Chapter 25
The second birdcall faded, leaving the cellar unnaturally quiet.
William stared toward the stairs. Every instinct urged him to go after Isabella, but Edmund was still locked behind the iron bars, and they had no idea who else might be inside Bryn Hir.
Beside him, Rosalind had gone pale. “That was Isabella.”
“I know.”
“We have to find her.”
“We will.” William forced his attention back to the cell. The ring of keys he had found had opened the outer door, but none fit the lock keeping Edmund imprisoned. “But first we have to get your father out of there.”
He searched the wall beside the cell again, though he already knew there was nothing to find. No hooks, no cabinet, nowhere someone might reasonably have left another key.
“The man who guarded me carried it with him,” Edmund said from behind the bars.
William exhaled slowly.
Of course he had.
There was already too much crowding his thoughts. Algernon’s birth. His father’s secret. Edmund knowing the truth all these years. Worst of all, the knowledge that Algernon had been frightened enough of William discovering it that he had imprisoned an innocent man to prevent it.
His own brother had done this.
William could not begin to understand what that meant yet. He could barely decide what he felt beyond a terrible sense that the family he had known that morning no longer existed.
One problem at a time.
The thought came back to him with almost painful clarity.
William turned to Rosalind. “I need you to find Gabriel.”
Her eyes widened. “You want me to leave?”
Only then did he realize what he was asking of her.
Rosalind had spent weeks searching for her father. She had crossed half the country with no certainty that she would find him alive, and now that she finally had, William was asking her to walk away from him again.
He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Only for a few minutes. I don’t think I can force that lock alone, and Frost will be far more useful than I am willing to admit in his presence.”
The faintest hint of a smile touched her mouth, but it disappeared almost immediately.
“And Isabella?”
William glanced toward the stairs. “That call was a warning. If someone else is here, we need to stay together as much as possible. Find Gabriel first. If you see Isabella, bring her back with you.”
Rosalind looked toward her father.
William reached for her before he had quite decided to do it, his hand settling gently over hers.
“I will stay with him.”
Her gaze dropped to their joined hands before lifting to his face.
“I will not leave him alone, Rosalind.”
Something in her expression softened. “I know.”
The quiet certainty of the words caught him somewhere beneath the ribs.
Only a day ago, William had confessed to Gabriel that he did not know whether Rosalind truly trusted him anymore. Perhaps this did not answer that question completely. Perhaps there were still too many things between them that would have to be repaired once Edmund was safe.
But she trusted him with this.
With her father.
At that moment, William could think of very little she could have given him that would have meant more.
His thumb moved once across the back of her hand before he reluctantly released it.
Rosalind turned to the bars and reached through them once more. “I will be back.”
Edmund closed his hand around hers. “I know you will.”
She lingered for another moment before taking the lamp and heading toward the stairs.
William watched until the glow disappeared above him, leaving the cellar in near darkness.
For several moments, neither man spoke.
William was grateful for the silence.
There were too many questions waiting between them, and every one seemed capable of dividing William’s life into what he had believed before entering this cellar and what would come next.
For a while, Edmund seemed content to let him have the silence. Then he spoke quietly behind him.
“William, I am sorry you had to learn the truth this way.”
William closed his eyes. “So am I.”
There was more he could have said. He could have asked why Edmund had never told him, whether his father had truly intended to do so, or how many conversations between Edmund and Algernon had been shaped by a secret William never knew existed.
But none of those questions mattered as much as getting Edmund out of this cell.
“We will talk about it when we are out of here,” he said.
Edmund nodded. “Of course.”
William returned to searching the cellar. He found rusted tools, empty bottles, several lengths of rope that he preferred not to examine too closely, but no key.
As the minutes passed, his attention returned more and more frequently to the stairs.
Rosalind should have been back by now.
William told himself that finding Gabriel might take time in an unfamiliar house. It did nothing to stop him from imagining all the reasons Isabella might have sounded that warning or wondering whether sending Rosalind upstairs alone had been a mistake.
He was seconds from abandoning Edmund and going after her when a faint glow appeared at the top of the stairs.
“William?”
Rosalind.
The tension that had been gathering inside him loosened at the sound of her voice. “Here.”
Her footsteps hurried down the stairs, the glow strengthening until she came into view with the lamp held before her. Gabriel followed close behind, carrying an iron bar William had no idea where he had acquired.
William’s relief lasted only until he realized they were alone.
There was no Isabella.
He looked immediately at Gabriel. “Where is she?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Gabriel’s usual ease was gone as he descended the last few steps. “I remained near the front entrance exactly where I was told. When I heard the birdcall, I went around the side of the house, but by the time I reached the rear, she was gone.”
The fear beneath the words was impossible to miss. William had rarely seen Gabriel truly frightened, and judging by the way Rosalind’s expression softened, she recognized it too.
“We heard her,” Rosalind said. “Twice. She was close enough that the sound carried into the cellar.”
“That does not tell us where she is now.”
“No.” Rosalind moved nearer to him. She was pale herself, but her voice remained steady. “But I have known Isabella for years. She does not panic easily, and she does not act without thinking. If she saw someone, she would have warned us first.”
“She did warn us. Then she disappeared.”
“I know.”
Gabriel looked toward the stairs, and for a moment William thought he might turn around and go straight back up them.
Rosalind touched his arm. “She is clever, Gabriel. Far cleverer than either of us gives her credit for sometimes, and remarkably good at taking care of herself.”
“I know she is.”
The quiet certainty of the answer caught William’s attention.
“That is precisely the problem,” Gabriel continued. “I have discovered that knowing Miss Hartwell can look after herself does absolutely nothing to make me less worried about her.”
Rosalind studied him for a moment, and understanding softened her expression.
“No,” she said quietly. “I suppose it wouldn’t.”
Her hand remained on his arm. “But Isabella is my dearest friend. I am frightened too, and I still believe she can manage whatever made her sound that warning until we reach her. We free Papa, then we find her together.”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “I should be looking for her now.”
“And if Isabella warned us because someone dangerous is inside this house, she would be furious to discover you ignored her and went searching alone.”
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth. “That does sound like her.”
“It does.” Rosalind squeezed his arm once before letting go. “Trust her for a few more minutes.”
Gabriel looked toward the stairs again before reluctantly nodding.
William remembered their conversation at the inn, when Gabriel had insisted he did not want Isabella to surrender the future she imagined for herself simply because he hoped someday she might make room for him in it.
Apparently respecting a woman’s independence did nothing to lessen the fear of losing her.
William understood that rather well.
He looked back at Rosalind and realized Isabella was not the only thing troubling her. She kept glancing over her shoulder, and a tension lingered in her face that had not been there when she left the cellar.
“What happened?”
“I became lost.”
William frowned.
“The corridors all looked the same, and I took a wrong turn trying to find the front of the house.” Rosalind wrapped her arms around herself.
“There were papers scattered through some of the rooms. Pages covered in writing. At first I thought they were notes or correspondence, but some looked more like exercises.”
“What sort of exercises?”
“I do not know. Pieces of sentences. Syllables. Words copied repeatedly, some of them pinned to the walls.” She glanced toward the stairs again.
“The farther I went, the more I found. It looked almost as though someone had been practicing. Learning to read, perhaps, or trying to memorize something.”
A chill crept along William’s spine. “Do you remember any of it?”
“Most made no sense to me.” She hesitated before looking directly at him. “But there was one phrase I kept seeing.”
William waited.
“Why, Father.”
The words seemed to empty the cellar of sound.
His thoughts went immediately to Algernon.
To the boy whose father had despised the way he spoke. Who had been threatened with the loss of everything he had been raised to inherit and sent away because his father could not tolerate a son who needed longer to form his words.
Why, Father.
William looked toward the stairs, suddenly seeing the darkened house above them differently.
“Those rooms,” Edmund said from behind the bars. “I have never seen them.”
Rosalind shook her head. “I don’t think Papa is the first person who has been kept here.”
Gabriel glanced toward the darkness beyond the cellar. “Charming place.”
“It feels haunted,” Rosalind murmured.
William knew what she meant. Whatever had happened within these walls had begun long before Edmund Carlisle was brought here.
Gabriel shifted the iron bar in his hands. “Whatever happened here, I would prefer to contemplate it after Eastmere is free and Isabella is standing somewhere I can actually see her.”
William understood the urgency. Every moment they remained in the cellar was another moment Isabella was somewhere above them alone, and the two birdcalls had made it painfully clear that they were no longer the only people moving through Bryn Hir.
He looked at the iron bar. “Where did you find that?”
“Outside, near the old stable.”
William took one end and examined the lock. It was old, but solid, the iron plate fixed deeply into the stone beside the barred door. Breaking it would not be easy.
It would not be quiet either.
He glanced toward the stairs.
Whoever Isabella had seen might already know they were here. If they did not, what William was about to attempt would almost certainly remedy that.
“We do this quickly,” he said.
Gabriel seemed to understand the rest. He moved beside William and gripped the other end of the bar while Rosalind stepped back toward the wall.
William looked through the bars at Edmund. “Stand away from the door.”
Edmund retreated several paces.
William wedged the end of the bar between the lock and its iron plate, testing it until he felt the metal catch. Gabriel adjusted his grip beside him.
“Ready?”
Gabriel nodded.
Together they threw their weight against it. The shriek of metal tore through the cellar.
Rosalind flinched, and William felt the sound reverberate through the bar and into his arms. For one hopeful instant, the lock seemed to give. Then the iron slipped free with a violent scrape that sent William stumbling half a step forward.
The door remained closed as William swore beneath his breath.
The noise seemed to linger long after it had stopped. He found himself listening to the silence that followed, wondering how far through the house that metallic scream had carried.
For several seconds, there was nothing. No answering footsteps or voices from above, and no third birdcall from Isabella.
The silence should have reassured him. Instead, the longer it continued, the more uneasy he became.
Gabriel seemed to feel it too. His gaze lingered on the stairs before he tightened his grip on the iron bar.
“Again.”
William nodded and forced the iron back into the narrow space beside the lock. This time he drove it deeper, bracing one foot against the stone floor while Gabriel positioned himself beside him.
They had only begun to put their weight against it when a voice emerged from the darkness behind them.
“There is no need.”
William froze.
For one disorienting instant, the words seemed to belong to the house itself. The voice was low and rough, close enough that whoever had spoken must have entered the cellar without any of them hearing him.
Gabriel’s grip tightened on the bar.
William started to turn, but his gaze caught on Rosalind first.
She was staring past him.
The fear on her face stopped him cold.
Her back had gone rigid against the wall, her eyes wide and fixed upon whoever stood behind him. Whatever color had remained in her face disappeared.
William released the iron bar and reached instinctively toward her as the voice came again.
“This game is over.”