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‘No.’ She looked up, her smile valiant, if a little tremulous. ‘Why?’
‘Because I thought it the bravest thing I ever heard,’ he confessed, unsurprised to find his voice husky. ‘To be chained in a cellar with a pot of poison to drink and to own yourself merely a little apprehensive.’
‘I was lying,’ she confessed, tipping back her head to look up at him. ‘I was terrified. But I knew you’d get us out.’
‘Let’s get this door open first before we congratulate ourselves.’ The old lock was so large and crude he needed two picks to work it, but they were out into the passage in minutes. ‘I’ll lock it again.’ He had to keep going, to think ahead and not back to what might have been. If Hythe and Lady James had been attacked, if they had not found the cell in time. If…Somehow he had to starve his imagination until they were safe away. ‘We’ll take the candles. I wonder if she would ever have opened the door again.’
Beside him Elinor shuddered. ‘She must be mad. They both must be. You know, I’ve had a horrible thought. What if Leon marries Julie and they have a son—and then Leon does something to upset them? What do you think his life is worth once there’s an heir those two can fully control?’
‘Not much. I’ll write to him once we get clear. He may need some convincing, though. Would you believe such a thing of your mother?’
He did not wait for her answer, striding to open the secret panel and take out the Chalice. This time he did not wrap it when the hiding place was secure again, merely grabbed it by the stem and put his other hand under Elinor’s arm. ‘Come on.’
‘Where to?’ she asked as they slipped out into the silence of the great hall.
‘To the bedchambers.’
‘But we can’t take anything or they’ll realise we are free.’
‘We need to speak to your mother, let her know what is going on.’
Aunt Louisa was, all things considered, extremely calm about finding her daughter and her nephew in her bedchamber at four in the morning, both of them filthy, battered and clutching an artefact of such indecency she had to examine it twice with her quizzing glass before she was prepared to believe the evidence of her own eyes.
Alarming in nightcap and flannel robe, she listened to their story in silence. There was, Theo admitted, something to be said for the scholarly turn of mind.
‘The woman is insane,’ she pronounced when they had finished. ‘So, what do you propose we do now? Call in the authorities?’
Theo had been thinking about that. A descent on the mairie with a demand to see the mayor and order the arrest of the most powerful woman for miles around seemed doomed to failure. It would take some time to convince Leon of his mother’s appalling crimes and, even if convinced, he might act to cover them up, rather than to restrain her.
‘There is no one we can trust,’ he concluded and saw from her nod of approval that she fully agreed. ‘I will take the Chalice and get it back to England.’
‘And what about me?’ Elinor demanded.
‘I can drop you off with Madame Dubois; you can hide in my old room. Aunt Louisa will pretend to believe we have eloped and will set off in pursuit, collecting you from St Père on the way.’
Both women regarded him in silence. Finally Elinor said flatly, ‘Very well. I do not like it, but I would be a burden to you on the way, I can see that.’
He expected his aunt to agree, but she looked at her daughter incredulously. ‘I never thought to hear you so feeble, Elinor! I am not happy with you hiding with some woman I do not know, and I am not convinced of our safety if they should find us together. You will go with Theo.’
It was like someone handing him an unexpected gift. Days with Nell, just the two of them, the gypsy existence on the road they had joked about. The life those sketches had pictured so vividly. He looked at his aunt, the incredible suspicion forming that she was quite deliberately throwing them together. Surely she did not really want him to marry Elinor? Did she?
Elinor looked at him and, just for a second, he thought he saw his own desires mirrored there. Then she said, with no colour in her voice, ‘If you feel it better, Mama.’
‘We will go to Maubourg,’ he said, the idea coming to him from nowhere. ‘It is closer than Paris and the coast and you said Sebastian and Eva have gone back there for the baby to be born.’
‘Very sensible,’ Lady James approved. ‘You can send that hell-begotten object to your patron in the diplomatic bag.’
‘I think not,’ Theo said, imagining some clerk in the Foreign Office unwrapping it and requiring medical attention. ‘I will write to Lord X from there, though.’
‘Maubourg?’ Nell was frowning at him.
‘Where better to be safe than a castle surrounded by guards? We will get down to the stables and wake Hythe. He must take the carriage and drive to Avallon to have Lord X’s men set free. He will also provide a false trail, setting out to Paris. Goodness knows if those two will ever check on us, or move the stone panel again and find the Chalice gone, but if they do then my carriage is distinctive enough to give them something to chase. We can drop off on the road to Avallon and hire a chaise.’
He felt invigorated now, despite the lack of sleep, the blow to the head, the horror of believing he had brought Nell to her death. They were alive, relatively unscathed and he had days in her company ahead. Not that she seemed very happy about the prospect. My poor love. She must be exhausted, he thought, wishing he had the right to take her in his arms and carry her off to his bed. To sleep. Just to watch her sleep.
‘Right. I imagine we must get a move on,’ Lady James was saying briskly. ‘I will find a spare toothbrush and soap and under-things from my wardrobe so it will appear nothing of Elinor’s is missing. That is a weakness in their little plot, is it not? If I were eloping, I would certainly pack a bag!’
The thought of her mother doing such a thing at least produced a faint smile on Elinor’s lips. Theo watched her with concern. Had he finally found the limit of her courage and endurance? Or was she appalled at the thought of spending days alone with him after his insane proposal up on the hill?
