Page 176 of Courting the Wrong Duke

Recognition crossed Edmund’s face.

“That would have been him.”

“The guard?” Rosalind asked.

“I cannot be certain, but it sounds very much like him. Particularly the arguments over what was to be done with me.”

William frowned. “Where is he now?”

“I do not know. He stopped coming several days ago.”

Rosalind’s gaze dropped over her father again, taking in the hollows beneath his eyes and the way his clothing hung from his frame. “How long have you been alone?”

“Two days. Perhaps three. I had enough water, but little else.”

Her fingers tightened around his. The thought of her father locked beneath this house while the only person tending him simply disappeared made anger rise hot beneath her fear.

“Why would he leave?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Edmund glanced toward the cellar stairs. “But if he was the man who wrote that letter, I doubt he simply forgot I was here.”

A strange sound drifted faintly through the house above them.

Rosalind turned toward the stairs.

For an instant, she could not place it. Then she remembered Isabella disappearing around the rear of the house and the plan they had made before separating.

The call of a bird.

Long and low, it carried through the walls before fading into silence.

William’s head lifted sharply, his attention fixed upon the stairs.

Rosalind waited, scarcely breathing.

The call came again.

Chapter 25

The second birdcall faded, leaving the cellar unnaturally quiet.

William stared toward the stairs. Every instinct urged him to go after Isabella, but Edmund was still locked behind the iron bars, and they had no idea who else might be inside Bryn Hir.

Beside him, Rosalind had gone pale. “That was Isabella.”

“I know.”

“We have to find her.”

“We will.” William forced his attention back to the cell. The ring of keys he had found had opened the outer door, but none fit the lock keeping Edmund imprisoned. “But first we have to get your father out of there.”

He searched the wall beside the cell again, though he already knew there was nothing to find. No hooks, no cabinet, nowhere someone might reasonably have left another key.

“The man who guarded me carried it with him,” Edmund said from behind the bars.

William exhaled slowly.

Of course he had.