by Lisa Norato
But none came. Iris pressed an ear to the door and heard nothing but a whisper of wind.
Snow scratched at the door, anxious to get out.
Weapon clutched in one hand, Iris cracked the heavy door open with the other. Snow pushed through and ran off, barking wildly into the night.
Iris peered into the darkness, frightened for the safety of her household, frightened for Johnny. The danger was still out there — her grandfather. Would he dare return to Nook House with the whole community on careful watch for him? Who then had been standing here moments ago, banging at her door? Iris wished for Johnny’s swift return all over again, but took comfort that Snow would surely chase away any stranger about the grounds.
Mr. Bliss would find the dog and bring her home. He had promised to patrol the farm yard at regular intervals.
Iris closed the door and secured the latch. Her appetite had vanished and she began to prepare a tray to take upstairs to Hetty. She also wanted to check whether the disturbance had awoken her father. Halfway up the staircase, she ran into the old nurse looking worried and wringing her hands.
“Is Father well?” Iris asked with a nervous squeak in her voice.
“He is,” said Hetty. “That noise. Why, it sounded like a great nor’easter trying to blow the house down.”
“That was my fault.” Iris continued toward the master bedroom with the hope that Hetty would follow. “I was helping Peter carry in more firewood and dropped the logs against the door. How is father faring?” she asked, quickly changing the subject.
Hetty kept her voice low as they moved quietly down the corridor. “He stirs every now and then in discomfort, but with a bit of soothing he settles and continues to sleep.”
Iris kept vigil at her father’s bedside, watching him slumber while Hetty supped by the fire. When Hetty had eaten her fill, Iris begged her to retire, but the faithful nurse would hear none of it, and so Iris returned the dirty dishes to the keeping room to spare Hetty the stairs.
Upon entering, she heard a scuffle, like the sound of someone banging about behind the narrow chimney door. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears, and she hurriedly dropped the tray on the long worktable then checked to be certain the horizontal plank was secure, when she heard a recognizable whining from within.
“Peter?”
He screamed. He was terrified of the stairwell.
“Peter, it is Iris. What are you doing in there?”
He was crying. She pushed at the heavy board that barred the door, but after a trying day, it proved unusually cumbersome. She pushed again at the splintering old wood, and this time a sliver stabbed her palm. She cried out, snatching back the hand to watch a drop of blood appear. Desperate now, Iris gathered her strength and finally shoved the plank away.
The door opened with a yawning creak into total darkness. Iris stepped over the lid into the narrow passageway. A rush of cool air rose from the cellar below, earthy and dank. She stepped forward and nearly tripped over a crumbled body on the stairs.
“Peter, what’s happened?”
He lay face down with his arms shielding his head. “He hurt me. I’m sorry. I thought he was my friend.” His voice was thin and brittle, so weak Iris could barely make out his words.
“He is a bad man.”
A foreboding chased shivers up her spine. No, it could not be.
“Can you get up? Come, I’ll help you. Hurry.” Iris didn’t ask who had hurt him or how. She was too afraid of the answer, concentrating only on the immediate need to get Peter into the keeping room so she could once again bar the door.
She reached down to take his arm, but his solid weight proved resistant. Every moment felt like too much time wasted as Iris struggled to raise him. There was barely room to breathe in the narrow enclosure. Peter panted heavily.
A creak sounded on the stairs behind her. Her throat went dry.
Out of the darkness came the touch of cold fingers at the back of her neck. They entwined in her long hair, clutching then yanking back her head. Iris screamed and tripped over Peter’s legs onto the hard, steep stairs.
“Willful, disobedient girl,” came a Cornish male voice.
She landed hard on her backside. The stair edge bruised her ribs. Iris flailed her arms, trying to reach behind and free herself. She couldn’t gain her footing, and the cold brick chimney wall scratched her palm as she put out a hand to brace for balance.
“My lady,” Peter cried.
Her neck strained backwards until Iris felt it might snap. Her scalp burned. The pain blinded her. She couldn’t see forward or back, but could only look upwards into the black, web-infested rafters. The man behind her kicked out. She heard Peter’s grunt and then no more.
“Peter! Oh, Peter, no. He’s harmless. Why must you hurt him? What do you want from us?”
“I-want-your-obedience,” Lord Treybarwick grit out.
Still holding her by the hair, he dragged her up the stairs. Iris’s ankles banged painfully into the treads with each stumbling step. The earl was climbing too fast for her to keep up, and she couldn’t see where she was going, couldn’t move her head or gauge the steepness of each stair, walking backwards.
If she could manage to turn forward, perhaps she could push him down the stairs, but he seemed remarkably strong for a man of his years.
Did he know her father had survived? Had Peter told him? She must keep him away from Father at all costs.
“You’ve killed my father,” she said, “what will you do with me? Please. Release me and I promise to obey.”
The earl continued to climb but eased his grip slightly on her hair. Iris was grateful the staircase led directly to the third floor, bypassing the second floor bedroom where her father lay.
She mustn’t scream or Hetty would come running, which would place her in danger as well. What would Lord Treybarwick do were he to confront the woman who had helped her mother escape? This hidden stairwell had been meant to be a safe hideaway from this evil man, but for Iris it had become a place of entrapment. What was she to do? Who would help her?
Almighty God.
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty,” she prayed aloud. “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in Him will I trust.” Psalm 91 had always been her mother’s favorite.
Releasing her hair, the earl spun her around by the shoulders. She felt his warm breath in her face. “Eleanor often repeated those very same words. I recall I could not stand to hear them then any more than I can tolerate them now. As if a prayer could protect Eleanor from me. And you, child, are no better than she.”
“And yet it did protect her,” Iris said.
With a grunt, he squeezed her upper arms in a grip that felt deliberately cruel. Then he took her by the wrist, dragging her up the stairs behind him. At least she now faced forward and could navigate the stairs while holding onto the wall for support.
“For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways,” she continued. “They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.”
“You’re wasting your breath, Eleanor.”
He now believes I am my mother? Johnny said he was mad.
His cold, bitter laugh practically confirmed it. “There are no angels to help you here. I am your father and you shall respect my authority. You shall do as is expected of a daughter of a noble. That is your purpose. And your duty. To attempt to do otherwise could get you … hurt.”
Iris’s desperation grew. Where did he think they were going? In his delusion, did he even realize this was Nook House and not his estate in Cornwall?
“Release me.” She struggled to free herself, but his grip held tightly around her wrist. “You have nothing to gain by hurting me. I cannot help you. I am not your daughter. I am not Eleanor. Eleanor is gone. I am Iris. Your granddaughter.”
He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “Silly, useless thing that my f
irst wife was, she could not even bear me a child. Everyone believed she drowned, but I had to replace her with a spouse more fitting to my title. I chose your mother and did indeed love her, but instead of an heir she gave me you. So now it falls to you, Eleanor, to produce a Treybarwick heir with a husband of my choosing. Accept your fate.”
In a quiet, trembling voice, Iris prayed, “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him, I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him—”
The flat of the earl’s palm struck her cheek, knocking her head back against the chimney. Dazed by the impact, her cheek burning, Iris nearly lost her balance on the stairs, but he caught her by the waist and held her upright. Tears sprang to her eyes at the thought of her kind, sweet, gentle mother raised by this monster.
And then Iris realized that the something poking her ribs was not his harsh fingers, but a hard, metal object which could only be the barrel of a pistol.
Her horrified gasp seemed to please him.
“Your worth has always been in your extreme beauty, Eleanor. You thought you could outsmart me, and you might have done so … once. But this time, I have made certain to dispose of your lover. And you shall not get away from me again.”
Chapter 25
Johnny walked the quiet country roads and paths of Duxbury in search of the earl without success.
He visited the boarding houses on Washington Street where he interviewed the crew of the doomed barque Vulture. The stranger calling himself Mr. Gregory would be most recognizable to them than to any, having crossed the Atlantic with the foreigner. Several admitted to having seen the nobleman in and about a tavern or two, of even having shared a drink with him at his expense, and they directed Johnny to precisely which establishments.
Johnny called at a tavern in Tarklin then checked the stage stop and spoke with the innkeeper where the earl was lodged. He persuaded the fellow into letting him enter the earl’s room. Johnny found the earl’s traveling satchel and inside a wooden pistol case carved with the Treybarwick crest. It was empty.
Which meant Lord Treybarwick was still in the area and he was armed.
A notice had been posted on the meetinghouse door warning citizens of his crime and requesting information that might lead to his whereabouts, but no one as yet had come forward with helpful knowledge of Duxbury’s deadly visitor.
Johnny wandered through the weathered gray headstones of the burying ground. With the setting sun, his eyesight dwindled, but this time he had been able to actually view Lady Moon’s grave marker and see the empty plot beside it where Captain Moon would soon be laid.
It was growing increasingly more difficult to see clearly, and Johnny felt his efforts were best spent returning to Nook House to check on Iris.
His feet dragged in disappointment on the twilight walk back to the Nook peninsula.
Fading pinkish rays of daylight framed the Bliss farmhouse, and Johnny turned off the main road to call on Benjamin before heading home. Captain Moon’s farm manager answered his knock, looking as exhausted as Johnny felt. Benjamin took one look at him and said, “So it’s true then? You have regained your sight.”
Johnny grinned. “Aye, it’s true. Thankfully so.”
Benjamin nodded and smiled warmly. “Lud suspected as much. Come inside, please. Alice, dear, we have a visitor,” he called excitedly behind him as he stepped aside to allow Johnny entrance.
“Yes, indeed, I see that. Praises to our Heavenly Father,” Mrs. Bliss said as she rose from the supper table to greet Johnny with a warm hug. The affection surprised him, yet he soaked it up gratefully the way a cold, weary traveler absorbed heat from the home fires.
She released him and Johnny looked past her into the front room. “I have interrupted your meal. My pardon, Mrs. Bliss.” He found himself staring, but every sight was a fascination to him, having known the deprivation of it.
Before the fire, a plain pine table was lain with a white cloth and surrounded by five chairs, two of which were occupied by the Bliss’s teenaged twins — a girl and a boy. Peter was absent, Johnny noticed, and only a count of four coats hung on pegs by the door.
“Not at all,” she said. “You are most welcome. Our second miracle today.”
Johnny directed a puzzled stare at her. “Second miracle?”
Chuckling warmly, Benjamin clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve been away and don’t know. Lud and I set off immediately for Duxbury Town after you, making the assumption that was where you had gone. We tried to find you to tell you and to help in your search for the earl, but you were always one step ahead of us. We visited the inn where the fellow was lodged and were informed you had already been there. Johnny, Captain Moon lives.”
Johnny spirits rose excitedly. “How can that be? I was told he had passed.”
“We all believed he had taken his last breath, for verily it did appear so, but then several moments later he suddenly took another. He awoke and spoke to Iris. Doctor Huxham examined him and told us he expects the captain shall make a full recovery.”
“Praise God,” Mrs. Bliss repeated.
Johnny stood before them speechless, consumed with awe and joy and thankfulness. Verily, he could not think of a single thing to say.
This changed everything. And lent even more haste to Johnny’s search for Lord Treybarwick. He had to find the earl before he discovered he had failed to destroy the man who had stolen his daughter.
As if reading his thoughts, Benjamin asked, “I take it you had no success in tracking Lord Treybarwick down?”
Johnny nodded and quickly recounted his fruitless search.
“Since returning, I have remained on the lookout, taking hourly tours of the grounds should the earl unwisely chance to venture here,” Benjamin said. “My wife and I are concerned also, because I have not seen Peter anywhere and it is unlike the lad to miss supper.”
The uneasy feeling Johnny had gotten upon finding Peter absent intensified. He was anxious to get home and especially to see Captain Moon. He thanked the Blisses and promptly took his leave, promising to send Peter home should their paths cross.
Night had fallen under a heavy cloak of darkness during his short visit, bringing with it a damp cold that seeped into Johnny’s bones. He could see only dimly now and had to use his walking stick to assure he did not trip over anything in his path. A small flicker of lantern light guided him toward the rear entrance of Nook House, but as he passed the farmyard, a low, whining growl halted his steps. He followed the sound into a small court enclosed by outbuildings and a walled garden, where he found Snow sniffing and pawing at the cellar entrance.
“Snow, what have you found, girl?”
His presence seemed to boost her confidence, and the Labrador continued to scratch then peered up at him as though asking for assistance. Her eyes gleamed in the night.
A feeling of dread sunk like a large stone into the pit of his stomach at the thought of what … or rather, who … might be down there.
His thoughts flew to Iris, and Johnny instinctively reached for the pistol at his waist, realizing it would be useless to him in the near-blind state nightfall had placed him. And yet, if his fears were true and the earl had returned to Nook House, he had a responsibility to protect her.
He ran to collect the lantern from its hook by the keeping room door. His weariness melted away and Johnny felt his every sense alert. His pulse quickened and he no longer felt the cold but burned with the heat of anger and purpose. Returning to Snow, he urged the dog aside and threw open the doors that led into the cellar. Barking sharply, Snow rushed into the darkness below.
Johnny drew his pistol and followed her down. His boots crunched on the sanded floor with each step as he shone his light into every nook and pocket of darkness. Trepidation crawled up his spine and his pulse raced at what horror he might find. Even with the lantern, his weak eyes struggled to adjust. The golden glow revealed an enormous hearth built of the same stone that supported the underground room. The ceiling hung low, crossed by grea
t wooden beams from which bunches of herbs hung to dry. Root vegetables were stored in bins of sand. There were shelves of pumpkins and other squash, bins of apples and onions, but otherwise the cellar was empty.
Snow had padded on ahead of him. Johnny’s light didn’t reach that far ahead, but he followed the sound of her angry snuffling to a staircase that hugged the chimney wall up into the house. Dim illumination filtered down from above, and Johnny pushed past the Labrador to climb towards the light until he heard the sounds of a moaning wail.
“Iris?” he called.
No, not Iris. The voice was male and repeated something which grew more distinct with each step that brought Johnny closer. “My lady … my lady… .” Peter’s lament echoed through the cramped stairwell.
Johnny found him on the small landing which led to the keeping room. His bulky form was curled tightly and he was holding his head, rocking slightly.
Johnny gave the young man’s shoulder a gentle shake. “Peter, it’s Johnny. Are you hurt? Who did this to you?” Looking up he peered through the chimney door into the room beyond. Light from the hearth shone onto the table where dirty plates sat among an assortment of prepared dishes as though a meal had been suddenly interrupted.
His heart dropped heavily into his stomach. He could feel Snow pressing in behind him. Her nose nudged the back of his leg. “Where is Iris?”
“He took her. My lady … my lady… .”
Johnny lifted his gaze up the narrow passage of cobwebs, stale air and pitch darkness. The old wood and timbers creaked, which could have been the house shifting or the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He couldn’t be certain, but there was another noise — a soft, trembling vibration — which did not belong in an empty stairwell.
Johnny shushed Peter and strained to hear. A terrified voice floated down.
“…refuge and my fortress, my God, in him will I trust.”
Iris! Johnny’s hopes plunged downward into the hollow pit of his stomach. Frantic thoughts and worry clouded his mind, and while he struggled to determine his next move, he remained acutely aware that every second he stood frozen with indecision exposed Iris to greater danger.