The far end of the passage to the hall was blocked by a king’s man, and so she carried on to the entry. She put the torch on the marble floor while she strained to push the heavy settle against the main double doors of the hall. As she turned to retrieve her weapon, she caught sight of the portraits soaring up to the ceiling. Beautiful likenesses of a beautiful, old, noble family that at its heart was as rotten as the insect-infested core of a dead tree. Traitors and liars and murderers and torturers.
A sob caught in her chest, interrupting her numbness for the briefest moment. They were all as dead as she was now.
Searrach strained upward to reach the portrait closest to her, then the next, struggling to pile the heavy works of art she could touch, one by one, on and against the settle blocking the hall doors. She stood back and looked at them for a moment: Lord Hargrave, Caris, Euphemia, Cordelia, and others Searrach did not and whose names she would never know. All dead. Like her da. Like her dreams.
The din within the hall went suddenly quiet. Black smoke was billowing up the throat of the west corridor and now toward her; surely it had begun wafting into the hall by the kitchen corridor. No more time for musing.
Searrach set the cushion of the settle well ablaze and then retraced her initial steps into the east wing to wait, touching a tapestry here and there—a chair, a portrait—with fire as she went. She heard the pounding against the hall door behind her like the faint sound of the sea.
* * * *
“Euphemia?” Caris Hargrave’s question was like a whistle of breeze through reeds.
The blond woman swept an arm before her middle and gave a gallant bow while, behind her, Padraig felt frozen in place. This woman before him, wearing tall boots and trousers and a cape; the woman who had shot Lucan, who had killed Lord Paget in the wood; this leader of the band of highwaymen who had terrorized the Darlyrede Road for years—this woman was the girl from the portraits in the hall.
“It is indeed I, Grandmother,” the woman said. “Although I am not Euphemia Hargrave, and I never was. That was simply the name you gave me after you cut me from my mother’s body. I prefer Effie now. Effie Annesley.”
Padraig’s heart skipped a beat. Euphemia Hargrave was alive!
“Euphemia, where have you been?” Lord Hargrave demanded gruffly. His face had lost its fish-belly cast, and was now rapidly deepening to scarlet. “Lady Hargrave and I have searched for you for years. We thought you dead.”
“Had I not gotten away when I did, I’m certain I would be dead by now,” Effie quipped. “And I’m certain you both very much wish I was dead. Neither of you monsters are worthy of being called family. The people I’ve been living with these past fifteen years are the only family I have known, and now—” She half-turned and met Padraig’s gaze. “Now, my blood family will return to Darlyrede. And you—”
She faced forward once more. “You both will pay for what you’ve done.”
“I’m very disappointed in you, Euphemia,” Hargrave said, his face now a terrible purple color. “All these years I had no idea it was you who had caused such anguish on Darlyrede’s lands.” Hargrave glanced about at the frozen, terrified faces of the nobles in the hall. “Did you all hear her?
“And now you are somehow convinced that this—this stranger is your true family? A man spawned by our own Cordelia’s killer? I am ashamed. And it will in fact be you who pays for your crimes.” He looked to his men-at-arms, still standing about the perimeter of the hall with an air of confusion. “Seize her. You heard her—she is the leader of these bandits. These murderers. They killed Lord Paget, and countless others have been robbed of their wealth.”
Effie threw back her head and laughed loudly. “It’s absurd that you think anyone here believes I am behind the grotesque crimes committed against the people of this land. Am I supposed to be frightened by your threats? Intimidated? You stupid, stupid man. I’m not afraid of you anymore. Why do you think I’ve come back now, after all these years? Why didn’t I flee south? Or to Scotland, like my father? To another country like brave Sir Lucan, at your side just there?” The way she spoke of the knight insinuated that she did not in fact hold him in high regard.
She turned suddenly to face Padraig once more. “Why did I risk my life to stay within a stone’s throw of this hell on earth, brother? I think if anyone can tell them, it is you.”
As Padraig looked into her eyes and he saw Tommy Boyd’s stubborn determination there, Padraig realized. Thomas Annesley had been injured, alone when he’d fled Darlyrede the night Cordelia was murdered, and for most of their lives neither Padraig nor his brothers had had any idea of their father’s history, their own connectedness.
Euphemia alone had escaped with the terrible knowledge of Darlyrede’s evil past. And she had waited.
“Because you knew he would come back,” Padraig thought aloud. “You knew we would all come back.”
Euphemia nodded. “I knew you would come back,” she repeated softly, and there was hard triumph in her eyes. She faced the dais once more. “And so here you are,” she announced loudly and extended her arms, the fingers of both hands clasped together into one fist, addressing the soldiers still standing surrounding her. “I’ll no longer evade the king’s men. Let them take me into their custody. I’ll happily remain under their guard to be brought before the king. Sir Lucan, perhaps you would like to do the honors?”
Clever woman, Padraig realized, amazed at Euphemia’s forethought. Under the protection of the king’s men—and Lucan Montague—Hargrave could not touch her. And everything she knew about Vaughn Hargrave would be laid bare before the king himself.
Padraig’s thoughts at once returned to Iris’s leather packet of notes and maps, still safe in the bag at his hip. The nobleman on the dais—his wife at his side, seeming to be stricken with panic and gasping for air—was finished.
They’d won.
The soldiers now looked to Lucan, who was staring down at Euphemia with an unusually dark expression on his ordinarily unimpressed visage.
“You shot me,” he blurted out.
Euphemia’s hands turned, palms up toward Lucan. “I admit, I shouldn’t have done that. It was a clean shot, though. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You seem fine. I’ve seen much worse.”
“You’re sure I’ll be—?” Lucan winced and shook his head and then nodded toward his captain. “Take her into custody. If not for her own protection, then the protection of everyone else.” Then he looked to Padraig. “Where are Searrach and…Beryl?”
“Searrach was afraid to return. Beryl didna—”
“Fire!” A woman’s echoing shout came from behind a guard standing watch at the entrance to the corridor leading to the kitchens. “Fire in the north wall!”
The hall was at once in an uproar as guests gained their feet and began fleeing, but black smoke could already be seen roiling from the tops of each doorway along the ceiling. The guards went at once to the bar holding the double doors to the hall closed. They slid it free of the brackets, but the onslaught of the crowd pressing against them prevented the doors from swinging inward.
“Back up,” Padraig shouted, fighting his way through them, pulling them by their arms. “Back up or they canna open the doors. Back up, you fools!” He gained the sides of the guards and took hold of one of the oddly warm handles. “Move!” he shouted as they strained at the doors.
The crack between the doors widened, and some of the guests inserted their fingers, pulling at the gap even as more black smoke slithered through the opening. Padraig let go at once as he realized what lay beyond, but it was too late—the crowd strained backward and the doors flew open. Fire and smoke rained down from a towering inferno in the entry, collapsing on the guests elbowing their way to be the first to escape the hall.
“Let the lord through!” Padraig heard Hargrave shouting. “Let me through, you useless peasants!”
The nobl
es and servants scattered again as those touched by flame screamed and writhed on the floor, their hair, their clothes singed or burning. Padraig leaped to the nearest tapestry hanging on the wall and flung one end to Ulric, who stepped toward him. They fell upon the burning people, smothering the flames while the hall continued to fill with smoke and the people screamed and rushed around the benches and trestles, over them. The sound of tables collapsing, splintering, filled in the gaps made by the crackling flames.
Lucan appeared then at Padraig’s side, holding one end of a bench; Peter held up the other. “The corridors are already filled with smoke; we have to clear a way before we’re all trampled to death.”
“Can you push?” Padraig said. “Your foot—”
“I must,” Lucan protested.
“I’ll do it,” Gorman said, appearing at Lucan’s elbow. The red-bearded man from the forest took the heavy bench from the knight’s hands and then looked at Padraig. “Let’s get them out.”
Padraig nodded and took up Peter’s end, crouching as best he could with Gorman behind the narrow height of wood.
“Go,” Padraig shouted.
They blasted into the pyre blocking the doorway with a crash and a shower of sparks. Padraig felt hot embers on his face and neck, burning through his shirt as he followed the bench through into the center of the entry hall. He straightened and slapped at the smoldering patches on his clothing, brushed at his hair as the rank smell hung about his face. He coughed, gasped into his elbow at the acrid smoke. The guests ran, limped, staggered, screaming around them like a panicked sea, and someone threw the main doors wide.
Padraig felt his arm seized and looked through watering eyes to find Lucan’s intense gaze.
“Where is Iris?”
“She didna come with me,” Padraig said. “I’ve nae seen her since the chapel.” He looked around at the roiling sea of escaping people, and realized that Gorman had vanished.
Rolf skidded up to them then. “Beryl came to Lady Hargrave’s wing just as you were leaving, Master Boyd, but she did not accompany the lady down to sup. Lord Hargrave left the wing sometime after his wife had departed.”
All three men looked up toward the ascending flights of stairs just in time to see the slight form of Caris Hargrave pulling herself along the railing into the black smoke hovering at the tall ceiling, stopping at the top to gasp and cough against the balustrade.
“She must still be there,” Padraig said. And then he looked back to Rolf. “Find Lord Hargrave and anyone else who might still be in the hall. Then get out.”
“I lost Lord Hargrave in the crush—he’s likely to have escaped. But we must try to slow the blaze,” Rolf objected. “There’ll be naught left for you to win.”
“It’s only stones.” Padraig gripped the man’s shoulder, very aware that Lucan stood at his side, watching, listening. “Only stones, Rolf. A house can be rebuilt. But you canna be replaced, you ken? Nor Marta nor Rynn nor Peter.”
Rolf nodded, and his shoulders squared. “Aye, Master Boyd.” And then he was gone.
Padraig turned to Lucan, who was looking through the doors into the smoky hall into which Rolf had disappeared.
“She’s gone too,” Lucan said.
Padraig froze. “Who?”
“Euphemia.” He met Padraig’s eyes.
“She’ll be back,” Padraig predicted. “I canna see that woman giving in now.” He clapped Lucan’s arm as he passed toward the stairs.
He took the risers three at a time, gaining in moments the uppermost level where the smoke was thickening like angry, choking storm clouds. He realized that Lucan had struggled up behind him on his wounded foot, but Padraig pressed his mouth and nose into his elbow and ran ahead through the corridor to the first door on the left and pushed through.
“Iris!” he called. It no longer mattered that her secret would be known. Padraig intended that only the truth be spoken between them, about them, from this time forward. And he intended to protect Iris from whatever storm lay ahead of them both. “Iris! Lady Hargrave!”
He heard Lucan enter behind him and shut the door, keeping as much smoke in the corridor beyond for as long as possible.
“They’re not here,” Padraig advised as he ran through the adjoining doorway. “Iris!”
The lady’s chamber was also empty, the banked fire and single, low lamp revealing the lush appointments in an ironic, flickering glow even as the air grew quietly hazy with stinging smoke.
“What else is up here?” Padraig asked Lucan, who was wincing and leaning hard on one arm against the frame of the connecting doorway.
“Nothing. A pair of apartments, but they’re never used.”
Padraig grabbed the lamp, and then he and Lucan ducked back into the smoke-filled corridor. One of the chamber doors stood open and they pushed inside, but Lucan had been right: The only things there were ghostly draped furnishings.
“Perhaps she returned to her chamber while everyone was gathering in the hall,” Lucan suggested.
“She could have left this wing, aye,” Padraig said. “But it wasna for her chamber—I went there first. And Caris Hargrave climbed the stairs before us—where did she go?”
Lucan’s frown intensified and he limped in a circle, his eyes examining the floor, the ceiling. “She couldn’t have just vanished. And why would she have come at all unless she was certain Iris was still somewhere here?”
Padraig remembered the satchel resting on his hip, and its contents. He shoved the lamp at Lucan and scrambled to pull the leather bag to his front. He withdrew the portfolio and held it up as evidence.
“Mayhap this will tell us.”
“My God, you found it,” Lucan said. He set the lamp on a draped table and took the packet, opening it and pulling out the thick sheaf of pages. He split the stack and handed half to Padraig.
“Maps,” the knight said. “Iris told me she thought there was another way into the wing, but I didn’t listen to her.”
“Here,” Padraig said, pulling out a trio of pages. “Look.” He held them close to the light, and Lucan skimmed the lines with his fingers.
Lucan tapped one page. “Here…here are the lady’s rooms. And so…yes, here we are now.” He flipped up the page to look at the one beneath.
“And here,” Padraig said, tracing the shapes. “The floor below. It doesn’t quite meet the curtain wall, but there’s naught in the space between. So this chamber—” He looked up at the wall to the west, noticing at once that the paneling seeming asymmetrical in the dim, rippling light.
“Perhaps it’s an escape passage,” Lucan suggested. “Many of the old holds kept them in case of attack.”
But Padraig was only half-listening—the wall section was not asymmetrical. One of the panels had a gap along the trim.
“It’s there,” he said to Lucan. He was stuffing the pages back into his satchel as he dashed to the wall. He felt the cool breeze wafting from beyond, smelled its freshness in opposition to the close, smoky air in the chamber they occupied. He pulled open the panel without a sound and could sense the descending darkness before him.
“It canna be an escape to the curtain wall,” Padraig said half over his shoulder in a low voice. “The passage would be filled with smoke, and the air is fresh. You didna know this was here?” he added accusingly.
Lucan seemed taken aback. “Not at all. But Darlyrede House is old, and has been added on to so many—” His explanation ended abruptly. “It leads to the old dungeon. It must bypass the wall entirely.”
Padraig gave a single, curt nod. “Aye. O’ course it does.” An instant later he was ducking out of his satchel and handing it to Lucan. “Take this and go back down.”
“I will not,” he said. “The fire will surely spread and there could now be two women trapped down there.”
“You’ll only slow me down. If Iris is down there,
” Padraig said emphatically, “I’ll nae be coming up without her. You have my word, Lucan. But if we doona make it out, her work canna have been in vain.” He glanced pointedly at his old leather satchel. “Iris’s notes may very well support everything Euphemia Hargrave has to say. Now go while you can.”
Lucan seemed to hesitate a moment longer. “I’m trusting you with her life.” He offered his hand.
Padraig seized it. “I ken ye are. You’ve both saved mine enough times.”
Padraig turned and ducked down into the darkness.
Chapter 19
Satin’s eyes opened from slits, his ears swiveled forward, his breathing paused. Then the sound of the hinge squealed through the silence again, and the cat leaped from Iris’s chest into the shadows of the murky cell.
Iris tried to quell the sob in her chest if only to save her throat the agony. She had never been so scared. There was a metallic clatter from beyond the bend in the corridor, an almost delicate clink. She wanted to close her eyes, but she could seem to do nothing else but turn her head and stare at the torchlight through the doorway.
And then there it was: as shadow. A human shadow, appearing suddenly on the wall, looking back the way it had come, as if watching for someone following. It grew larger, larger, until it was in the doorway, a wheeze of labored breath, and the light revealed—
Iris released her sob with a pained gasp. “Milady! Thank God,” she croaked. “Hurry! If he catches you here, he’ll kill us both!” Her voice sliced her throat like a knife.
“Shh, shh. I’m sorry. There is no escape for us,” she wheezed through her smile, her red-rimmed eyes bright with unshed tears. She brought her hand beneath Iris’s head and lifted it, setting the rim of a chalice against her lower lip. The whoosh of air around the woman smelled strongly of smoke. “Here, drink this for your comfort.”
Iris nearly choked on the tepid, milky substance, but Caris kept tipping the cup, flooding Iris’s throat with the drink until she must swallow or drown. It tasted somehow green, but it was smooth and cool and seemed to fill in the deep, bloody fissures Iris imagined lined her throat.
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