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Chapter Twelve
Darcy
It was several more days before I got the chance to explore again at night. I’d been kept busy mucking out the stables. Like Mr. Nolan frequently told me, the staff was too small to do only a few jobs. He said the last stable hand had left “abruptly.” There was that word again. And they hadn’t yet found anyone to replace him.
I shoveled out the stables along with the other man assigned there, and tried to ignore the idle soldiers that seemed to always be lounging around the courtyard and who came to look in at me every chance they got. None of them seemed to be Alphas, though, and I thanked the gods for that. I suppose the baron didn’t want any Alphas around.
At least working in the stables, I got to check on the horses and make sure they weren’t being abused in any way. They were still as unfriendly as ever and rolled their eyes at me when I got close. One of them was Midnight, and I wasn’t all that surprised to see the big red roan that belonged to Brandon in the stall next to him. Somehow, Whiskey, who was safely back home in Morovia, had gotten away, and with the help of Asher’s magic perhaps, had made it home. Or maybe he made it on his own. I didn’t know enough about horses to be sure. What I did know was that none of the Alphas would ever have been parted from their horses willingly. That could only mean they were either imprisoned somewhere close by, or they were dead.
I refused to believe that Wyatt was gone, because I felt like I would know if he was dead. Maybe it was just a form of denial, but if I really believed he was dead, I wouldn’t be able to function, so I refused to even entertain the idea. Hewasalive. And I would find him. And there was nothing else I could believe.
It was about a week later that the baron caused a terrible scene with his wife at dinner.
Lady Camilla had managed to stay in the room past the first courses that evening. She was quiet and had been agreeable to everything the baron said, so I had hopes that they could avoid another scene. Not only for her sake, but for mine. It was painful to watch the baron treat her so badly and not intervene or do anything to help. I had promised myself I’d do something if it happened again, even if he struck me down.
We had made it all the way to the main course when it happened. When I uncovered her plate, she looked down at the small squab on the dish with distaste. I wondered why, because it looked all right to me and smelled delicious, but she must have had previous experience with the way it was prepared. When she cut into the breast, red juices ran out and the piece she cut out wasn’t done at all. She made a small sound of disgust and the baron exploded.
“Is nothing ever good enough for you?”
His features twisted into a wild, distorted rage all out of proportion to her offense, and suddenly the fire in the fireplace roared up with a loud angry sound as well. The baron surged to his feet and glared at her. Then he literally threw his knife and fork at her across the long table, and the fork struck her squarely in the forehead, causing her to scream in shock and pain. Blood gushed from the wound, and she grabbed the fork and literally had to pull it out. I started toward her, but he was already out of his seat and storming around the table toward her, and I was in his way. He shoved me aside with a roar, and I slammed back into the wall. Nolan grabbed my arm to pull me back to my feet and his hands were shaking violently.
Lady Camilla still cowered in her chair, probably in shock, but he pulled her from it and began dragging her from the room. She stumbled and fell, but rather than stop, he just kept dragging her away by her arm. Again, I started toward them, but Nolan wrenched me back against the wall.
“Are you crazy?” he whispered hoarsely in my ear. “He’ll kill us both if you try to interfere. You must stay out of this!”
The fire roared again, and I wondered if the baron were somehow responsible for it. The next second the flames died back down, and I was left to think I must have imagined it or it had been only a log shifting.
“But we have to do something,” I cried. I could hear her body thumping on the stairs as he dragged her up them, but he shook his head violently.
“There’s nothing to be done. Clean up the mess at the Vicountess’s place at the table and then go downstairs.Now.”
I did as he asked, because by the time I got out of the dining room, they had disappeared up the stairs, and all was quiet again. I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs for a long time, but then Nolan came out and saw me.
“Go, damn you,” he hissed at me, and gave me a shove. “This is none of our concern.”
Things were almost ominously quiet after that, and neither the baron nor the Vicountess ever came down to finish dinner. Later that night in my room at the top of the stairs, I thought I heard a single cry, cut off suddenly. I listened for a long time afterward, but never heard anything like it again.
That next day, Mr. Nolan announced that the baron and his wife had both left for a short visit to some of the baron’s friends in the capitol city of Crillia. He said they’d be back in a few days. When I’d glanced at him in alarm, he’d given me a quelling look, as if daring me to say a word.
That night, I went upstairs to the Vicountess’s room. Nothing was out of order and some of her clothing was still hanging neatly in her wardrobe. On a hunch, I went up to the attic room, though, and knocked softly on that door. The hairpin trick wouldn’t work, because the door suddenly had a bright, new padlock on it. I tapped softly to see if anyone was inside, but only silence replied. It was only as I was leaving that I saw a long, blonde hair lying on the floor across the doorway. I knew then that Lady Camilla must be inside that room, probably too frightened to answer the door or maybe even tied up in a corner somewhere.
I tried again to knock and even called out to her, but the Vicountess didn’t answer, and no one came to the door or made the slightest sound behind it.
Barbarosa Lagoon had once told me to search high and low, however, so when the baron still hadn’t returned two nights later, I decided to go down to the scullery just past midnight and pick the lock on the cellar door with the hairpin given to me by Lady Camilla.
I had already explored most of the rest of the house by then, and I was even gaining a bit of confidence. Twice now since the incident in the dining room, I’d stood outside the baron’s room, trying to get up the courage to go inside, but I chickened out both times.
On the other hand, picking the lock in the old scullery that night proved to be amazingly easy. So easy, it made me nervous, like I was being set up in some way. After the lock clicked and opened in my hand, I stepped through quickly into the old passageway leading to some narrow stone steps, the middle stones worn down with great age. When I stood at the top of the stairs, a musty odor of damp and a gamey, unpleasant smell of rat piss rose to hit me in the face. I’d need a light if there were rodents down there, so I went back to the pantry and found a candle, lit the wick from the coals in the fireplace and made my way down the passageway and the steep, old stairs.
About halfway down, the walls began to glisten with wetness and the smell of mold and rot was stifling, but I made myself keep going. The thought that Wyatt could be close by kept me going, despite my fears. I came to a corridor with old, solid, iron doors, half rusted, but still strong looking. As I stood there hesitating, something ran over my foot, and I jumped and almost dropped the candle. That would have left me in the dark, which was terrifying. I tightened my grip, gritted my teeth and kept going.
I thought about calling out, but I was afraid to make any noise. What if Dargan had some guards down here? I went up to the first door and tried the doorknob. It was locked, of course, so I bent down and tried to pick the lock again, thinking I’d never be lucky enough for it to work a second time. I was right—it didn’t work.
I began looking around for keys, thinking that perhaps the guards would have keys somewhere close by. And since these doors were ancient, I figured the keys to them would be large and clunky and hard to carry around.
I poked my head in every little storeroom or storage I could find and got lucky. In a small, rusty storage bin on the wall, a set of old iron keys was hanging on a nail. I grabbed them and went over to the first cell door. Fitting the old key in the lock, I held my breath and twisted it, shocked when it actually made a clicking noise and opened up. I was so surprised, I flung open the door and it banged back against the wall with a loud, hollow sound.
I almost passed out at how the noise reverberated throughout the cellar, expecting a whole mob of guards to swarm into the cellar any minute. Every muscle tensed, waiting for a a loud outcry when they spotted me where I definitely wasn’t supposed to be, I froze for a full five minutes, feeling unable to drag enough air in to make my lungs work properly. But that level of fear can’t be sustained indefinitely. As time ticked by and no one came running down the steps or from some side entrance to see what had happened, I slowly relaxed. The servants slept on the third floor and the baron and his lady’s rooms were in another wing, but that noise had been so loud in the hush of the cellar that it seemed like I must have shaken the whole castle. Taking a deep breath after a few more minutes passed with no alarm being raised, I sighed with relief and moved down to the next door.
