Chapter Twenty-four
The cart path narrowed as Marcus approached the turnoff that led to the mill, the rutted earth lined by drooping hawthorn and encroaching weeds.
The wheel ruts had long since filled with rainwater and hardened unevenly beneath the hooves of passing livestock.
The trees here leaned too close together, their branches skeletal against the late afternoon sky.
Marcus kept the satchel close at his side, the strap drawn tight across his chest. The weight of it felt unfamiliar and burdensome in the wrong way.
He knew the contents by heart: the carved reliefs, the worn glass beads from Cirencester, the slender fibula pin unearthed near the southern hedge line.
Artefacts that had once spoken to an ancient people’s survival. Now they were ransom.
The old mill emerged from the trees like something half-faded from a dream, with a lopsided stone frame with roof tiles long since lost to wind and rust. The door hung partially open, crooked on one hinge, the darkness inside absolute.
Marcus stopped a few yards short. His heart pounded hard enough to drown out thought. He had done enough thinking on the race there that she could already be dead, and this could be nothing but a trap to end his life, as well.
His own life was irrelevant to him. Catherine had to be alive. He could not allow himself to believe anything else.
Harold needed her alive, after all, at least long enough to manipulate the exchange. But what then? Would he vanish into the woods, leaving Catherine behind? Or had he constructed something far more final? Marcus’s throat tightened. If Harold had already disposed of Catherine…
No, he thought, furiously shoving aside the notion. Do not think it. She depends on me to bring her back home. And he would bring her back, whatever the cost. He tightened his grip on the satchel and pressed on, the sting of tears pricking his eyes.
***
Catherine’s hands ached, the cords biting deeper each time she strained against them. Her wrists had long since gone slick with blood where the rough hemp tore into skin, but she dared not stop. Every gradual slackening, every millimetre of loosened fibre, brought her closer to freedom.
She sat upright on the splintered floorboards, her back pressed to the post, fingers blindly working at the knot behind her.
Splinters bit into her palms, and the effort made her shoulders tremble, yet she bit down on the pain and would not relent.
The blood helped the cord to swell and slip; with each tug, the bindings grew looser.
My hands are bleeding, but the rope is giving way, she realised, holding onto the small bit of hope the knowledge gave her.
She had no illusions about what would follow.
If she remained bound when Marcus arrived, Harold would have no cause to spare her.
The fact that he had not yet ended her life was merely a calculated delay—manipulation, nothing more.
She shifted her weight and twisted harder; the cord creaked and drew taut.
Across the room, Harold paced back and forth. He was a man-shaped fragment of fury, circling through the dust-thick beams of lamplight like something long caged and maddened by confinement.
“No one listened,” he muttered, as though continuing a quarrel begun hours before. “They laughed. Dismissed me. Always the same superior nods, the same smug corrections. I produced real findings—work finer than Travers ever managed—and still they barred me. Cast me out.”
He turned sharply toward the wall, addressing not Catherine but some invisible tribunal.
“And for what? For questioning dates? For asking who funded his papers? Jealousy, pure jealousy. They could not abide a voice outside their precious circles, their clubs. They knew I was right.”
From beneath her lashes, Catherine watched, careful to hide that she was loosening her bonds. His gaze fixed on nothing, his face flushed with fervent memory, his hands twitching in rhythm to invisible debates.
“Oxford sent a letter, but the damage had been done already,” he said, still speaking as if there was another person present with whom he was conversing.
“None of them believed it was fraud. They envied how complete my records were. I was meticulous. I never fabricated. I only refined what was already true.”
He turned again, muttering lower now, something inaudible about acquisitions in Norfolk and a name that elicited a rasp of laughter. She closed her eyes for a moment.
He speaks of crime the way some men speak of weather, she thought, unable to suppress a shudder. Another inch of rope loosened, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out with relief. If shuddering helps, I only need listen more carefully to what he is rambling…
“Edmund had the same weakness,” Harold said, his tone sliding to sweetness. “He wanted proof. Always asking questions. You cannot build a career on questioning. You must possess. Claim. Why waste time authenticating what ought to be accepted?”
Her stomach turned, but she kept her face still.
If Marcus comes—and Harold perceives, even for an instant, that his hold is slipping—he will end us both, she realised with numbing dread. He is not playacting. He has done as much before.
Her fingers moved again. The knot was loose enough now that her right hand might slip free if she twisted just the right way.
A moment later, she froze at a distant noise. It was the soft but unmistakable cadence of hoofbeats, drawing nearer. Harold’s head snapped up. He moved to the window like a man uncoiling from a trance and reached for the blade resting on the chair beside him.
“No,” she whispered, the word lost in her breath.
He crossed the room in three strides, seizing her by the arm and dragging her upward.
The force sent a bolt of pain up her spine where her muscles screamed from hours of stillness. She managed to rise, unsteady but upright, as he hauled her toward the broken window.
His arm fastened about her, and the blade rose cold against the hollow beneath her jaw. His breath struck her ear—unsteady, too quick. He held her fast, a captive to his grip, her gaze forced toward the courtyard beyond the mill’s threshold.
Marcus’s voice rang out across the clearing.
“Harold,” he said, steady but loud enough to carry. “I have what you demanded. No tricks. I have come alone.”
Catherine’s heart leapt. He had come. But the sight of her would wreck him if she failed now.
Do not let him see how frightened you are, she told herself with fierce urgency, steadied by the sound of his voice. Be strong for him. He cannot think I have surrendered. He cannot walk in here thinking me broken.
She forced her shoulders straight. The knife pressed tighter against her skin, but she held her breath and lifted her head.
Her hair hung in loose snarls over one shoulder, blood marked her wrists, and dirt streaked the hem of her gown, but she stood firm against the trembling that threatened her knees.
She found Marcus’s eyes through the gap in the shattered pane.
His expression shifted in an instant. Resolve twisted into something like horror, then sharpened into recognition of the danger, and helplessness to alter it.
Harold pressed the knife closer, forcing her chin upward.
“That is close enough, Lord Penwood,” he said, voice unnaturally bright. “Do not take another step—or I will see that she shares the same fate as the others.”
Catherine saw Marcus’s jaw clench and the way his fingers closed tightly around the strap at his side.
“You wanted your collection,” Harold said, his voice higher now, balancing on a strange edge between command and elation. “Well, here’s your price. And if you think for one moment that I will let you take both your wife and your treasures, think again.”
Marcus took a single step closer, but Catherine did not flinch. She met his eyes again, held them, and hoped that he saw what she meant to say.
I am alive. I am not broken. I can fight.
***
Marcus stepped through the open doorway with slow precision.
The dim light pooled across the uneven floorboards, throwing the warped beams into long slants of shadow. The mill smelled of damp stone and old grain.
Harold stood near the broken window; one arm locked around Catherine’s throat. His other hand held a blade tight to her skin, pressed so close Marcus could see the sharp edge catch the light.
Yet she stood upright and very much alive. Her gaze found his—steady, unflinching. The set of her shoulders, the quiet balance in her stance, spoke of calculation. She was not paralysed by fear, nor pleading for her life.
Marcus, meanwhile, felt a fear greater than any he had ever known, while Catherine remained as composed as he had ever seen her.
My brave, brilliant wife, he thought as she met his gaze firmly once more. I believe she’s trying to give me an advantage.
Harold’s smile was stretched too wide.
“Set the satchel down,” he said. “Right there. Easy.”
Marcus reached slowly into his coat and lifted the satchel from beneath his arm, kneeling to place it on the dusty floor near a fractured crate.
Harold’s grip on Catherine remained tight, but his gaze drifted toward the bag.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now back away.”
Marcus straightened.
“I brought what you asked for,” he said. “Just let her go.”
Harold laughed. It was not loud and joyful, but dry and high-pitched, like old wood cracking.
“Let her go?” he asked. “She is the reason everything became so infernally tangled.”
Catherine’s expression did not falter, though Marcus discerned the faintest movement at her bound wrists.
“She betrayed you,” Harold hissed suddenly. “She played the clever wife, gathering your trust as though it were a prize. You imagine she has formed any true affection for you? She sought access. That was all she ever required.”
Marcus shook his head.
“That is a falsehood,” he said quietly.
Harold pressed on, heedless of the reply.
“And you, like a fool, believed her. There lies the difficulty, does it not? You began to care for her. That was never part of the design. All you had to be was the distracted academic husband. But then you had to feel. Always feeling. Always weakness.”
His breath came uneven now; the blade in his hand trembled.
He is unravelling, Marcus thought, his pulse quickening, though he could see Catherine was not wholly helpless nor paralysed by fear. He grows less predictable with every moment. I must hold his gaze—keep him speaking. She may not have long.
Catherine moved again, ever so slightly; the fabric of her sleeve stirred, just enough to draw Marcus’s eye.
She is working on freeing her bonds, he realised at last, a spark of hope flaring. If she can win free, I may overpower him. If not…
***
Catherine stood motionless in Harold’s grasp, her heart beating so violently it seemed to drown every other sound.
Yet even as the blade lingered at her throat, her fingers worked in patient, silent increments behind her back. The cord chafed cruelly, but she did not cease. She could feel the faintest slackening—the final resistance giving way.
Harold was spiralling.
“You never saw it, did you?” he said with sharp triumph. “Edmund fancied himself a guardian of scholarly purity, as though his credentials gave him the right to challenge me and threaten years of progress and reputation.”
Marcus’s voice remained steady, though Catherine heard the rage beneath it.
“He was not trying to shame you,” he said. “He was trying to protect collectors from being exploited by criminals.”
Harold snorted, not unlike a hungry pig.
“By me,” he hissed. “Say it plainly, my lord. From the man with the nerve to uncover the truth and use it well. He stood in the way. Just like they all did. Just like your clever little wife. Always watching. Always noticing too much.”
Catherine kept her face neutral, her eyes fixed ahead. The knife trembled ever so slightly against her skin.
“He would have exposed everything,” he said, pacing now behind her back, dragging her with him step for step.
“Do you comprehend how long it took to build the network? The aliases? The cyphers? I have outmanoeuvred curators from Manchester to Kent. And he would have brought it all to ruin. That I could not allow. Which is why Lady Penwood here shall bear the blame for the thefts—and for your murder.”
He paused, giving Catherine enough time to shudder once more. “A pity she must die today. She might have served as a convenient scapegoat for some time yet. But there will be another. There is always another.”
Her wrists twisted. One loop slipped free. Her fingertips scraped the final knot loose.
With all her strength, Catherine drove her elbow backwards into Harold’s ribs. The contact was sharp and jarring. She felt the breath leave his lungs as he staggered. She wrenched free at last.
The blade grazed her collar as she ducked and stumbled forward, the rope trailing from one wrist.
She did not scream despite the pain and sudden influx of fear. But Marcus was already moving, which helped her combat her terror with relief.
Harold’s roar followed her. Footsteps pounded after hers. Marcus collided with him before Harold could reach her.
The sound of impact was sickening, the weight of two bodies slamming into the mill’s rusted gearworks with enough force to jolt the structure. Dust exploded from the rafters.
The men hit the ground hard.
Catherine whirled, gripping the support beam with one trembling hand. Her breath came ragged and shallow.
They were on the floor now with Harold on top, his blade raised high, his arm shaking with effort and madness alike. Marcus grunted, blocking the strike with both hands, his wrists straining as he shoved upward.
Harold was stronger than he looked. Desperation made him wild, unpredictable, impossible to dislodge. He fought not like a man defending himself, but like one cornered by truth. But Marcus would not let go.
Catherine saw it in every taut muscle and every grim line of his face.
He will die before he lets Harold reach me again, she realised with both love and horror. But if Harold landed the blow…
No, she thought, mustering the last of her willpower and resolve. I will not let that happen.