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He shrugged. “We had best hurry.”
There were several other bedchambers like the one they had been given along the hall that ran through the center of the house. They were all empty, for which Arthur gave silent thanks. The place was eerily quiet. He was used to a household where people bustled about completing various tasks at this time of day.
They took the stairs up to the next floor. The corridor was narrower here, and the rooms smaller. Servants’ quarters, Arthur thought. A glance into the first two chambers confirmed this. They were much more plainly furnished than those below.
The next door was locked, as were the five following. They heard weeping from behind the last, which stopped abruptly when Arthur tried the doorknob. He pictured a girl cowering behind the panels, praying that they did not open. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so angry.
Señora Alvarez knelt and put her lips to the keyhole of the last door. “Odile?” she murmured. “Sonia? Maria? Jeanne?Êtes-vous là?”
“Qui est-ce?” came the reply.
“Shh.Parlez trés doucement.”
There was a stir beyond the door. Someone inside came closer. The señora conversed with her very quietly in French.
As she did, Arthur tried the key he had in one of the locks. It didn’t work. He hadn’t really thought it would.
After a bit, the señora came to stand beside him. “All of the dancers are here,” she murmured. “As well as two other girls. They have had little chance to speak to each other. These…monsters keep them alone and afraid. Some of them are hurt as well.”
Arthur’s fury was mirrored in her dark eyes. “Breaking down the doors would bring them down on us,” he said. “We must find the keys.”
“They bring food two times each day,” she replied. “We could wait and take the keys from that person.”
“That could be hours. I don’t want to spend so much time here. And it could be more than one person.”
“We must do something!”
“I have an idea,” Arthur said.
“What?”
“It is an unpleasant one,” he added.
“Nothing could be worse than this!” She gestured at their surroundings.
“I could ring, from the room we were given, and ask for another girl. To…join us. I could insist upon choosing her myself.”
The señora grimaced. “I suppose they would do that.”
“Particularly if I offer more money.”
“And then we overpower the woman and take her keys.”
He nodded.
“Very well.” Before they left, she whispered at all the locked doorways, addressing each dancer in her native language. The two strangers were English, wary but wild for escape.
When Arthur unlocked the door on the floor below, they found the bedchamber as they had left it. “We must set the scene,” he said.
“And be certain of our plan,” she replied.
A few minutes later, Arthur pulled the bell rope. When the “hostess” arrived in response he made his request, with another payment ready to tempt her. There was no difficulty. She left briefly and returned with a ring of keys to lead Lord Macklin upstairs.
Teresa waited until the sound of their footsteps had died away before slipping from the room and following. The corridor was empty. The stairway was empty. She lingered behind the door at the top, cradling the heavy vase she carried. The flowers it had held lay on the washstand in the room below. She could hear the woman speaking to the earl, but not what she said. “That one might do,” said Lord Macklin in a loud voice.
This was the signal they had agreed on. Teresa surged forward. The earl stood beside an open door. He had maneuvered his companion so that her back was to the stairwell. Teresa ran forward and hit the woman on the head with the vase as hard as she could.
She fell in a heap, hitting the floor with a loud thump.
