“I don’t suppose he wants to,” Gideon said. “The question is how long hedoesneed to keep you here, and what he’s trying to achieve by it.”
Zeb grabbed a couple of handfuls of hair, tugging at it as ifthat would relieve his feelings. “Suppose I confront him? Push him into a corner where he has to stop pretending to be a genial host?”
“Do we want him to stop pretending that?”
“Then what are we going to do?” Zeb demanded. “Because I’ve got to do something. Get Jessamine out of here, for a start, and warn the others, and what about the staff? We can’t just leave everyone to fester in this madhouse, and especially not if Dash is locked in a room.”
“We don’t know he’s anything of the kind,” Gideon said. “He may be assisting Wynn’s little game and have his feet up in perfect safety. That’s very much the problem: we don’t know who, if anyone, we can trust. Honestly, I think our urgent problem is to get you out of this mess, and we should not be worrying about anyone else.”
“Dash is missing. Jessamine is achild.”
“I very much doubt Wynn will harm Jessamine. Zeb, now is not the time for your absurdly generous nature. Please promise—” He stopped himself sharply.
“Gideon—”
“Let me rephrase that,” Gideon said, voice steady. “I don’t give a damn for anyone else in this house. I realise you do, and that you are a better man than me for it, but I nevertheless beg you will look after yourself first. Because there is something dreadfully wrong here and I’m afraid for you.”
“Noted,” Zeb said. His mouth felt oddly dry. “I do want to go, don’t think otherwise. It’s just—I’m tired of walking away frommesses. I walked away from you—”
“I sent you away.”
“I let you do it. If I had fought for you a year ago, if I had faced the difficult things instead of scurrying away, we would neither of us be in this ghastly house right now.”
“You didn’t make this mess, though, and I doubt you can mend it.”
“But I’m neck deep in it. So I am going to—” Whatwashe going to do? “Talk to Elise,” he decided. “That would be a start.”
“Do you think she’ll listen?”
“She’s got nobody else on her side. And she’s got plenty of character, and is exhibiting more sense than Bram or Hawley right now. If we had her on our side, that might do something.”
“All right. And I’ll see if I can come up with anything useful among the staff.” He stood, pulled Zeb up by the hand, and kissed him, swift and firm. “Just, please, take care.”
***
Zeb headed directly to Elise’s room, on the grounds that she had yet to leave it before two in the afternoon. He hoped she’d got a good book.
He knocked. She answered the door herself with the expression of a woman who was not used to answering doors, or pleased about it, and Zeb blurted, “Did Wynn not let you bring a maid?”
“He claimed there would be staff to assist me, by which he seems to have meant one sulky, incompetent woman. What doyou want?”
“May I come in?”
She gave him the thinnest possible smile. “That would hardly be proper.”
Zeb glanced up and down the corridor: there was nobody in sight. “I’ll stand out here if you’d rather. I wanted to talk about what’s going on in this house.”
“Meaning?”
“Someone dressed up as a ghost to frighten you,” Zeb said. “Not just you, either, there’s a lot of it about. People dressing up as monks to scare Jessamine, a lot of spiders put in my room, slander written on walls—” He saw her mouth tighten. “Was there writing on your wall too? Did it disappear inexplicably?”
“Are you part of this bizarre practical joke?” she snapped. “Is Hawley behind this?”
“I had some on my wall too. It was on a piece of wallpaper, stuck over the actual paper, if you see what I mean: that’s how they took it away again. I don’t think it’s Hawley, myself, because I don’t see where he’d find a spare roll of wallpaper, and also, he’s clearly going off his chump. And Colonel Dash has disappeared. He’s not in his room and Wynn won’t say where he is.”
“He’s unwell.”
“I don’t think he is,” Zeb said. “I think Wynn’s lying about that, as he’s lying about a lot of things. I know he’s been misinterpreting what I’ve said, including about you. He’s trying to set us all fighting over the inheritance, not to mention scaring everyone half to death with ghosts and footsteps and strangewriting, and let’s be honest, it’s worked.”
