Chapter 18
In the shadows near the coaching inn, the woman drew her hood closer to her face, shielding her identity from the four little lambs who walked right past her. They paid her no heed. And while that was the goal, rage coiled her fingers around the fabric she held.
Patience.
At the reminder, she eased her grip. Soon she would have her revenge on Jules MacIntyre for always failing to see what was right in front of him, for refusing to take what she had offered.
Paradise denied would soon bring only desperation and pain. Her hand crept down to her side, to the belt that carried the means to her revenge—a whip, a dagger, and a third weapon that just passed her by.
Penelope.
She was the oldest of the three girls she had kidnapped, and the one who would eventually remember all that she had wanted her to. The girl would lead them into her trap, into the darkness, from which there would be no return.
Flickering lantern light curled golden fingers around the headstones as Jules led the way through Greyfriars kirkyard.
The heat from the day had cooled, but because of the rain a few nights ago, mist hovered just above the ground, giving the cemetery an even more surrealistic feel.
They should have waited until daylight. Yet if anything happened to those girls because they had waited .
. . They were doing the right thing, exploring the graveyard at night.
“Do you recognize anything?” Jules held his lantern toward Penelope, casting both the young woman and Claire in a circle of yellow-gold light.
Penelope’s face was pale and taut. “Not yet.”
They continued on, winding their way toward the gated area that had been vacated only eight months before by the Covenanters who had been captured and held as prisoners after the Battle at Bothwell Bridge.
David had been part of that battle, as had Jane’s brother and father.
Neither of Jane’s relatives had returned.
At the gates, they paused, and Jules felt David’s tension shred the silence. “Do you want to go inside?” Jules asked, softly.
David nodded and pushed the gates open with a whining creak of sound.
Noiselessly, they followed him inside. The large grassy area was lined with stones on either side, most likely monuments dedicated to those who had passed over to the other side of life years before, or the entrances to mausoleums that housed the generations of families from Edinburgh.
But there was something else that lingered in the open space as well, something that had no form or substance.
It was a feeling of pain and suffering, of violence and brutality.
Something horrific had happened here to the men who had once been prisoners of the Scottish government. Jules could feel his heart hammer in his chest in response to that anguish. Did the others feel it as well?
David’s face was pale as he walked through the area, his lantern lighting the dark stone, illuminating the carved figures of heavenly angels and grotesque skulls and skeletons, along with the faces of those who were buried within the graves.
David knelt beside a particularly gruesome representation of a skeleton with long hair and a crown upon its head. Beneath it was a long line of hash marks etched into the stone, as though one of the prisoners was keeping a tally of how many days they had been detained behind the bars.
Jules stood beside his friend. He counted one hundred and fifty-three marks. He closed his eyes against the agony that clenched his heart. He knew what that kind of confinement could do to a person. He fisted his hands at his side, trying to control the rage and the fear.
An unexpected touch made him jump. Claire stood beside him. She worked her fingers into his grip until he relaxed, and she enveloped his hand with her own.
“So much pain,” she whispered.
Whether she referred to the pain of the souls who had suffered here, or his own suffering, he wasn’t certain.
Push her away, his pride demanded. But he could not. Instead, he gripped her hand in return and stared at her, ached all the way to his bones for the comfort she was giving to him, the darkness she helped keep at bay.
“Dear God,” David’s voice cut through the moment.
“What is it?” Jules asked without taking his gaze from Claire.
“The one who carved these notches—he signed his name below.” David’s voice was strained, uncertain. “It can’t be . . .”
“Who?” Jules asked, pulling his gaze from Claire.
“Jacob Lennox.” The words pierced the silence. “Jane’s brother. He was here.”
“At least for a hundred and fifty-three days,” Jules said dully. “Come. We can do nothing for Jacob at present, but we can still help the girls.” He released Claire’s hand, snapping himself back to the present. “We must continue our search.”
Jules turned back to the open field. “Where’s Penelope?
” Tension brought a tick to his jaw as he searched the shadows for some sign of the young woman.
That was when he saw the lantern she had been holding in the distance, turned on its side and sputtering to stay lit.
Outside the ring of light lay a dark figure.
Claire gasped beside him, and he knew she had seen Penelope’s body as well.
They bolted across the open field. “Penelope.” Claire knelt, cradling the girl’s still body, rocking her back and forth in an agony of sympathy.
Penelope shuddered. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Is it your hand?” Claire smoothed Penelope’s hair back from her face.
Penelope shook her head, then groaned.
“You are safe now. I’m here,” Claire soothed.
“What happened?” David asked, kneeling down beside the two women.
“Looks like she fainted,” Jules replied.
The young woman looked about her as though trying to remember where she was. She raised a trembling finger and pointed to the mausoleum in front of her. “This is the one,” she whispered. “This is where they brought me out before we headed to Kildare Manor.”
Jules studied the square edifice with two pillars that flanked the doorway and the arch that connected the two, forming an opening.
The place looked like no one had disturbed it in the last hundred years, until he held his lantern over the gravel that covered the front entrance to reveal an impression left behind from the gate.
It had been recently opened. A thousand emotions tore through Jules—fear, anger, but most of all, relief that they had found where the girls were being held.
He bent down beside Claire. “I beg you to stay here with Penelope while David and I go inside.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he pressed his finger against it.
A frisson of sensation tingled along his finger at the intimate touch. “Just this once, do as I ask?”
Her eyes went wide as though she’d felt it too—that odd sensation. She nodded.
Jules stood, then reached inside his boot and set a dagger on the ground next to her. “Just in case,” he said, then he and David disappeared through the gate of the mausoleum.
Claire moved Penelope into a sitting position, then palmed the dagger and stood. She offered her other hand to the young woman. “Can you stand?”
“I think so.” Penelope struggled to her feet.
“What happened?” Claire asked, looking around them in the hazy light. She swallowed. Why had she never noticed before that moss growing on the sides of stone looked like rivulets of blood in the darkness?
Penelope reached for her head and rubbed the back of it gingerly. “I think something hit me.” She pulled her fingers away to reveal a smear of blood.
“You are certain your hand is okay?” Claire asked.
Penelope looked down at her bandaged finger. The pristine white linen fairly glowed beneath the silver moonlight. “Not my hand. Something else.”
“Something or someone?” Either way, they were not alone. Whoever hit Penelope could very well be waiting for David and Jules inside that tomb.
She knew Jules would not be happy with her if she followed them inside, but she couldn’t simply wait outside either if she could do something to alert them to the danger ahead.
“Come on, Penelope, we are going after them.” She didn’t wait for an answer but pulled Penelope along with her into the gated opening.
“We have to hurry,” she said breathlessly.
She showed her lantern into the dark mausoleum ahead. For a moment she couldn’t see anything in the fetid darkness until her eyes adjusted to the low light. In the inky darkness, she saw two sarcophagi positioned in the center of the chamber. And beyond that another chamber.
“I don’t like this place,” Penelope whispered.
“I know. We will be out of here soon, and you can put the memories behind you,” Claire said in her most reassuring voice.
Penelope nodded as they stepped into a broad hall-like antechamber. Claire held up the lantern. There were three openings in the chamber, tunnels, apparently, that led in different directions.
“Do you remember which one of these you came through?” Claire asked as she studied the tunnels uncertainly. Which way had the men gone?
“I don’t remember.” Penelope’s gaze shifted from one tunnel to the next.
“That’s all right,” Claire reassured her.
“We will follow each one until it takes us to the men or the girls. With any luck, both.” She moved toward the opening on the far left.
She came to steps and proceeded down them, following the tunnel as it veered to the right.
Except for the light from the lantern, they were in total darkness.
They went on, inching their way forward as the walls grew narrower and the roof lower.
“Do you remember any of this?” Claire asked.
“I think I do,” Penelope said, in a stronger voice.