Chapter Thirteen

Albert glared at her, the dim light sparkling on his blue eyes. He glared at the dog as well, who shrank into Rose’s side.

“I hadn’t intended to return after this,” Rose said, keeping her voice even. “I will take what Charles wished me to have, and go.”

Albert didn’t move. “It’s criminal you should have anything at all.”

Rose frowned at him. “It’s what your father wanted. You can dance around with your solicitors trying to tie up my settlements, but this was written out very plainly.”

“I intend to prove my father wasn’t in a sound mind when he wrote it. Won’t be hard to prove. He had to be mad to marry a woman less than half his age.”

“There was absolutely nothing wrong with Charles’s mind,” Rose said indignantly. “He was one of the kindest men I’ve ever known.”

“Kind was he?” Albert balled his fists as he stepped inside. He hadn’t donned a hat, or else it had been torn off in the wind, and his thin, graying hair was a mess. “He wasn’t kind to me, was he? His own son—his only son!”

“You shunned him,” Rose said, lifting her chin. “When I met Charles, he was very lonely. In all the time I was betrothed to him, and then married to him, you never once called on him, or tried to meet with him, or wrote him any letters except having to do with business.”

“How do you know? Did you read his correspondence?”

“Of course not. He told me—very sad that you couldn’t bother to even have a conversation with him.”

“You know nothing!” Albert shouted, the words ringing to the high ceiling. “You stupid tart! My father never had time for me—ever. Not when I was a boy, not when I left school, not when I became a man. He never cared that I made my own living without taking a penny from him, and a good living. No, he only cared about this sodding house and the bloody title and the family name. He didn’t care about me at all!”

Rose bit back her next retort, sensing she was wading into murky waters. Charles had always spoken of Albert sadly, as someone estranged from him. A gap between us, my dear Rose, he’d said. More like a chasm. I thought perhaps we didn’t see eye to eye because of our ages, but you are younger than he, and you and I rub along very well, don’t we?

“I’m sorry,” Rose said to Albert. “It’s clear you two had much friction, and I’m very sorry about that. You needn’t worry about seeing me anymore. I’ll take what he left me and go.”

Albert wasn’t listening. He took another step toward her. “My father was wrapped up in my mother. The sun and moon rose and set on her. I thought, I hoped, after she was gone, that he’d turn to me. Embrace me. At least talk to me. But no. You came along and put paid to that, didn’t you? He saw you, and again he forgot I existed. You played him, you little whore. You wrapped him around your finger, and he couldn’t see anything but you. Stupid bugger—at his age, what could he really poke? But you stroked his vanity and turned him from me, and I was cut out again.” Another step, the rage boiling from him. “Then you killed him. He tried to be young again for you, and it killed him. And so, I’m making sure you don’t get one penny of Southdown money. Not cash, not a trust, not a house, not a room in a house. You’ll get your two pieces of bloody furniture, but only if it’s scrap wood.”

He took two more strides inside, then started beating the pile of furniture with his walking stick. Pound, pound, pound!

Rose skipped well back, the dog hiding behind her, whining. Chairs broke, tables fell, the wood rotted, the cloth and rush seats exploding in dust.

Albert beat it all, his face red, arms straining. Rose saw with alarm that he’d started to smile—a gruesome smile—as though breaking up the furniture his father had put out here released something feral inside him.

Rose started to edge around him. Wind and rain notwithstanding, she wanted to be hurrying up the path after Steven, not shivering while Albert rained destruction inside the summerhouse.

Albert saw her. He snarled at her and rushed her, shaking his walking stick.

Rose yelped and scrambled back. The dog, cringing no more, braced himself in front of Rose and started to bark at Albert.

Albert seemed to come to himself a little. He lowered the stick but swung around and scuttled for the door.

“You can wait in here for you lover,” he snapped. “I never want to see you again.”

The idea sat well with Rose. Albert could be left alone with his bitterness and rage, and that would be fine with her.

Albert turned around and glared at her again, his face blotchy, eyes protruding. Then he stepped onto the summerhouse’s porch, wrestled a moment with the big door, and managed to shove it closed.

The summerhouse shook with the impact, raising dust. Rose started sneezing again, the dog echoing her.

She put her hand over her nose and mouth and headed for the door, stopping in dismay when she heard the key screech in the lock.

No matter, Rose thought in irritation. The hinges were flimsy enough. She’d wait until Albert was gone, then pry the door loose from the wall.

The next moment, she heard a scraping, heavy sound of the ebony settee being dragged along the porch and thumped in front of the door.

“Albert!” Rose yelled. She pounded on the door’s flaking panels. “Let me out at once!”

More pounding, as Albert presumably took his stick to the settee as he’d done to the other furniture. Then came more dragging—this time it sounded as though Albert piled large tree limbs, easy to find in this neglected woods, on top of the settee to block her in. Rose pushed at the door. The hinges gave a little, enough to let in light, but she couldn’t shove the door far enough to slip out.

“Albert!” she shouted.

She heard another drag, thump, and rattle of a heavy branch. The light between the slit in the door was muted.

“Damn and blast you, Albert!”

She heard his tread as he stomped away, then silence but for the wind and rain. Rose balled her fists and beat on the door again. The dog pawed at it, then looked up at her, worried.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Rose pressed her hands flat on the door, then reached down and gave the dog a reassuring pat. “Steven will be back in a few minutes. Won’t he?”

The dog wagged his tail, but looked perplexed, as though wondering why on earth Rose wasn’t letting them out of there.

Rose gazed around at the wreck of the summerhouse and the ruined furniture in sadness. Charles must have sent the extra furniture out here to disguise the settee, but still, these things had been part of the house, part of its history. Albert apparently hated that history.

It was also sad that Charles and Albert had never had a chance to settle their differences. Albert blamed Rose, but Rose could feel no remorse or guilt for that. Either man could have tried to talk to the other, regardless of Rose’s presence. She’d certainly done nothing to keep Charles from Albert—she’d barely known Albert. Charles could have made overtures to his son, but it was also clear that Albert was a spoiled brat, even at his age.

These thoughts went through Rose’s head distractedly as she let out an irritated breath. She was cold, rain pounded down on the roof, and who knew how long it would be before Steven and Albert’s staff could trundle a wagon down here?

The dog left Rose’s side to circle the room, his head down. He might smell rats or birds—the dog would have been trained to fetch grouse or other game from fields after a shoot.

She watched him abstractedly until he started pawing at the wall opposite the door. More than pawing. He let out a bark and scrabbled at the paneling with his paws.

Rose went to him, curiosity spilling through her anger. “What have you found, lad?”

The dog looked up at her, tail moving, pleased with himself. He pawed again at the paneling, and it started to come away.

Instead of a stone wall behind it, Rose saw emptiness, and felt a wash of air. “A secret passage?” she asked, bending down to peer inside. “I adore secret passages.” Sittford House had several, which Charles had delighted in showing Rose. They’d led between bedrooms—which had set them to laughing at Charles’s naughty ancestors.

“Shall we be sensible and wait for Steven?” Rose asked the dog. “Or see what’s in there?”

The dog sniffed the opening, looked up at Rose again, then shook himself and plunged inside.

That settled that. Rose moved the panel aside, propping it against the wall, then she ducked into the opening, and hurried after the dog.

***

“Rose!”

Steven shouted for her as he jogged up the path to the summerhouse, moving far faster than the wagon creaking along behind him. The wind was biting, icy. The rain would turn to snow before the evening was out, he’d wager. The sooner Steven got Rose back to London, the better.

“Rosie?”

The summerhouse was now in deep shadow from the waning afternoon. The builders had raised it on a fairly high foundation in order to accommodate a set of stone stairs that ran all the way around it.

Woods seemed to have grown up onto the porch since Steven had gone—thick, dead branches blocked the door, reaching halfway up the wall above it.

“Rose!” Steven bellowed.

His shouts turned to swear words as he ran up onto the porch. Someone had dragged huge branches across the door, blocking the way in—or out. Through the limbs he could see the ebony and gold settee, the gilding he’d rubbed clean shining in the dim light.

“Dear God.” Steven pulled away the branches, tearing his gloves and bloodying his hands. “Rose!”

No answer. No cries of help from Rose trapped inside, no barks of the dog he’d left with her. Bloody useless animal.

The wagon stopped behind him at the edge of the trees. The driver, one of the farmers, climbed slowly from his perch, his son, whom he’d recruited to help, holding the horses.

Steven yelled to them. “Help me shift this lot!”

The farmer came panting up, stared in amazement at the dead branches covering a piece of broken furniture, then joined Steven in pulling the things away.

Steven’s heart hammered, and his stomach roiled. Who the hell had shut Rose in here? He thought he knew the answer, and his rage flared.

“I’ll kill him,” he snarled. “I don’t care if he is a bloody duke. Rosie!”

No answer. Steven shoved the remains of the settee out of the way and reached for the door handle. Locked again, damn it.

Instead of fumbling for the key, Steven simply yanked the door from its hinges. It fell, but he shoved it aside and ran in, calling Rose’s name.

The place was empty. Rose wasn’t here. Steven’s relief was closely followed by another terrifying question—then where the hell was she?

He ran out. “Rose!” The woods were growing darker, the rain falling hard. “Rosie! Damn it. Answer me!”

“Guv,” the wagon driver who’d followed him inside called out to him. “Come and see this.”

Steven charged back into the summerhouse. The driver stood looking at something on the wall, hidden by the broken pile of furniture, which seemed to have become even more broken. A black square about four feet high and three feet wide opened on the back wall, a panel of peeling yellow paint leaning next to it.

The question was not whether Rose had gone into that opening. It was how far had she gone, and what had happened to her once inside?

“I need lanterns,” Steven snapped. “Fetch them. Now!”

The driver didn’t bother explaining that he didn’t work for Steven. He obeyed without question.

Steven was kneeling in front of the opening, peering into the darkness when both driver and his son ran up, each carrying a lantern. Steven snatched the one from the boy’s hands. “Stay here in case she turns up,” he told the boy then looked at the driver. “You, come with me.”

“I should go, sir,” the boy said, taking his father’s lantern. “I’m smaller.”

Steven had no wish to drag a young lad into danger, whatever that might be. The father, though, nodded. “He can wriggle into tight places like a worm,” he said proudly. “He’s your man.”

Steven still didn’t like taking a child into that hole, but he had to conceded that the driver did not look much capable of crawling about in the dark.

“You stay behind me,” Steven said to the boy. “And don’t lose sight of me.”

“Yes, sir,” the lad said.

Without further word, Steven ducked into the darkness.