“No one listened,” he muttered, as though continuing a quarrel begun hours before. “They laughed. Dismissed me. Always the same superior nods, the same smug corrections. I produced real findings—work finer than Travers ever managed—and still they barred me. Cast me out.”
He turned sharply toward the wall, addressing not Catherine but some invisible tribunal.
“And for what? For questioning dates? For asking who funded his papers? Jealousy, pure jealousy. They could not abide a voice outside their precious circles, their clubs. They knew I was right.”
From beneath her lashes, Catherine watched, careful to hide that she was loosening her bonds. His gaze fixed on nothing, his face flushed with fervent memory, his hands twitching in rhythm to invisible debates.
“Oxford sent a letter, but the damage had been done already,” he said, still speaking as if there was another person present with whom he was conversing. “None of them believed it was fraud. They envied how complete my records were. I wasmeticulous. I never fabricated. I only refined what was already true.”
He turned again, muttering lower now, something inaudible about acquisitions in Norfolk and a name that elicited a rasp of laughter. She closed her eyes for a moment.
He speaks of crime the way some men speak of weather,she thought, unable to suppress a shudder. Another inch of rope loosened, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out with relief.If shuddering helps, I only need listen more carefully to what he is rambling…
“Edmund had the same weakness,” Harold said, his tone sliding to sweetness. “He wanted proof. Always asking questions. You cannot build a career on questioning. You must possess. Claim. Why waste time authenticating what ought to be accepted?”
Her stomach turned, but she kept her face still.
If Marcus comes—and Harold perceives, even for an instant, that his hold is slipping—he will end us both,she realised with numbing dread.He is not playacting. He has done as much before.
Her fingers moved again. The knot was loose enough now that her right hand might slip free if she twisted just the right way.
A moment later, she froze at a distant noise. It was the soft but unmistakable cadence of hoofbeats, drawing nearer. Harold’s head snapped up. He moved to the window like a manuncoiling from a trance and reached for the blade resting on the chair beside him.
“No,” she whispered, the word lost in her breath.
He crossed the room in three strides, seizing her by the arm and dragging her upward.
The force sent a bolt of pain up her spine where her muscles screamed from hours of stillness. She managed to rise, unsteady but upright, as he hauled her toward the broken window.
His arm fastened about her, and the blade rose cold against the hollow beneath her jaw. His breath struck her ear—unsteady, too quick. He held her fast, a captive to his grip, her gaze forced toward the courtyard beyond the mill’s threshold.
Marcus’s voice rang out across the clearing.
“Harold,” he said, steady but loud enough to carry. “I have what you demanded. No tricks. I have come alone.”
Catherine’s heart leapt. He had come. But the sight of her would wreck him if she failed now.
Do not let him see how frightened you are,she told herself with fierce urgency, steadied by the sound of his voice.Be strong for him. He cannot think I have surrendered. He cannot walk in here thinking me broken.
She forced her shoulders straight. The knife pressed tighter against her skin, but she held her breath and lifted her head.
Her hair hung in loose snarls over one shoulder, blood marked her wrists, and dirt streaked the hem of her gown, but she stood firm against the trembling that threatened her knees.
She found Marcus’s eyes through the gap in the shattered pane.
His expression shifted in an instant. Resolve twisted into something like horror, then sharpened into recognition of the danger, and helplessness to alter it.
Harold pressed the knife closer, forcing her chin upward.
“That is close enough, Lord Penwood,” he said, voice unnaturally bright. “Do not take another step—or I will see that she shares the same fate as the others.”
Catherine saw Marcus’s jaw clench and the way his fingers closed tightly around the strap at his side.
“You wanted your collection,” Harold said, his voice higher now, balancing on a strange edge between command and elation. “Well, here’s your price. And if you think for one moment that I will let you take both your wife and your treasures, think again.”
Marcus took a single step closer, but Catherine did not flinch. She met his eyes again, held them, and hoped that he saw what she meant to say.
I am alive. I am not broken. I can fight.
