Too Wicked to Kiss: Gothic Love Stories #1

by Ridley, Erica

  She tried the next painting, then the next, then the next.

  By the time she had the correct frame flung open, Mr. Lioncroft’s footfalls thundered fast and heavy down the corridor, the maid dropping behind him to collect the broken tea service.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded the moment he reached Evangeline’s side.

  “The twins,” she explained, pointing a trembling finger at the unrelenting blackness. “They’re trapped inside.”

  Without pausing to ask more questions, he brushed past her and vanished, hurrying sideways in the opposite direction from which she’d first heard noises. His disappearance was so sudden and so complete, her breath tangled in her throat.

  “No,” she called into the dark, standing at the junction between candlelight and shadow, with one hand gripping the open frame and the other splayed against the corner of the wall. “The other way. Go back the other way. They’re—”

  “Mama?” came a small terrified voice from the undulating gloom to Evangeline’s right.

  “No, it’s Miss Pemberton,” she called back, fighting to keep the tremor from her voice. “Come this way.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in the corridor. Follow my voice, darling.”

  “I can’t…It’s—it’s too dark,” came the small broken voice of a child. “Can you come get me?”

  “I—” Evangeline gulped for air. She’d barely managed to survive the first time. Could she voluntarily enter such a dark confined space again? She slid a slipper forward and shuddered when the tip of her foot disappeared into the inky murk. Her lungs hitched and her limbs melted. Oh, Lord. She couldn’t. She couldn’t.

  “Rachel? Rebecca?” came Mr. Lioncroft’s deep voice, followed by the shuffling of his large booted feet as he edged back into view.

  “Down that way,” Evangeline said, panting with terror but pointing in the right direction.

  “Why didn’t you go to them?” The shadows were too dense to read his expression, but there was no mistaking the anger in his tone.

  “I—” she said again and faltered, unable to complete the thought even to herself.

  He was already gone, slipping down the narrow passageway toward a child’s soft whimpers. After several long heart-stopping moments, he returned with a dusty blond moppet clinging to his neck.

  “Rebecca?” Evangeline asked.

  “No. Rachel. She was alone.”

  “Oh. Where’s Rebecca?”

  “I don’t know. Rachel says she doesn’t know, either.”

  “Rachel, where did you and Rebecca get separated?”

  The little girl’s eye’s widened. “I don’t know where.”

  Mr. Lioncroft’s tone gentled. “That’s all right, sweetheart. We just need to know how to find her.”

  “She’s lost. Like I was lost.”

  Evangeline stood there, feeling stupid and cowardly and useless.

  “You weren’t lost together?” she asked.

  “We were, but then Rebecca dropped her dolly and wouldn’t come back without it. I couldn’t find the dolly and then I couldn’t find Rebecca and then I couldn’t find my way back out.”

  Tears streamed from Rachel’s dirty cheeks to Mr. Lioncroft’s cravat. He made no move to set her down, and instead only held her closer. “Is she in the same section where I found you?”

  “No. I made lots of turns. Lots and lots of turns. I think.”

  “Do you remember which ones?”

  Rachel shook her head miserably.

  “Damn it.” Mr. Lioncroft’s jaw flexed.

  Evangeline swallowed her panic as best she could. Ignoring the still-raging tempest storming in the back of her skull, she reached for the little girl.

  “Come here,” she coaxed softly. “Let me hold you. Just for a second.”

  “I’ve got her.” Mr. Lioncroft’s eyes were cold, hard. He was no doubt disgusted with her cowardice, her inability to go after Rachel instead of standing dumb at the entrance, her apparent apathy about the welfare of his nieces.

  “No. I mean…please. Just let me touch her.”

  “Miss Pemberton, I don’t have time for this. A five-year-old girl is lost. If you have no wish to help locate her, then just go back to your—”

  Evangeline threw her bare arms around both man and child, and squeezed.

  Where is Rebecca? Where is Rebecca? Where is Rebecca?

  Darkness surrounded her, smothering her. She couldn’t see. She couldn’t breathe. At first she thought she managed to swoon after all, proving herself a coward beyond all redemption. But then, through the unrelenting shadows, came the unmistakable sounds of childlike voices.

  * * *

  “Give it back!”

  “It’s mine!”

  “Jane said I could play with it!”

  “Jane’s stupid!”

  “You’re stupid!”

  “Huh-uh. I’ve got the dolly, and you d—Oh!”

  Something hard clatters against a wall and falls to the floor. Kicking and scuffling sounds fill the subsequent silence, followed by the rip of torn hair and the wail of a hurt child.

  “I hate you!”

  “Good! I’m going back without you!”

  The small, quick footfalls pad down the passageway, go straight through the first intersection, speed up, falter, turn left at the second intersection, stumble to a stop just past the third.

  “Rebecca?”

  No response.

  “Rebecca? I’m lost.”

  No response.

  “Rebecca? Can you hear me? I’m sorry I threw your dolly.”

  No response.

  “Rebecca?”

  Small fists bang against the wall.

  “I want out! I want out! I want out!”

  A flutter-thump sounds, as though Rachel trips, then tumbles to the floor. The banging at the wall increases and then fades, followed only by the occasional scritch of fingernails looking for purchase in the cracks of the dusty wall.

  And then the noise of Evangeline’s foot colliding with the other side.

  * * *

  Evangeline gasped and jerked away, reeling so hard at the agony in her head she stumbled against the wainscoting and crumpled in a heap.

  “Miss Pemberton?” came Mr. Lioncroft’s hesitant voice from somewhere high above her head. “Miss Pemberton? Are you all right?”

  “To the right,” she managed, still sprawled on her back with her eyes squeezed tight. “You have to go to the right, then right again at the first intersection and straight through the second. Hurry. She’s just a dozen meters past, looking for her doll.”

  “What?”

  “I told you Rebecca was looking for her dolly,” Rachel put in. “I told you.”

  Despite the fury of her headache, Evangeline forced her eyes open. “You said she dropped the doll,” she corrected her with a stern smile, “not that you took it from her and threw it.”

  Rachel’s jaw dropped open. She closed it with a snap, shoved her nose in the air, and turned back to her uncle. “Can you find Rebecca? And the dolly?”

  Brow furrowed, Mr. Lioncroft glanced from Rachel to Evangeline and back again. “I’ll try my damnedest.”

  He set the little girl down and disappeared into the fathomless shadows.

  Chapter 18

  Gavin rushed along the no-longer-very-secret passageway between the walls. Usually his movements through the lightless corridors were exact, designed for efficiency and speed yet careful not to brush his skin or clothing against the narrow walls. Today, however, his only concern was a lost little girl.

  Right at the first intersection, he reminded himself. Straight through the next.

  At least that’s what Miss Pemberton had said. But how would she know? Short answer: she wouldn’t. Not unless she’d been the one to lure his nieces into the branching shadows herself. And how had she known about the swinging access panel in the first place?

  “Rebecca,” he called, the darkness swallo
wing his words whole. “Rebecca, can you hear me?”

  Was that a whimper up ahead? He hurried faster.

  The children had been the only individuals present who treated him without suspicion or fear. After being lost in the forgotten crevices of Blackberry Manor, however, he suspected both he and his home had lost any remaining appeal.

  He’d barely careened around the final intersection before his boot crashed down onto something melon-sized and porcelain. The whimpering ceased, then started anew. Apparently, he owed his niece a new doll.

  “Rebecca?”

  “Papa?”

  Gavin closed his eyes, realized he couldn’t see either way, and reopened them. “No, sweetling. It’s Uncle Lioncroft.”

  “Oh.” She sniffled. “I think you broke my dolly.”

  “I think so, too. Where are you?”

  “Over here. Where are you? It’s too dark. I can’t even—is this your hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s very cold.”

  Yes, he imagined it was. The thought of her trapped between the walls continued to chill his blood. Her hand, however, was over-warm. And a bit moist—he hoped due to tears or sweat or some other non-nasal fluid.

  He pulled her to her feet. She stood readily. Her hand wrapped around his largest two fingers. He stooped for the broken doll and then made his way back toward the corridor where Rachel and Miss Pemberton waited. Miss Pemberton, whose directions had been uncanny at best. Suspicious at worst.

  “How did you get stuck back here, Rebecca?”

  “Rachel hid my dolly.”

  “But how did you get back here? Did—did Miss Pemberton drop by the nursery?”

  “No.”

  An odd feeling of relief settled across his skin, as though he had not wished to discover Miss Pemberton at fault. Well, of course, he hadn’t wanted her to be at fault. He didn’t want anything more sinister afoot than children up to mischief.

  “So,” he said presently. “You got stuck because Rachel threw your dolly.”

  “Yes.”

  What the hell did that mean? Gavin wished he could see Rebecca’s face. Her explanation made no sense. “Where, exactly, did Rachel throw your dolly?”

  “Behind the drawing board.”

  “Behind the—oh.” He’d completely forgotten about the access door in the schoolroom adjoining the nursery. Until the week before this laughable catastrophe of a party, neither he nor his staff had reason to visit the nursery, or even the guest quarters in general.

  “Where’s Rachel?” came Rebecca’s small voice.

  “In the corridor with Miss Pemberton.”

  “Why?”

  Ah. Wouldn’t he like to know what Miss Pemberton had been up to. When he’d first seen her peering into the blackness beyond the wainscoting, his first thought had been—had been—well, he wasn’t sure he’d been able to think much at all. His mind had been on the missing girls. But now that they had been found, there were several questions he’d like to ask the wide-eyed and wild-haired Miss Pemberton. The flickering of candlelight up ahead indicated he would be able to do so in very short order.

  When he and Rebecca reentered the hallway, Miss Pemberton was on her feet instead of the floor. She leaned against the opposite wall, fingertips massaging her temples, eyes squeezed shut, face twisted in a grimace.

  “Where’s Rachel?” he demanded.

  Miss Pemberton opened her eyes. Sort of. But she didn’t stop rubbing her temples or push away from her slump against the wall.

  “Nursery,” she said, squinting at him as though the meager sconce light burned brighter than the noonday sun. “I took her to her mother.”

  “Stay here.”

  Without pausing to see her reaction to the terseness of his command, Gavin led Rebecca to the nursery as well. Once the door opened, Rebecca tugged her fingers from his and flew across the room to her weeping mother.

  “Rachel broke my dolly,” Rebecca cried as she hurled herself into Rose’s outstretched arms.

  “Did not,” Rachel yelled from her position at Rose’s feet.

  Gavin laid the now-headless doll on a small table near the doorway. “I’m afraid I did.”

  “I’m afraid of everything about this house,” Rose murmured.

  He stiffened. Everything meaning what? Meaning him?

  “I’ll purchase a new doll for her.”

  Rose looked away.

  “It’s not the doll,” Nancy cut in. “It’s…” She glanced at her mother, then the girls, then at Gavin. “It’s everything.”

  “She means Papa.” Jane sat on one of the twins’ small chairs, her gown puddling on the floor. “We know she means Papa, Nancy.”

  Although a spineless worm, Heatherbrook had been the children’s father. For this reason, Gavin nodded gravely and said, “I am very sorry about your loss.”

  Rose’s head snapped up, forehead lined, eyes narrowed. She said nothing. Perhaps she was not sorry. Or perhaps she had nothing left to say.

  If any other words threatened to escape the dry confines of his throat, Gavin swallowed them.

  What did Rose’s expression mean? Did she think him insincere? True, he didn’t lament Heatherbrook’s death. Merely the girls’ loss of a father. Was he that transparent?

  Or did she suspect him of causing the incident in the first place? If so, such suspicion poked a sharp hole in Miss Pemberton’s theory that Rose herself might have contributed to her husband’s death. But then, there were plenty of holes in the things Miss Pemberton said, and plenty more holes in the things she did not say.

  “I am sorry,” Gavin said again, when it seemed no one else felt the inclination to speak.

  “Sorry?” Rose echoed, scooping both twins into her arms. “As if the loss of my husband was not enough—” She did blame him! Gavin fought to keep his expression neutral but could not prevent a slight wince. “—getting my children lost in your walls where they might easily have hurt themselves and, God forbid, never been found…Sorry is no substitute for safety. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  A horrible silence fell.

  Then, from Jane: “But tomorrow is my birthday.”

  All gazes cast in her direction.

  “I don’t wish to travel on my birthday,” she insisted. “Uncle Lioncroft promised kite-flying and pall-mall.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened. “What’s pall-mall?”

  Rebecca sat up so fast she knocked Rose’s chin with the back of her head. “I want to fly kites.”

  Holding silent, Gavin returned his focus to Rose.

  Nancy knelt next to her mother. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to stay until after Jane’s birthday, would it, Mother? We do not have kites or pall-mall at home.”

  “Nor will we,” Rose said bitterly, “Now that Monsieur Lefebvre is no longer a secret.”

  “Teasdale isn’t the only man with money, Mother. And Pierre—”

  “Would have been more than merely sacked, had I not distracted your father while he made his escape. You did quite enough to your family, young lady, when you should’ve been doing something for them.”

  “I’ll marry well, Mama,” Jane put in. “I think love is stupid.”

  Gavin ran a hand through his hair. He had no idea how to join the conversation, as he had no idea what the conversation was about. Who was Pierre Lefebvre? And why was the Heatherbrook household permanently without simple activities like kite-flying? That is, unless…

  “You mentioned you hoped Nancy would make a match with Mr. Teasdale,” he said. Rose started, as if she’d forgotten he still stood just inside the doorway, and then her head dipped in a quick nod. “Do you have reason to believe him uninterested?”

  Nancy blushed and looked away. “He’s old.”

  “And rich,” Jane added.

  “And displeased,” Rose said with a sigh. “I cannot blame him.”

  Nancy rose to her feet and glared down at her mother. “I’ll marry someone else.”

  Rose stood as well, ret
urning her daughter’s gaze. “You’ll marry no one else, as we can no longer afford to put in appearances.”

  Nancy’s chin lifted. “Then you should’ve let me marry him!”

  Rose’s reply was gentle, but firm. “He didn’t offer.”

  “He would’ve!”

  “Yet he did not.”

  “He loved me!” Tears filled Nancy’s eyes. “He wrote me poetry!”

  “You are too young to understand.” Rose reached out to touch Nancy’s arm.

  Nancy jerked away. “I understand Papa ruined it. Papa ruined everything!”

  “Papa’s dead,” Rachel put in.

  Rebecca nodded. “Like my dolly.”

  With a groan, Nancy spun away from them and stormed past Gavin and out the door. Jane hesitated a second before sprinting after her. Rose sank back onto the sofa and refused to meet Gavin’s eyes.

  Why, he had no idea, since their conversation had only grown more confusing with each hurled phrase. The female mind was unfathomable. Nancy had wanted to marry Teasdale, the deaf old codger? Who had apparently scratched out love letters in his spotted, palsied hand?

  After inclining his head to the women, Gavin slipped out of the nursery and back into the corridor. Miss Pemberton still stood about ten meters away, if one could call slumping bonelessly against wainscoting “standing.”

  He approached Miss Pemberton with soft, slow steps. Although his footfalls were soundless, her eyelashes lifted as if she sensed the minute shift in the shadows.

  She did not smile to see him. The pulse in her throat suggested she was waiting for him to pounce.

  He hooked his thumbs in his waistband. “You stayed.”

  “You told me to.”

  “So I did.”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Are the girls all right?”

  “I believe so. Their mother seems to be the most affected.”

  “Such is often the way.”

  “How did you know?”

  She shrugged. “I often sequestered myself as a child.”

  “No,” Gavin said, “I mean, how did you know where to find them?” Although, now he very much wished to know where and why she’d sequestered herself as a child.