Chapter Thirteen
C hapter T hirteen
T ime was running out, and Abby was in far more trouble than she had ever imagined being on this mission.
How could she let this happen? How did this happen?
She was in love with her target! Wildly and breathlessly in love with him, and reduced to sneaking moments away from the girls to kiss him until they were both completely disheveled and clawing with a need they dare not sate.
She’d never felt anything like this in her entire life, and it was with the one man she should never have even been tempted by.
It had all come crashing into her of late, and somehow perfectly settled her heart for the prospect of the rest of her life.
Her mind was far more sensible, when it made an appearance amidst the fog of enticement that was Gilles. It knew full well that she had a task to do, and if she did not do it now, she never would. She had sent nothing to Milliner about her time here, not even hints at what she suspected, and now she would have to add a confession that might bring down her entire career.
Was it considered treason if Gilles never found out who she was? What if she found a way to filter his messages to England from the Faction and could continue to help the covert operatives that way? If she could stay here with him and be delirious with love for him, but keep this part of her life and her mind separate and focused on her mission for England, could it work?
It was a stupid question, and even now, she shook her head at herself. She was wandering the ground floor of the house tonight, looking for anything that might tell her if the third cave was actually long enough to lead back here somehow. She was not meant to come here and rusticate, let alone find passion with the master of the house, so she had to give England something.
But she refused to believe that Gilles was as wicked as she’d imagined when she’d arrived. There was no way this man would have accepted marrying Lucy Allred against her will just to join London Society for the Faction. If he was involved at all, he had to be a pawn for the Faction. Possibly against his will and without his knowledge, even.
So was she going to find proof to vindicate Gilles or to save him?
Even that was unclear at the moment, but she could not—would not—sleep until she found something. Anything.
Something that could break her heart or save it. Give her life or end it.
Three days of bliss was all she’d allowed herself. Two nights of tossing and turning in her sleep because of the torment and confusion. The conflict between body and mind raging unlike any war the world had ever known.
The only reason she had managed time tonight was because Gilles had gone out after supper and said he would not be back before dawn. She hadn’t asked any questions, and neither Mrs. Corbin nor the other servants seemed to think anything was amiss by his going.
It was now or never.
Abby walked unsteadily towards the servants’ wing of the house, her legs still not where she would have liked them to be after her adventure in the caves. Instead of the shuffle-and-clunk gait she was used to, she now had a creaky and steady dragging one, and her bad knee shook if she put too much pressure on it. She’d fallen yesterday, but only enough to bruise her pride. No one had seen, and she had conveniently avoided telling anyone about it.
She would continue to heal and strengthen, of course. She simply needed the time to do so. And she was not about to spend more time in her bed, being doted on by people with better things to do.
Once she reached this older part of the house, Abby began to look at everything more carefully. Any painting out of place could indicate a secret door. Any rug that did not belong could hide a trap door. Any corridor could lead somewhere important.
She inhaled slowly, closing her eyes for a moment, held her breath for a few heartbeats, then exhaled a steady, almost silent stream of air. She could feel the training she’d received and given carefully snap into place in her mind, sending a wave of calm into her body and filling her thoughts with clarity and alertness.
Sage might be retired and gone, but Pearl was here.
And no one would know what to expect from Pearl.
Not even Pearl.
She opened her eyes and began to move again, her eyes tracking everything and anything about her surroundings. Her mind filled with insights and details, filtering them one after the other with ease and sorting them into categories. Important, interesting, and irrelevant, for a start, though she could go back and think on them all again later and restructure. The amount of information she’d have to find tonight was too much for a thorough evaluation on sight, so her training in memorization and recall would come into play.
The trouble was that everything seemed to be fairly open in this part of the house. No doors were locked, artwork was minimal, and there were absolutely no rugs. It was almost as though they were trying to show there was nothing to hide back here, which was even more bewildering.
Abby wandered through the kitchens, examining every detail and every floorboard, but still found nothing. Even the larder held no clues or secrets, and she’d pressed on enough bricks to give her a fairly good indication of any hidden passages or doors. But still, the memory of the cave and its depth ate at her, warning her of something. Teasing her, in a way, and she did not believe in coincidences. If something bothered her, instinct was telling her something.
But what?
She stood in the servants’ dining room, a rather cavernous space that led out into the courtyard by way of a few steps, given the sunken nature of this portion of the house. She had stepped on each and every stone in this room, studied every nook and cranny, and there was nothing out of the ordinary or in any way suspicious. The complete lack of anything was suspicious, but how could she send that information out?
I haven’t found anything, and that is suspicious. Please advise.
She snorted softly to herself, shaking her head. Milliner would be annoyed at the waste of parchment for such a message, if nothing else. Operatives were trained to think for themselves, not to be guided by someone at every point. She had to figure this out on her own, and she had certainly gotten information out of more complicated places.
Just not any that meant as much to her.
Her eyes fell on the courtyard just beyond, and she moved in that direction, tilting her head as her heart began to pound a little harder. It was the middle of the night, but her eyes had so adjusted to the dark of the house that being outside was actually brighter for the moment. Slowly, she walked around the courtyard, sweeping her eyes from left to right in an easy motion, almost as though she were looking for a lost piece of jewelry amid the stones.
She’d never been out here before; there had never been a reason to. The family didn’t use the courtyard for anything; only deliveries to the house and preparations of horses and carriages were done back here. The space was tidy and well kept, and remnants of a fountain sat in the middle of it, but it was clear that had been gone for some time.
Her eyes fell to the ground around the base where the fountain had once been. Where there had been water, there just might be…
Abby bit the inside of her lip and began slowly walking around the base, her pulse thundering in her ears and drowning out the sounds of the night and her own breathing. There would be something here, she could feel it. Sense it.
There.
An old, rusted iron loop sat almost flush with the ground against the ancient stone base, barely big enough for two fingers to hook into. She stooped quickly and pulled at it, feeling only the slightest bit of give. Whatever door it opened would be heavy, but if she could find a way to ease its opening…
Abby went to her knees and traced her fingers on the ground just in front of the loop, finding a small crevice her eyes had missed. She ran a finger along the crevice, no matter where it went, taking care to avoid believing a space between stone could be it. She could feel dust and powder collecting on her finger and into her nail as she traced, but she didn’t care. Finding this space would be worth any disgust or discomfort.
After a few minutes, she had the general idea of this trap door of sorts, and she shifted into a better position for leverage and hooked her fingers into the loop once more. Bracing her feet against the stone, she heaved with all of her might, and felt the stone shift. She hissed between her teeth and continued to pull, the groaning of the stone rumbling in her ears. If it wouldn’t give more than this, she was going to wake someone.
The resistance against her arms faded as the door broke the surface of the ground, and Abby gasped in relief. Holding it open by the loop, she moved to the side and gripped the thick side of the door, heaving it the rest of the way open. It rested against the surrounding stone easily, and once she was certain it would not close unexpectedly, Abby moved to look into the opening.
It was perfectly dark, and there was no sign of how to get down there.
She frowned, glancing around, and smirked when she caught sight of lanterns against the wall. She hurried over and grabbed one before moving back into the kitchen, where the coals from the night’s supper still glowed in places. She pulled the candle out of the lantern and teased the wick until it stood perfectly upright, then touched it to the brightest coal she could find.
It took a moment or two, but then the wick caught, and a feeble flame began to flicker. She replaced it in the lantern and closed the door, moving back out to the courtyard quickly. Lying on the ground, she reached the lantern as far down into the darkness as possible, her eyes squinting to see whatever was there.
A ladder extended up to the door, which answered that question, but the space below was what caught her interest. It was a large room, the walls entirely stone and resembling the cave walls. There were four cots to one side and two desks to another. A shelf scattered with books leaned against one wall, and the other…
The other held an opening that moved off in the direction of the caves.
Abby scooted closer to the opening until her head was over it entirely, and turned her ear towards the darkness, closing her eyes and focusing all of her attention on what she could hear.
For a long moment, there was nothing. But then…
Drip. Drip. Drip-drop. Drip.
There it was. She couldn’t be entirely certain, of course, without venturing within and tracing everything by foot, but she was confident enough to suspect this room led to that open space beyond the third cave, where she hadn’t been able to go.
So what was this space used for? Who was landing at the Coutanche beaches and staying in this room beneath the ground where no one would find them? Based on the effort she had to put in to get the door open, she could presume it hadn’t been used for some time, but it had been used at some point, and conditions within seemed fair enough that it could be used again at any time.
Abby moved herself back from the hole and set the lantern aside before going to the door and carefully, quietly, closing it all back up. There were still the telltale scraping sounds of stone against stone, but it was softer than the groans that had come when she opened it. She blew out the lantern and placed it back with the others, then slipped back into the house, walking back towards the main portion with as much haste as her gait would allow her.
She needed to get back into Gilles’s study. She might find a decent explanation for the who and where and how of the room, and if she knew that, the letters she could intercept might allow her to interrupt the next…
The possibilities were beginning to open up, and she had to force her heart to stop its fierce burning and pounding, convinced she would wake up tomorrow with bruises around her ribs from its activity.
She felt as though she barely took a breath as she made her way to the study. Her legs forgot to shake when she walked, and her hands almost itched with the desire to run over surfaces to find more abnormalities and insights. She couldn’t recollect when she had last felt this connected to her operative side, but it was as freeing as the moment she’d had in the warm pool, only more satisfying.
This, at least, hadn’t gone anywhere she could not retrieve it.
The study door opened with just as much silence as before and the room appeared just as she had left it the last time she had entered. This time, she had no hesitation. She moved to the windows and yanked the curtains open for each one, letting the moonlight and starlight stream into the space. Then she turned and looked at the entire room with an awake and discerning eye.
What had she missed the last time she was in here? There had to be more, and now that she knew Gilles even better…
Gilles.
Her heart sprang into her throat, fairly choking her with the betrayal in which she was currently engaged. He would never forgive her when all of this was over.
Which was why operatives should never get emotionally attached in the first place, but as it was…
Her eyes narrowed. What did she know about Gilles that could give her insight in this room? She let her gaze trace up and down the bookshelves, the desk, the chair, the floor…
A simple and soft rug lay across the floor in front of his desk, only visible from this side at the moment, given her position. But it was a very light cream color, and nothing else in the space was so fair a shade. And why would it need to be soft? This was a study, not a bedchamber.
In fact, the rug could have been made from the wool of a sheep, based on its appearance.
Sheep.
Eyes widening, Abby took two steps forward and dropped to the floor just in front of the rug. The Odyssey. His favorite book. And the sheep escaping from the cave…
She flung the rug back, revealing a small, tidy trap door. This one had a hook that was flush with the floor, allowing the rug to lay perfectly flat and give nothing away.
Opening the door, Abby sat back on her heels, willing her chest to loosen in its present torment of her heart and lungs. She reached into the space, finding several folded pieces of parchment, ledgers, and journals. She pulled everything out she could, including a signet ring, of all things.
She went to the papers first, finding both letters in French and English, none of which had any specific significance within. But then there were other loose pieces, and those had quite a bit of information in them, and one word in particular caught her eye.
Allred.
“Oh, dear Lord, no,” she breathed, the words catching painfully in her throat. She scanned the lines three times, but there was no mistaking it. Allred. Bride. Warehouse.
Abby closed her eyes as a wash of nausea cascaded through her, creating a faint shudder that left her colder than any flooding cave ever could.
How could Gilles be involved with this? How? The Faction was one thing, but kidnapping innocent girls to have them married off to Faction members for their connection to Society? It went against everything that Gilles had shown himself to be to her, and everything he would want for his daughters. How could he hide that part of himself so well that she couldn’t even spot hints of it?
She was a covert operative, for heaven’s sake! She had been trained to notice everything about people and how to spot lies within moments in any given conversation. But she hadn’t seen or felt anything deceptive in Gilles. Those instincts did not vanish so easily, especially when she was regularly teaching new operatives the very same thing at the Convent. These skills were always in use for her. Always.
Which meant… she couldn’t be wrong. Not entirely.
But then what was all this? What was Gilles doing, and what could any of this mean?
She set the letters aside and picked up the ledgers, thumbing through the first of them quickly. They bore the same sort of details that the book in his desk had. Only numbers, checks, and circles. No words whatsoever.
The next had words and numbers, but the words didn’t form any sort of context. Candle, India, Apple, Cheese, Arrow, Rain … Completely nonsensical, and yet they had to mean something to someone, or they wouldn’t have had a line in the ledger.
Another ledger had more numbers, but no checks or circles.
It was maddening to see a wealth of information that meant absolutely nothing to her. And when she came across another ledger with random words and numbers, she gave up, closing it and stacking it with the others. She leaned forward and gripped at her hair, growling softly to herself.
Something was right in front of her face, and she wasn’t seeing it. Something was missing.
She straightened and looked through the journals, all written in French and dated. From quick reading, it seemed as though it was a record of letters sent and received, but she would have to go through letter by letter to be sure. There was no time for that, and there were far more entries in the journals than there were letters in the space. Dates went back more than five years, and that was terrifying.
What if he’d known about the assignment where her injury had occurred?
Her injury had nothing to do with that assignment, of course. Yes, her body had already been in a weakened state, which was from the assignment, but the damage itself was pure accident and coincidence. Yet it somehow was crushing to think that Gilles might have passed a message to someone about the very assignment where her life had shifted forever.
Abby exhaled slowly, shaking her head as she set the journals to one side and picked up the signet ring, turning it towards the window for better lighting. There was an anchor in the center, but around the edges were the words Un lointain rivage.
Foreign shore.
Exactly like the cufflink Sparrow had found in the cave at Barcliffe on her assignment.
Worse and worse.
She ran her finger over the surface of the ring, barely even feeling the engravings etched in it. The ridges were so smooth now, the details so buffered by use that the seal must be faint in any wax. How many Faction letters had this ring sealed so far?
How many more would it seal?
The door to the study burst open then, startling a yelp from her throat, and she looked up in horror.
Gilles stood in the doorway, lit candelabra in hand. His brows were raised as he took in her position, the rug, the items around her…
Abby couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t swallow. Couldn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Slowly, Gilles entered the room and closed the door behind him, turning the key into the lock. He turned and faced her, leaning his back against the door as he stared at her, his expression bordering on the dangerous.
“I think, Abigail, it is time to tell me who you really are.”