The day was raw and unpleasant, a cutting wind blowing in from the Channel, but there was no rain, and the sun was attempting to make an appearance.
Knowing the general location and what they were looking for, it didn’t take long to find the outside wall of the staircase. Stepping back from the curving, towering walls of what had once been part of the outer edge of the original Norman keep, Charles easily spied the indentations in the stone façade. Ladders would not suffice to reach them, and while the servants were hastily constructing scaffolding, he and the others, followed by a limping Adrian, searched for an entrance.
In Sir Huxley’s time, the gardens on this side of the house had been seldom used and, thus, had been allowed to run rampant. From the trees dotting the landscape, one could guess that the grounds had been extensive, but the shrubs, grasses, and bushes were so overgrown that the area looked more like a wilderness than part of a formal garden. A jungle of green pressed next to the stone walls of the house.
Spreading out, Charles, Julian, and Marcus worked around the wall, peering through the tangle of greenery, hoping to find a door. Time passed with no discovery.
Meanwhile, Goodson arrived with the chair Charles had requested for Adrian. Adrian looked mortified, but he was glad of Charles’s thoughtfulness and gave up the battle of pretending his ankle was just fine. Sitting down on the chair, he sighed with relief.
From his position, Adrian had a good view of the action. He observed the servants hard at work constructing the scaffolding for a while and then switched his gaze to the efforts to find an entrance into the staircase. Tired of doing that and wishing he had stayed inside, he glanced around at the ragged gardens, deciding he would have to talk to the head gardener about bringing them back to snuff. Eventually, his attention came back to the house. He studied the curving wall for a time, then watched the others as they pried away vines or pulled back the various pieces of concealing shrubbery. Bored, he considered the section of wall in front of him, the surface nearly obscured by a thick row of several overgrown lilac bushes.
He had been staring at a dark patch in the stone surface of the wall for quite some time when he froze, realizing what he was looking at. Rising from his chair, he hobbled toward the wall. “Over here!” he cried excitedly. “I think I’ve found something.”
Adrian had found the entrance for which the others had searched so diligently, for there behind the lilac bushes was a massive door. The ancient heavy-timbered door was anchored to the stone wall with huge black iron hinges. Darkened by age, the lumber was nearly as black as the hinges, and concealed behind the lilac bushes it was nearly invisible.
“If we hadn’t been specifically looking for it,” Charles mused, “we could have walked past it a hundred times and never noticed it.” Clapping Adrian on the shoulder, he said, “Splendid work! And to think I tried to convince you to stay inside.”
Adrian flushed. “You would have found it eventually,” he said fairly.
“But not as soon,” said Julian, smiling kindly at him. “And you were the one who discovered it.”
A closer examination revealed that behind the row of lilacs, there was a narrow pathway, the branches not extending all the way to the wall itself. Charles’s mouth thinned as he studied that tight space between the wall and the lilacs. It was no natural occurrence—the lilac branches had been systematically broken off, creating a tunnel-like path. A secluded path, he thought with an unpleasant trickle running down his spine, just wide enough for a man to walk through…Scowling, he ran his hand over the splintered ends of one of the branches, noting the signs of healed wood. The break wasn’t new, at least not recent—it could have been done months or years previously, but not, he thought tightly, centuries ago.
“What are you waiting for?” demanded Adrian, his eyes bright with excitement. “Aren’t you going to open the door?”
“Of course,” Charles said slowly, “just as soon as I am armed.”
Adrian’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Armed?” he squeaked in a voice that would have embarrassed him any other time. “Whatever for?”
“Because this path is man-made. That leads me to believe that someone has already discovered our doorway and has been using it for some time.” He sent Adrian a dry look. “I don’t relish coming upon our, um, uninvited guest defenseless.”
Julian and Marcus looked over the pathway themselves, and their expressions were grim when they stepped away from the lilacs. The three men exchanged hard glances. Charles knew that the same thoughts were in his cousins’ minds. Raoul. He didn’t know what they would find behind the ancient wooden door, but instinct told him that this was precisely the sort of lair that would appeal to Raoul.
“I agree with Charles,” Julian said. “We should be armed.”
“By Jupiter!” breathed Adrian, oblivious to the air of tension in the three older men. “Do you think that the smugglers are using my house?”
Adrian appeared more thrilled than alarmed by the notion of smugglers commandeering a section of the house, and Charles felt some of his fear dissipate. Of course, that was the most likely explanation for the pathway behind the lilacs. Smugglers. The house wasn’t that far from the Channel. They had not yet explored the full length of the secret staircase. It was possible there was enough room in the lower reaches of the house for the smugglers to hide their goods before transporting them out of Cornwall. This entrance could be well-known to locals and used since time immemorial. It was a logical conclusion. Yet he could not shake the feeling that Adrian was wrong. There were too many sea caves in which the smugglers could stash their goods. Why the devil would they cart them way up here?
Forcing a smile, Charles said to Adrian, “You could be right, but before I go through that doorway, I want a weapon in my hand.”
Charles had hoped that the news of their find would not filter through to the ladies. At least, not until he and Julian and Marcus were armed and had made an initial exploration into whatever lay behind that door. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to tell Adrian to keep his mouth shut and while he and the other two men were busy arming themselves, Adrian had limped into the library and excitedly divulged all to the women.
Convincing the ladies to remain inside until the gentlemen had seen for themselves whatever might be behind the door had been out of the question.
“The last time you went exploring,” Daphne had said fiercely, “you could have been killed. I’m not staying here, wringing my hands, waiting for news of your death. I’m coming with you! And short of locking me in my room, you cannot stop me.”
When Charles, Julian, and Marcus returned to the door Adrian had discovered, they were armed, each carried a lantern, and they were followed by a contingent of curious onlookers.
The weather had changed dramatically since Adrian had discovered the doorway. Gray, sullen clouds scudded overhead, and the wind, already biting, had picked up; then, the first leading edge of rain began to fall. Another storm was blowing in from sea. Thunder boomed, and in the distance, jagged lightning tore across the horizon.
Faced by the force of the storm, almost as one, Adrian, April, Miss Ketty, and the servants retreated to the shelter of the house, leaving only Charles, Julian, Marcus, Nell, and Daphne to continue the exploration.
A brief skirmish between Charles and Daphne confirmed her determination to follow him.
Glaring at his beloved, who glared right back, Charles growled, “This could be dangerous.”
“All the more reason for me to come with you,” snapped Daphne.
Cursing under his breath, Charles ducked behind the lilacs, followed in a single line by the others. Silently, they crept along the narrow pathway.
The door in front of him, Charles paused. He studied it a long second and then putting down his lantern, his pistol held at the ready, his fingers closed around the thick iron handle at one side of the massive door. He lifted the handle, the ease and silence with which it moved telling him that someone had oiled it well.
His pulse pounding, he pushed on the door. And like the lid to Pandora’s box, it opened.
Chapter 20
Utter blackness met Charles’s gaze. As Julian handed him his lantern, Charles muttered, “I hope that Adrian is right and that we are on the brink of discovering a smuggler’s den and not….” His lips thinned. “And not something else,” he finished tautly.
“You no more than I,” said Julian softly. Their gazes locked. “If it should prove to be…something else, can you do it?”
Charles smiled icily. “Oh, I can do it. I must do it.”
There was one last attempt by the gentlemen to convince Daphne and Nell to wait inside with the others. Huddled next to the house, enduring the slapping branches of the lilac bushes, getting wetter and more frustrated with every passing second, the three men wasted valuable time in a fruitless argument with Daphne and Nell about the inadvisability of their presence during this initial search. Both women stood firm; there was no swaying them.
Her chin held at a pugnacious angle, Daphne said, “We either come with you…or we follow you. It is your choice. We are not going to be sent away like naughty schoolgirls.”
Feeling hard-pressed not to strangle his beloved, Charles snarled, “Very well, come with us. But for God’s sake, stay out of the way.”
After lighting the lanterns and seeing that everyone was armed, including the two women, the group gathered itself to plunge into the unknown. Charles hesitated, irritated and worried about the presence of Daphne and Nell. Staring at the pistol in his wife’s hand, Charles flashed her a harassed glance. “Nell knows how to shoot—Julian was her instructor—but are you certain you know how to use that?”
Daphne nodded. “Do not forget, I grew up in the military; my father taught me to shoot when I was ten years old.” She smiled faintly. “I am not a marksman, but I promise you I won’t shoot myself.”
“Bloody well take care that you don’t shoot one of us!” he snapped and turned his back on her.
His expression grim, holding the lantern before him, Charles stepped out of the now pouring rain and through the doorway. The others followed him.
Leaving the door open, glad of the faint light from outside and the fresh air the opened doorway provided, they glanced around the room lit with the fitful glow of the lanterns. Everyone was convinced that this was part of the original structure. Smoke-stained stone walls met their gazes. Signs of ancient torches still hung in the crude iron sconces that lined the room; a few pieces of old weaponry and broken furniture were scattered across the floor. The rectangular room was not huge, but it could have easily held several armed fighting men and their weapons. Even with the air blowing in from outside, there was a musty, unpleasant odor, and cobwebs heavy with the debris of centuries draped the corners and decorated every nook and cranny.
The door that provided them access was in the middle of the outside wall, and they did not venture far, bunching together just inside the room, but out of the rain and wind. Motioning for them to wait, Charles took several steps away from the group. His lantern light fell upon an arched opening at the far end of the room. Further exploration revealed a staircase that angled upward. After a moment’s study, he said over his shoulder, “I suspect that this is the same staircase we were on last night. We may not know all its twists and turns, but we know ultimately where it leads.”
Leaving the staircase for the moment, he swung back to rejoin them when Daphne gasped, “Charles! Look! Look at the floor.”
A thick layer of dust lay on the stone floor, but what held everyone’s attention were the three distinct trails of footprints that crisscrossed the room. The first trail led from the doorway where they were gathered to the opposite end of the room where they saw another doorway. A second set of prints ran from the staircase and across the middle of the room and then mingled and disappeared into the first. The final trail had been the one Charles had taken directly from the doorway to the staircase, his damp footprints clear to see in the midst of the pathway that had already been there before he had walked across the room.
Feeling the hair rise on the nape of his neck, Charles stared at those footprints. The pathways were well-marked, but whether one person or several had made the tracks in the dust could not be determined. No ghost had made those trails, he thought tensely. But someone had. Someone who already knew of this forgotten area of Beaumont Place. Someone who had been aware of it and had been using it for some time…
It was Nell who said what was on everyone’s mind. “It is Raoul,” she said in accents of horror. “I know it. I can feel him.”
Julian looked at her sharply. “You said you had no more nightmares.”
“It’s true I haven’t dreamed of him, and I don’t know how to explain what I am feeling now,” Nell said honestly, her sea green eyes wide and frightened. “I just know, as surely as he came to me in nightmares all those years, that Raoul made those footprints.”
“If that is true, then there is no question of you and Daphne continuing with us,” Julian said.
“Julian’s right,” said Charles, coming to stand in front of Daphne. “We cannot hunt him if we are worried about you. You need to go back into the house with the others and wait for us there.”
Daphne shook her head. “How do you know we would be safe?” she asked, her gaze steady on Charles. “If it is Raoul, he is already familiar with this section of the house. Who knows what else he may have discovered? What other ways into the house he might have found? While you are searching for him down here, he could be slipping into the house and doing the very thing you fear.”
Her words were irrefutable, and biting back a curse, Charles stared rigidly at the dark outline made by the doorway at the other end of the room. It was unlikely that there were other hidden or secret ways into the house, but dare he take the chance?
His eyes met Julian’s. “She has a point,” Julian said reluctantly.
“And we would be five against one,” chimed in Nell.
Charles and Julian looked at Marcus. Marcus hunched a shoulder. “Don’t ask me to decide—they’re your wives.”
Charles’s gaze dropped to the trail of footprints. He hoisted his lantern for a better look, his eyes following the path clearly defined on the dusty floor. He knew in his gut where those footprints would lead, and he wondered that he hadn’t realized the truth sooner. He’d wasted all that time and effort searching for Raoul’s hiding place, and it had been right beneath his nose all the time. Beaumont Place.
When Raoul had disappeared down the sluice hole in the dungeon beneath the Dower House, Sir Huxley had been a dying old man, cared for by servants in a rambling, isolated old house. There were no close neighbors. No meddling family to contend with. There was only this very old house, a house, the then-heir had often stated, he would abandon and allow to fall into rack and ruin. Raoul would have known all that—Trevillyan had never made any secret of it. And if Raoul had known of the secret entrance before Sir Huxley had died…
It made perfect sense. His brother had always been secretive, inquisitive, and if he had been considering Beaumont Place before Sir Huxley’s death, he would have made it his business to know everything about the house and its history. Charles speculated that on his latter trips to Cornwall, Raoul had accompanied Trevillyan on visits to Sir Huxley…and had no doubt run tame through the house. It was almost certain Raoul would have made some secret forays, unknown and unnoticed by anyone else, to explore the place and grounds. The awareness that it had once been a Norman keep made it only logical that there would have been dungeons, old fortifications. The boarded up arrow slits were plain to see along this side of the original outer wall of the keep; deducing that there was a staircase or at least a walkway would have been the next step. And if there was a staircase or walkway, it most likely would have a way to access it from the outside. It was true that the door through which they had entered had been concealed behind the lilacs, but as soon as they’d started looking for it, it had been easily fou
nd.
Knowing that Raoul had been gravely wounded after he’d dived down the sluice hole at the Dower House and disappeared, it was difficult to estimate how long it had taken him to heal and make his way to Cornwall, but Charles didn’t doubt that he had. Somehow, somewhere, Raoul had survived…and when strong enough, had gone to earth in Cornwall.
Adrian’s house, while not ideal, fit Raoul’s needs, and like a malignant shadow, Raoul had slipped into Beaumont Place and made himself at home in the lower reaches of the house. Charles snorted. No wonder he had been unable to find any hint of his brother’s presence in Cornwall. He felt a rush of gratitude for the little ghost, Katherine. If she hadn’t appeared to Daphne…if she hadn’t led the way to the secret doorway in Daphne’s room, at this very moment, they’d be inside, happily gathered around the fire, drinking punch, unaware that beneath the house….
Charles shook himself. Glancing back at the others, he asked Daphne, “You are determined to come with us?”
She nodded, her fine eyes resolute as they met his.
Giving in to the inevitable, he sighed and muttered, “Everyone stay together. No wandering off to explore. At the slightest hint of something not quite right, say so. We can take no chances. We are entering Raoul’s domain. Remember always that he will not hesitate to kill any one of us.” His mouth tightened. “All of us if he could.”
Silently, they fell in behind Charles as he headed toward the shadowy doorway at the other end of the room. Charles led the way, then Julian, Nell, and Daphne, with Marcus in the rear.
The heavy door at the far end of the room opened to reveal a wide hall. They passed two rooms, one on either side of the hall, the doors half rotten and hanging at drunken angles.
“Quarters, perhaps?” Julian murmured after they quickly examined the rooms.
“They could have been used for something like that,” Charles said. “Ammunition. Food. Who knows?”
Seduction Becomes Her Page 31