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“He also tried to kill me.”
“Obviously because he couldn’t trust you. It’s your own fault.”
“That’s for the police to decide,” Charlotte said.
Mary’s crazy eyes burned a little crazier.
“I can’t stand it. I can’t stand to think of him locked up. He’ll be so unhappy. He’s like a dog that needs to get out and run.”
Charlotte was close to the bedroom door. She moved slowly so she wouldn’t alarm Mary, but she also felt no hurry. Mary was slight. If it came to a fight, Charlotte thought she could handle this girl.
“Locked up forever, no sunshine, no country air, no chance he will ever touch me again …” Mary touched her own neck, and a shudder ran visibly through her body.
“Mary, trust me, that’s a good thing.”
“I’ll die for him!” Mary stood in the threshold of the bathroom, the light behind her lining her pale hair in bright yellow.
“No one wants to kill you, Mary. There’s really no call for—”
“I’ll die for Mr. Darcy.”
“Um … did you just say ‘Mr. Darcy’?”
“No.”
Mary’s face seemed to cool, the red splotches of emotion fading. She reached around the far side of the bathroom door, picked up a rifle that she had placed just out of sight, put it against her shoulder, and pointed it at Charlotte.
“Holy crap!” Charlotte said, as Beckett might. “I thought England was all famous for not having guns!”
“The gentlemen go hunting.”
“Is that a prop gun?”
Mary cocked the rifle. The click sounded ominously real.
The door to the hall was just a step away. Charlotte glanced at it. Did she dare run? Would Mary get spooked and shoot?
“You did it,” Mary said, her hands shaking dramatically, the tip of the rifle aimed at Charlotte’s head, at her neck, at her feet, now at the wall. “You’re responsible for Thomas’s capture. No one would have cared if the old man had just disappeared. But you spoilt everything. And Thomas loves me! He practically said so!”
“Then I’m very happy for you two,” Charlotte said shakily.
Mary’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t like how he’d look at you. Perhaps he was pretending to love you. I don’t know, I don’t know …”
That swaying rifle was pointing in the region of Charlotte’s head way too often. She decided fleeing was worth the risk.
Mary adjusted her stance, the bathroom light falling over her face, and Charlotte could see that the girl had put on makeup, apparently from Charlotte’s own stash. Her cheeks were well blushed, her lips pink, and one eye sported brown shadow all the way up to her eyebrow.
“Mary, you look pretty,” she said.
Mary hesitated; the rifle lowered. And that’s when Charlotte ran.
A gunshot rang in her ears as she threw open the door and fled into the hall.
“Mary’s got a gun!” she yelled, racing for the stairs. Miss Charming and Colonel Andrews poked their heads out of their bedrooms then quickly ducked back in again. Charlotte couldn’t blame them. She took the stairs two at a time.
Oh, come on already, police, she thought. Come on with your vicious billy clubs and beat the love crazies out of this psychopath!
Charlotte had no plan except to get out of the house. Maybe the house wasn’t a sentient, ancient beast that swallowed corpses whole, but it sure lodged a lot of nutjobs.
