“If you’d shut yer carcass-hole now and again, I wouldn’t have to.” Poseidon gave the pistol handle an expert twirl but didn’t return it to his waistband. No doubt the barrel was scalding hot. “Now, as I were saying. I’m getting right tired of all this chitchat. Anything else got your bonnet in a twist this fine day, Bothwick? Because one way or another, you’re about to take your leave.”
Chapter 13
With a reasonably low number of wrong turns—and the discovery of yet another heretofore unseen staircase—Susan found herself shivering in the chill morning air beneath the arched entrance to the Beaunes’ rock garden. Or grave garden, as it were. The serpentine rose vines twining the gate seemed lifeless and frozen, like the grounds of a bewitched castle awaiting the arrival of a handsome prince. Except there would be no waking up from this nightmare.
The dead would stay dead. (Well, perhaps. If she asked them nicely.)
Susan tiptoed out from beneath the thorn-encrusted archway, hyper-aware of each impression her booted feet made upon the cold soil. She did not see Lady Beaune. She didn’t see a single soul. Perhaps that was for the better.
Now that she was looking for such things, she found the three flat stones with relative ease. The first two marble rectangles were unmarked. She might not have recognized them for what they were, had the third—otherwise identical—stone not been engraved,Lord Jean-Louis Beaune, 1755–1813.
He’d died last year. Last year! Susan’s head swam with the implications. Not that therewereovert implications.
Whom did the other two graves belong to, that their rotting corpses merited neither name nor date? Had they died last year as well? Or longer ago? Or—Susan’s gaze jerked toward the skeletal manor looming over her shoulder—more recently yet? Did everyone who resided here meet an untimely death?
That was when she noticed the others. The (heaven help her!) dozens of freshly turned plots dotting the so-called garden. How could there be so many? And so recent? And so... small. Susan’s stomach convulsed in revulsion as she realized that such spaces were only big enough for children.
She backed out of the garden in slow, uncoordinated motions, grappling behind her for a handhold and wincing when errant thorns drew blood from her fingertips.
The clouds broke overhead. A dull glow whitewashed the dead earth, giving the entire vista a bleached, colorless appearance more appropriate to a dream than reality. The marble slabs glinted. The pungent scent of the dark soil mixed with the too-sweet stench of dying roses. Or something else. Something darker. Therewereno roses this time of year. The garden itself tilted, uneven, impossible. Susan fled back inside, desperate for the sanctuary of her bedchamber.
Instead, she took a wrong turn and came upon a hidden staircase.
Curious, she followed the stairs down, down into the bowels of Moonseed Manor, down into a cellar she hadn’t known existed. From those hellish depths came a plaintive whimper, like that of a lost cat... or a child, terrified of becoming companion to the unfortunates in the cold earth out-of-doors.
The last place she wanted to go was down into that darkness, from whence those horrible whimpers rose. But if a child needed help, how could she not?
Careful to keep her descent as soundless as possible—if a villain were there with the wounded child, she certainly had no wish to make her presence known—Susan crept down the steps one by one.
A dank chill emanated from the stone passageway. Tiny beads of moisture covered the smooth slabs, as if whatever misdeeds took place within these walls caused the house itself to break into a cold sweat.
Not for the first time, Susan wondered whether it would be smarter to just walk on back to London after all, with nothing more than the pelisse on her back. What were a hundred or so miles to the truly desperate? But then came another soft whimper. If she had within her power the opportunity to save an innocent from a terrible fate, she would never forgive herself for walking away.
She reached the bottom at last. There was only one room. And no way to miss what hunched inside.
The ghost from her bedchamber.
As before, a pair of long white plaits tumbled from beneath a hooded cloak. Age spots dotted ungloved hands. Dirty, ripped fingernails clawed at the cold stone walls, still damp with perspiration. Shadow obscured the rest.
Or had. Susan must have made a small sound. The figure turned around, hobbled forward, cocked her head... and the crimson hood fell away from her face.
A gasp fluttered from Susan’s lips. Not a ghost at all. Not evenold.
The elaborate crucifix was missing from the woman’s thin neck. The braids—now that they caught the weak light from the candelabra in the corridor—were palest blonde, not white. And the creature had just managed to brush off one of her age spots with the back of her hand. Dirt. From clawing at the walls. But why—
Then she saw it.
A chain. Thin. Delicately so. But strong enough to keep this poor woman’s warped frame shackled to its cage. The slender chain stretched from an iron ring attached to the lowest corner stone to an invisible manacle beneath the hem of the crimson cloak.
The woman couldn’t have been much older than four or five and twenty. She hobbled toward Susan. And whimpered when the chain checked her progress at her very first step. This time, its taut length revealed the iron clamp encircling a pale, bone-thin ankle.
Susan’s lungs drew in a sudden, heaving breath as if she’d been underwater all this time and finally come up for air.
If this woman was locked, trapped, imprisoned... there must be a key to release her. Susan just had to find it. But the walls were empty. Consumed with urgency, she jerked her body around to search the corridor for a nail hanging a key in the shadows.
She came face-to-face with the giant.
The master of the manor did not look pleased. The scarecrow stood just behind him, grinning his horrible slash-faced smile. He still carried a shovel in one hand. From the other dangled a ring of keys. Which quickly disappeared into a pocket.
