Chapter 20 #3
Dalton arched a brow. “After all those late nights reading poetry, are you sure you have the stamina?”
“Take hold of the end, and we’ll move on the count of three.”
They took their positions at either end of the stone coffin. The lid was cold and smooth beneath their fingers.
“Ready?” Gabriel said.
Dalton gave a curt nod, bracing himself.
“One,” Gabriel counted. “Two ... three.”
With a groan of effort and the grind of stone against stone, they heaved the lid sideways. It shifted an inch. Then another. One last push, and it slid free enough to reveal the hollow interior.
As Nesbit suggested, it was not some poor soul’s final resting place but a theatre’s prop basket—clothes, hats, rope, wooden staves. A few sacks of coins in denominations smaller than sovereigns.
Gabriel sighed. “Well, that sends my theory to the dogs. We’ll check the other, then return to the rectory and kick down the back door.”
The lid on the next tomb was lighter and easier to move. With a final shove, it shifted, dust rising in a thin plume. Inside lay a body bound in linen, the image more fitting for an Egyptian crypt than an English churchyard.
Gabriel stared down, unease creeping up the back of his neck.
The cloth was discoloured, but something caught his eye. The linen was darker in places, not just with age, but with the faint smudge of sooty fingerprints.
“Someone moved this body recently.” Gabriel reached in and tugged the edge of the linen. “Help me lift it out.”
Together, they moved the wrapped figure. It was so light, he doubted it was a body at all. Beneath it lay a coarse roll of hessian. Beneath that, wood, not stone.
“It’s a trapdoor,” Dalton whispered.
“Yes, secured by nothing but a latch.”
“You think it leads to a tunnel?”
“There’s only one way to know for sure.” Gabriel hesitated, meeting Dalton’s eye. He couldn’t lose another friend, not like this. “Wait here. Stand guard until Daventry arrives.”
Dalton caught his arm. “I’m coming with you.”
“You’ve a wife at home. She’d—”
“Understand why we risk our lives for each other.”
Gabriel looked at the man who’d stood beside him for over a decade. It was easy to dwell on what was broken and forget what still held fast.
“You’ve been a loyal friend to me.”
Dalton gave a crooked smile. “And love’s made you sentimental. Now open the damn door so we can find your wife and be done with this.”
The tunnel was narrow and airless, swallowing all light the moment they descended. Damp clung to the walls, the scent of soil and decay thick in the dark.
They walked for a minute before spotting the glow, a lantern hanging from a hook on the stone wall. To their right, a row of studded iron doors.
All stood open but one.
“These are cells,” Dalton muttered.
But Gabriel’s heart was in his throat. He quickened his pace, checking each cell in turn, hope and fear waging war within him as he reached the end of the row. The final one. Closed. The key still lodged in the lock.
He daren’t call her name. He held his breath, turned the key and pushed the door slowly open.
A man sat slumped in the corner, face bloodied.
Justin Lovelace looked up.
Time stilled.
Memories surfaced. The last time they’d spoken. The laughter, the slap on the back, the lie that said everything was fine.
Relief surged through him, not anger, not even confusion.
Just relief.
Relief the man wasn’t dead.
That he’d never again have to wonder, or carry the weight of it in silence. That part of his past no longer clung to him like a coat lined with lead.
“Where the hell is she?” Gabriel whispered through gritted teeth. Olivia was his only focus. “I’ll kill you if you’ve harmed her.”
But Justin staggered to his feet, panic sparking in his eyes as he looked past Gabriel. “Where’s Kate?”
“One of the fraternity’s thugs shot her.” Gabriel paused, letting the blow land, the same low punch he’d felt when he learnt Olivia was missing. “It’s a shoulder wound. Gentry’s tending to her.”
Justin shuffled forward, one hand pressed to his ribs. “I did what I could to save your wife. But they—”
“If she’s dead—” Gabriel lurched, clasping the man by the throat, the sudden chill in his body at odds with the fire in his voice.
“They have her upstairs,” Justin rasped. “They’re waiting for Kate to return, to confirm you’re dead. They’ll use her to find the evidence, then kill her. Us too.”
“Did you not warn them?” Gabriel released him and turned for the door. “Never underestimate the devil when he has everything to lose.” He paused. “How many men are there?”
“Five. And one woman. You’d best shoot her first.”
Gabriel nodded. Then said the words he never thought he would. “The trapdoor is open. Miss Bourne is at Studland Park. Tell Gentry the code word is Caesar. It might be best if you both disappear. Abroad. You may be certain I’ll never look for you again.”
They crept up the narrow wooden stairs, boots soft on the worn treads.
The cellar was packed tight, crates stacked to the beams, burlap sacks spilling grain, a rusted cider press hunched in one corner like a forgotten relic. Wooden barrels crowded the space, leaving barely room to turn.
There were no guards at the door. None in the corridor either.
Dalton exhaled. “They never expected you to find the hatch, and certainly not the tunnel.”
“They underestimated Olivia’s father.” He peered into the dining room, then the butler’s pantry as they prowled through the house. “And the power of poetry.”
They stole into the main hall, pausing when they heard raised voices.
“This has gone far enough,” Reverend Clay said, the strain clear in his tone. “When did this stop being about reform? About bringing the government to account? About helping the poor and needy?”
“When one of our members betrayed us,” came Sir Randall’s faint Scottish burr. “Reform will nae happen unless we weaken those peers who control the House of Lords.”
“Yet while others shouted in the streets, you were buying up half the high street in Melford, three months before the borough was granted its own Member of Parliament.”
“Aye. To make sure the people are charged a fair rent.”
“Yet you killed my mother years ago.”
Gabriel froze.
Olivia!
Her voice was clear, steady. She was alive.
He’d never heard a sweeter sound.
“Your mother died in a house fire,” Sir Randall countered.
“I have evidence to suggest otherwise.”
Pride rose in his chest. He’d never known a woman so courageous.
The mention of evidence sent the rector into a panic. “Where is Miss Bourne? She should have returned by now. This will all end badly. Mrs Hodge said as much when—”
“Well, she’ll nae have much to say anymore.”
Olivia gasped. “Is that what you do when members disagree? Silence them by any means necessary?”
“The cause is all that matters.”
“And lining your pockets in the process.”
“When will this madness end?” the rector whimpered. “Do you really think there’s a list out there? Perhaps it was nothing but an idle threat.”
“And the lass happened to find her way here from Cambridge? Poking her nose around the graveyards and visiting The Burnished Jade?”
“But you’ve abducted a marchioness,” the rector cried. “If we don’t hang for sedition, we’ll hang for that.”
“Miss Bourne packed her clothes. Rothley will think she’s left him. ’Tis a familiar pattern in his life. One he’s come to expect.”
Gabriel felt the sting of those words.
The past threatened to surface like an undead corpse.
“Gabriel knows I would never leave him,” Olivia said, laying a mortstone over any doubt, burying history with it. “I made a vow to him, and to Mrs Boswell, not to leave without speaking to them first.”
Mrs Boswell.
He was curious to know the details of that conversation.
“You’re all fretting unnecessarily.” A woman spoke, the words ringing with certainty. “Rothley will be dead in the woods. Katherine will have the valise. When she returns with it, we will deliver the traitor’s daughter to Studland Park and raze that monstrosity to the ground.”
Gabriel smiled to himself, satisfaction slithering through his veins. He glanced at Dalton, drew the blade from his boot, and entered the drawing room.
Olivia sat on a crude wooden chair, her hands bound in her lap.
Their eyes met. Anger surged at the bruise on her cheek.
It took everything in him not to go to her first.
Instead, he turned to Mrs Culpepper, who looked the picture of health. “I suggest you reconsider, madam. I believe there’s a flaw in your plan.”