The Bride of Time (31 page)

“Where has the master gone?” Tessa asked him.

“He’s gone looking for Moraiva the Gypsy. He must have been detained. I do not wish to alarm you, madam, but I still have to confine Master Monty, and I am duty bound to see to your safety first.”

“Let me fetch a ribbon and dress my hair,” Tessa said, moving back from the door.

“There isn’t time, madam. The guards from the Watch are downstairs. They are questioning the others. They will want to question me again after. We must hurry, I’m sorry.”

“So that was the pounding that woke me…the guards,” Tessa said. “I’ll just fetch my cloak.”

“Please hurry, madam!”

Tessa slid into her slippers, skittered into the dressing room, plucked her cloak from the armoire and swirled it about her shoulders. The strange uneasiness had begun inside her, just as it had in the little jail in London when the wolf first possessed her. It was nearly dark. Soon she would change again. Why had Giles left her? Her mind was reeling as she followed Foster to the staircase.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked as they began to descend toward the second-floor landing.

“Please, madam,” he responded. “Trust me to cause you no harm. I would never! I suggested the root cellar as a likable place to keep you, and the master agreed. There are no windows. We were thinking that might…minimize the transformation. Of course, it may not.” Snatching a candle branch from the hall table, he opened a door hung in the wainscoting and gilded plasterwork that didn’t even look like a door, and ushered her inside a service access to another landing and a narrow staircase winding below. “Watch your step,” he said, leading her. “The stairs are slippery. Dampness prevails in this part of the house.”

They seemed to descend forever before they reached a landing with a door that barred from the outside; it had an iron hasp and heart-shaped padlock. Foster hurried her in. “I don’t know that it’s safe to leave you the candles,” he said. “You would know better than I.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark, Foster,” Tessa said.

“It just seems such a cold thing to do,” said the valet.

Tessa smiled sadly. “It’s all right, Foster,” she said. “I might set myself afire if you leave them. Just…don’t forget me down here come daybreak, hmm?”

“Never, madam!”

“See to the boy. I will be fine,” Tessa assured him. They were brave words, but then he closed her in and she heard the heavy bar drop outside, and the lock snap shut. Unable to see anything in the deep darkness surrounding her, she slid down the wall to a pile of burlap sacks on the floor and waited for the wolf.

Foster retraced his steps and emerged through the invisible door in the wainscoting to face the guards from the Watch looking up at him from the first-floor landing below. Palpitations gripped his heart. There was no time for this. They had already questioned him. He needed to secure Master Monty before moonrise, which was imminent by the look of the darkening sky through the oriel window at the end of the hall.

“Come down here, Foster,” Stokes said. “We’d like a word with ya.”

“Can it wait for just a bit, gentlemen?” the valet replied, holding his ground. “Needs must that I see to Master Monty. He becomes…agitated during storms. I shan’t be long.”

“That’ll have to wait,” Stokes returned. “In the study? Now.”

Foster did as they bade him and went below. The study was dark, and the fire had gone out. He set down the candle branch and moved to light another, but Stokes stopped him.

“Leave that,” he said. “We’ve just had a chat with your fellow servants below stairs, and one of ’em says she saw Longworth nekked comin’ off the moor at first light.”

“Who said such a thing?” Foster asked, giving a start.

“ ’Twas one o’ the chamber maids. Lettie—or Lottie; can hardly tell ’em apart.”

“Given to fantasies, the pair of them,” Foster defended. “These are young, impressionable gels, prone to romantic air dreams. It comes from reading too much Byron. Pay her no mind.”

“That won’t wash, Foster,” Stokes said. “She was quite sure o’ what she saw, and scared o’ sayin’ it for fear o’ reprisal. What we want ta know is, how come you, his valet, privy to his every move, told us he was in here all night after Forsythe left, when he wasn’t; and what kind o’ evil was he up to going about nekked out there? That’s what witches do. Is that what he’s into, the master o’ Longhollow Abbey:
witchcraft?
He’s into somethin’, and there’s murder at the bottom o’ it. What have ya got ta say ta that?”

“I say, being his valet, sir, that he was in residence all evening after Mr. Forsythe left, and if Lottie or Lettie told you she saw a man going about in the altogether on these grounds, you should be off looking for a prowler or a lunatic, not bothering respectable folk with no powder to back up your musket.”

“Oh, we’ll get our proof,” Royal Forsythe spoke up. “My dad is dead, and he didn’t rip his own throat out.”

“A rabid animal, more than likely, is responsible for your good father’s death, Mr. Forsythe,” Foster said. “No mere man—naked or otherwise—could rip out another man’s throat. If you weren’t so grieved you would realize that.”

“Where is Longworth now?” Stokes queried, his eyes narrowed upon Foster. It was clear he hadn’t changed his opinion.

“He is out,” Foster said succinctly.

“I can see that. Where has he gone, man?”

“I believe he’s gone to visit the Gypsies camped on the south moor.”

“And that’s another thing,” Stokes barked. “We don’t encourage that lot hereabout. They’re nothin’ but trouble—thievin’ rabble. I’m goin’ ta run them off. They’re inta all that mumbo jumbo witchery, too.”

“This being the master’s land, I believe he’s entitled to have as his guests any whom he pleases,” Foster said loftily.

Stokes
hmm
ed. “We’ll see about that. Where is his wife?”

“In her bath, sir,” Foster said testily. “She has had a long, difficult journey from London, and I wouldn’t dream of disturbing her.”

“Mmmm. I s’pose she’ll keep,” Stokes said. “She’s told us no lies. You, on the other hand, had best get your story straight. Lyin’ to the law is a grave offense, especially when there’s murder involved.”

“I haven’t lied to you,” Foster said. “And you have no proof that murder took place. More than likely an animal killed Forsythe. Whatever the case, the master was at home in this house last night, sir. I have nothing more to add to it.”

Stokes studied him for a long moment, gazing down the long, crooked shaft of his nose. “We’ll see,” he said at last. “Meanwhile, you stay put. Somethin’ untoward is goin’ on out here, and you’re in the middle o’ it.”

“If there is nothing more, I really must see to Master Monty, Mr. Stokes.”

“Mmmm. Carry on, then, but just remember, you aren’t in the clear, Foster. We’ll be back.”

Foster didn’t bother to show the guards out. It was almost full dark. The boy had to be confined in the tower room at once, and the valet scaled the staircase like a man half his age and went straight to Monty’s third-floor suite. He found it in darkness. Holding the candle branch high, the valet ran through the rooms calling
Monty’s name at the top of his voice, but there was no answer. The boy was gone.

Foster stood in the middle of the boy’s bedchamber, the candle branch trembling in his hand, murmuring a string of blue expletives he hadn’t uttered in forty years. It was only a passing moment, and he was grateful that the master of Longhollow Abbey wasn’t present to hear him slip so shockingly out of character. He had failed in his duty, albeit through no fault of his own. Correcting this was paramount now. He had to find the cunning child, who might or might not have become a werewolf, of all unlikely things. It mattered not that he would probably lay his life on the line doing so.

Bursting back into the corridor, he went first to Tessa’s chamber. The boy had stolen there before; he may have done so again. It was a desperate fantasy, and Tessa’s rooms were vacant also. Was the strange child somewhere watching, gloating over his triumph, or had the wolf taken possession and rendered him mindless, reduced him again to the savage beast that had begun the nightmare? Either way, the boy had to be found and restrained. With that to drive him, Foster went below to the master suite, praying he would find the child there.

As he stepped off the second-floor landing, the plaintive howl of a wolf pierced his heart and paralyzed him where he stood—not with fear, however; he was trying to isolate the sound. Where was it coming from? The echoes in this old Abbey made it next to impossible to pin down. The howl came again. It seemed to be coming from the master suite, and the valet tiptoed along the darkened hallway until he reached it, then hesitated.

The door was ajar. Being the master’s personal manservant, and since his own room adjoined, Foster possessed a key, which he kept on a chain attached to his
waistcoat pocket. Slipping it out, he seized the door handle, pulled it to, and turned the key in the lock, a flood of relief rushing over him like an ocean wave at the sound of the click as the door locked. But there were three other doors that gave egress into the corridor from the master suite: the bedchamber, dressing room, and his own chamber. The same key fit them all.

Vaulting down the corridor, he quickly locked the bedchamber door, then the door to the dressing room. But when he reached the door to his own apartment and seized the door latch it was jerked out of his hand. The door flew open, and the valet stood, not before the wolf he expected, but before the boy, mimicking the cry of a wolf. He swung a heavy candlestick into the valet’s head.

How long he lay there, the valet couldn’t tell. When he finally moaned awake it was to total darkness—thick, palpable darkness—malodorous darkness, stifling, smothering. He coughed then choked.
Smoke!
Great, billowing clouds of smoke were funneling through the corridors.

Fire!

Terror gripped the valet’s heart like an icy fist. He tried to rise and failed. His gashed head was throbbing, pounding. His pulse echoing in his ears, he raised himself to his knees, then with the help of the door handle, pulled himself to his feet.

Snatching a candlestick from the table inside, he touched it to the wall sconce in the hall to light it. Blood was leaking into his right eye from a deep gash in his forehead, and vertigo starred his vision with tiny pinpoints of blinding light. He’d thought he was confining a wolf. The boy had caught him completely off guard.

That Monty was possessed of such uncanny strength testified to the severity of the curse upon him. But there
was no time to analyze it; the Abbey was on fire and his first thought was of Tessa, bolted inside the wine cellar in the bowels of the servants’ quarters. He had to free her, else she burn to death or suffocate—if it wasn’t already too late.

With that thought to drive him, the valet plowed through the curls of black smoke, his handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Wheezing uncontrollably, he made his way toward what appeared to be a faint ray of light coming in brief glimpses from the oriel at the end of the hallway, since the feeble candle he carried was useless in that pitch-black ink. The oriel glow picked out the door in the wainscoting on the second-floor landing, and he flung it open and reeled inside. Could he have been unconscious the whole night?

The upper regions were engulfed in flames. The solarium studio was full of flammable materials that must surely have exploded. Fiery bits were raining down as the valet shut the little invisible door behind him and hobbled down the narrow stone stairs that led to the wine cellar below, leaning against the wall as he went, for his footing was anything but sure. The dizziness hadn’t subsided. Inhaling the smoke had made it worse. A fog of the acrid stuff prevailed there also, and the wall separating him from the rest of the servants’ area was hot to the touch the lower he went. Could the child have run through the Abbey igniting it top and bottom? He must have done. Foster could see it in his mind, and groaned aloud at the terrible loss of property—and possibly life. But he dared not think about that now. The rest of the servants were on their own; he had to free the mistress. That was the single thought driving him.

“I’m coming, madam!” he called through a strangled gasp, as he set down the candlestick and fumbled with the key in the heart-shaped padlock. His eyes were smarting from the smoke swirling all around him, as
were his lungs, and his hands were shaking. “Please, madam, would you give a holler so I know you’re all right?”

But there was no reply, and Foster hurried with the padlock, the rasp of metal against metal grating against his patience as he finally turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

Snatching up the candlestick, he held it high. The sight that met his eyes stopped him cold. Half the wine bottles were broken, their racks turned on end. A sea of wine peppered with broken glass bled over the floor toward the pile of burlap sacks beside the door, where the Tessa lay half-dressed, unconscious under a blanket of smoke.

She had evidently transformed back—dawn had come, or at least enough of it for this purpose—and started to dress when smoke overcame her. She’d gotten into her frock, but her cloak still lay on the floor where she’d cast it down. The valet quickly snatched it up and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“The Abbey is afire, madam!” he choked out. “We must away! I fear I cannot carry you up those stairs as I am. Madam, please!”

But Tessa didn’t move, much less reply, instead lying like a rag poppet in her bed of burlap sacks.

Chapter Twenty-six

Giles woke just before first light, naked and cold, hunched in the barrow, which was deep enough for a wolf but hardly adequate to contain a man. Like so many other cairns in the area, time had changed its original proportions.

His first sensation was pain in his right shoulder, then teeth-chattering cold and nausea as recollection returned. The guards had seen him shape-shift. He had left his clothes behind. It was over now. They knew. He could bluff no longer. Whether he was the one who killed Forsythe or the boy had done didn’t matter any longer. He would hang for it now regardless. His only hope was to flee.