Page 38 of A Scandal at Stonecliffe

“Stanhope?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” Nathan handed the man another coin, which brought not quite a smile, but at least a less belligerent expression, to the barkeep’s face.

It didn’t take long to reach the pathway the barkeep had given them, but finding the correct place in the warren of houses was another matter. It took a good deal of fruitless wandering about and finally a few more coins to a street urchin to find the right flat.

The door eased open a crack at Nathan’s knock, then immediately slammed. Putting their shoulders to it, Nathan and Sloane burst into the room, only to find that the sole occupant was a frowsy woman screeching at the top of her lungs. Her words were almost imperceptible at that pitch, but Nathan could make out one word. Hill. The man with the scar. The man that had cut Verity.

Nathan charged up a narrow set of stairs behind the screaming woman and Sloane followed.

The room above was empty, but a knotted rope hung out the open window. Nathan ran over and looked out in time to see a tall, lean man madly dashing toward St. Mary Hill.

“How’d you know he was up here?” Sloane looked surprised and impressed—an altogether irritating combination that Nathan unfortunately was getting used to seeing on the man’s face.

“There wasn’t anywhere else to go and she was clearly trying to alert someone,” Nathan answered as he gave a sharp tug on the rope.

Sloane quirked an eyebrow. “Think it’ll hold us?”

“It better,” was Nathan’s terse reply as he grabbed hold of it and backed out of the window.

Sloane grinned, and he followed Nathan’s lead. Once on the ground, they took off at a run. When they reached the outer street, they spotted their quarry nearing the docks. They pursued him as he turned left at the Workhouse and cut across St. Dunstan’s churchyard. Swerving around people and dodging through traffic on Thames Street, they continued after him and were closing in on the man when suddenly he veered into a ramshackle building.

Sloane’s jagged breathing matched Nathan’s and the sound was all Nathan was aware of in the darkness of the room. The windows had been knocked out long ago, and between the dim light diffusing through them and a partially collapsed roof, his eyes adjusted enough to see a hinged wooden cover beside an opening in the floor. A faint light came up from beneath it.

“Trap door?” Nathan asked, his breath still coming in pants, and Sloane nodded.

They lifted the cover, peered into the hole and saw a ladder leading down to a dirt floor, with stone walls on either side.

“It’s a tunnel.” Sloane looked over at Nathan. “Shall we?”

“Of course we shall,” Nathan replied and started down the ladder.

Nathan quickly moved aside so that Sloane could come down after him. The light, he saw, came from a spot ahead of them where the roof of the tunnel had caved in. The debris had been pushed to the sides, and the threat of collapse obviously didn’t deter the man they were pursuing, for Nathan could see his form disappearing into the dark in the distance.

There was a narrow gap in the floor, but two planks had been laid across it. Nathan started toward it, Sloane on his heels, but before he reached the planks, there was a loud crack, and the floor gave way beneath Nathan. Sloane lunged forward to grab Nathan’s arm, and for a moment Nathan dangled there. And then the floor completely collapsed beneath Sloane, and they both tumbled down into the dark.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NATHAN LET OUT a groan. His head was pounding, and he was half covered in debris. He looked around him. “Sloane?”

There was no sign of the other man. Coughing from the powdered dust and crushed stone that hung in the air around him, Nathan called Sloane’s name again. A string of curses from a few feet away reassured him that Sloane was alive.

“Are you all right?” Nathan began to dig out from the pile of dirt and broken planks that hemmed in his legs, visions of Sloane lying bleeding filling his head. The idea would have pleased Nathan in the past, but now he thought of the pain it would cause Annabeth; it was no longer an idea Nathan relished in any capacity.

“Of course I’m not all right,” Sloane growled as he struggled to his feet on the other side of a pile of rubble. “I just fell ten feet.” He brushed ineffectually at the white layer that coated his clothes. He looked up at the hole in the tunnel above him, and said, “Make that fifteen feet.”

Nathan coughed and crawled out. There were various points of pain all over him that said there would soon be bruises, and something had sliced through one leg of his breeches, leaving a shallow groove of blood. The feel of wetness on his face made him suspect there was another cut on his head. But at least nothing seemed to be broken.

He walked over to stand beside Sloane, looking all around. “Where the devil are we?”

There was enough light from the collapsed tunnel above that they could see that they stood beside a shallow rectangular pit. It was floored in stone, and the remains of a stone wall marked its boundaries. Even with the rubble that had tumbled down on either side, it was clearly laid out in a pattern, with two smaller squares extending from it and a tiered sort of arrangement of blocks at one end, like a small pyramid. The opposite end of the rectangle was shrouded in darkness.

“I believe we have fallen into Londinium,” Sloane replied.

“What?” Nathan’s voice rose in disbelief, but as he looked around, he could see that the ruin before them looked very much like the remains of a Roman bath. “Good God. I think you’re right. These are Roman ruins.” He peered into the darkness, an urge to explore sparking in him. What else lay down here? “Blast. I wish we had a paraffin lamp.”

“I wish we had that ladder.”