by Kate Bateman
The candle had burned down almost to the halfway point when the monotonous gray of the rocks was suddenly split by a seam of pitch-black material, almost a foot wide, that snaked along the wall. Gryff reached out and stroked it, then turned his palm to show her. His hand was as black as soot.
“Look at that! A coal seam!”
He gave the black stripe a fond slap, just as if it were the rump of his favorite horse. “It’s probably part of the same vein that runs across my land. It must extend all the way down to the sea. Interesting.”
Maddie rolled her eyes. “I fail to see what’s interesting about it. What good is coal to us right now? You want to light a fire and smoke us to death?”
He shot her a chiding glance. “Welsh coal is some of the richest in the world. It burns for longer, so it commands the highest price. My father thought we were coming to the end of our seam. It’s good to know there’s more down here. This is black gold.”
“Well, as soon as we get out of here, perhaps we can set up a joint mining operation and make our fortunes,” Maddie said sarcastically.
He snorted. “A joint Davies-Montgomery enterprise? You mean like building a canal? That sort of thing?”
His tone was equally sarcastic. He rubbed his finger along the coal face, adding even more grime, then turned and selected a relatively flat piece of rock on the opposite wall. He wiped his finger in a semicircular shape, depositing a black smear on the pale rock.
“What are you doing?”
“Adding our initials.”
He applied more coal dust to his finger and completed the letters GLD for his own name. “Gryff Llewellyn Davies,” he explained. He drew an M for her.
“What’s your middle name?”
“Charlotte.”
He completed her initials next to his, then added a plus sign between the two. GLD + MCM.
Maddie stepped back, assuming he’d finished, but he reached for more coal dust and drew an enormous heart around the outside, the kind that lovers carved into the bark of a tree.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked. “That’s going to be there forever!”
He grinned, and she knew he’d done it just to annoy her, the beast. “Who’s going to see it down here?”
He had a point. She doubted anyone else would venture down here for centuries. Still, she wasn’t sure she liked the fact that he’d linked their names in such a permanent way. Even if they escaped these blasted caves, that graffiti would be down here, a silent, untrue testament to them being together romantically. One evening of kisses in his library did not a relationship make.
Still, what did it matter? They were unlikely to escape these caves alive.
“When they finally identify our bodies,” Maddie said peevishly, “in a thousand years’ time, people will think we were lovers.”
He sent her one of his ridiculously provocative glances. “We should make it true. If we’re doomed to spend our last hours on earth together, we might as well enjoy them.”
Heat rose up her neck at his teasing—especially since it echoed her own earlier thoughts—but she sent him a disapproving glance. “I don’t believe we’ve exhausted all avenues of escape.”
He chuckled. “Something to consider, though.” He started forward again, following the vein of coal deeper into the rock. “If we do have to die down here, I always thought it would be funny to be buried in an odd position.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the archaeologist—I bet every burial you’ve come across is the same: someone lying flat on their back, straight as a stick.”
“That’s true.”
“Just think of how confused future archaeologists will be if they find a couple of skeletons arranged in a different way, like pointing, or holding hands, or kissing. They’ll ascribe all manner of ridiculous interpretations to it.”
“You’d be messing with history!” Maddie spluttered, appalled. “You’d ruin scientific understanding for years.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he fought not to laugh. “What a legacy, eh? Admit it, if you found an unusual burial, you’d be delighted. It would make your career. You’d spend years trying to explain it.”
Maddie fought a smile, amused despite herself by his macabre humor.
“I can see it now,” he continued, sweeping his arm in a wide arc in front of him as if reading the words on a circus poster. “The tragic lovers of Trellech. We’d be immortalized for eternity. Scholars would puzzle over our demise. You’d have to make sure you died in my arms, of course. Or I in yours.”
Not such a bad place to spend eternity, really.
Maddie cursed her own idiocy. “We should be strangling each other. That would be the perfect testament to our feud.”
“So unromantic, cariad.”
Maddie was about to take him to task for calling her darling, but he stopped abruptly, his face turned toward a crack between two huge slabs of rock. He thrust his hand back toward her.
“Quick! Hand me the candle. Do you feel that?” His incredulous laugh boomed around the cave. “It’s a breeze!”
Sure enough, the tiny flame began to flicker as he held it in front of the narrow opening.
“If there’s wind, there’s a good chance it leads to the outside!”
Maddie’s heart began to pound, but she hardly dared to hope that he was right. A breeze might come from a crack an inch wide.
“Come on.” Gryff turned sideways and started to wriggle between the two sheets of rock. The back of his breeches scraped along the coal seam. He disappeared, taking the candle with him, but after a tense moment he she heard his long, low whistle.
“Come through. There’s something here you need to see.”
Maddie sidestepped until the crack widened out. She emerged next to Gryff and her mouth dropped open in wonder. The candle revealed they stood at the edge of a vast under-ground lake.
“This is incredible!”
It was impossible to say how far the lake extended; the light didn’t penetrate far enough into the darkness. A waterfall trickled nearby, descending a wall that resembled molten candle wax: layer upon layer of yellowish stone dripping down toward the water, which was as black as ink. Dark ripples lapped at the rocks that rose around the sides, and great columns of stone stretched from floor to ceiling like the pillars of a great church. More pointed spires rose from the surface of the water, while others descended from the ceiling like enormous icicles.
Gryff handed her the candle and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Helloooo!”
Hello! Hello! Hellooooo!
The call bounced off the walls and water, a cacophony of male voices echoing back at them like some infernal, discordant choir.
He nodded at the water. “Think there’s a dragon under there? Like at Dinas Emrys?”
“If there is, you’ll have woken it up with all your shouting. It’ll come and gobble us up.”
He flashed a grin. “I’ll be all right. It’s you who’ll get eaten.”
“Why me?”
“Because everyone knows dragons like virgins. Those pure of body and heart. That rules me out.” He sent her one of his wicked looks. “Maybe you should lose that virginal state of yours, just to be safe?”
Her skin heated, but she managed to keep her tone cool. “Are you offering to help?”
“It’s a sacrifice I’d be willing to make,” he said loftily, but his eyes twinkled. “Your safety is my highest priority.”
“That’s very noble,” she said dryly. “But I don’t believe in mythical creatures.”
“What, virgins?”
“No, dragons.”
“Pity,” he chuckled.
Chapter 36
Despite her words, Maddie eyed the surface of the water with deep misgiving, half expecting to see a stream of bubbles and a scaly head emerge from the black depths. Gryff started skirting the edge of the lake, leaping with irritatingly good balance from rock to rock. “This must be an underground tributar
y of the River Wye. Or the Usk. One of the two.”
“So?”
“The Wye is tidal. If the water levels rise and fall with the tides, we could drown when it comes in.”
“How lovely.”
It was his turn to ignore her sarcasm. “The level in here seems constant, though. That means there must be an outlet.”
Maddie started picking her way between the rocks. “It’s probably below the surface of the water. Or too small for a person to fit through.”
Something low on the wall flashed in the candlelight, and she stopped, squinting at it. “Wait. What’s that? There’s something … sparkling.”
Gryff barely turned his head. “Probably fool’s gold. Iron pyrite. You find it next to coal seams all the time.”
“And near real gold,” Maddie insisted. “Because they’re formed under the same geological conditions.” She crossed over to the shining, reflective area. “Please bring the candle.”
He turned, his expression impatient. “You know, we Welsh have a saying. Nid aur yw popeth melyn.”
“Which means?”
“Not everything yellow is gold.” He stomped back and brought the candle closer as she bent to examine the rock.
“It’s not as yellow as fool’s gold. Look, it’s almost … pink.” A few currant-sized, butter-colored lumps tumbled into her palm.
Gryff squatted down next to her and nudged at them with his fingertip. “It’s fool’s gold, I tell you. Real gold is soft. You’d be able to see my teeth marks when I bite into it. Look.”
He brought a lump to his mouth and bit down, as if eating a carrot. And then his eyebrows shot up to his hairline as he saw the distinct indentations his teeth had left on the surface. They both looked down at them in silence.
“Bloody hell!” He rocked back on his heels and let out a deafening yell. “It’s gold! It’s bloody gold!”
Maddie toppled backward onto her bottom, clutching the handful of nuggets. “You’re teasing me.”
“I swear I’m not. Maddie Montgomery, you’re a genius!”
They both stared down at her hand, then back at the wall. The gold formed a narrow seam, just like the coal. It was at least an inch thick, and extended in a glittering line for more than twenty feet into the darkness.
Maddie tried to calm her pounding heart. “How … how much is this worth?”
“Hard to say, without weighing it, but this lump is about the same as a musket ball. That’s almost an ounce.” He glanced down at her hand. “And you have a whole handful of ’em!”
“How much is an ounce of gold?”
“Five pounds, maybe?” He glanced along the wall, obviously doing some rapid mental calculation. “You’re holding at least a few hundred pounds’ worth.” He swept his arm to indicate the seam set into the rock. “And all that must be worth thousands.”
Maddie let out a shaky, incredulous laugh. “Dear God! We’re saved!” She could barely speak for excitement; she felt almost delirious.
Gryff sent her an odd look. “What do you mean, ‘saved’?”
She bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but what was the point in keeping the secret now? She fixed him with a hard stare. “First of all, I want your word that we’ll split this equally. We’re on shared land. We each get half of whatever gold’s recovered.”
He nodded, as if amazed that he would even question it. “Of course. Half each. Agreed.”
“In that case, I should probably tell you that until this very moment, my family has been on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“What?”
“Father lost almost all of his investments last year. During the great stock exchange scandal.”
Gryff frowned. “I didn’t hear much about that—I was off fighting in Spain.”
“It was an elaborate hoax. A group of men deliberately spread the false rumor that Napoleon had been defeated, possibly killed, by a group of Russian Cossacks. The news made the price of government stocks surge. Father’s man of business bought consols on his behalf when the prices were at their peak—convinced they would continue to rise when the rumor was confirmed, and make Father a tidy profit—but when it proved to be false, the value of them plummeted. Father lost over six thousand pounds.”
“Good God,” Gryff muttered.
“We’ve been staving off creditors for months,” Maddie admitted. “I only found out how bad it was a few weeks ago. Father’s been looking at selling the London house, and even Newstead Park.”
“Is that why you’ve had Drake dangling after you?”
Maddie glanced away, too ashamed to meet his eyes. “Well, yes. He heard about our troubles and offered Father two thousand pounds if I would marry him.” A glow of happiness warmed the center of her chest, replacing the embarrassment. “But now I won’t have to marry anyone!”
Her spontaneous shout echoed over the water, but she quickly sobered, glancing up at him uncertainly. “Could you possibly consider not selling your half right away? If we both sell it’ll flood the market and drive the price of gold down.”
Gryff still looked rather dazed. “Agreed.”
She let out a heartfelt sigh and placed her hand on his arm. “Thank you. You really are a decent man, Gryff Davies. No matter what my father says.”
He glanced down at her fingers. His muscles tensed, then he shook his head and stood, brushing the dirt from his thighs. “You know, all this bargaining is purely theoretical unless we can find a way out of here.”
He turned and gazed out over the dark water, and the absurd reality of their situation hit Maddie like a physical blow. Her previous elation vanished like smoke. He was right. Why on earth was she celebrating? What was the use of finding a fortune if they were stuck down here?
The irony of it had her stifling a half-hysterical laugh. This was just her luck. The lightning strike hadn’t finished her off, but this surely would.
Utterly dispirited, she leaned back against the wall, drew her knees up to her chest, and dropped her forehead onto them. “We’re never getting out of here, are we? We’re going to starve, surrounded by gold, the richest prisoners in history.”
Above her, she heard Gryff sigh. He nudged her foot with his own. She ignored him.
A disturbance in the air told her he’d crouched back down beside her. “Come on, cariad. You’re not one to accept defeat.”
She snorted into her skirts. He was wrong. Even Little Miss Optimism couldn’t ignore reality when it was staring her in the face.
“When all this is over we’ll celebrate by getting roaring drunk. You’ll see.”
“I don’t like spirits.”
“We’ll find some other way, then. I’m sure I can think of something fun.”
He lowered himself so he was sitting next to her; his shoulder brushed her own.
“Do you know,” he said conversationally, as if they were sitting side by side at some genteel tea party, “my father once told me that he and your father used to hide each other’s court robes whenever they were in Parliament.”
Despite her misery, Maddie couldn’t resist a snort. “That is incredibly childish.”
“Incredibly. But also, I imagine, quite fun. For the record, if we are doomed to die down here, I’d like you to know that I couldn’t have wished for a better co-captive than you.”
Her heart squeezed tight. “Well, thank you. And … likewise.”
They sat in companionable silence for a moment.
“You were equally childish, you know,” she muttered into her knees. “All that teasing when we were younger.”
He snorted. “You must have known why I did it.”
“Because you were a monster?”
“I thought it was obvious. Boys always tease girls they like.” He nudged her shoulder with his own. “They steal their shawls and tie them up in their own skirts.”
She lifted her head and stared at him. “You did it because you liked me? Rubbish. You just liked tormenting me.”
His lops
ided smile made her heart skip a beat.
“I’ll admit, I did try to get a reaction. Because anger was better than indifference. Even hatred was better, because it meant you were still thinking about me. I loved seeing if I could rouse your temper.” His smile widened even more. “Of course, then I’d think of ways to redirect all that passion. I spent far too much time thinking about kissing you.”
Maddie shook her head. “I always thought you hated me.”
The look he sent her was amused and a little pitying. He leaned over and caught her chin, exerting gentle pressure with his fingers until she turned to face him. His gaze was so intense, so burning, she felt it right down to her toes.
“Maddie.” His voice was so deep it was almost a growl, and her body reacted on the most primitive level. Her heart began to pound and an answering pulse throbbed between her legs.
He spread his fingers along her jaw. His thumb stroked her chin, then slid across her lower lip to the indent at the corner of her mouth, and everything inside her stilled.
“This is how much I hate you.”
Chapter 37
Maddie sucked in a breath an instant before his lips met hers in a kiss that went from soft to scorching in a heartbeat. She threw her arms around his neck and leaned into him, opening her mouth greedily, snaking her tongue out to tangle with his own.
His arm came around her waist, and she almost moaned in gratitude. Here was the comfort she’d been craving from the moment they’d been trapped. Here was the human contact, the bodily warmth, the proof that she was still alive.
He kissed her with a thoroughness that left her breathless. His wicked tongue licked and swirled as though she were an ice cream at Gunter’s. She rose up on her knees, heedless of the rocks pressing through her skirts, and tangled her fingers in his hair, urging him to continue with a hum of pleasure.
He tightened his arms and pulled her even closer. She wanted to clamber on top of him as she had in his library. She wanted his hands all over her, the feel of his skin beneath her palms. Her seeking fingers found their way under his shirt and she stroked his back, savoring the sleek warmth and bunched muscles that flexed beneath her palms.