by Danice Allen
Disregarding Henry’s curious look, Beth lifted her face to the gloaming sky and fixed her gaze on a faint first star striving valiantly to outshine the waning sun. If it had been a true wishing star, she’d have wished that the passion that rose in her at the sight of Alex, at the nearness of him, at the mere thought of him, would transfer its intensity to Zach. Zach, her betrothed.
But it was more than passion she felt for Alex. Just the thought of him inside the mine, surrounded by crumbling earthen walls supported by rotting timbers, made her blood run cold. With startling clarity she realized that if something happened to Alex, a part of her would die….
Hoofbeats sounded in the distance, drawing nearer. She turned and saw a rider driving his horse hellbent for leather across the moor. His coattails flew in the wind. His pale hair caught the last rays of the sun and gleamed a strange pinkish gold. Zach.
She watched him approach, her mind in a muddle. She didn’t know how to feel. She was glad he was there to help find Gabby, but she was angry, too. But no matter how angry she was with Zach, and despite the feelings that grew daily for Alex, she dreaded the thought of Zach entering the mine. Already two people dear to her had disappeared into the bowels of the earth. She hoped Zach would listen to reason and wait outside till Alex emerged from the shaft.
Zach reined in and dismounted, calling to Henry to attend to his horse. Henry hurried forward, and Zach tossed him the tethers. Zach tugged off his coat and threw it on the ground as he walked quickly toward Beth, his face a mask of grim determination, his eyes narrowed and snapping with emotion. She recognized the most pronounced emotion: He was angry. At himself, she wondered?
“How long have they been inside?” he asked her, his voice harsh and clipped. He never looked at her, but stared instead at the mine shaft. His color was high from the hard ride across Bodmin Moor. Sweat shimmered on his upper lip, and his shirt clung to his damp chest. A part of Beth’s anger relented, softened. Zach was obviously worried about Gabby and had come in a great rush. He stood close, and Beth noticed that he smelled like perspiration … and honeysuckle. Her brain registered the improbability of such a mixture of scents, then quickly dismissed it.
“They went in about an hour ago, I think. I’ve lost track of—”
“Bloody hell!” Zach cursed. “They’re probably wandering around like a bunch of babes in a maze. I’m going inside. Henry, I’ll need a torch.”
Beth stepped in front of the mine opening, her hands on her hips. “Alex left word that you’re not to go inside. He said if they find Gabby—”
Zach finally looked at her, but it was a look that implied she had suddenly taken leave of her senses, that she was a complete dolt to think she could physically bar him from entering the mine. “I don’t care what Alex said; I’m going in. Step aside, Beth.”
Her temper flared again, hotter than ever, fed by frustration and fear. She thrust her face to within inches of his. “You refuse to listen to anybody, don’t you, Zach? Perhaps I can understand your unwillingness to listen to a mere woman like me, but Alex is a man, after all, and your brother, and a good deal older and wiser than you are!”
Zach’s jaw clenched, and a muscle ticked in his cheek.
“You didn’t waste a bit of time, Beth,” he ground out.
“You had to throw the blame for this whole mess right at my feet, didn’t you?”
Beth raised a contemptuous brow. “If the shoe fits, Zachary …”
“I saw no harm in Gabby listening to Pye. I never anticipated this sort of thing happening—”
“I warned you, but you didn’t listen.”
“Don’t tell me you thought she’d run off and look for knackers, for I won’t believe you,” he retorted.
“No, I never dreamed she’d do this. I didn’t know what she’d do. But I had a strong feeling—”
Zach snorted. “You had a feeling. Humbug! If a man was to pander to a female every time she had a feeling, this would be a highly disordered world.”
Beth stamped her foot. “Oh, why can’t you give me a little credit? Why can’t you admit I was right, Zach?”
“Is that what this is all about, Beth?” Zach demanded caustically. “If I say, ‘Yes, Beth, you were right,’ will you be happy?”
Beth felt the tension and fear rise to the surface as tears welled in her eyes. She swallowed hard, trying to rid herself of the aching lump that swelled in her throat. “Of course I won’t be happy. I can’t be happy till Gabby’s found.” Her voice quavered, and tears broke loose to stream down her cheeks. “I’m so worried and scared, Zach. I love her! What if she’s lost to us forever? I couldn’t bear it if—”
Through a salty veil, Beth watched Zach’s expression change from belligerence to compassion, his golden eyes clouding with pain. He reached up to thread his long fingers through his hair—his usual gesture indicating mental anguish or turmoil—then his hand darted out suddenly to cup the back of her neck and pull her quickly, roughly, against his chest. Her cheek rested against his damp shirt, and she twined her arms around his waist. She clung to him like a frightened child and sobbed, a part of her ashamed for being so weak, another part of her immeasurably relieved to draw comfort from her childhood friend.
“There, there, Lilibet,” Zach soothed as he stroked her hair with one hand and cradled her shoulders with the other. “We’ll find Gabby. I’ll find Gabby,” he added, his voice firmer now, threaded with steely resolve. “I’ll find her if it’s the last thing I do!”
Beth didn’t like the implications of such a pronouncement. It sounded foolhardy. She didn’t want this to be the last thing Zach did, or the last thing anybody did.
Especially Alex, she thought, a sharp dagger of pain slicing through her.
She lifted her face to look Zach square in the eye. “Don’t talk like that. You mustn’t take unnecessary risks. Please stay here till Alex returns.” Pray God he would return!
“I have to go in, Beth. Please understand.” His tone was gentle but unquestionably full of determination. Beth’s shoulders sagged. He would go no matter what she said or did. “Godspeed,” she whispered, pulling out of his embrace to step aside and look at the ground, her fingers interlaced in a prayerlike grip.
He tilted her chin with a curled forefinger, his thumb tenderly brushing her single dimple. He compelled her to look at him. Their eyes locked. Shared worry and pain meshed and pulsated between them. Then he smiled that careless, charming grin of his. “See you soon, Beth.” He turned to Henry. “I’ll take that torch now.”
Moments later Beth watched Zach bend and enter the mine. She stooped at the entrance and watched the torch’s orange tip shrink to the size of a firefly and disappear, with Zach, around a curve.
It was cold, so cold. Gabby shivered and drew her knees up to her chest, resting her cheek against the soft, comforting velvet of her riding skirt. Her bottom hurt. The ground was hard and pebbled with small, sharp rocks. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the shuffle of rats in the darkness. The thick tallow work-candle she’d borrowed from the pantry had been snuffed out long ago by a dollop of water that fell from the ceiling of the mine. She had no idea how far she was from the entrance, but in the pitch black she dared not try to find her way there.
She’d seen no knackers, no elves with jaunty caps and pickaxes smiling upside down and backwards at her between their legs. She’d seen only rats, the size of which she could only guess at by the darting shadows she’d seen by candlelight. They looked bigger than the puppies at Pencarrow.
Something brushed against her ankle, something long and prickly-soft like a rat’s tail. She gasped and reared up, flailing her arms in the space around her. Connecting with nothing, Gabby wrapped herself into an even more compact ball than before.
“I’m not a coward,” she said aloud, her voice oddly intrusive and defiant in the still musty air that cocooned her nearly to the point of suffocation. Her eyes stung with first tears.
“Zach, where are you?” she
said. “I’m not afraid, really. Just worried, you know. You’ve always come for me before.”
She lifted her head and stared into the darkness. “But I shall do as you told me when I was a bit worried about riding my horse for the first time. I shall say it now.” She jutted out her chin determinedly. “I am Gabrielle Louisa Tavistock. I can do anything I set my mind to do because I’m an exceptional young lady. And I’m not afraid.” Then louder: “I am not afraid!”
The words eddied in the dark, secret nooks of the mine. The mine, as still and black as the grave, Mr. Thatcher had said, where no birds sang, where there was no wind in the trees and no mother’s voice calling you to dinner.
Mama! Oh, how she wanted Mama! Gabby pressed her face against her skirt again, tears sliding down her cheek.
“Zach will come. I know he will. I’m not afraid,” she whispered.
Chapter Nine
Alex’s throat was coated with silt. He craved a quenching drink from a cool well. Hell, even the brackish water that guttered along the mine walls was beginning to look tempting. But the filth-infested liquid would surely kill anyone who dared drink it. He prayed that Gabby would have sense enough to leave it alone. His eyes ached from peering into the dark, and hope of finding Gabby sputtered as low as his torch.
“M’lord, we’d best head back,” suggested one of the men. “Our lights’re about done fer.”
“I know,” Alex replied on a deep sigh. “But are you sure you followed each tunnel to the end?” He fixed his keen gaze on each man in turn, looking for shifting eyes. If any of them could not return his questioning look straight on, he’d have to suspect that they’d been too afraid to follow the passageway to its conclusion because of the alarming fragility of the walls. Alex himself had been horrified to discover them so very tenuous. One false stagger against them would precipitate a collapse. But all the men appeared as concerned and sorry as he was.
“Trouble is, m’lord,” said the same man, an older silver-haired fellow with some apparent authority among them, “we can’t be sure all the tunnels was seen and searched. There be spots hid from view. There be pockets and holes in the walls a little bit of a girl like Miss Gabrielle might squeeze into and find herself in another section of the mine. Could take days t’ find her.”
“Blast it, man, we don’t have days,” Alex rasped. “She’ll die of thirst—or something worse!”
“The master’d know where t’ find ’er,” piped up a man from the back of the group. “Master Zachary knows these mines like the back o’ his hand.”
“So I’ve heard,” Alex said dryly. “Let’s return to the entrance. I hope Zach will be waiting for us there. We can get fresh torches and commence another search under his direction. After we’ve told him where we’ve already been, it should be a rather easy task to know where to go next.”
Following the markings they’d carefully carved into the timbers at intervals, and particularly at junctions where tunnels split and went in two directions, they returned to the entrance. Alex was looking forward to a drink of water and a glimpse of fresh English sky to fortify him for the continued search within the close confines of the mine. But he was not looking forward to telling Beth the bad news.
In the distance he saw the opening, an irregular pale gray circle suspended in a wall of dirt and rock. Just beyond, he observed a torch’s blaze, its reddish-gold aura wreathing a woman’s silhouette. It was Beth waiting there. Waiting for him? Worried about him as well as Gabby? His chest constricted joyfully, painfully, at the thought.
“Alex? Alex, is that you?”
Her low voice echoed through the tunnel, warming his heart, warming his blood. “Yes, Beth,” he called back, his own voice gritty and strained.
“Good! Did you find her? Where’s Gabby?”
They’d reached the shaft, and Alex bent to ease himself through the opening. He handed his torch to Henry, grasped Beth by the arm, and pulled her away from the curious stares of the other men. She’d held up wonderfully when he’d first told her that Gabby was missing, but could she continue to shore up her feelings? Could she continue to be so brave?
By now Beth surely knew that Gabby had not been found, but her eyes strained desperately toward the file of men climbing out of the mine, as if she might still see one of the Pencarrow servants carrying the child in his arms.
“Beth, we didn’t find her.” He didn’t touch her, but he could feel the tremors of remorse rack her frame. He wanted to pull her into the circle of his arms and comfort her. She turned and looked up at him, her eyes tear-bright with barely suppressed anguish.
“But she must be inside … somewhere,” Beth said hoarsely. “You’re not quitting, are you?” Her hair was loose and tangled by the wind. Moonlight picked out honeyed highlights.
“Of course not,” Alex swiftly assured her, his hands fairly itching to grab her by the shoulders and pull her close against him. But earlier that day when she’d touched him, she’d responded like a thief before the magistrate, guilt marking her every feature. He crossed his arms, burying his hands in the folds of his shirtsleeves. “Zach can help us now. Where is he?” Alex looked around. He’d been so caught up with concern over Beth’s reaction to Gabby’s continued disappearance that he’d almost forgotten about Zach.
“He’s not here,” Beth answered.
“He didn’t come?” Alex had wondered if Zach might regard Gabby’s latest runaway antic as a harmless and trivial lark, like the previous episodes. It would be especially hard to drag him away from Tessy, too, since they’d been apart for so long.
“No, he came. But he went inside the mine.” Beth’s voice was flat with resignation. “As usual, he would not listen to me.”
“Or me,” Alex added grimly. “The foolish jackanapes. Now he’s in there alone, blast ’im!”
“He knows the mines well,” Beth said hopefully.
“Yet he’s not been in them, I’ll wager, for many years. How can we assist him if he does not wait for us? Now there’s no telling where he is or where we ought to go!”
“What are you going to do?” Beth’s eyes were wide and fearful.
“After we’ve had a drink, I’ll take a couple of men and go back inside.”
“But you don’t know where he is. Now you will be looking for Zach and Gabby.” Beth reached out with both hands and grasped Alex’s arm.
Alex’s muscles convulsed under the light pressure of her fingers. His eyes met hers, and he saw the worry. She was fearful for him as well as for her sister and Zach!
“The mines are old, Alex,” she went on. “Judging by the men’s expressions and whispers, I suspect that the walls are in even worse condition than I thought, though you will not tell me the extent of their decrepit state for fear of alarming me. But I’m dreadfully frightened for all of you. Please, please be careful!”
Alex placed his hand over hers, stroking her small fingers tenderly. “Never fear, I shall be careful. I will find Gabby and that headstrong brother of mine, and I have every intention of emerging from that hellish pit in prime twig. I’ve a great deal left to do in this life, and I’m not of a mind to leave it just yet.”
Beth was electrified by Alex’s touch and the determined tone of his voice. She felt certain that he would take no foolish risks, but she was confident that he was perfectly capable of accomplishing his mission anyway. There was a promise implied in his words, too, as if part of what he had left to do in this life concerned her. But she could not think of that now.
After Alex took a long drink from an oaken bucket of water, he took two men and fresh torches and went inside the mine. Beth sighed shakily. It seemed endless, this waiting. She felt so helpless. She supposed it was a woman’s curse to wait while men placed themselves in peril, sometimes for the purpose of evil, like war, or for good, as in this case. If only they were not so essential to her happiness—Zach and Alex.
Zachary hadn’t been inside the mine since he reached his majority, but its twists and turns seemed as fam
iliar as if he’d been there the day before. He thought it ironic that Gabby had chosen this particular mine. It had been his favorite because of its unpredictable meanderings and its hidden chambers. But why would Gabby be drawn here over all the other mines? On the outside, it was no more remarkable than the others, yet she’d chosen this one above the rest to search for the knackers.
It was uncanny the way Gabby found danger, he mused as he quickly traversed the passageway, waving his torch back and forth to observe the unstable condition of the walls. Lord, they looked as though a hearty sneeze would send them tumbling down! If the Pencarrow servants knocked about carelessly, they’d all be entombed alive. A cave-in in one part of the mine could easily initiate a full-blown collapse.
Within minutes he’d reached his destination—the first offshoot from the main tunnel. It would have been indiscernible to all but the most practiced eye or to the eyes of an intrepid child. But it would take hours or even days for an average person to find the crack hidden behind the jutting rock that led to another smaller tunnel. He stuck the torch through the opening and tried to peer beyond it, though the glare made his attempts futile.
“Gabby? Gabby, sweeting, are you in there?” he called. There was no reply, but if she was hurt or asleep she might not be able to answer. He pulled the torch back and eyed the opening, wondering if he could still squeeze through. It looked like a close fit, but he was leaner and less muscular than Alex, who took after Grandfather Hayle. Zach smiled grimly. For once he was glad he took after his father and the Wickham side of the family.
He lifted one leg through, ducked his head under and in, then carefully eased himself into the narrow opening, scraping his chest and back as he went. He held his breath as dirt and rocks loosened and sprinkled him with a fine, powdery gravel. Last came his other leg and the torch he held in his right hand.
This tunnel was in worse condition than the others. Less timber had been used to shore up the walls. They looked fragile and extremely dangerous. The air was thick and dank. Water dripped from the ceiling and pooled along the sides, as it did in the stagnant sewers of London. His shadow loomed up and shuddered in the flickering torchlight, and rats scurried at his feet. God, poor Gabby! How frightened she must be. His heart ached for her.