Eloisa's Adventure (9 page)

“As far
as I am aware this house isn’t likely to be stocked with anything
we could eat, so I brought a meagre supply of food with me. It’s in
my saddlebag.” He didn’t add that he had been too distracted
thinking about her earlier, to remember the blasted
thing.

“Which
is in the stable,” she finished for him, and almost groaned when he
nodded.

Eloisa
turned to glare balefully at the cloak. It was soaked. The last
thing she wanted was to put it on again because she was cold enough
already. If she went outside in the pouring rain without it though,
her dress would become even wetter than it already was. What choice
did she have?

“Why
don’t we look in the cupboards? There must be something,” she said
with an air of desperation.

“Fine,”
he sighed but suspected that they weren’t going to find anything.
“You search that side, I will search this.”

“How do
we see?”

Simeon
sighed again and nodded toward the box on the mantle. “There are
some beeswax candles in there. The spills are in the
pot.”

Eloisa
stared at his back and wondered if he was being obtuse for a
reason. It irked her to think that he considered her a useless
female. She knew what spills were because she used them every day
of her life at home. After throwing a dirty look at his back, she
turned around and lit several candles. Once she had placed them at
various points around the room, and it was sufficiently lit for
them to see what they were doing, they began to search the
cupboards.

“Simeon,” she said quietly when she opened the door to the
pantry.

One look
inside made her stomach churn. She jumped when he moved to stand
behind her because she hadn’t even heard him move. As she turned to
face the room again, she lifted her candlestick so he could see
what she had found.

“From
the smell, they are fresh,” she whispered. She took a tentative
step into the room, and poked at the two loaves of bread that sat
on the small table on the back wall.

Sure
enough, they were fresh, as was the ham, freshly cooked beef, and
cheese. She eyed the basket of fruit and vegetables at the end of
the table and picked up a fresh apple.

Simeon
walked toward the door at the far end of the room and rattled the
latch.

“Where
does that go?” she asked curiously.

“It’s
the door to the wine cellar,” he replied. He picked up the
half-drunk bottle of wine from the table beside him.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t heavily dusted as he would expect it to
be if it had sat in the cellars for several months. It hadn’t been
in the pantry for any length of time either. Unless his eyes were
deceiving him, this had been opened recently. He turned to study
the rest of the shelves.

“Either
the housekeeper is still coming here and keeping house, or someone
is using this place as a refuge,” Eloisa said, and tried valiantly
to ignore the loud rumble of her stomach.

Simeon
studied the table in the middle of the pantry, and the rows of
carefully made preserves. He knew that the last time he had been
here the shelves had been full. His uncle’s housekeeper had made
new batches of quince jelly and strawberry jam just days before
George’s death. As a result, the shelves had been heavily laden.
Now though, there were gaps where there should have been
jars.

Someone
had been helping themselves.

He
turned to look at Eloisa, only for the quiet click of the door
behind her to halt his words. A dark scowl marred his brow as he
noticed the door had closed all by itself. He raced past her and
yanked on the latch only to stare at it in disbelief when it
refused to open.

“Give me
a hand,” he snapped. He thrust his candle at her and used both
hands to try to yank the door open. It didn’t budge.

Eloisa
lifted the candles so they could both see the latch. She frowned
when a gentle breeze wafted over her ankles. Her heart leapt into
her throat, and she lifted one hand to study the door that Simeon
had told her led to the wine cellar.

“Simeon,” she whispered.

“What?”
he turned to look at her and followed her gaze to the
door.

A flurry
of awareness swept through her when she touched his arm, but she
forced it aside as she dragged him to stand where she was. “Do you
feel it?”

“What?”
he frowned at the floor while he tried to focus on what she was
talking about.

“There
is a cold breeze coming from the door.”

“It’s
the cellars. It will be cold,” Simeon explained reasonably. It was
a struggle to keep hold of his patience. He was trying to get them
out of there and she was bothered about cold spots in the
room.

Eloisa
glared at him for a moment but he was too busy wrestling with the
door to notice. She cautiously made her way over to the cellar
door. She felt as though some unseen force was telling her that it
was the only way out. She frowned and wondered if it was a flight
of fancy to even contemplate going in there, but Simeon wasn’t able
to get the main door open, and there really was no other way
out.

She
pulled the door open and, once again, felt a gentle breeze tickle
her cheeks. From the safety of the doorway, she lifted her candle
and peered into the gloom. A small flight of stairs disappeared
down into inky blackness. She glared at the impenetrable gloom and
felt a shiver of foreboding sweep through her.

“Jesus,
we are stuck,” Simeon growled in disgust. He glared at her as
though it was her fault. “There must be something here, a hook or
something that I can use to get the door open. Help me look for
something that might help, will you?”

Eloisa
looked back at the stairwell for a moment before she reluctantly
moved back into the pantry and helped him search. In some ways it
was a relief to be able to close the door while in others, it was
worrying to know they were trapped.

Simeon
shook his head in disgust and stared at the door when, ten minutes
later, they both came up empty handed.

“Why
lock us in here?” Eloisa whispered.

“Because
they want to confine us,” Simeon snapped. “How should I
know?”

He
sighed deeply when a small voice warned him that he really was
being unfair on her. After all, it wasn’t her fault they were in
this situation. He gave her a somewhat conciliatory look and
thought about her question. “It is the only room in the house with
a lock on the outside,” he mused.

“It’s a
pretty stupid thing to do, isn’t it?” Eloisa replied carefully. She
turned to look pointedly at the fresh food sitting on the pantry.
“I mean, what are they going to eat?”

Before
he could say anything, she tore off a chunk of bread and pushed it
into the fresh pat of butter beside it. She handed it to him before
she repeated the process, and began to eat.

“Wine?”
she asked somewhat ruefully. She didn’t give him the chance to
reply before she handed him one of the bottles that were already
open.

Bemused,
he took it off her and watched her pick up the second bottle. She
sniffed that too before she took a sip.

“It’s
nice,” she declared with an approving nod. She bit into the bread
again and turned to look at him when he moved to stand beside
her.

“Heavens
above, Eloisa,” Simeon smiled. It was like some bizarre tea party
where she was serving and he was the guest.

“It’s a
pity they didn’t leave any seats,” she mused. “We may get chilly,
but at least we won’t starve.”

Once she
had finished her bread, she picked two apples out of the basket,
handed him one and began to eat her own while she thought about
their situation.

“Now, we
have the food. Unless they have some more food stashed away
somewhere, they are going to go hungry really quickly.”

He
chewed thoughtfully on his succulent apple and nodded. “They are
going to come back for something to eat.”

“I think
that there must be another way out of here,” Eloisa mused. She
hated the thought of anyone coming back for the food, and the
resultant confrontation with the dark shadow she had seen earlier.
“Didn’t you say that there were some secret passageways around this
house, only you have never found them?”

“Well,
yes, but we are not going to look for them now,” Simeon declared
flatly.

If he
was honest, he was impressed by just how well she was handling
their situation, and definitely approved of her calm logic in times
of crisis. He was starting to feel a little easier now about having
her in the house. At least she wasn’t cowering, whimpering, and
demanding he take her home in the middle of the storm.

“I don’t
want to search for them now either, but the alternative is to hope
that hunger forces the intruder to let us out.” She turned to look
blithely at him. “What is there to lose?”

Simeon
snorted. “Our sanity?” He sensed the direction her thoughts were
going and shook his head. “We are not going into the cellars,
Eloisa.”

He
didn’t want to scare her, he really didn’t, but he couldn’t allow
her to go on a wild adventure around the house in an innocent quest
to get some answers. By doing that, she would inevitably walk right
into the danger that lay within these walls.

“Look, I
told you that I suspect my uncle was poisoned,” Simeon
began.

“Yes,
but this food is fresh. It’s fine. I feel fine. You are fine. We
are both alright. We can take it with us. Look, there is another
basket up there. If this person, this other person in the house
wants to eat, they are going to have to find something in one of
the jars here. Or they will have to come and get the food off
us.”

“I am
not drawing them out,” Simeon countered. He turned to scowl at her.
“Look, first thing in the morning, I am going to take you home.
This isn’t your venture. You are only going to be here
overnight.”

He
cursed at that and closed his eyes when the cold reality of their
situation sank in. He was alone, in his house, with an unchaperoned
female. If they remained where they were, they were going to be
alone, in the same room, overnight. Now, although there wasn’t
anyone else around, other than the intruder who shouldn’t be there
in the fire place, there was such a thing as his own personal
integrity. He couldn’t risk ruining her reputation in any way, or
her for that matter. It would be impossible to just casually drop
her off at her house without a backward look if he did. His
conscience wouldn’t allow it. If he compromised her by spending the
night alone with her, even stuck in a pantry, then he would
ostensibly have to offer for her. He turned to look at her with a
frown.

“You
said your father had passed away?” The husky rumble of his voice
was intimate in the silence of the room.

“Yes,
that’s right, about three months ago now. Why?”

“Who is
your guardian?”

“Our
Uncle Alfred, but he is something of a distant guardian. He doesn’t
really have much contact with us.”

“So he
is guardian from a distance?” Simeon frowned at that. “Who lives
with you?”

“I share
a house with my sister, Cissy,” Eloisa shrugged. “I know it is an
unusual arrangement, but it serves us perfectly well. Our father
used to live with us until he passed away.”

There
was something in her voice that warned him that he should not pry
too much, but he was too intrigued to ignore it. It was a highly
unusual arrangement as far as he was concerned. Single young women
like Eloisa should definitely not be living without a chaperone, or
guardian, even with a sibling in attendance.

“So,
other than your sister, Cissy, nobody knows where you are,” Simeon
asked.

Eloisa
had no idea where his questions were going and had the strangest
feeling she wouldn’t like the answer if she asked. With a mental
shrug, she considered his question but could see no reason not to
answer him.

“Mr de
Lisle is – was – my dance tutor. He has taught me everything I
needed to know about dancing. It was him who arranged for me to go
to the ball tonight.” She sighed despondently as she thought about
the lost opportunity again. “He is waiting for me, and will be
worried when the carriage arrives and I am not on it.”

Now that
she came to think about it, would Mr de Lisle think that nerves had
gotten the better of her and she had decided not to attend at the
last moment?

“Outside,” he said flatly.

She
threw a scowl at him. “Yes, outside. I am not really one for pomp
and circumstance and the snobbery of aristocrats,” she declared
firmly.

His lips
quirked. He nodded his acceptance of her chastisement and watched
the intriguing way the shadows highlighted her fine features as she
spoke.

“Mr de
Lisle will be worried when I don’t turn up,” she said a little
defiantly.

“So, it
is Mr de Lisle, and your sister, who will be concerned for your
welfare.”

Eloisa
sighed. “Yes, that’s about it. Why?”