Chapter 28
Cold reached Adelaide before memory did. It had settled into the stone beneath her, into the damp wool at her shoulder, into the air that scraped unpleasantly through her lungs when she drew a deeper breath.
Somewhere beyond the walls, gulls cried over the steady violence of water striking rock, and when she opened her eyes to a narrow room washed in gray light, she knew at once that she had been brought nearer the sea.
She remained still for several seconds to listen to her surroundings.
One door. Someone beyond it, shifting his weight occasionally. A boarded window high on the opposite wall. Stone walls, old mortar, no fireplace.
Her wrists had been tied before she lost consciousness, but whoever had done it had grown careless afterward. The rope remained around one wrist only, the other having slipped loose. Adelaide kept that hand beneath the folds of her skirt.
The last thing she intended was to announce the advantage.
Her head hurt abominably.
Later.
She could be frightened later too. Adelaide pushed herself upright and examined the room.
They were in an abandoned keeper’s cottage, perhaps. Or some forgotten building once used by fishermen. The smell of salt was too strong for the cliffs nearest Wolverton. Wherever she was, they had taken her farther toward the coast.
The door opened.
Adelaide immediately let her freed hand fall behind her.
Atlas entered.
There was no Loretta with him now. No servants. No amused cousin smiling across Eric’s dinner table.
Oddly, that frightened Adelaide less.
At least this man was honest in his ugliness.
“You’re awake.”
“Your powers of observation remain extraordinary.”
Atlas shut the door. “I wondered whether you’d be different once you understood your situation.”
“I wondered the same about you.”
His smile came slowly, and Adelaide watched him instead of the door. The guard remained outside. Atlas had not locked it behind himself.
“Where is Loretta?”
Atlas wandered toward the boarded window. “My wife understands that when I require something of her, there is usually a reason.”
“How fortunate for you.”
He glanced back. “Women are happier when they stop confusing obedience with oppression.”
Adelaide flexed her free fingers behind her skirt. “And Olivia?”
His expression changed. “Olivia is dead.”
Adelaide held his gaze feeling a strange sense of satisfaction. “You were going to marry her.”
“I was.”
“For love?”
Atlas laughed. “Don’t be childish.”
Adelaide tilted her head. “Then why?”
He studied her for a moment, perhaps deciding how much it mattered that she knew. Apparently, he concluded it did not matter at all. “The old duke was generous where Olivia was concerned. Land. Investments. A substantial dowry. More would have followed.”
“And you wanted it?”
“I had earned it.” His words came sharply. “I spent years beside that family. Your husband never cared about Wolverton. Never cared about the responsibilities attached to his name. His father taught me what Eric could not be bothered to learn.”
Adelaide stared at him. “You were jealous of a boy inheriting from his own father.”
“I was useful to his father.”
“And Eric was his son.”
Something ugly flashed across Atlas’s face. “That was always enough for him.”
Now Adelaide understood that Atlas had made entitlement into injury.
“When Olivia disappeared,” he continued, “everything promised with her disappeared too. I married Loretta. Sensible enough.”
“How romantic.”
“She knew what was expected of her.”
Adelaide thought of Loretta standing beside that carriage, frightened and defensive.
“Then Olivia gave me something more valuable than a dowry.”
Adelaide’s blood chilled. “Eric’s grief.”
“Precisely.”
He seemed pleased that she understood. “He withdrew. Stopped attending society. Stopped thinking about marriage. Children. He made it remarkably easy.”
“For you to become and remain his heir.”
“For the estate to pass where it ought.”
Adelaide almost laughed. “You mean to you.”
“Eventually.”
Adelaide stared at him. “You kept him broken and alone.”
“He preferred being alone.”
“Because you made certain he believed it was safer.”
Atlas’s smile thinned. “So you do understand.”
That pleased him too, and Adelaide felt suddenly ill.
“The accounts.”
His brows lifted. “Eric knows?”
She had guessed it, and his reaction confirmed it. “You’ve been taking from him.”
“Managing what he neglected.”
“And the accidents?”
Atlas shrugged.
“Small reminders that Wolverton was not particularly hospitable to change.”
Adelaide’s pulse quickened, but she kept her expression bored. “And then Eric married me.”
“That was inconvenient.”
“No. You thought it temporary.”
Atlas’s silence confirmed that too.
Adelaide continued, “You expected him to remain miserable. Perhaps send me away eventually. Instead, he began behaving like a husband.”
“Playing at one. He changed his will.” Atlas stepped closer. “And then you began filling his head with ideas about children.”
An heir?
It wasn’t Adelaide that he resented; it was what she represented: the end of Atlas’s certainty.
“You could simply wait and see whether we have children.”
He crouched before her. “This ends more neatly.”
Adelaide looked at him. “You’re going to make Eric believe I killed myself.”
Adelaide’s fury nearly cost her control as Atlas rose with a smirk playing across his sneer. “He’ll believe it without any help from me.”
“No.” Adelaide met his eyes. “He knows me.”
Atlas’s expression faltered only a fraction, and Adelaide smiled. “You’ve made a miscalculation.”
Behind her skirt, her freed hand closed around the loose rope, and Atlas turned toward the door. “Everyone thinks that shortly before they discover otherwise.”
He knocked once, and Adelaide watched the guard shift and the door open. She watched the man’s position and where Atlas stepped around him. And watched the iron key the guard returned to his pocket before pulling the door shut again.
One guard.
One key.
One loose rope.
And Atlas believes Eric was a hundred miles away.
Adelaide lowered her gaze before either man could see what had changed in her face.
“You know, the truly remarkable thing is that you still believe you’ve won.”
Atlas stopped with one hand on the door.
Adelaide remained where he had left her against the stone wall, her skirts arranged around her legs and the loosened rope concealed beneath them. Her head still throbbed, but she kept her expression almost pleasant.
If he meant to kill her, then she needed time. Time for Theodore to realize she had not returned. Time for someone to question Abigail. Time for Eric to come home.
Atlas turned slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said you’ve made a mistake.”
“So you mentioned.”
“And you haven’t even asked what it is.”
His vanity did what Adelaide hoped it would. Instead of leaving, he stepped back into the room.
“Very well. Enlighten me.”
Adelaide smiled. “Olivia.”
The effect was immediate, and Atlas’s amusement disappeared. “What about her?”
“You said she gave you something more valuable than her dowry when she died.”
“She did.”
“No.” Adelaide watched him carefully. “She gave you five years in which you were too stupid to look properly at what was directly in front of you.”
Atlas stared at her.
Adelaide’s heart hammered, but she had already committed herself.
Olivia’s secret had protected her for five years.
It would not protect her much longer if Atlas succeeded here.
And if Adelaide could make him angry enough to keep talking, perhaps she could keep herself alive long enough for the truth to matter.
“She isn’t dead. You were right.”
Nothing moved in his face, and then he laughed. “You’re desperate.”
“I am tied up in an abandoned building while a lunatic explains his inheritance plans to me. Desperation seems reasonable.”
“You expect me to believe Olivia survived those cliffs?”
“I expect you to remember the woman you cornered yesterday.”
That stopped him, and Adelaide leaned her head against the wall. “You nearly had your face against hers, Atlas. You told her she seemed familiar.”
His expression altered. “No.”
“Dark hair. Those eyes. The face in the portrait at Wolverton, only five years older.”
“No.”
“You didn’t recognize her because you never actually saw her, did you?”
Atlas crossed the room so quickly that Adelaide’s body reacted before her mind did. She drew one knee upward, ready to kick if he reached for her, but he stopped just beyond it.
“Violet Hale?”
Adelaide smiled despite the fear crawling along her spine. “Olivia Sullyard.”
His face emptied. For several seconds, he merely stood there. Adelaide had expected rage. When disbelief appeared instead, it was far more satisfying.
“She has a child.”
“Yes.”
“She was married.”
“Yes.”
“She—”
“Escaped you. Married someone she loved. Had a daughter. Built an entire life while you spent five years congratulating yourself for profiting from her death.”
Atlas’s hand closed into a fist.
Good. Angry men made mistakes.
The door opened behind him, and Loretta appeared. “What is taking so long?”
She stopped when she saw her husband. “Atlas?”
He turned on her. “Did you know?”
Loretta recoiled. “Know what?”
“That woman.”
“What woman?”
“The maid.”
Loretta looked at Adelaide.
Something frightened already lived behind her eyes.
Adelaide had noticed it in the carriage but had been too furious to examine it.
Loretta was not behaving like a woman pleased with the success of a plan.
She looked like someone who had agreed to one thing and discovered too late that she had stepped into another.
“What maid?” Loretta asked, truly confused, and Atlas pushed past her. “Where are you going?”
“To finish this.”
Loretta caught his sleeve. “Finish what?”
He looked down at her hand until she released him.
“Atlas, you said Adelaide would be sent away. You said Eric would believe she’d left him.”
Adelaide went very still as Atlas’s expression hardened. “And he will.”
Loretta glanced toward Adelaide. “But the letter…”
“Will explain the rest.”
“What rest?”
Silence.
Loretta understood.
Her face lost what little color remained. “No.”
Atlas sighed. “Do not become tiresome now.”
“You said no one would be hurt.”
“I said you needn’t concern yourself with the details.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“To me it is.”
Loretta stared at him as though she had never seen him before. Perhaps she hadn’t.
Adelaide shifted her free hand beneath her skirt, working the rope farther away from her other wrist. “Loretta.”
Atlas turned sharply. “Do not speak to my wife.”
Adelaide ignored him. “He intends to kill me.”
Loretta’s breathing became shallow. “No.”
“He intends to make my death resemble Olivia’s. That is why he needed the letter.”
“I said enough!”
Adelaide raised her voice. “And when Eric eventually discovers what happened, do you imagine Atlas will protect you?”
“Adelaide.”
“Who lured me outside?” Adelaide prompted. Loretta looked at her. “Who was seen?”
“Stop!”
“Who will hang beside him if this fails?”
Atlas crossed toward her, and Adelaide braced herself. Then she heard it. So faint at first that she thought desperation had invented it. A shout beyond the walls.
Atlas stopped too, and Loretta turned toward the boarded window.
Adelaide held her breath.
Atlas went white as the ghost of her name carried on the wind.
Adelaide’s heart slammed against her ribs because she knew that voice— She would have known it beneath thunder.
Loretta whispered, “Who is that?”
Adelaide looked directly at Atlas and knew, without a shadow of doubt, that she no longer needed to pretend that she would survive. Her smile came easily then.
“My husband.”