Chapter 36 Kitty
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.
I drew my shawl tighter as I followed him into the vast room. Our footsteps echoed in the eerie quiet. No doubt, my husband would confront the specter that had haunted him for so long.
Sebastian’s pace slowed as we reached a darker patch of floor, visible beneath the puddle of candlelight.
“Here,” he said simply, though his voice hitched.
The place where Hugh had fallen. There was no blood now, only shadow, but Sebastian’s posture tightened all the same. A memory was etched into the floor as surely as if it had been carved.
“My grandfather will finally have proof of corruption,” he whispered as he handed me the candle and pulled a second out of his coat to be lit. “I warned him about Julien. About the ledgers, the discrepancies. I don’t know if he listened, but he knows.”
Would Julien exact vengeance?
I turned away to examine the towering stacks of crates. The wooden surfaces were rough beneath my fingers, the stencil markings faded. Within the feeble light of the candle, I spied crate after crate stacked in uneven rows. A rodent skittered across the floor.
The inside was a rugged place despite the respectable redbrick exterior.
The walls remained streaked blue from years of careless handling of indigo. A residue of the fine dust clung to the floorboards, leaving footprints with each step I took. In one corner, rusted weighing scales sat atop a crooked desk.
Leaving my side, Sebastian slipped into a narrow side room where the old ledgers were kept. The door creaked faintly on its hinges.
Records were not my forte. I left Sebastian to comb through the yellowed papers while I moved swiftly past the crates with my candle held high, yet none bore the infamous tiger Edward had reported.
I suspected Julien would not flaunt such a sign. I drifted deeper into the space, with only the sound of my slippers shuffling against the floor, then halted in front of another stack of wooden crates.
I reached for one near the bottom of the stack, and my fingers brushed an image. A faded ink marking—almost smudged beyond recognition.
A tiger.
I gasped and stepped back just as a creaking footstep echoed nearby.
“Mrs. Sinclair, why must you insist on trespassing into spaces that do not belong to you?”