Chapter 44
Alistair was waiting at the foot of the steps leading up from the beach; he’d been there a while.
He had very little idea what he was going to say to Cecilia if she did appear, and even less expectation that she would.
But he couldn’t seem to stay away, and not because he wanted to make love to her.
To have her make love to him. Though he did.
He had the fanciful notion – and he didn’t even want to imagine what his brother or any of his other friends would have said about it if they’d known – that he could somehow keep his love safe by being here, watching over her as she slept, even though she’d never know it.
He could also keep her sisters safe, he supposed, and Miss Macintyre, the Scottish chaperon, but that was a much less pressing concern for him.
Chivalry wasn’t exactly dead this spring, but it was snoozing.
The moon was still huge in the sky, almost as bright as day.
It was, if one was that way inclined, a romantic scene.
He’d never been of that disposition before, but now apparently, he was.
But just now, he was alone, and could not share the breathless beauty of it with anyone, least of all with the woman he loved.
So as he leaned back against the old brick wall and waited, without much real hope, he had an excellent view of the sands, and of the dark figure crossing them, just as he himself had done a while back, from the far side.
The fact was, as he’d told Cecilia that first time, he didn’t own the beach.
Other people were allowed to walk about it on a fine spring night.
Other people, he told himself now, had a right to be lovesick, or restless, or unable to sleep, or all of those things at once, or something else entirely.
And even if the person he could see in the distance had a fixed destination in mind, he or she might easily be going somewhere else.
To the village, to one of the isolated cottages.
But they weren’t. As the relentlessly trudging figure made a beeline for the steps, the Major became more and more certain that they were coming to Albery Hall and nowhere else.
He moved into the shadows where the stair made a convenient corner, and turned up his coat collar to hide his pale face.
If whoever it was had an innocent purpose – if they were, for instance, one of the lawful inhabitants of the house, though that seemed unlikely – they’d never know he was here.
They’d pass him by and no harm would be done.
The figure strode determinedly on across the sand, closer and closer, slowing only a little when he or she reached the tussocky roughness of the sand above the waterline. They were trespassing now on the Constantines’ property – but then, so was he.
The intruder was wrapped in a long coat of masculine cut, with shoulder capes that gave an impression of male bulk that might be deceptive.
A dark scarf was wrapped around the head and lower part of the face.
It might easily be someone he knew, though not, he thought, a Constantine or one of their servants; at any rate, he could not recognise them now, and nor would anyone else.
It was a most successful attempt to conceal identity, and did not argue for innocence of purpose.
He stayed concealed. They mounted the steps with an ease that spoke of practice, and were lost to his sight.
He could not hope to achieve such a silent ascent.
It was a perfect place for an ambush, for a swift and deadly blow to the head, that couldn’t be denied, and he wasn’t in a fit state to counter any attack as well as he would wish.
But he knew he had to follow, whatever he met when he reached the top, and quickly.
Alistair, ignoring his protesting muscles, reached the top of the steps just in time to see the figure disappearing around the side of the house to his right.
He made better time across the lawn, and, staying on the grass at the edge of the gravel path, was able to track his quarry directly into the stable yard, which was paved with rough stone slabs.
He did not observe which stall the disguised person entered, but saw the light flicker and then vanish in the loose box in the furthest corner.
So there was a damn secret passage after all.
And the entrance had been here all along, where even two determined small boys had never thought to look.
Wishing devoutly that Rory was with him now, or anybody competent, wishing he had a pistol, he hobbled on alone.
It had occurred to him during his progress across the lawn that he might be about to make an almighty fool of himself, and embarrass the Constantine family in a manner that would do his relationship with Cecilia – if he could be said to have a relationship with Cecilia – no good at all besides.
There were many possible explanations for what he was seeing, and though most of them were alarming and sinister, just a few were not.
The person he was pursuing might be going to a Constantine sister’s bed, or one of the servants’ beds, and might be expected and welcome there.
Which was absolutely none of his business, and almost bound to have repercussions that didn’t bear contemplation. But what choice did he have?
If he’d seen someone clandestinely approaching a dwelling in the middle of the night like this a couple of years ago, he’d have challenged them out in the open.
Provoked the inevitable confrontation here, not allowed them to enter the house and put its inhabitants, potentially, at risk.
But he wasn’t the man he’d been then, and while he could still do a good deal of damage in a close fight, he hoped, what he could not do was give chase, or avoid a weapon if his quarry had one.
Since he had no idea who this intruder was nor what they wanted, he could not risk them getting away.
And so, it seemed, he was going to have to follow them into a dark passage – it must be dark in there or they’d not have struck a light first – which they knew well, presumably, and he did not know at all.
They were nimble on their feet, as he had seen, and he was decidedly not; they might be armed and he was not.
Well, he had his cane. Precious little use that would be if they simply waited at the top of a staircase or in concealment – having heard him stumbling after them a mile off – and struck him down, or pushed him down, or stabbed him…
Young Alistair would have thought all this an enormous adventure, and would have been grinning to himself with anticipation as he crossed the stable yard, lithe as a panther.
The Alistair who was clumsily approaching thirty had very grave misgivings about the whole situation, but none the less pressed grimly on.
The woman he loved with all his heart and soul was inside the house, and might be in danger.
Or she might not – he might be about to take part in a farce – but he had to make sure.
If he had one advantage, Alistair thought as he made his way gingerly down the secret stair, and God knows he needed one, it was his excellent night vision.
He’d had it since he was a mischievous child, and he’d been walking out at night over the last months, usually without a lantern to guide him.
Now that he was not the heedlessly powerful male animal he’d once been, now that he’d been forced to accept and accommodate physical vulnerability, his perceptions of the world around him had grown sharper, or so he felt.
He hoped and believed that the person he was following might be less attuned to the world around them, and had not the least notion of pursuit.
He’d found the ingenious little catch that opened the hidden panel in the back wall of the stable easily enough, since after what he’d just seen, he’d known it was there.
Unlike his quarry, he did not pause to make a light.
He lifted out the secret door and left it to one side; it was obviously possible to close it behind one as the intruder had done, but he had no time, and no desire to feel himself trapped.
So a little glimmer of moonlight had helped him at first, and the steps he descended were both dry and regular.
The confined space smelled of dust, cobwebs, old wood and stale air, but not of damp or decay.
When the light vanished as the stair turned, he closed his eyes and stood still, wasting precious seconds, as he was all too well aware, but needing to accustom himself to the total darkness.
He was safe, he thought, for a little while.
He heard no sound below him. The secret way must go down, then cross the small space between the stables and the house as a sort of tunnel, and only then would it go up again, probably built into the shelter of one of the chimney stacks.
It might ascend only to the ground floor, leaving the intruder free to roam the house at will and making them very difficult to track, or go all the way up to the first floor where his love lay sleeping and defenceless.
Alistair wasn’t sure just now which disagreeable option was worse. He gritted his teeth and continued.
He stumbled a little when his foot met level stone rather than another step down, but he had tight hold of his cane and used it to steady himself.
Now it was entirely dark, a velvety blackness, and the sharpest eyesight in the world would be no use to him.
He groped his way doggedly forward. There was the faintest whisper of a breeze full on his face – no, not a breeze, but a slight current of air – and he walked towards it.
His free hand brushed the wall on his left, and he felt, though he could not be entirely certain without going slower than he thought wise, that there were no more passages leading off in any direction. So he could not mistake his way.
He was using his cane, probing just a little way ahead of him, so that he would not stumble again when he encountered a rising step.
He must assume that what he next found would be another stair, and possibly one that led all the way up; now for the first time, he and his prey might be sharing the same part of the passage, and any sound he made might be fatal.
He found the step, and hesitated for a second.
Above him, he thought he saw the faintest speck of light now. A candle flame. He was close.
By the time Alistair reached the top of the stairs, which were solid stone or brick and did not let out any betraying creaks, the light had vanished.
But he thought he sensed a paleness nonetheless: a square of less profound darkness.
When his eyes adjusted, he realised that there was a panel that had been left open, off to his left.
He could see now that there was a narrow passage that led two ways.
He had no time to marvel at what a labyrinth this house must be, and yet for all their searching, he and his brother had never discovered any trace of it. He followed the light and went left.