Page 57 of Down Comes the Night

As she shifted her weight backward, the floorboard whined beneath her.

The ensuing silence was resounding.

“Hello?”

His footsteps thudded menacingly on the floorboards. His lantern light glided toward her. Wren held her breath and cupped her hands over her mouth.

For a brittle eternity, Lowry did not move.

Then, with an indistinct mutter, he turned away. Darkness flowed back in like the tide.

Wren let out her breath shakily, pressing her head into the velvet back of the sofa. As her nerves settled, she felt a steadytick, tick, tickagainst her hip. Her pocket watch? She’d been so fixated on investigating that noise, she’d forgotten to leave the timer with Hannah. As soon as Lowry left, she’d have to hurry back upstairs. Her antidote would finish brewing in a minute, and she needed to make sure it was taken off the heat before it denatured.

Just as realization struck, her pocket watch rang as loud and bright as a whistle.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Like a shock of cold water, fear doused Wren with an eerie numbness.

She expected Lowry to react, to scream, to startle. But he stood perfectly still, his expression slowly clouding with dread. “Who’s there?”

She reached into the pocket of her nightdress and turned off the timer. With every churn of the second hand, it pulsed in her fingers like a beating heart. There was no use trying to hide. Wren stood on unsteady feet. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Oh, Ms. Southerland. What are you doing here?” He didn’t exactly sound impatient, but there was an edge, an urgency, to his question. His lantern’s flicker made the broken darkness swim on his tightly drawn face.

“I thought I heard a noise.”

“What sort of noise?”

“A moan, I think.” Her voice was surprisingly even. As she foundher footing, she tried at a playfully stern tone. “And it seems I was right to check. You’ve hurt yourself.”

Up close, through the steady trickle of blood, she could see his wound more clearly. It was already knotted shut with black thread, and his skin was puckered from the imperfect, hurried job. It looked like a railroad sewn into his flesh. Around it were other scars, shiny and ridged. Some were pockmarks, like strawberry seeds—others were wide and irregular like canyons.

“Oh, this? This is nothing.” Lowry angled his arm away from her. “I wish you hadn’t seen this. It makes me look quite hypocritical, doesn’t it? That wingisa death trap, but it’s… well, it’s where the wine cellar is. I was going to fetch a bottle and took a spill in some debris.”

Liar.

The explanation made little sense—the chronology even less so. She’d seen him emerge from the east wing just now, and the wound had already been treated, shoddily done as it was. Whatever he was doing in there, he had brought medical supplies with him. Not to mention, the cut was perfectly clean. No debris would leave such a deep, straight cut.

But a scalpel would.

He smiled, and although unease curdled within her, she smiled back. “Would you like me to take a look at it?”

“I couldn’t impose on you. In fact, I hardly feel it.” He smoothed back the limp mop of his curls. “You should be in bed.”

Wren showed him her pocket watch. “Eleven fifty, my lord. I’ve ten minutes of freedom left.”

“So you do.” The key around his neck glinted as it caught the light. It was covered with fingerprints stamped in drying blood. “In that case, let me entreat you to join me for coffee. If you don’t mind my saying, you look positively dreadful. Are you sleeping enough?”

A pocket of fear bubbled in her chest. Something was terribly wrong, and she didn’t want to prolong this meeting any longer. She wanted nothing more than to lock herself in her bedroom and leaveonly when she could afford to never look back again. “No, thank you. I need to get back to work.”

“Come now,” he cajoled. “Don’t tell me Henry is rubbing off on you with that attitude of his. Such seriousness will halve your life, Ms. Southerland.”

He most certainly was not.

“Actually,” she said sourly, “coffee sounds wonderful. I believe you’re due for an update on Henry, anyway.”

Wren followed him to the drawing room. He flicked on a switch and cursed under his breath when the lights remained dark. Only dim firelight from the hearth twinkled on a chandelier dripping with crystals and cobwebs.