Mrs. Pritchard grimaced. “I would say you should stay here and let someone else go, but there’s no one left but myself and Cook.”
“No point.” Ryder turned to the corridor that was the fastest way to the stables. “If my stepmother’s in residence, as it seems she is, I’m the only one here to whom she’ll consent to grant an audience.”
Mrs. Pritchard humphed and watched him go. He felt the concern in her gaze as he headed down the corridor, striding increasingly swiftly as, despite all rational arguments, premonition took hold.
Chapter Fifteen
“Lavinia wouldn’t have dared.” He muttered the words as he rode into the band of woodland that formed the eastern border of the home farm fields. There were no lanes through the woods, only the bridle path along which he was riding.
The trees there grew thickly, old stands of oak and beech shading the path and shrouding the woods in deep shadow.
The Dower House was as old as the original part of the abbey and had been one of the original ecclesiastical buildings attached to the holy house. His paternal grandmother had been living at the Dower House when he’d been born, but she’d died soon after, and subsequently the house had been lived in only by caretakers, until he’d effectively banished Lavinia there.
As none of the locals wished to work in her household, she’d been forced to seek staff from further afield. Consequently, unlike what generally occurred in the country, especially in a well-populated county like Wiltshire, the household at the Dower House had little contact and less connection with the staffs of the surrounding houses. More, although Lavinia insisted on living in the country for a decent part of the year, even while she’d reigned at the abbey, she had never put herself out to court the local gentry, had largely shunned them and their entertainments as beneath her, so she now had little truck with their neighbors.
Which meant the household at the Dower House was isolated, and something of an unknown world.
Ryder rode steadily on, Julius’s hoofbeats an echo of his own heartbeat.
His reaction to Mary’s disappearance had hardened with each passing hour. Each minute she was not by his side, within his protection, where she was supposed to be, strengthened his instinctive reaction. And increased his suspicion that she’d been abducted; nothing else could explain her continued absence. The unknown enemy who had first tried to kill him, then had shifted their sights to her, had taken her.
Whoever it was, they would pay.
Sometime over the past hours, the instincts he normally kept well leashed had come to the fore and now largely ruled him. When it came to Mary, to anyone threatening any danger, much less harm, to her, he wasn’t inclined to be anywhere near civilized.
Instinct and intellect were now wholly focused on one goal: On getting her back, safe within his keeping.
The thought that Lavinia might be the one responsible for Mary’s disappearance and all the rest . . . until now he’d dismissed the notion out of hand. Lavinia was a personal irritant, vindictive, vituperative, but essentially ineffectual; he hadn’t believed it at all likely that she would actually act in any concerted way. She never had. Ranting was one thing, making plans and setting them in train quite another.
Lavinia had always been a ranter, not a doer.
If she’d acted, then something had changed.
And as if signaling such a change . . . until now, whenever she’d taken up residence at the Dower House, she had sent a haughty note to the abbey, informing those on the estate that she was in the neighborhood. Often the carriages of her London friends would bowl up the abbey drive and have to be redirected out and around to the separate entrance to the Dower House drive.
This time Lavinia hadn’t sent a note.
Some might say that was because his marriage had put her nose even further out of joint, yet he would have thought she would have wanted Mary, and him, too, to know she was there, also a marchioness, and therefore a competitor in the neighborhood status stakes. That sounded more like the Lavinia he knew.
There was no competition—not between his wife and his self-absorbed stepmother—but Lavinia wouldn’t see it like that, which begged the question of why she hadn’t sent a note.
Mrs. Pritchard knew of the antipathy between him and Lavinia, as, indeed, did most of his staff. None of them had fared well under, much less liked, Lavinia, which was why they all viewed him as a savior of sorts.
So on learning that Lavinia had taken up residence at the Dower House, but this time secretly, Mrs. Pritchard had been quick to leap to the conclusion he was still resisting.
He simply couldn’t imagine Lavinia actively—and nearly successfully—arranging his murder. Of plotting and planning to have Mary abducted.
Glimpsing the steep roofs of the Dower House through the trees, he slowed Julius to a trot, then a walk. No need to advertise his arrival, not until he’d had a look around.
The bridle path joined the gravel drive fifty yards from the forecourt before the front porch. The Dower House had little by way of gardens, the woods crowding close on three sides. It was a very quiet, private place.
Registering that quietness, indeed, the pervasive silence, he reined to a halt just inside the path, within the shadows of overarching branches, and studied the house.
It appeared . . . not uninhabited but temporarily deserted, as if everyone had gone out for the day.
Leaving the front door ajar.
The sight filled him with cold dread.
All the thoughts he’d been avoiding consciously thinking spilled through his mind. Lavinia had the wherewithal to hire thugs to kill him—and to hire men to hire them, and so forth. She knew which routes he used when walking home in town. Here, in the country, despite the lack of friendship between the staffs at the abbey and the Dower House, Lavinia’s stableman or grooms would know where the abbey tack room was, would have been able to identify which saddle was Mary’s, the only newish sidesaddle there, and could easily have watched from the woods and seen him assessing her driving the gig and guessed which road they would take to Axford . . .
The scorpion he couldn’t immediately explain, but as for the adder, Lavinia’s staff would have known when the abbey staff would be gathered on the front steps greeting Mary, and would have known which bedroom would be hers, and how to reach it quickly and leave again via the servants’ stairs.
He sat on Julius’s back and considered that half-open door. It was clearly an invitation of sorts—which spoke to the caliber of the men behind this.
Unsophisticated, but effective.
They were currently watching him from somewhere in the woods on the other side of the drive.
He could feel their gazes, but he knew those woods. Chasing anyone through them was a fool’s errand, and he didn’t doubt there would be more than one of them; few men would be so foolish as to come against him unarmed, one on one.
Despite the difficulty his rational mind was having casting Lavinia—petty and spiteful with all the acuity of a turnip—in the role of arch-villainess, his instincts had no such problem but at that moment considered the point irrelevant; they were solely focused on how to rescue Mary.
That she was somewhere in the Dower House he didn’t doubt; that was the message of that half-open door. But he hadn’t come armed, and as far as he knew there weren’t any helpful crossed swords on any of the Dower House walls.
Holding back the impulse, the emotional imperative to gallop up, rush inside, and find her—to wrap her in his arms and reassure his oh-so-exposed heart that she was unharmed, that she was all right—wasn’t easy, but if he just rushed ahead . . . this wasn’t a situation he’d expected, much less foreseen, and he fully intended them both to survive.
How else could he exact his vengeance?
Even more pertinently, he wasn’t about to surrender all he and Mary had so recently claimed.
Pushing aside all emotion, he filled his chest and forced his mind to cool logic. It was unlikely they, whoever they were, would hurt Mary, not yet. It was his life Lavinia had targeted; she might have tried to scare Mary away, but at this moment his wife was . . . bait. No need to harm her yet, and every reason not to; a live lure always worked best.
Weighing up the possibilities, balancing them against his options, took time he forced himself to take, but eventually he dismounted. Shortening Julius’s reins, he wove them into one stirrup strap. Julius would wait for him untethered, but if anyone else approached and tried to grab him, the big gelding wouldn’t have it, and ultimately would return to the abbey stables.
It was the best he could do by way of a message should something go awry. More awry.
Not allowing himself to think further than that, he walked out into the drive, paused to look up at the old house, at the many-paned leaded windows, at the cool gray stone. His gaze came to rest on the half-open door; focusing on the dark section of shadowed hall beyond, he strode forward.
At his touch, the door opened further. The hall beyond lay in cool darkness. Not a sound reached his ears, not a scrape or a scuff, not any hint of human life.
He walked into the drawing room. It was unoccupied, as were the other reception rooms, all on the ground floor. He kept his ears peeled as he did the rounds, but the silence continued, heavy and unbroken.
Slowly, senses wide, he climbed the stairs. The bedrooms showed signs of occupation. In the largest, he found scent bottles and powders on the dressing table, and the gowns in the armoire confirmed all belonged to Lavinia; he recognized her style. In a bedroom further down the corridor, he discovered brushes, combs, and male attire. The particular designs of the coats and waistcoats, and the floppy silk scarves instead of cravats, told him who was also currently residing at the house.
Potherby. With icy calm, Ryder considered the fact. He’d known about Potherby for as long as he could recall knowing Lavinia; she and Potherby had been childhood friends, but despite the conclusion many leapt to, Ryder didn’t believe Potherby had been—or, indeed, was—Lavinia’s lover. There was something in the way Potherby looked at Lavinia, an expression more consistent with his being that childhood friend. But could Potherby be involved in the attacks on Ryder and Mary?
The man certainly had the intelligence Lavinia lacked, but . . . Ryder had always considered Potherby, despite his allegiance to Lavinia, to be a decent sort.
Then again, he’d never imagined Lavinia would turn her hand to murder.
Leaving the question of Potherby for later, Ryder quit that room. He paused in the corridor, listening. The house was so eerily silent that he didn’t doubt there was no one else—no other breathing being—on that floor. His senses, flaring wide, detected no hint of Mary. But there was an attic.
Walking to the end of the corridor, he opened the narrow door that gave onto the attic stairs. They rose into relative darkness, but slivers of faint twilight showed here and there between the roof slates; once his eyes adjusted, he would be able to see well enough.
Slowly, step by step, he went up the stairs.
Had he been in his opponents’ shoes, this was where he would have staged an ambush; emerging up a stairwell so narrow that he had to angle his shoulders to pass, he was at a very real disadvantage . . . but no. Even before his head cleared the level of the attic floor, he knew there was no one waiting to cosh him, to shoot him. And no Mary, either.
People, alive and awake, were simply never that still.
After one quick glance, he went back down the narrow stairs, senses alert as he emerged into the first-floor corridor, but no one had sneaked up while he’d been above.
Striding more quickly, he headed back to the main stairs. Going rapidly down, he reviewed again his certainty that Mary was somewhere there, that she was hidden somewhere in the Dower House. Despite all the evidence thus far, he remained convinced she was there; why else the open door? Why else the complete absence of staff?
Pushing through the green baize-covered door at the rear of the front hall, he went down a short corridor, past a small butler’s pantry, then down three shallow steps to the kitchen. Like the house above, it was devoid of life, but utensils were lined up on the cook’s table, selected plates and cutlery were stacked on a sideboard, along with folded napkins, and a tea tray was set ready on a bench by the stove.
The staff were still living there but had been sent out for the day . . . or perhaps for several days. A glance through the windows confirmed it was growing steadily darker outside, but as it was just past midsummer, full dark was still hours away.
Walking further into the kitchen, he looked around—and saw the basement door had also been left ajar.
He considered the sight, then noticed several lanterns ready and waiting on a nearby shelf. Picking up one, he saw there was a mark where another, currently absent, normally sat. Hunting up tinder, he lit the lamp; after adjusting the wick, he pushed the door to the basement wider. It was the only place within the house he’d yet to search, and while there was a smallish stables, with rooms for coachman and groom above, to hide Mary somewhere secure, somewhere they could trap him as he came for her . . .
With his senses still confirming no one else had come past the green baize door, that no enemy was yet creeping up close behind him, he stepped onto the landing at the top of the basement steps and shone the lantern into the darkness.
The beam played over bins of apples, potatoes, and onions, barrels of various stuffs, shelves of dry goods in boxes and sacks, and lots of glass jars, but the shelves inhibited his view of the further reaches of the room.
He couldn’t see anyone, see any evidence that Mary was there, still could not sense her presence.
Yet, once again, why had the door been left ajar?
Stepping back into the kitchen, he looked at the shallow steps from the front of the house, glanced across at the kitchen door. His would-be attackers could come from either direction, but they hadn’t dared show themselves yet.
A moment’s consideration was all it took to convince him that, if they had any choice, they wouldn’t appear until he’d found Mary; that was when he would be at his most vulnerable, with her to protect and his attention divided.
They might not know he was unarmed, but few men carried pistols or swords these days, and not when searching for missing ladies on their own damned estates.
His gaze fell on the utensils lined up on the cook’s table. Setting the lamp down, he swiftly searched. No knives. Not there or anywhere else; he went through the drawers and cupboards, but there wasn’t a single decent knife left. His would-be attackers might be unsophisticated; they weren’t stupid.
He found a few other items he could use.
One of the fire irons did a nice job of breaking the bolt off the basement door. A long spatula wedged under the lower edge of the door made it difficult to shift; setting that aside, he continued his hunt.
The poker might come in handy. Hefting it, he dropped a set of metal skewers into his pocket, cast a last glance at the other utensils he’d uncovered.
As well as the knives, his opponents had removed all long, pointy implements, like the long-handled forks he was sure should have been there. As an afterthought, he tucked four ordinary forks into another pocket, then finally turned to the basement door.
They had to be watching him from outside, from the cover of the nearby woods. The kitchen faced west; the last of the fading light was probably sufficient to illuminate the room enough for them to follow his movements. So they would know he had the poker.
And from the fading glow of the lantern he carried they would know that he’d finally gone down the basement steps.
Reaching the bottom, he moved quickly, playing the lantern beam to either side as he strode down the aisle between the high shelves. There was an open area at the far end of the room. I
t was completely bare, but there the floor was wood, not stone, and the fine dust on the boards, drifting from bags of grain stacked along the back wall, showed evidence of footprints and the swishing of a woman’s skirts.
The marks circled a square trapdoor set in the floor.
He’d never been into the basement before, didn’t remember—had never heard—what lay beneath the trapdoor.
A heavy iron ring was set into the surface. Setting the lantern on the floor, he bent and hauled the trap—literally as well as figuratively, he feared—open. The door was heavy, weighted by a metal frame and bracing. Leaving it tilted back on its hinges, he crouched beside the opening and looked down, into a largely featureless void. Picking up the lantern, he directed the beam down, revealing a stone floor, not flagged but rough-hewn, more than ten feet below. There were no steps, not even a ladder.
The chamber was empty. He angled his head and the lantern, bent lower and peered, but all he saw was empty space leading to blank walls, also cut directly into the stone. The hole might have been part of a long-ago rock quarry, later built over. A tunnel, large enough for him to walk down, led off in one direction. He glanced briefly at it, his gaze passing over and on, but then he looked back. After a moment, he cursed and turned the lantern away—and yes, there was light, distant and faint, seeping out through that tunnel.
He hesitated, then with nothing to lose, called, “Mary?”
Instantly, distantly, he heard the drum of heels on stone. Even more faintly, he heard muffled sounds. She was there!
“Wait—I’m coming.”
The words unleashed a positive torrent of muffled protest; she wanted to warn him not to come down, that it was a trap.
He already knew that. Accepted it. He was still going down.
Even before he’d walked through the front door, he’d realized that leaving her there and returning to the abbey for help was not an option; if he did, when he returned with his men, she wouldn’t be there anymore. She was the bait to lure him to his doom; Lavinia and her henchmen now knew they had that right, that that would work, so they would keep her until he did as they wished and stepped into their trap. Putting it off would only prolong the drama and risk Mary’s health, and most likely shift the venue from which he had to rescue her to somewhere even less advantageous to him.