Then he folded it again, precisely, and set it down on the edge of his desk, as if it were some fragment of pottery that might, by stillness alone, arrange itself into sense.
Catherine was, indeed, innocent. And she was alive.
But she was in grave danger.
He had sat wallowing in false suspicion while his wife was in the hands of someone who was clearly unpredictable. The knowledge struck so hard it hollowed him.
He reached for the back of the chair as fury and helplessness locked in equal measure behind his chest.
He picked up the note again. The script was confident, deliberate—betraying no haste. That alone revealed much. Its author had written without fear of discovery, certain of his advantage.
‘Do not bring the constable… Come alone.’
He demands everything.
Marcus crossed the room, already unlocking the cabinet where his most valuable items had been stored under protective cloth.
He withdrew them with care. Each item told a story of his life’s study, his years in Oxford and out in the field. And now, each would be a bargaining chip in someone else’s game.
He packed them into an old satchel, set it upon the chair, and raked a hand through his hair.
Every instinct screamed to go to Alexander. To demand Rosalind’s help. To alert the constable.
But the words of the note remained fixed behind his eyes.
‘If you want Lady Penwood alive, you will comply.’
He dared not chance it. Whatever snare lay ahead, he would step into it willingly. He would bring the whole collection—every shard, every fragment. He would carry the Roman world to that crumbling mill if it meant Catherine stood there, breathing.
He would give it all: his reputation, his safety, his scholarship—let them burn to ash—so long as his wife returned to him alive. He bent to fasten the strap. Dusk would come soon. And he would be ready.
Chapter Twenty-four
The cart path narrowed as Marcus approached the turnoff that led to the mill, the rutted earth lined by drooping hawthorn and encroaching weeds. The wheel ruts had long since filled with rainwater and hardened unevenly beneath the hooves of passing livestock. The trees here leaned too close together, their branches skeletal against the late afternoon sky.
Marcus kept the satchel close at his side, the strap drawn tight across his chest. The weight of it felt unfamiliar and burdensome in the wrong way. He knew the contents by heart: the carved reliefs, the worn glass beads from Cirencester, the slender fibula pin unearthed near the southern hedge line. Artefacts that had once spoken to an ancient people’s survival. Now they were ransom.
The old mill emerged from the trees like something half-faded from a dream, with a lopsided stone frame with roof tiles long since lost to wind and rust. The door hung partially open, crooked on one hinge, the darkness inside absolute.
Marcus stopped a few yards short. His heart pounded hard enough to drown out thought. He had done enough thinking on the race there that she could already be dead, and this could be nothing but a trap to end his life, as well.
His own life was irrelevant to him. Catherine had to be alive. He could not allow himself to believe anything else.
Harold needed her alive, after all, at least long enough to manipulate the exchange. But what then? Would he vanish into the woods, leaving Catherine behind? Or had he constructed something far more final? Marcus’s throat tightened. If Harold had already disposed of Catherine…
No,he thought, furiously shoving aside the notion.Do not think it. She depends on me to bring her back home.And he would bring her back, whatever the cost.He tightened his grip on the satchel and pressed on, the sting of tears pricking his eyes.
***
Catherine’s hands ached, the cords biting deeper each time she strained against them. Her wrists had long since gone slick with blood where the rough hemp tore into skin, but she dared not stop. Every gradual slackening, every millimetre of loosened fibre, brought her closer to freedom.
She sat upright on the splintered floorboards, her back pressed to the post, fingers blindly working at the knot behind her. Splinters bit into her palms, and the effort made her shoulders tremble, yet she bit down on the pain and would not relent. The blood helped the cord to swell and slip; with each tug, the bindings grew looser.
My hands are bleeding, but the rope is giving way,she realised, holding onto the small bit of hope the knowledge gave her.
She had no illusions about what would follow. If she remained bound when Marcus arrived, Harold would have nocause to spare her. The fact that he had not yet ended her life was merely a calculated delay—manipulation, nothing more. She shifted her weight and twisted harder; the cord creaked and drew taut.
Across the room, Harold paced back and forth. He was a man-shaped fragment of fury, circling through the dust-thick beams of lamplight like something long caged and maddened by confinement.
