small placed it on your bed, my lady.”

  “Wonderful!” Patience bounded up the staircase without a thought about decorum.

  “And Mr. Thorn?” Quent asked the butler. “Where did you put him?”

  “No one puts me anywhere,” Thorn said from the entrance to the great room, his usual smirk firmly in place.

  “I trust your travels were safe.” Quent smiled at his friend.

  “The safest,” Thorn assured him. “And short, as luck would have it. I’ve spent the last day at Torrington Abbey with Chetwey and Brighid.”

  Yes, yes, Garrick had said something to that affect, hadn’t he?

  “Oh, and, sir,” Bendle began as Quent and Garrick were just about to join Thorn in the great room, “Lord Bradenham sent word from Braewood. He and Lady Bradenham have arrived.”

  “And there goes the end of our fun,” Hope complained.

  “The three of you can have dinner here before you have to head over,” Quent said.

  “A short reprieve, but no pardon.” She heaved a sigh.

  “Come on.” Grace linked her arm with Hope’s. “We’ll change for dinner and enjoy the time we have left.”

  With the girls on their way to their chambers, Quent and Garrick started once again towards the great room.

  Thorn looked past them and said, “You know, Quent, even after all this time, I can’t tell one of those girls from the other.”

  Few people could. “I’m sure Braden would prefer you not think about them at all.”

  Thorn laughed at that. “You wound me. As though I’m more dangerous than Kilworth.”

  Garrick bit back a smile. “The one in green is Hope—”

  “Speaking of Kilworth,” Thorn muttered.

  “—And the one in yellow is Grace.”

  “And now they’re changing clothes and that information will be completely useless to me.”

  “Do tell us how things are at Torrington.” Quent stopped at the sideboard to pour a couple glasses of whisky. “Still no babe?”

  “No, not yet. Though it shouldn’t be too much longer.” Thorn dropped onto the closest settee and stretched his legs out in front of him. “If I was a betting man—”

  “Which you are,” Garrick cut in.

  Thorn grinned. “I would wager that she’ll deliver on Samhain, fitting for a witch, don’t you think?”

  “I think—” Garrick dropped into a seat across from Thorn “—that you’d better not let anyone hear you call Brighid Chetwey a witch.”

  Thorn glanced around the great room as though someone might be listening in. “Perhaps outside these walls, but anyone alive or dead at Marisdùn is well aware of the lady’s powers.”

  “Not my sisters.” Quent handed one glass to Thorn and another to Garrick. “Callie didn’t want everyone to know all the details as she’s fairly protective of Brighid,” he said before turning back to the sideboard to retrieve a drink of his own.

  “I will not mention the little witch’s abilities in front of the ladies, in that case,” Thorn promised.

  “I say,” Garrick began, but he was interrupted by a sudden high-pitched wail that came out of nowhere.

  What the devil! Startled, Quent splashed a healthy amount of whisky into his tumbler and onto himself. Damn it all. That sounded like one of his sisters. He dropped the whisky decanter back onto the sideboard and started for the threshold in a hurry, with Garrick and Thorn quick on his feet.

  “Never a dull moment at Marisdùn, hmm?” Thorn drawled from somewhere behind Quent as they raced up the stairs and started for the family wing.

  “Things had been fairy peaceful until now,” Garrick replied.

  But Quent paid the conversation very little attention. The wailing they’d heard in the great room was only intensified the closer they got to Hope’s set of rooms. Hysterical sobbing spilled down the hallway and reverberated off the stone walls. What in the world was going on? Quent couldn’t get down the corridor fast enough.

  “What happened?” he bellowed, when he was close enough to be heard over the wailing.

  Grace appeared from in front of Hope’s door, touching a hand to her heart as though the wailing had taken a good year off her life too. “She’s missing an earbob, but it’s not life threatening.”

  Another despondent wail echoed from Hope’s chamber and drifted through the castle, rattling the teeth in Quent’s head. For the love of God! All of this insanity over a missing earbob? “Hope!” he barked. “Do pull yourself together!”

  Hope wailed louder in response.

  Damn it all!

  “Dearest,” Grace called through the door, “I’m sure it’ll be just like Patience’s ribbon and will turn up.”

  That would most definitely be the case, Quent was sure. Thieving little ghosts. Things would have been perfectly pleasant the last two days if not for their pilfering ways.

  “I can’t wait that long!” Hope wailed, sounding the most pitiful Quent had ever heard her. “What if they don’t give it back before the masquerade?”

  Was that all? “You have lots of earbobs,” Quent called. “It will be fine.” Which was apparently the wrong thing to say as she let out another ear-piercing scream, one so filled with pain it nearly broke Quent’s heart. He shot a glance at Grace. “What in the world is wrong with her?” he whispered.

  Grace winced a bit. “They were, umm, special earbobs. They, uhh, match her eyes. She brought them specifically for the masquerade. The set is very important to her.”

  The Samhain masquerade was not for a few days. “Patience already has her ribbon back,” he muttered to the level-headed sister at his side.

  “I don’t think Patience cared about her ribbon nearly as much as Hope does those earbobs.”

  “We could search the castle for it,” Thorn suggested from behind Quent. “Especially if Lady Hope might stop crying in order for us to do so.”

  Quent glanced over his shoulder to find Garrick nodding in agreement. Not that searching would do any good if those little ghostly thieves didn’t want the earbob found, but…perhaps Hope could be convinced otherwise and she might calm down enough to be reasonable. Honestly, he would look the place over from top to bottom if she would stop her ear-blistering screams.

  “Did you hear that, my dear?” he called through the door. “Thorn, Garrick and I will search Marisdùn over if you can stop crying long enough for us to think.”

  “We’ll turn the place inside out,” Thorn vowed.

  A heaving sound, as though Hope was struggling to catch her breath, came from her chambers, which was a good sign. Hope gasping for breath was preferable to her bellowing like a banshee.

  And then her door clicked open.

  Hope’s cheeks were stained a brilliant shade of red. Quent had never seen her look so miserable. With shaky hands, she lifted up a pear-shaped emerald earbob, encrusted with tiny diamonds along the edges, for Quent’s inspection. “I-it—” she struggled for breath “—looks like this one.”

  “And you’re sure it’s not in there?” Thorn asked, gesturing to Hope’s chambers with a flick of his hand.

  Her face twisted up and she started to cry once more.

  “No, no, no,” Garrick soothed. “Don’t cry, my lady, we’ll find it. Not to worry. I’ve always found everything I’ve put my mind to.”

  “Give her your handkerchief,” Quent said, as his had been quite ruined from cleaning Patience’s coin back at the ruins.

  Garrick quickly lifted his handkerchief out to Hope and said, “Chin up. We’ll find it, I’m certain.”

  “You know,” Thorn began as they entered a small sitting room after a full hour of searching Marisdùn, “I am quite exhausted from looking this place over. Between missing girls and earbobs, I have seen more of this castle than I have my own home.”

  And the results were the same as it had been when they’d scoured the place last yea
r looking for a vanished Callie.

  “If it’s those Mordue children,” Garrick said, stepping towards the hearth and inspecting the mortar work, “their governess really ought to teach them not to steal.”

  “I would imagine if they were going to learn that particular lesson,” Thorn started, “they would have already done so by now.”

  That was probably true.

  “What is this?” Garrick asked, his voice in awe.

  Quent and Thorn both turned around to find Garrick pulling back a part of the sitting room’s wall, right beside the large hearth.

  “What indeed?” Thorn echoed. “A secret room?”

  “Looks like it.” Garrick turned his full attention on Quent. “Did you know this was here?”

  But Quent had no idea. He’d even searched this very room with one of the castle’s servants last year. “First I’ve seen of it.”

  “How did you find it?” Thorn opened the hidden door, which was crafted from the same stone as the rest of the wall, making it the perfect camouflage. Then he squinted into the darkness.

  “It was ajar,” Garrick replied. “I just looked to my left and there it was.”

  But it hadn’t been ajar when they’d stepped into the sitting room, Quent would have bet his life on it. Or perhaps it had been. Honestly, the entire day had been so taxing he might not have been able to remember his middle name. Charles. His middle name was Charles. At least he could remember that. Thank God.

  “Shall we venture in?” Thorn asked, poking his head further into the opening.

  “It’s dark as pitch in there,” Garrick breathed out.

  Who knew what they’d find in the inner bowels of Marisdùn? The castle had kept so many secrets over the centuries…

  “Perhaps this is where your great-grandmother kept Callie prisoner,” Thorn muttered under his breath.

  “No.” Quent shook his head. “She was stuck between worlds or something like that. She says she could see us, we just couldn’t see her.”

  “Well, whatever’s in there—“ Thorn pointed to the hidden doorway “—I want to see what it is.”

  “Me too,” Garrick agreed. “I’ll grab a candle. See what there is to be seen.” And then he quickly disappeared into the corridor.

  Quent stepped closer to the opening and touched the stone door. It looked so much like the wall; it was the exact stone of the wall, in fact. Someone had gone to quite a bit of trouble to conceal the room. It was a miracle Garrick had even noticed the opening. There wasn’t even a trickle of light from inside, however. Where did the passage lead?

  A moment later, Garrick returned to the sitting room, a lit beeswax candle in his hands. “After me.” Then he stepped into the darkened passage way and moved the light from side to side.

  “Looks like the place was crudely carved out long after this wing was built,” Thorn said, glancing closer to the edge of the passageway.

  And sure enough, there were scars covering the walls, which appeared to have been made by a hurried pickaxe of some sort.

  “Reformation,” Garrick agreed, lifting his candle closer to one of the deeper gashes in the wall for inspection.

  “Oh! A torch!” Quent said as the light from the candle illuminated a sconce on the passage wall.

  “Perfect.” Garrick carefully made his way to the sconce and used his flame to light the torch. Warm light bathed the small passageway, which ended just a few feet away in a dead end.

  The small passage was far from roomy. It was very clearly a priest hole that wasn’t made for living but for hiding for a short period of time. At the end of the hollowed-out space was a mound of…something.

  “What is that?” Quent asked.

  “I don’t know,” Thorn said, edging closer to the pile. “What in the world?” He laughed a bit as he picked up an old corset from the pile. “On my word, I have not undressed anyone in this room, not yet.”

  “So you say,” Garrick chuckled slightly as he approached the pile of things. “Weapons.” He pushed a sword out of his path with his Hessians. “Jewelry.” He retrieved a ruby necklace from the assortment on the floor. Of course, the thing could have been made of paste, but it shimmered under the warm light from the sconce just like a set of real rubies would.

  “Why the devil would someone keep clothing, weapons, and jewelry strewn about in this priest hole?” Quent scrubbed a hand down his face. How very odd.

  “Do you think all these things have been stolen over the years by those ghost children?” Garrick asked.

  Quent shook his head. “Mrs. Small said they always return what they take.”

  “She could be mistaken,” Thorn began.

  “Damn it all!” Garrick breathed out, dropping down to his haunches and retrieving a small cravat pin from the mix. “I thought I’d lost this. Misplaced it somewhere.” He snorted. “Damned little thieves took it.”

  “What is it?” Quent asked.

  “Used to be my father’s.” He shook his head, still surprised by his find. “Family crest and everything on it.”

  “You had it with you last year?”

  “I must have.” Garrick nodded. “This is my pin, Quent. I’ve had for nearly two decades.”

  Then there was a good chance Hope’s earbob was somewhere in the pile of pilfered possessions. “Let’s find that emerald, shall we?”

  The three of them dropped to their knees around the edges of the mound. And before they knew it, they were sorting the treasure into piles. Weapons – a set of dueling pistols, a dagger with a gem encrusted hilt, and enough swords to supply a small regiment. An odd assortment of clothing - one ladies’ boot, pantaloons from a bygone era, a collection of cravats, hats and bonnets that could be used as examples of fashion over the last two centuries, various gowns and a mismatched set of gloves. And jewelry – pendants, bracelets, watch fobs, necklaces, and earbobs of all shapes and sizes, though not the one they were looking for.

  “Dear God,” Garrick’s mouth dropped open. “Is than an actual chastity belt?”

  It did, indeed, appear to be a medieval contraption designed to preserve a lady’s virtue. “How the devil did the little thieves steal that?” Quent asked.

  “Very carefully,” Thorn laughed.

  “If you find two more, Braden can give them to our sisters.”

  “That might keep Kilworth at bay,” Garrick replied as he went back to searching the collection of stolen possessions.

  “Whoa,” Thorn breathed out a moment later. “An entire jewelry box. They were enterprising little thieves, weren’t they?”

  Perhaps Hope’s earbob was in there. “Open it,” Quent said.

  Thorn lifted the edge of the small metal box and shook his head. “Just another ring.”

  But it was different from the rest of the jewelry. The craftsmanship separated it from the other pieces of the treasure. The ring was made of gold, but it was ancient in appearance, not one designed by a talented artisan, but more utilitarian in nature. Quent could hardly believe his eyes.

  “That is ugly.” Garrick glanced down at the piece.

  “That may be the most valuable piece in the collection,” Quent said, retrieving the ring from the box and lifting it up to catch more of the light from the sconce. “Do you know what this is?”

  “I would have said rubbish about a minute ago,” Garrick replied.

  “It’s Roman.”

  “Roman?” Thorn echoed.

  Quent nodded. “A military ring, likely one owned by a leader of some sort.” He rubbed his fingers over the metal. There was an engraving in the gold, easy to make out as though the ring had never been worn. “Hadriano Fidem,” he told his friends. “Loyalty to Hadrian. This is early 2nd Century.”

  “From when they arrived in Ravenglass,” Garrick whispered.

  “What is that smell?” Thorn grimaced. “Like something died in here.”

  Perhaps something had. The sudden odor was nauseating, like rotten eggs. “Let’s come back after it’s aired out.” Que
nt pocketed the Roman ring and started back for the sitting room entrance. “Besides it must be dinnertime by this point.”

  “Excellent idea.” Thorn was right on his heels.

  Eight

  Lila hurried up the walk to Braewood’s front door, which opened before she had the chance to knock. Muckle, the butler smiled warmly when his old eyes landed on her.

  “Miss Southward, it’s always so nice to see you.”

  She smiled in return and said, “You’re too kind, Muckle. Lady Brandenham sent for me. Is she receiving?”

  “She would never turn you away,” he returned and gestured towards the yellow parlor that was just off to the right.

  Lila stopped in the threshold as Callie was holding court with her husband and two of her sisters-in-law. Oh, drat! Which sister was which? And which one wasn’t there? For the first time since meeting the Post ladies, Lord Quentin wasn’t around to whisper that information in her ear, and…

  Lord Quentin.

  Lila had spent half the night trying to put his lordship from her mind. It was a battle she lost, as she couldn’t for the life of her, forget what it had felt like to be in his arms or the way his kiss had nearly turned her to mush. But she really, truly needed to find a way to forget those things, as Lord Quentin was clearly not for her.

  “Oh!” Callie leapt from the settee when she spotted Lila. “I’m so glad you’re here!” She threw her arms around her neck and held on tight like Lila might vanish if she released her hold at all. “I missed you so much,” she said softly.

  “And I missed you.” Though Lila hadn’t realized how much she’d missed her friend until this moment. Once upon a time the two of them had been nearly inseparable. And in the months since Callie had left Cumberland for Buckinghamshire and London, things hadn’t been the same.

  Finally, Callie pulled back from Lila and grinned. “Do come and tell me everything.” She tugged her towards the settee. “What have I missed?”

  “As though Ravenglass could compete with London.” Lila shook her head.

  Lord Bradenham dipped his head in greeting, then resumed his seat once Callie and Lila fell into place beside each other on the settee. “It is good to see you, Miss Southward.” He gestured to his sister on his left in blue and said, “Have you met Grace and—” he gestured to the one in white across from him “—Patience?”