Rising, she went to the cupboard. She withdrew her favorite nightgown. The heavy lace at its deep neckline did not detract from the soft clinging of the material. What she enjoyed most about it was the sensuous caress of the fabric when Ian’s hand moved in heated circles across it.
Without haste, she changed into it. Even if Ian hurried, it would take him five minutes to go to the kitchen and back. She was sure Mrs. Puhle would delay him by asking for the latest news.
She sat at her dressing table. Although the mirror in front of her was useless to her now, she never changed the habit of brushing her hair here each night. Suddenly, the feeling of the eyes piercing her back returned.
“Who is it?” she cried. A door creaked, and she knew it was not her imagination. Lifting her heavy silver hairbrush, she rose and stepped away from the table.
In the silent room, she could hear her fear-heightened heartbeat and the steady rhythm of the intruder’s breath. A trinket dropped from a table behind her. She whirled, wondering if there was more than one stranger in her room. A heavy arm went around her neck. She tried to scream, but it was impossible. The arm squeezed until her clawing fingers dropped to her side.
Mariel moaned. She coughed as she put her hands to her tender throat. Leaning against the damp stone wall, she waited until the paroxysm passed. When she could stand with wobbly knees, she slid her hand along the wall to find a clue to tell her where she was. That she had been imprisoned somewhere she did not doubt. Her attacker had rendered her senseless with quick precision. If he had wanted her dead, she would be. Obviously, he had some other use for her.
Counting her steps, it did not take her long to discover her prison was four paces long on two sides and eight on the other two. Nothing interrupted her journey along the stone wall. She discovered neither door nor window. Her attempts to touch the ceiling proved futile. There was a ceiling over her head, for the air moved stagnantly in the room, but she could not reach it. The floor beneath her sloped gently toward a metal grill plate less than five inches square.
Although she knew the dimensions of her prison, she had no idea where she was. As unpopulated as the Cloister was, her abductor could have entered and left with little difficulty.
Cold bit into her bare toes, and she shivered. She was somewhere outside the Cloister. Exactly where, was something she could not guess. If she had some idea of how long she had been unconscious, she would be able to narrow the list of possibilities to within a certain radius from the Cloister.
Panic teased her to submit to it. Mariel knew how easy it would be to allow the hysterical tears to fall, but she feared they would never stop. Someone aimed to hurt her, or one of those closest to her, by abducting her. She feared the worst awaited her in the invisible shadows of the future.
Trying to stay warm, she paced the narrow width of her cell. Her feet ached with the cold. Her shoulders cramped with the fear she refused to acknowledge. She made and rejected several plans of escape. All of them were useless until she learned where she was. She could not guess who wanted her here.
A half-forgotten conversation blared in her memory. After the fire, Ian had asked her if she had any enemies. Jokingly, she had named the school board, for she could think of no one who hated her enough to destroy her home. They had not spoken of it again. As they had become enraptured by the love they found, and caught up in the events of their lives, the fire in the old Cloister lost its importance.
She wondered if she had been foolish to push aside what she considered only an accident. In her opinion, the fire had been started by two lovers trysting in the Cloister. It had been a common practice. A candle left burning could have ignited the building, and the culprits would not have dared to come forth and admit to illicit love and igniting the Cloister.
Perhaps she had been as wrong about that as she was about having no enemies. Someone had taken her from her rooms to bring her to this place. Over and over, her mind demanded to know why. It was something she could not answer.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a scratching sound. She wrapped her arms around herself and backed against the wall. Fear eclipsed all her thoughts as she prepared to come face-to-face with the one who wanted her here.
Straining, she fought to hear other sounds or to discern clues that would allow her to know where her captor stood. All she could hear were the reluctant sounds of stone against stone. What it meant, she was scared to speculate.
“Mariel was a little lamb,
Her hair as black as coal.
Everywhere that Mariel went,
Lorraine was sure to go.”
The deep breathless voice repeated the rhyme again and again. Mariel spun to face the direction where the sound originated. She could not determine where it was coming from until she tilted her head back. Fresh air burst over her face. Somehow, someone stood on the roof of her prison.
Cold, superstitious fear washed over her. Only three other persons could know the significance of that poem. Two of them were dead. When she heard maniacal male laughter resonating queerly through the small space, she struggled not to scream out her terror.
It could not be him!
It could not be!
He was dead!
Fiercely, she asserted her strong will to submerge the panic. Struggling to control her voice, she whispered, “Georgie? Georgie, is that you?”
“Mariel was a little lamb,
Her hair as black as coal.
Everywhere that Mariel went,
Lorraine was sure to go,”
was the only response.
A dull thud warned her that whoever had been on the roof had dropped to stand on the floor. He repeated the once harmless poem a final time as she fought the paralysis of fear.
Putting her hands on the slimy stones, she moved along the wall away from the speaker. “Georgie?”
Broad hands grasped her. “Lady Mariel.”
This voice, so different from the husky whisper, she recognized instantly. “Thank heavens, Walter!” Sapped by her sense of relief, she stepped into his embrace and leaned against the coarse overalls he always wore. “Help me out of whatever this place is! Something is going crazy here. Someone is pretending to be my dead cousin.”
When he bent to whisper in her ear, “Mariel was a little lamb,” she pulled back in horror. His fingers tightened to hold her in the stone-strong prison of his arms.
“Georgie?” she whispered, in a fear that stripped her mind of all thought. She could not bring herself to ask how he could be here alive when she had seen him buried in the cemetery behind the Cloister.
“You were always the smartest one, Mariel.” His voice held the same childish petulance she recalled, although it was far deeper. “I thought you would guess Walter was Georgie.”
“It has been so long since I saw you,” she said cautiously. She did not know what to say, as he leapt from one persona to the other. If she spoke to Georgie, Walter might answer, or someone else entirely. “I was just a child when we played together.”
“Smart Mariel.” His heavy hand patted her head as he had so often. “Pretty and kind, even to your mad cousin Georgie.”
“You—you were—you are my friend.” She fell back on long-forgotten skills of dealing with the volatile man.
“Not like Lorraine.”
“Not like Lorraine,” she agreed quickly.
He snarled, “She said bad things about Georgie. She would do naughty things and tattle on Georgie. Then Georgie would be locked in his room. He would be tied to his bed. No one would talk to him, not even Mariel.”
“They would not let me.” She recalled that final year, before her twin was killed and Georgie banished to the asylum. More than once, he had tried to tell her what he was saying now. Like everyone else, she had not listened, for his distortions of the truth twisted all his words.
“She is gone.” Pride resounded in his voice. She knew he had used his intelligence to fool his keepers at the asylum that he was recovering. He had no regret
for the murder.
“Yes, Georgie, she is gone.” Mariel moved slightly. His hands readjusted on her arms, but not so tightly. She kept her face from showing her hope. Georgie had been her friend. If she could help him remember that, she might be able to escape before his ungovernable rage erupted.
“She wanted to hurt my Mariel. She and the voices.”
“They can’t hurt me. Lorraine is gone, and I know you will keep the voices from me, Georgie.”
Instantly, she realized she had said the wrong thing. His fingers bit into her arms. When he shoved her against the wall, she cried in involuntary pain.
“I tried, Mariel, but you fought me when I brought you to the attic to hide you from the voices. You screamed. You called the others. They hurt me. Then you said it.”
She did not have to ask what he meant. As clearly as if it was happening now, she could see the scene from sixteen years before, when Georgie had lurched toward her across the attic floor. Her feet had been frozen to the floor, although Phipps tried to urge her to flee. Frightened, desperate to repay him for killing her sister before her eyes, she had taunted him with the childish poem Lorraine used.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I have always been sorry I said that. I was angry. You get angry, Georgie. You know how easy it is to say or do something you feel bad about later.”
“No!” he screeched.
Cowering away from him, Mariel knew she could not guess how he would react to anything she said. One moment he adored her as he had when they played together as children, although he was physically nearly ten years older than her. The next moment he did not hide that he despised her.
When his hand settled on her cheek, she flinched. It slid to rest on the crook between her neck and shoulder. As his fingers spread out around her vulnerable throat, she froze against the wall. He had killed Lorraine by breaking her neck with his bare hands.
With a sob, he dropped his hands. He stepped back from her. “I don’t want to kill my Mariel!” he cried. Listening to the voices torturing him, he shouted, “Not my Mariel! She always loved me.” He fell to his knees before her and hid his face in her ripped nightgown. “Help me, Mariel!”
“Go away!” she ordered to the ones existing only in his head. “Leave Georgie alone. He is a good man. He does not want to do the things you say any longer.” She placed her hands gently on his shoulders. “Tell them,” she urged.
He shook his head. “No, Mariel. If I talk to them, they will make me do something horrible.” He clamped his hands over his ears. “No! I will not listen to you.”
“Georgie, Georgie,” she crooned, knowing he did not speak to her. “Don’t let them control you. You have done nothing horrid in all the time you have been home. You can best them.”
When she heard the vicious sound of deranged laughter, she knew she had lost him again to the demons within him. He leapt to his feet to pin her to the wall. His voice had regained its taunting, strangely sane tone.
“Nothing? Nothing successful, you mean. All the years we were caged in that place, we thought about what we would do to the one who sent us there.”
“Georgie, I—”
He paid no attention to her. “We pretended as they wanted us to. When we finally convinced them we were well, they did not watch us so closely. Setting fire to our prison was not hard. How we laughed when they sent another to be buried at the Cloister. They could not tell Lord Foxbridge they could not find his heir in the ashes. We watched. We hid. Then we came back to Foxbridge Cloister. It did not burn as well as our prison. It still stands.”
While he continued with his tale, Mariel listened in growing horror. More than his use of the plural in talking about his actions, what he said nauseated her. Wrapped up in her busy life and her growing love for Ian, she had not suspected the kindly handyman of drugging the wine the day of their picnic. His hope that she would drown was stymied by the chance that she walked with Ian to the cave above the water level.
“No!” she screamed when he spoke of his second attempt to murder her. It had been so simple, and his involvement, in retrospect, was painfully obvious. That the brakes and the steering both failed simultaneously should have alerted them immediately to tampering. The electric car should not have exploded. Only his plot to kill her explained such improbable events.
“You did not die. We knew we had to try again, but you went away to London. We bided our time. We knew you would come back to the Cloister. Always so busy you were. Then you went away. We thought you were gone forever.” His brow furrowed as he said reflectively, “Mariel cannot go away forever. We must make her pay for sending us to that prison. Arranging the accident for Father hurt us, but we had to have you in the Cloister. You had to come back. Now you have.”
“Georgie, listen to me. Send the others away.”
“No!” he cried. She did not know if it was to her or the voices within him.
She moaned as he gripped her face tightly in his long fingers. Muttering some incoherent threats, he shoved her to the ground. Before she could scramble to her feet, she heard him climbing out of whatever this place was.
“Georgie!” she cried. “Don’t leave me here, Georgie!”
His taunting voice repeated the rhyme she had never forgotten.
“Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the boys came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.”
His laughter surrounded her like a torturing curse. “Cry, Mariel, cry. I will be back before the boys come out to play.”
“Georgie! Wait!”
The crash of some heavy article over her head told her he had enclosed her in this unknown prison again. She sagged against the wall. What he had planned, she could not guess. In his madness he was capable of anything.
Cradling her face in her scratched hands, she moaned, “Ian, oh, Ian, I love you. Don’t forget that. Don’t let Rosie forget me, please.” She slid to the stone floor to weep out the sorrow she could keep within her no longer. Only a short time ago, she had been delighting in the joys of her life. Soon, those would be gone.
Again she struggled to escape from her fear. She could not let it control her. She needed every bit of her intelligence to best her cousin. That he was quick-witted made him more dangerous. His complicated plot warned her he had a diabolical death planned for her. She could not wait meekly.
Calculating swiftly, she walked to the wall where she had heard him climbing from this hole. A smile creased her face as she felt the handholds in the wall. She had missed them earlier, for she had not been thinking to look for such. Foolishly, she had expected to find a door, hidden somewhere among the stones.
Carefully, she fit her toes and fingers into the lowest holes. They were spaced quite far apart, but she could manage. It surprised her how evenly placed they were. They were not there by chance.
Suddenly, she knew where Georgie must have put her. This must be one of the dry cisterns scattered around the property. All during her childhood, they were warned to stay away from them. That admonition made them only more determined to explore them. They had found five or six.
A curse escaped from her lips as she bumped her head against the ceiling. With caution, she explored the uneven surface of the stone. As she felt its breadth, she knew she could not shove it aside from this precarious perch. Hope drained from her, leaving her weak.
Slowly she lowered herself back to the floor. She had no choice but to wait for Georgie to return. He would. That she did not doubt. It was not part of his madness to leave her to starve in this well.
She needed a weapon. Sweeping the floor of the cistern, she sought something, anything, to use to help herself. When her fingers closed on a slab of the mortar, which had dislodged from the wall, she smiled. It was nearly a foot long. She could use it to knock her cousin senseless without injuring him too badly. The thought of killing Georgie did not come into her calculations. She could not forget the bonds of love, fo
rged from her earliest memories.
With her plan formed, all that she could do was wait … and wait … and wait. The minutes passed with accursed slowness. She had no idea if it had been hours she had been waiting or if fear simply slowed time.
When she heard a sound, she froze against the wall. Overhead, the rock moved reluctantly. Mariel remained poised in the shadows. She would have only one chance. As strong as Georgie was, he could kill her easily barehanded. She could not think of that now. She had to think solely of what she had to do.
A chill seared along her spine as she heard the cruel sound of the childish rhyme she once had loved. Uncle Wilford had invented it for her one night. Although he had forgotten it, the children had not. The poem gave Lorraine the idea of using another rhyme to torment Georgie.
Again she heard the thump of his feet as Georgie landed on the floor. “Where are you, Mariel? We want to see you.”
His words warned her of his continued dementia and steeled her to do what she must. Hoping it was night, she slithered along the clammy wall. He kept talking, allowing her to narrow her search for him. She prayed for luck as she raised the slab.
The concussion of the blow raced along her arms. She dropped her weapon as she heard him fall to the floor. His moans of pain told her she had not succeeded in knocking him senseless. She must flee.
A hand grasped her ankle. Viciously, she stepped on his arm. Another screech ripped through the night. Although the sound of his suffering ached within her, she did not pause. Only by saving herself could she help her cousin.
Following the handholds up the wall, she left skin and bits of material in her wake. She did not pause to worry about such small pain. If she did not escape, Georgie would kill her.
She teetered on the edge of the hole. One attempt at shoving the monstrous stone over it told her how futile that was. She must find help. The sound of movement below her sent her running away from the hole.
Immediately, she tripped over an obstacle and crashed to the ground. Tears fell along her cheeks, but she ignored them as she rose on her ravaged knees. Pulling cinders from her palms, she realized where she was. Georgie had brought her only as far as the burned section of the old Cloister. Although she had feared the cistern was one beyond the stables, she should have guessed. This was his world. This was where he would do the bidding of his voices.
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