Time slowed to a near standstill, and Phoebe floated downward. Darkness enclosed her, and an endless void yawned below. Her arms and legs were not hers to command, and they flailed ineffectually around her. But when her hand struck a stone protruding from the wall, she felt the sharp pain in her shoulder and then spun like a top as she plummeted to the bottom. A scream formed in her throat but never emerged, for an instant later she hit water at the bottom and the impact knocked the air from her lungs.

As Phoebe sank into the blackness, no sense of up or down existed. Suddenly the realization cut through to her stunned mind that she was about to drown. She fought off the paralyzing panic. The will to live took charge.

She kicked her feet, one hand clawing at what felt like a wall of stone, and then her body began to move upward. She broke through the surface into air nearly as cold as the water, but still could not draw breath.

No. No. No. You will not die.

Trying to move her hands and feet to keep herself afloat, she found she had no feeling in her left shoulder. Her arm floated uselessly, as if it had become detached from her body. Her chest was locked in a painful spasm that would admit no air. She grabbed her arm and shoulder, and a sharp pain radiated across her back. She felt a jolt of air enter her lungs, and she tried to think.

Another breath. She looked up. Stone walls stretched straight up for an ungodly distance. A well. She’d fallen into a well.

The water was very cold, and her dress was weighing her down. Another breath seeped in. She looked up again and the distance to the top seemed to stretch even farther.

She started to call for help but immediately stopped. Her hat came fluttering down the shaft.

The memory returned. Fear formed a tight knot in her stomach. Someone had pushed her. And this same someone was standing at the top now.

The hat landed on the water beside her.

She tried to move her left arm again and the sharp pain caused her to stop kicking. Her chin dipped beneath the surface. Phoebe swallowed a mouthful of foul-tasting water and she gagged. Retching and gasping for air, she scratched at the wall, slippery with moss, desperate for something to hold onto. Her fingers found a narrow lip of stone.

She looked up again once the retching subsided. Someone at Bellhorne wanted her dead.

* * *

“I’ll be going to Edinburgh myself next week,” Dr. Thornton said. “I’ll see to it that the doctor from the medical college comes back with me. Have no fear, Captain.”

Ian wished he could remain as composed as the doctor. He’d been away from Bellhorne less than a week, and yet upon his return, his mother appeared even paler and weaker. Getting a specialist here to see her was beginning to feel critical, and he told the man his concern.

“I understand your thinking,” the doctor agreed. “When I arrived earlier, I stopped up to see her before coming to your office. Whatever decline you’re seeing now may be temporary. But I must tell you the change may very well have been caused by the excitement of this unexpected company.”

“She was quite happy to greet them.” The welcome his mother gave Phoebe had touched Ian the most. The way she took Phoebe into her arms brought back more memories of Sarah. She’d touch her daughter’s face and look into her eyes as if she could discern, with that simple gesture, everything that was right and wrong.

The doctor shook his head. “It may have appeared so to you, but she thought the household wasn’t prepared to receive the daughters of an earl. The cook is all at sixes and sevens apparently, and the housekeeper is in a panic shuffling staff about to tend to these young ladies. I had to hear her every worry. If you care for her health, you’ll spare her this type of agitation.”

Ian knew it was in the man’s character to speak his mind regardless of whom he was addressing, but he felt his temper rising. Most days, he would allow the doctor to say his peace and let it go. But making the suggestion that Phoebe should not be welcome at Bellhorne was exceeding the bounds of his position.

“I do care for her health, Thornton,” he said sharply. “And I’ll address any confusion in the household, starting with Cook and Mrs. Hume. But to be clear, Lady Phoebe and her sister are welcome guests at Bellhorne, as they always have been and always will be. Once you meet them, you’ll realize their presence will have a positive impact on my mother’s . . .” A soft knock at the door stopped Ian momentarily. “ . . . on my mother’s health.”

As Ian went to open the door, Dr. Thornton grumbled something under his breath and turned to the window. He’d half expected it to be Phoebe and was surprised to find Millie waiting outside. She looked pale and out of breath. He noticed bits of hay caught at the bottom of her skirts as if she’d been walking through the fields.

“Lady Millie, what’s wrong?”

“I am sorry to interrupt, Captain, but I was hoping you might know where my sister has disappeared to.”

“What do you mean ‘disappeared’?” he asked, unease clenching his stomach in a tight grip.

“She left our room soon after our luncheon with your mother. I was to meet her in the garden. But I’ve looked everywhere, and she’s nowhere to be found.”

He reminded himself to stay calm despite his tendency these days to imagine the worst. Phoebe was a frequent visitor to Bellhorne while Millie joined her sister only on occasion. The older sister was more familiar with the castle and the grounds.

“Where exactly have you looked?” he asked as he ushered her toward the great hall with Thornton on their heels.

“The garden. The orchards. I checked with the grooms in the stables, thinking Phoebe might had decided to go for a ride. But no one saw her, and no horses are missing.”

A footman appeared.

“Get Mr. Singer now,” Ian ordered, sending the man running for the butler. He turned back to Millie. “Could she be up with my mother?”

“She’s not. I asked Mrs. Young to check. She said your mother is resting, and Phoebe has not been to see her.”

The butler rushed into the hall. Ian gave directions to organize a search. “Get Mr. Raeburn here as well.”

The household was already stirring because of the urgency in his calls. The housekeeper appeared. “What is it, Captain?”

“We can’t find Lady Phoebe. Have the servants look for her. Look everywhere.”

As Mrs. Hume hurried out, Ian turned to Millie again. “Did you look in Sarah’s room?”

“When she wasn’t in the garden, that was the first place I looked,” she answered. “She’s not there.”

He tried to think of all the places where Sarah liked to take her friends. Bellhorne was a large house with extensive grounds, and Phoebe was no stranger to it. Running footsteps could be heard now, as well as doors opening and closing.

Millie suddenly looked somewhat embarrassed by the upheaval she’d set in motion.

“Perhaps I’ve overreacted, and my worry is for nothing. I know my sister. I know she has an adventurous nature. Perhaps she’s simply off on her own and will be back by dinner.”

Nothing would make Ian happier than to have that be so, but wishing it did not make the worry diminish. He wouldn’t rest until they found her.

* * *

Phoebe had little strength left in her legs to kick and keep herself afloat. She’d found a slippery, narrow lip protruding on the stonework, and she clung to it for her life. Her fingers were growing numb, however, and she kept losing her hold. Each time, she sank deep into the water. But she wasn’t giving up, and each time she thrashed her way to the surface.

She had no voice left to call for help. The only sound in the well was the clicking chatter of her own teeth and the hollow lapping of the water around her.

The feeling in her left side had returned, but the cold and exhaustion rendered the arm useless. Her body felt more and more like dead weight, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she lost her handhold and sank to the bottom.

Time. She didn’t know how long she’d been down here except that the sky far above was taking on a darker shade of blue. Whoever pushed her in had to be gone. Nothing else rained down on her. No boulders. No branches. There was no attempt to cover the top. Perhaps he thought the fall had killed her.

She had no doubt they’d have realized by now she was missing. Millie would go looking when she didn’t find her in the rose garden. Phoebe wasn’t giving up, but the chances were poor that anyone would search the Auld Grove. And even if they did, how would they find her at the bottom of a forgotten well?

Phoebe closed her eyes and rested her face against the slippery wall. She couldn’t lose hope. She couldn’t die. No. Not here. Not at Bellhorne. Ian’s face formed in her mind’s eye. He’d already suffered too much. He held himself responsible for what happened to Sarah. She couldn’t add to his guilt.

“I’m waiting for you, Ian,” she murmured. “But find me.”

* * *

Bellhorne and the estate grounds were in complete turmoil. Every member of the staff was looking for Phoebe, and the tenants had now joined in.

Fearing additional upset for his mother, Ian decided he needed to remove her from the center of the commotion. The minister, Mr. Garioch, stepped in and invited the older woman to join him in the village for dinner. The carriage was brought around, and Alice Young accompanied her to the rectory. Millie, however, would go nowhere until her sister was found.

The house was searched again with care, room by room. The dogs had been taken out of the kennels, and field hands and grooms were combing the fields.

Ian was about to lose his mind. He could not fathom where Phoebe might have gone. They’d arrived here in his carriage. She’d taken no horses from the stables. There was only so far she could have walked in a few hours on foot. But which direction would she go?

As soon as the search was well under way, he rode to the village to query the fishermen laying out their catch to dry along the shore. Worry topped worry. What if she had been taken against her will? Everyone he questioned answered the same. No one had seen a woman matching her description. No strangers had traveled through. No one had seen her. All Ian was able to accomplish there was to enlist the help of more men to expand the search up and down the shoreline.

He didn’t want to think it. There was no parallel between Sarah’s disappearance and what was happening now. They were at Bellhorne. They were not in Edinburgh. No dangerous netherworld of crime existed out here. He trusted his tenants and the villagers, everyone that she might have come in contact with.

Riding hard back to Bellhorne, he prayed she’d be waiting there with Millie. But what if she wasn’t? Dread washed down his spine, and he spurred his horse on.

Ian tried to put himself in Phoebe’s place. He knew she was upset while they were having lunch in the rose garden. His first thought on hearing of her disappearance was that she might have revisited places she’d gone with Sarah. But they’d already searched all the spots he could think of, and she was not to be found.

Evening was drawing near. Soon the dark of night would overtake them. Ian felt the tension straining his every limb. He could hardly think for the knot of pain throbbing in his head.

“Where are you, Phoebe?” he called out into the wind. No answer came back.

Put yourself in her place. The words echoed again and again in his mind. How could she disappear? Where would she go? And why?

He knew her. He’d witnessed her courage, her willingness to face danger.

Ian had almost reached Bellhorne, and he saw his men and their dogs stretched out in lines across the fields. Raeburn was directing them. She hadn’t been found yet.

“Where did you go, Phoebe?”

The image of her unconscious body landing at his feet in the Vaults came to his mind. Few people he knew—man or woman—had her heart, her courage.

The realization was slow in coming, but to solve any puzzle one needed to assemble the first pieces. And he had them.

He’d found Phoebe wearing men’s clothing for her sojourn into the Vaults, the most dangerous place in Edinburgh for anyone. He’d followed her through the streets of Edinburgh, only to catch up to her by Greyfriars Kirkyard, where headless ghosts of Covenanters rose from their graves. She wanted to climb to the top of Arthur’s Seat where Bonnie Prince Charlie stood and surveyed the capital he’d come to fight for. She was drawn to the dangerous, to the untamed.

The Auld Grove. No one went there anymore, except the travelers who camped nearby later in the summer. Like a fool, he’d shown his sister the standing stones once, and then, thinking better on it, he tried to warn her off with stories of witches and blood rituals. He thought he’d succeeded, but now he wondered if Sarah had taken Phoebe there during her visits.

And if he was right and something happened to Phoebe out there, then he had one more reason for burning in hell.

* * *

Phoebe stared at the pale hand clinging to the mossy rock. The bloodless fingers didn’t belong to her. A vague indifference was clouding her brain, and she found she no longer worried about the cold, for she could hardly feel her legs. The chattering of her teeth continued, but she only occasionally heard it. Her panting breaths were not taking in enough air. But she didn’t care about that either. All she wanted to do was sleep.

She rubbed her cheek against a slick rock and thought of her regrets.

“Reg . . . rets.” She struggled to get the words past her lips. The sound bounced around her head. Or was it echoing off the walls? She didn’t know.

Regrets.

She was a good daughter, even though she caused her father to lose his temper every other time they argued. She was also a good sister. And if Hugh and Gregory claimed that she’d given them the grey patches beginning to show in their hair, it was a lie. Millie and Jo loved her, tolerated her without their brothers’ meddlesome theatrics. And she was socially aware of the problems facing the poor. She had used her gift of writing for their welfare.

She had no regrets.

“Another lie,” she breathed.

Closing her eyes, she saw Ian’s face. He was her regret. Not going after him. He’d always been the one. The only one.

She was twenty-seven years old, and their few moments alone—and his kiss—were all she thought of.

“Ian,” she whispered.

She had secured a place for herself as a writer, despite the difficulties presented because she was a woman. She was writing columns for the Edinburgh Review. It was a great accomplishment. But what of the other things that could bring her happiness?

Marriage. Children. Sex. It occurred to her that the order was muddled, but what did it matter? She’d missed all of it. She’d missed the passion that went with giving a man all of herself, body and soul. She was dying in a hole dug centuries ago in a forgotten grove . . . and she had not yet experienced life.

“Let me go,” she said as one hand slipped off the rock. It would be so easy to let the other one go too.

Her body begged to be allowed to sink to the bottom. Easy. Phoebe stared at the slippery hold keeping her afloat. All she had to do was release each finger.

“Ian.” His face. He wouldn’t let her be.

So she had regrets. But what of his? she wondered. His sister dead, and after three years he was no closer to resolving his feelings of guilt. And what about her? He’d saved her in the Vaults. He worried about her, lectured her, but treated her like an intelligent, feeling human being. And then he brought her to Bellhorne. He would feel responsible for her death. She had no doubt of it.

Death. The grave. What did it matter if it was a casket in a kirkyard or the water at the bottom of a well? She stared again at the obstinate fingers clutching the rock.

“Ian,” she cried out with all the breath she had.

* * *

Ian would never have heard it if he’d not followed the broken branches and trampled clumps of bracken and tall grass. The faint cry came from the bottom of the well, nearly hidden by the overgrown shrubs.

As he led a group of men to the Auld Grove, he’d been worried that if Phoebe had ventured out here alone, she might have twisted an ankle. Much worse, she might have been attacked by a vagrant passing through. But the well? It had never occurred to him.

“Blast me,” he cursed.

As he scrambled to get to her, he nearly went in himself. Staring down into the darkness, Ian shouted orders to his men to bring ropes and a lantern.

Going down on his hands and knees, he leaned into the well and heard the sound of a splash at the bottom.

Relief at finding her and worry over how badly she might be injured battled in his brain.

“Phoebe!” he called down to her. For a moment panic hit him that perhaps he’d imagined it. He’d wanted to hear her voice so badly that he’d conjured it up. “Talk to me, Phoebe.”

“No.”

The single word reverberated up along the stone walls, and relief swept through him.

“That’s the spirit,” he said.

A lantern was lit and lowered into the well. Ian could see her upturned face. Her wet hair was pushed back, her skin as pale as the dead. Tired eyes flashed in the flickering light.

“I’m coming,” he said. “Hold on.”

Ian quickly tied a large loop at the end of a second rope and went down into the well. As he descended, his heart almost broke. Wet and shivering, she clung to the moss-covered wall.

When he’d nearly reached her, she stretched her arm out to grab the rope, but her fingers wouldn’t close over it and her body sank out of sight. Letting go, he knifed into the water, praying he wouldn’t drop on top of her.

The water was black and cold, but he found her immediately. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he propelled them both quickly to the surface.

He wanted to kiss her senseless.

“Phoebe,” he breathed her name. Her face had taken on a masklike grey hue. Her skin was like ice, and she was shivering uncontrollably.

Bloody hell, he thought. How long had she been in here?

Sitting her in the loop, he tried to get her to wrap her hands around the rope. He wanted to get her out of the water, but she clung to his neck and was not letting go. He understood her response. He wanted to do the same.

“Phoebe, you need to let me go. We can only get out one at a time.”

She shook her head and held on tighter to his neck.

“There’s a warm blanket waiting for you. Dry clothes. A bed.”

“No.”

“I promise to hold you, sweetheart. I will never let you go once we’re out of here.”

She still was hesitant. Forcibly removing her arms from around his neck, he then wrapped them around the rope. He kissed her lips and shouted to the men above to pull her up slowly.

“Hold on, my love.”

Her eyes looked into his as they began to lift her. She was alive, he told himself. Alive. She’d survived the fall into this well. An absolute miracle. He commanded the worry carping at him to be silent. He hadn’t lost her.

“No regrets,” she said through chattering teeth. “I want no regrets.”

She continued to watch him as she ascended, and he never took his eyes off of her.

Delirium can make a person say strange things, he thought, but Phoebe didn’t sound delirious.

No regrets.

As he waited for the rope to come back down the well, Ian wondered what she meant.