Chapter 20 #2
“Excuse me for a moment.” He was at the door before they could question him. “When I return, we’ll begin searching the house.”
Gentry stood. “I’ll accompany you.”
Gabriel smirked. “To use the pot?”
And then he was gone, picking up the pace once out of earshot, racing through the corridors and bursting out the servants’ door into the herb garden.
He stopped. Rain soaked him in seconds.
Cold water ran down his collar, sharp as pins.
They’d think he’d lost his mind.
And he had.
Because until Olivia was home, nothing in his world would be right again. He’d hunt down every last member of this damned fraternity. A lone assassin out for blood. A stone-faced—
“Gabriel.” Gentry appeared behind him, using his given name for the first time in years. “Come inside before you catch your death. You heard what Mrs Hodge said. We need to find the evidence. It’s the only way to save Olivia’s life.”
He turned, wiping rain from his face, knowing Gentry was right.
But something pulled at him.
An impulse he couldn’t ignore.
“Give me a minute.”
He didn’t need a minute.
He heard his name carried on the breeze.
Then he saw her, just a flicker in the corner of his eye, gripping the raised hood of her grey cloak to shield against the rain. Her hair was loose, fiery strands whipping in the wind like flames.
Olivia?
She was home.
But she was moving, ambling across the lawn.
Away from the path.
Away from the house.
Away from him.
Had she been drugged? Injured? Returned under their noses to serve the fraternity’s next wicked plan?
“Olivia? Olivia!”
He was running, sprinting through the rain, calling her name to lure her back, afraid she couldn’t hear him.
She stopped. A statue for a second. Then she turned and headed towards the small copse of trees, moving like a puppet through someone else’s nightmare.
She stopped again. Dazed. Disoriented. He couldn’t tell.
What the devil was wrong with her?
“Run, Gabriel!”
A sharp crack pierced the morning air. Pistol fire, not thunder. The shot came from the cluster of trees.
He fell to his knees, instinct taking over.
Olivia didn’t. She jerked from the impact but didn’t scream, just collapsed hard onto the wet ground, limbs slackening, the grey cloak spreading around her like a shroud.
He froze. Pain tore through him, as if the bullet had struck his own chest.
“No! Olivia … No!”
Gentry was suddenly there, grabbing his arm, forcing him to his feet, dragging him forward. “She’s still breathing. Move.”
They reached her in seconds. Gabriel sank down, rain soaking through his trousers as he turned her gently onto her back.
He stilled, disbelief knotting in his gut.
Not Olivia.
His breath caught. For one irrational second, he couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.
Miss Bourne stared up at him, ghostly pale, her wig askew, revealing the familiar golden hair beneath.
Gentry crouched beside him, parting her cloak, his skilled fingers finding the wound. “It’s her shoulder. Clean shot, I think. But we must get her inside before the shock takes hold.”
Miss Bourne’s weak fingers found Gabriel’s. “Run. Run before he shoots again. I … I was meant to lure you to the trees, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t hurt you again, Gabriel.”
His grip tightened around her ice-cold hand.
None of it made sense. Her presence. The cloak. The warning. The sacrifice.
He wanted to ask why. To ask how far this betrayal went, how long it had festered under their noses. But Olivia was out there. And every second’s delay was a gamble with her life.
“Where is she? Where have they taken my wife?”
Another shot rang out, missing them but shattering a windowpane behind, shards spraying the flagstones.
“Take this.” She pressed a folded note into his hand. “You’ll find her there. With Justin. She’s alive. He’ll do what he can to keep her safe. Hurry. Take the valise. They may agree to a bargain.”
Her eyes fluttered shut.
Gentry pressed his fingers to her throat. “She’s losing consciousness. I need to get her somewhere warm.” He cast a glance at the trees. “But doubtless that bastard’s already reloading.”
Shouts rang out beyond the copse, muffled, frantic, followed by the sharp snap of undergrowth and a sudden crack of gunfire. A man’s groan followed, pained and guttural, chased by a stream of curses in a rich Scottish brogue.
Kincaid emerged, ruffling Alfie’s hair and grinning like his horse had just won the Derby. “The lad hit the beggar with the first shot,” he called. “I wouldn’t believe it had I nae seen it myself.”
“That boy was wasted at the seminary.” Gentry hauled Miss Bourne into his arms, the strain etched into his features. “If you’re planning a rescue attempt, should you not wait until Daventry arrives?”
One of Daventry’s men had returned to Mrs Hodge’s cottage, breathless and bloodied. He’d found her wounded and chased the devil, but lost him near the Thames bend.
He should wait.
Wait for reinforcements. Wait for a plan.
But love made fools of sensible men.
Gabriel stood. He opened the note, now damp in his hand, and read the address, one he knew all too well. “Give this to Daventry.” He shoved the paper into Gentry’s pocket. “Tell him to follow with his men. And have Rutland look for that damned swallow wallpaper.”
The rectory stood tucked back from the road, half-swallowed by trees, its weathered gables just visible through a screen of tangled branches and ivy. Carts and carriages rattled past, unaware a woman had been seized from her home and held prisoner within.
Gabriel cursed his own stupidity. He’d searched this house hours ago. Every room. Every cupboard. And come away with nothing but the rector’s stunned grief and the nagging sense he’d missed something.
Dalton scanned their surroundings as they crouched low behind the hedgerow. “You’re sure you trust Miss Bourne? That we’re not walking into a trap?”
He wasn’t sure of anything. Except the love that burned in his chest. And the fear of what awaited him inside this godforsaken place.
“It’s undoubtedly a trap.” They’d sent Miss Bourne to Studland Park to kill him in the woods or force him here at gunpoint. To make him hand over the evidence while they tortured his wife. “But we have the advantage.”
“We should wait for Daventry.”
“And have them silence her when they see the cavalry amassing?”
That had always been the fraternity’s plan. Bury the truth and dispose of the witnesses.
Still, Dalton erred on the side of caution for once. “If they’re expecting you, you can be sure we’re not just dealing with the rector.”
Having met the man, Gabriel knew the Reverend Clay was nothing more than a fool out of his depth.
“Do you think Lovelace is in there?” Dalton’s tone held the bitterness of someone who’d spent a decade believing a lie. “That he’s been alive all these years and never bothered to tell us?”
Gabriel wanted to think the worst of Justin Lovelace. That he was a liar, a cheat. Cruel. Conniving. What sort of man let his sister identify a body, believing it was him?
Only a desperate one.
“He’s in there.” Whether as friend or foe, only time would tell.
“But why bring her here? Why not somewhere less conspicuous?” Dalton glanced back along the road. “Mrs Hodge died practically on the doorstep.”
“Because clever villains hide in plain sight. This whole business is a case of smoke and mirrors. Clues hidden within clues. The evidence is there, if one knows how to decipher the messages.”
“Olivia’s father led her here for a reason.” Dalton’s hand moved to the sheathed blade at his side as a cart trundled past on the road. “He gave her the key to the mausoleum. Why do that if it’s nothing more than a meeting place?”
Gabriel considered the clues. The cross, a symbol for the church. The message carved into the back, saying the truth lay in poems. The compass pointing west of the mausoleum. All of it led to the rectory.
But something still didn’t fit.
“The answer is in the poem, but we’ve spent hours analysing every line.” Gabriel raked his hand through his hair, tension coiling beneath his skin.
Maybe he was too close. Too emotionally invested.
He thought of those first few days after their wedding, how every moment spent with her fed his obsession. He began reciting lines he could remember, nothing standing out at first, until one made him stop dead in his tracks.
“This crypt, built to entomb the dead,
Is now a prison for a living thought.”
He turned towards the road, the graveyard visible in the distance, his heart thudding. “A prison? Perhaps it’s not a metaphor. Some old churches had hidden tunnels. What if the men gathering at the mausoleum weren’t footpads, but fraternity members, meeting beneath the rectory?”
Dalton eyed the graveyard. “It won’t hurt to look. Our only other option is to knock on the rectory door. And we’ve no idea how many men are inside.”
They followed the road back to the graveyard and entered through the rickety gate. Gabriel stole a glance at Olivia’s cottage, recalling the sharp ache of regret when she’d refused his proposal. He’d ridden away, his heart heavy, yet something had compelled him to turn back.
It was different now. That ache no longer stemmed from uncertainty, but from love. Whatever lay ahead, he knew she felt it too.
Someone had fixed the lock on the mausoleum door. Thankfully, Dalton had brought a ring of skeleton keys and made quick work of the mechanism.
“Is there no end to your talents?” Gabriel teased.
Dalton gave a knowing grin. “My wife often says the same.”
Inside the mausoleum, nothing had changed.
Gabriel removed the lid of the wooden coffin, expecting to find a sack of rotting meat, shocked to find an actual corpse.
“Someone who knew the fraternity’s secrets?” Dalton asked.
“It’s not anyone I recognise.” He quickly replaced the lid and brushed his hands on his trousers, then scanned Dalton’s solid frame. “Let’s hope you’re still a decent pugilist, and married life hasn’t dulled your footwork. I need that brute strength to help open these tombs.”