Twenty-Two
So this is what it feels like to be dumb, Beau thought. Huh. Now I know.
The child had tricked him, well and truly. It was so shocking, so completely disorienting, that for a long, painful moment, he did not know what to do.
“Wait. Hey. Stop. Stop!” he shouted after her.
“Not a chance.”
“I want my key back. Now,” he thundered, pulling his dagger from his waistband.
He expected her to be terrified at the sight of the blade, to toss him the key immediately. Instead, she snorted laughter. “Or what? You’ll make me eat a charcuterie plate?” She nodded at his weapon.
Beau glanced at the knife he thought he was holding and saw that it was, in fact, a salami.
“Son of a—”
“Can I get a piece of cheese with that?” the little girl taunted. “Some quince paste?”
Beau threw the salami down. “I want that key back,” he growled. “You stole it.”
“That’s rich coming from you,” said the girl. She dropped the key into her skirt pocket.
Desperation stabbed at Beau. He tried a new tack. She was just a child, a child who’d been cruelly imprisoned in the darkness. He would show her some fake sympathy.
“Who locked you away down here, little girl?”
“Lady Espidra.”
“When?”
The girl tilted her head. “Mmm, about a hundred years ago.”
“A hundred years ago,” Beau said flatly.
“Give or take a decade.”
“Little girls shouldn’t tell fibs.”
“Neither should grown men. They also shouldn’t steal stuff.”
Beau’s entire body went cold. “How do you know—”
She cut him off. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I have work to do. I’d advise you not to linger down here, either. Ta-ta.”
And then she turned and ran, taking her light with her. The darkness wound Beau in its tentacles again.
“Wait!” he shouted, starting after her. “Don’t go!”
The little girl had a strange effect on him. She drew him like a beacon, and he found he couldn’t bear to lose sight of her. She would lead him out of the darkness. Back to the stairwell. To the kitchens. If he was lucky, there would still be time to snatch another candle. To find the tunnel and escape from this horrible place. To get to Matti and make him better. He could do these things. All of them. He would do them. Nothing could stop him.
But the child was diabolically fast, and he had to run to keep her in his sights. She sped through rooms and down hallways, rounded corners at breakneck speed. She reached the stairwell quickly and dashed up it, taking two steps at a time.
Beau emerged in the kitchen a few seconds after she did, panting for breath, and found her standing in the middle of the room, her head tilted, listening. As he started toward her, she whirled around, pointed at the long worktable, and said, “I’d duck under that if I were you. Right about … now.”
“Valmont? Percival? Is anyone here? Camille?” a voice called from a corridor. “Her Grace is unsettled. She requires a pot of tea.”
Beau ducked under the table just as Lady Espidra and Lady Rega entered the kitchen. He heard them stop dead and gasp. Balancing on his fingertips, he leaned forward, the better to see them.
Espidra, her eyes impossibly wide, reached for Rega and gripped her arm so tightly, her nails pierced Rega’s skin. Blood seeped up under their sharp points. Astonishingly, Rega seemed not to feel it. Her gaze was fastened on the girl; her expression was murderous. Lady Hesma had followed them into the kitchen. She stumbled backward now, shielding her eyes with their hands, as if the child’s wan, flickering light blinded her. Behind her, half a dozen other ladies whispered and hissed like a nest of vipers.
“You,”Espidra said. “How did you get out?”
“I’ll never tell,” the girl said with a wink.
“Seize her! Take her back to the cellar!” Espidra shouted at Rega.
“I think not,” the girl said.
In the blink of an eye she jammed the key into the cellar door’s lock, turned it, and then she was gone, running out of the kitchen through a doorway.
Beau’s heart hit the floor. His chance at freedom was gone, too. The cellar door was locked now. How could he resume his hunt for the tunnel without the key? He tried to see which way the child had run, so he could follow her, but a table leg blocked his view. He could still see Espidra, though. Her face was as pale as bone. Her hands were shaking.
She wasn’t furious, like Rega. She wasn’t shaken, like Hesma.
Espidra was terrified.