“I don’t know, love. I know what you’ve done.”
“What?”
“Quite possibly saved our lives.” Gideon kissed his hair. “If we survive this, it will be because you were good to her, you and that oversized heart of yours.”
They hung on to one another for a moment, then Zeb pulled away. “I need to tell you, I worked out what Wynn’s doing. His ultimate goal.”
“On a scale of one to ten, where one represents normal, rational behaviour—”
“Twelve.”
“Go on.”
Zeb braced himself. “He’s sacrificing us, the Wyckhams. Possibly to Satan?”
Gideon just shut his eyes. Zeb pressed on. “Remember the Wyckham curse, that we all die before we’re fifty? Wynn told methat Walter had made a bargain—a deal with the devil—that he would live longer by exchanging his wives’ and children’s futures for his. Well, I found a paper with a list of Walter’s wives and children and the ages they died at, and a lot of calculations in Wynn’s hand. He was trying to work out how many years they had lost and Walter had gained. I mean, how many years past fifty Walter got for all the years under fifty the othersdidn’tget, if you see what I mean. He calculated that Walter had an extra year of life for every six years lost by his relatives, but I didn’t check his sums.”
“I can see why you wouldn’t trouble to.”
“Well, no,” Zeb said. “But on the other side of the paper he had all our ages—me, Elise, Hawley, Bram—and done the same sort of calculation, and he’d concluded he’d live to sixty-one if we all died now. He even had my birthday written down, I suppose because he didn’t want me to get another year older. Is this making sense?”
“No, it really is not,” Gideon said. “But I think I understand. He believes he’s fated to die at fifty unless he makes the same imaginary bargain that Walter did, and he intends to kill you and steal your remaining years?”
“That’s what I think.”
“But he’ll be fifty next year. If he wants to extend his own life, why didn’t he start earlier, when everyone was younger?”
“Are you seriously applying logic to this?” Zeb asked. “Maybe he only developed his theory recently. Maybe he has to be the same age as Walter for it to work. Maybe the goblins are telling him what to do. How should I know?”
“Fair. Well, I suppose that explains why he’s involved. I couldn’t see why Wynn would care in the slightest that Bram abandoned his mistress but, of course, he doesn’t. He brought these people together because what they wanted would help his goal.”
“To kill the lot of us and get away with it. He wants it to look like we murdered each other, and failing that, he’s got plenty of other people here to blame. Oh, that’s what he wanted you for. An obvious scapegoat if he killed me.”
“Very possibly,” Gideon said thinly. “And he’ll play the gentle, baffled recluse, hopelessly surrounded by people fighting over his money or pursuing their own schemes. Who’d believe a story about spiders and sacrifices and ghosts when there’s such an obvious lot of motives about? Christ.” He put both hands into his hair and gripped hard, as if he was trying to pull himself upright by main force. “It’s ingenious, I suppose, but a score of twelve might be underrating this.”
“There’s something else,” Zeb said. “It’s possible I’m fraying at the seams now, but this all goes back to Walter, yes? Well, today is Walter’s birthday. I can’t feel that’s a good thing.”
Gideon considered that in silence. Then he said, “You asked what we’re going to do. The answer is, wait for the signal and get out of here as though the hounds of hell are at our heels.”
“What about Bram and Hawley?”
Gideon grimaced. “What can we do? There are two footmen and the chauffeur itching to mete out righteous retribution, and I don’t think we’ll get anywhere tangling with them. The chauffeur caught me trying to take a ladder from a shed and gave mea rather bad time before he dragged me back in here.” He indicated his bruised face. “They’re all strong and brutal and they really did not mind hurting me.”
“Are you all right?”
“No. He punched me in the face and kicked me in the ribs when I fell. I didn’t know if he was going to stop.”
Zeb grabbed his hand. “Oh, God.”
“I can’t fight them. I don’t know how. And unless you’ve taken up the study of jiujitsu in our time apart, nor can you.”
Zeb thought about the gun. “Well—”
“We’d have no chance at all in a scrap, even with Bram and Hawley’s aid, which we’re not going to get, are we?”
“Hawley will be no use. I wouldn’t trust him not to run to Wynn, thinking he’s being clever; I’d rather leave him here. That’s awful.”
“No, it isn’t,” Gideon said grimly. “It’s the calculation of necessity, and I think you need to apply it to Bram as well.”
