Chapter Twenty-Six
Sebastian closed the cell door, giving it a push so that with a sigh of putrid air, iron fittings ground against stone. He shook off a shiver of unease. At his side, Diana shivered, too. Lord, that door sounded like death. What must hapless prisoners have felt to be on the other side when they heard that sound? Thunder roared, a tremendous clap to be heard from so deep within Pennhyll. Diana cringed.
“Apres moi, le deluge,” Sebastian murmured.
“Oh, do hurry,” said Diana, motioning in Price’s direction. “I do not like this at all. I want to go.”
Price cleared his throat. “Perhaps some tea to settle ruffled nerves? Before the ladies make their preparations for tonight’s festivities.”
“Tea.” Diana tugged on Sebastian’s sleeve. “Already I feel warmer, don’t you, my lord?”
“Yes.”
“If everyone is with us now. This way, please.” Price lifted his light. Thunder boomed and with it, as if propelled by the storm, a gust of arctic air.
Fansher’s lamp went out.
Diana gasped and most of the young ladies cried out. Sebastian took Diana’s hand. Another gout of cold air raced through the corridor. Price’s lamp winked out, then Mr. Cage’s.
Hew shouted and dropped his lantern. It crashed to the floor, flared and went out. “Something touched me.”
“Did you hear that?” said Miss Cage.
“I didn’t hear anything,” James said. In the darkness now lit only by Sebastian’s lantern, his face gleamed. “Unless—” He wagged his eyebrows “—you meant that blood-curdling howl.”
Diana made a face. “You’re beastly, James.”
“I thought I heard someone calling for help,” said Miss Cage.
“I heard something, too,” said Hew.
“The wind,” Sebastian said.
“A spirit,” said James. “Some poor soul lost here in centuries past and who wishes to communicate with the living.”
Fansher picked up Hew’s lantern. “Broken.” The glass on two sides had shattered and the oil reservoir cracked.
“Perhaps,” James said, “the Black Earl himself.”
A rat skittered just at the edge of the light. Miss Cage shrieked and Diana, catching a glimpse of the beast, let out a scream of her own. One of the other girls sobbed.
“Hold up your lantern, Captain,” Egremont said. “It’s dark enough here as it is.” Sebastian complied, and the circle of flickering light widened.
James rubbed his palms together. “Perhaps I’m right about the spirits, Diana. If I’d been clapped in here for upsetting the first Lord Tiern-Cope, I’d still be calling for help however long I’d been dead.”
Price turned to Diana. Light flickered on his cheeks. “A ghostly call from centuries past, Miss. For there’s no denying many a blue-painted barbarian felt the cold chill of iron here. Their unfortunate souls linger still.”
“You see?” James said.
“Oh, do let’s go.”
One of the girls in the back still sobbed. Sebastian gave Price his lamp. “You know the way, best hold this.”
“My lord.” He took the lantern, but the granite passage was so dark the single flame hardly penetrated the blackness ahead. “Have we everyone with us?”
“Who can tell?” Hew said.
“Whoever’s not here,” said James, “speak now or forever hold your peace.”
“Oh, let’s be gone from here.” Diana stamped a foot. Something skittered again, two high-pitched squeaks rose from the blackness. When they reached the stairs leading to the upper floors, Diana clutched Sebastian’s arm. “What was that?”
“I heard something, too,” one of the men said.
“Thunder,” said Hew. “The storm’s broken.”
In the gloom and dankness they all heard a low wail, thin and distant. “Helppppp.”
Diana shrieked.
“Help me, laird,” a voice said. “For it’s dying I am, mon.” A shape lurched from the darkness. “Helppp.”
The figure staggered and knocked over a pile of rusty pikes with a sound like a roar. Several of the ladies screamed. Diana would have fled for the stairs had not Sebastian had an arm around her.
James lumbered into the light, grinning. “Boo.”
“James,” Diana cried. “You are horrible. Horrible.”
“I thought you wanted to commune with the spirits, Diana.”
“Don’t be a beast, James.”
He was unrepentant. “Oh, come now, Diana. Admit it. It was an excellent jest.”
Diana walked to her brother and hit him right between the middle buttons of his waistcoat. “You’re awful, James, and I hate you.”
“Ahem.” Price held up his lantern. “Tea in the red saloon?”
When Sebastian reached his room, the Black Earl stood by his bed. In one hand, he gripped a sword of unearthly silver, but held downward so that the point of the weapon touched the floor. He wept as if his heart were broken. “Aidez-la.” Help her.
Sebastian heard nothing but the roar of those words tearing through his soul. Help her.
The Black Earl, weeping still, turned to the stone wall. A rent marred his crimson tunic, the edges jagged and blackened, and then he, too, vanished and left behind him nothing but an aching, unfillable emptiness.
Help her.
In the fireplace, the heat found a flaw in several of the coals and sent hissing, popping flares upward. He shivered, for the room felt cold. He heard the jingle of metal, the ring of a sword replaced in its scabbard. Foreboding weighed him down, pressed upon him so that he felt he could not breathe for the certainty of disaster looming.
Help her.
The last time he remembered seeing Olivia was in the dungeon. In that atrocious cell that stank of death and decay. Just before the lamps went out. Standing, he remembered, at the rear of the cell into which Price had led them. She’d have been the last one out. He remembered the scraping pull of the cell door closing. Certainty gnawed at his gut. He’d closed her in there. He knew it. Just like his ancestor the Black Earl, he’d locked a woman in that God-awful cell. His blood ran cold as he recalled Diana’s conviction that she’d heard someone calling for help. And no one actually confirmed everyone had come out.
“Help her.”
Sebastian turned, knowing what he would see at the same time he wondered what sort of madman conjured ghosts of long-dead ancestors and conversed with them about women gone missing. “She’ll be in her room,” he said. “Changing like the others.”
The Black Earl faced the window. “Help her.”
Sebastian walked to the window, shuddering when he passed through the Black Earl. He looked out. The storm boiled in the sky. “There’s nothing—” To his right, he saw a flash of white. Movement. A woman clinging to the ledge between the castle and the steep drop to the cairn below. Olivia. Wind whipped her hair and gown. “I’ll wring her bloody neck.”
In his sitting room he ran down a servant carrying an armful of linens. Sprawled on the floor, she tugged at her cap.
“What’s the quickest way the the outside. The back of the castle?
She pointed to the outline of a door in the wall. He obeyed without thinking, his fingers finding the release mechanism. A staircase spiraled down, his feet took him wherever it led, spinning. Down. He came out near the rear of Pennhyll, into a fierce wind. Sleet pelted him as he worked his way to the backside of the tower. The wind tore at his coat. His heart leapt to his throat when he saw where she was. “Olivia.”
The rear of the north tower faced nothing but the sky and a drop down the mountain. He crouched, peering along the jumble of rock and flurries of snow, searching for the safest route. Any route at all. Olivia picked her way along rock and crumbled brick, treacherous footing. Wind whipped her hair and gown. She slipped twice before he reached her. Her head bowed as she concentrated on the patch of rock in front of her.
“Olivia.”
Her head jerked up.
“Stay where you are.” His words flew into the wind. Lifting his voice, he shouted. “I’ll come to you.”
She sank down, arms around a bulge of rock that formed the foundation of Pennhyll. Six feet more. His skin crawled. The sky exploded in a flash of lightening. He threw himself toward her, reaching for her outstretched hand. His fingers closed around her wrist, but he lost his footing in the shifting flint and slid below the ledge. Olivia shouted and threw out a hand. Instinctively, he reached. Their fingers caught. She slipped and shot past him, riding loose rocks. He squeezed her hands, slid farther down but caught himself. They teetered, and she flung herself at another boulder. An avalanche of shale and flint rolled and skittered down the mountainside. Sebastian threw himself over Olivia, his arms around their heads, protecting them both.
When the rocks stopped flying, he embraced his relief as tightly as he embraced her. Ignoring the sleet pelting them, he grasped her head between his hands. “Out for a stroll, Miss Willow?” he said.
“Lovely evening, my lord. So good of you to come along.”
Another flash of lightening lit the sky. He felt his stomach drop. Nothing below them but a fall to certain death. “Bloody, sodding little fool.”
He threw up a hand, grabbed the ledge and, together, they ascended the hill. When they reached firm ground, Sebastian swung Olivia into his arms and leaned against the castle wall. She shivered, and he held her more tightly yet. Lord, she felt small and vulnerable. “Thank God,” he said into her hair.
Taking care where he stepped because the sleet had turned to snow and turned the ground icy, he headed for the tower door. The squelch of his boots and the whisk of his breeches echoed in the stairwell. It was dark as pitch. He turned sideways to get up the stairs, and she helped matters by pressing herself tight against him. She felt like ice.
“I ought to wring your silly little neck,” he said to the dark.
“Why?” She was soaked to the skin, and she smelled like a privy.
“You could have killed yourself.” He was so used to having control of his emotions that he didn’t recognize his reaction for what it was. “What were you thinking, climbing out that hole?” He adjusted her in his arms again. “It’s a damn good thing you’re so small. He could feel her body, the shape of her backside against his belly and his forearm.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Coming after me.”
“I’m the one who closed you in.”
She hesitated. “On purpose?”
“No, I didn’t close you in on purpose.” His emotions grew larger than life, and he could no more sort out the panic from the relief than he could speak in tongues. “It’s bloody storming out there.”
“Yes.”
They exited into the sitting room connected to his bed chamber. He kicked the door closed. Olivia blinked and wiped her eyes. Water plastered her hair to her head and ran in rivulets down her face. The gown was black with mud. Her nose was red, her skin pale and waxy, her lips blue. She dragged more water-logged hair off her forehead. Her teeth chattered. Even when she clenched her jaw, it didn’t stop nor did the shivers.
McNaught heard the noise for he came at a run. His eyes went round as his belly. “She needs a hot bath, McNaught. Is mine ready?”
“My lord.” He took a step back, eyes as round as his belly.
“Then see to it, McNaught.”
He shifted Olivia in his arms and to keep her balance and his, she clutched his neck. “Whatever possessed you to attempt such a foolhardy and dangerous stunt as that? Hell, Olivia. You stink.”
“I know.”
He carried her into his dressing room. Steam rose off his bathwater, but the cold hit him the minute he walked in. Colors flashed behind his eyes, and he felt pressure in his head. The light shifted, the fireplace coals hissed and popped. His eyes sought the shadows. There, in far corner, a man. Holding a broadsword.
“Elle et à vous,” someone said in a approving tone. He didn’t know if the voice came from the shadow or his head or if he’d spoken the words himself. “En fin.”
Olivia shivered. Slowly, he set her down. The sense of belonging nearly bowled him over. Not him, but her. She belonged here. They belonged here. Together. Their clothes dripped on the carpet while he knelt at the fireplace, ignoring the Black Earl standing in the corner. He dumped the contents of the scuttle onto the fire. Brushing off his hands, he glanced at her. “It’ll be warmer soon. Come stand near the fire a while. Jesus, you look a fright.”
“Thank you,” she muttered. But she did as he directed. In the corner, the Black Earl hadn’t moved. “You’re soaked to the skin.”
“So are you.”
He stripped off his coat and stood looking for someplace where it wouldn’t do any damage. There wasn’t any place except the marble floor around the tub. “It’s bloody freezing in here. Where the hell is that draft coming from?” Abruptly, he turned. “You’re wet,” he said in a soft, low voice. He went to her, ostensibly to stand near the fire, but really just to be close to her. He rested his hands on her shoulders. Where the devil was McNaught? Anyone. If they stayed alone much longer, he would end by dishonoring them both. “And I would not have you fall ill.”
They jumped when someone knocked.
“Enter,” he said, torn between relief and disappointment.
The door opened, and a serving girl came in. Her eyes lit on him. She dropped into a deep curtsey. “My lord.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Edith,” Olivia said. “Her name is Edith.”
“Is that so?”
Edith bowed her head lower yet. “Milord.”
“Well, Edith. I take it, despite my not having seen you before—No.” He snapped his fingers. “I have seen you. I ran you down. Just before I went after Olivia. I presume McNaught told you to come here.”
“Aye, sir.”
Sebastian looked at Olivia. Something tugged at him. “She needs to get out of those wet clothes, immediately. You’re shivering still, Olivia. Move closer to the fire.”
“Any closer, and I’ll be standing in it.”
“Edith,” he said. “Immediately does not mean later. It means now. Do as I say, young woman.” He swung his attention back to Olivia. “What did I tell you about those wet clothes?”
“My lord,” Olivia said, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.
“Delightful as is the sight of your gown clinging to your body, I cannot help but be aware it is not healthful for you.”
“Nor for you, either.”
“Well, then?”
His dressing room door opened, and all three of them whirled. “McNaught.”
The valet glanced at the two women and then at Sebastian. “I have taken the liberty, my lord, of calling for another bath. In your sitting room.” He emphasized sitting room, so as to be sure, Sebastian imagined, the women respected the privacy of his bath.
Olivia said, “Off with you, Sebastian.”
He bowed. “I expect you ready for dancing in less than an hour.”
She grabbed two handfuls of her gown. “I was going to wear this.”
“That,” he said, “is easily remedied.” He glanced at Edith. “Keep an eye on her. Call me immediately if anything happens.”
“Aye, milord.”
McNaught followed him into the sitting room. Disapproval rolled off him. Footmen had already brought a tub and were filling it with steaming water. He stripped his outer clothes and peeled off his shirt and linens. While he waited for the rest of the water, he submitted without complaint to a thoroughly noisome potion administered by a silent McNaught. He stepped into the bath and while he soaped himself he wondered if Olivia was naked. He didn’t need much imagination at all to conjure her in her bath. Skin damp and slick, her hair curling around her face.
“Bugger it,” he said, leaning forward so that water sloshed out of the tub. He couldn’t keep his mind off Olivia even when she wasn’t here. Once he was dry and wrapped in his robe, he let McNaught shave him despite being worried that his valet was affronted enough to be careless with the razor. He dressed as impatiently as he’d bathed, fidgeting while McNaught tied his cravat. “Do you think she’s decent yet?”
“I cannot make a knot if you will not stand still, my lord.”
“Devil take you. I haven’t ravished her.”
His valet blew air into his cheeks. “This is a complicated fold that requires you to stay motionless.”
“Better?”
“Yes, my lord. A moment longer. There.”
“She needs something to wear.” Snatching up his gloves, he strode into his room and knocked on his dressing room door.