It was impossible to know when one of the servants might return, but she had to take the chance. This was the first time the stairs had been unguarded since she’d stumbled across the cellar’s dark secret. There might not be another opportunity.
She edged into the dark stairwell, careful not to let the sharp metal base of the borrowed shovel scrape against the damp stone walls. She crept down each wide, uneven step as silently as possible, straining to hear noises from either direction.
When she reached the last step, she paused to listen again. A single candle flickered in the musty stairwell, but provided just enough light to see. There was no one guarding the cage.
Susan took a deep breath and rushed into the tiny cell, shovel aloft just in case.
The (thankfully) still-living Lady Emeline shrieked her silent shriek and collapsed to the dirt floor, shuddering in terror.
“No, no, no—” Susan dropped to her knees beside the trembling woman and placed a hand on her bony shoulder. Her cousin recoiled, whimpering in earnest. “I’m here to help,” Susan whispered, horrified. “I promise to get you out of here.”
She reached for the hem of her cousin’s skirts. Susan lifted the soiled fabric high enough to expose a pale, unshod foot and the rusty iron band locked around the skeletal ankle. She tugged, knowing the effort would be useless. The manacle didn’t give. The clamp would never open without the key. The chain, however... The chain still held possibility. Susan straightened the slender metal rings, felt their weight.
Tears coursed down Lady Emeline’s dirty cheeks. She still trembled.
“I’m getting you out of here,” Susan informed her firmly. “Right now.”
Her cousin seemed unconvinced.
An insidious thought wormed into Susan’s mind. “Do you remember when I came to visit you last time?”
Without looking up, Lady Emeline nodded.
Susan’s blood ran to ice. There. Proof. Lady Emeline was equally asnot-deaf as her mother. There was no mystical contagion infecting the women of Moonseed Manor on their wedding nights. There were only self-serving cretins, who were evil enough to steal their wives’ tongues. Perhaps literally.
Susan had no wish to check.
She rose to her feet, more determined than ever to free this poor creature before her devoted husband was forced to kill her out of “love.”
“This ends now,” she told the quivering woman. “Don’t move.”
Susan raised the shovel as high as she could, both hands wrapped around the wooden pole, the metal base pointing straight down, poised to bisect the cursed chain.
She let loose.
A clang much louder than she’d hoped for echoed in the dark chamber. She had to work quickly.
Susan staggered backward, shoulders aching from the impact of shovel against chain. Had she done it? Could they leave? She dropped to the ground, inspecting the chain. Still solid.
No! She’d broken half a ring! Not enough to slide the interlocking piece free, but the shovelhadwreaked damage. Now she had to do it again—but to the other half of the ring. Bloody hell. What were the chances she’d hit the exact same ring twice in a row? Susan had never been one for sums, but her best guess on those odds was a whopping zero. The noise had been deafening.
“We have no time,” she said in response to her cousin’s questioning gaze.
The frail woman had stopped crying. As if she had hope, however small a glimmer. Susan could not fail her.
“We’re doing this. Don’t worry.” She scrambled to her feet with renewed determination. “We’re leaving here. Both of us. Tonight.”
She poised the shovel. Struck.
Another deafening clang.
She poised the shovel anew. Struck again. And again. And again. Her shoulders screamed with fire and agony, but Susan couldn’t stop, had to work faster, had to—Yes! She did it!
Susan dropped the shovel and left it where it lay, no longer worried about keeping silent. Servants inLondonhad probably heard, given the racket she’d been making.
“Come. We have to hurry.”
She hauled Lady Emeline up by a fragile elbow and, almost as an afterthought, grabbed the fallen shovel as well. She had no experience with knife fights, but she now knew a thing or two about swinging a well-aimed shovel.
