Page 77 of The Scandalous Spinster

When Bram saw Clara’s pale hair vanish into the crowd, he bellowed her name. The guests nearby stared at him, drawing back. Not fast enough, not nearly fast enough.

She was gone. She had taunted the bloody marquis on purpose, and now she was gone.

Fury and panic warred inside his ribcage, but he could give in to neither, no matter how desperately he wanted to start overturning gaming tables and punching footmen until someone told him where she was. The marquis was amusing his guests, pretending that there was not an edge to his laugh, that he had not been manipulated by a woman no one bothered to notice.

Bram would start punching there. With great relish. Followed by tearing the marquis limb from limb if necessary.

A whistle from the balcony above. He glanced up out of instinct.

Devil, leaning indolently on the railing as though Bram’s life hadn’t just exploded, nodded toward the far doorway. It opened onto the hall that led past the billiards rooms to the conservatory and the gardens. Bram didn’t bother nodding back, just shoved through the sea of chattering aristocrats. It was all a game to them, the whole evening, their entire lives.

Clara would not pay the price.

He barreled out of the doors, noticing the flowers in one of the urns had been snapped. Nothing else was disturbed. No one lingered.

That was when he saw the tiny scrap of red ribbon by his boot. He knew that silk well, had had dreams of pulling it off with his teeth. Clever, clever woman.

When he reached down to grab it, the blow came from behind, smashing against the back of his skull.

*

“This is not quite the rescue I had in mind.”

The cave was rough, damp, the chill barely softened by a battalion of candles. Clara would have preferred an army of actual soldiers ready to do her bidding.

Heavy, old-fashioned furniture of the sort generally brought down from family attics was scattered about: chairs, a long table, books, and baskets of needlework, all under a narrow window too small to fit through and barred with iron. There were several mattresses behind moth-eaten tapestries attached to the ceiling.

And Sybil, also attached, though to the wall.

She was the only one in chains, which made sense. She would have been the one to cause the most trouble. “Hello, Clara,” she added.

Clara had been shoved inside the room, hitting the hard ground on her knees. The thick wooden door shut with an ominous thud, followed by the sharp clack of the lock turning. When she looked up, Sybil smiled wryly. Clara sat back, dusting off her hands. “Found you.”

“Lucky you.”

“Quite.” Pretending to be calm was helping her feel calmer. As was the knowledge that Bram would find them. It sat in her ribcage as surely as her heart did. “Finally, my own adventure.”

“And is it everything you dreamed of?”

One of the ladies huddled together in the far corner stepped closer. She wore several shawls over her dress. She was very short, with a forceful nose and serious eyes. “Why isn’t she fainting?” she asked Sybil. “Or screaming?”

“Lady Heloise, this is Lady Clara. Lady Rosalinde and Miss Blanche Yarwood just there.”

“A pleasure. And I’m a Spinster, dear,” Clara added briskly, climbing to her feet. Her knees were definitely bruised, and the left one did not seem at all interested in supporting her weight. “We don’t give in to histrionics.”

However much she might want to.

Heloise snorted. “Sybil tore up the tapestries and then tried to strangle one of the guards within an hour of our being imprisoned.”

“That’s not histrionics,” Sybil said. “That’s just good sense.”

“It landed you in chains,” Heloise pointed out.

“A momentary setback,” Sybil assured her. She looked to Clara. “Took you long enough to figure out my clues.”

“Because they were haphazard and half mad,” Clara replied. “Until I found your letter, they were not particularly helpful.”

“I couldn’t risk anything falling into the marquis’s hands.”