The light flickered—she could see it through her closed eyelids.
This was the moment. It was falling. Coming down on her.
Thousands of stones to crush her.
“Violet, what are you doing? Drama such as this is Adalia’s forte—not yours.”
She couldn’t answer him, could only shake her head, the back of her upsweep grinding into the wet rock.
The light shifted again.
“Violet. Look at me.”
She cracked her eyes open.
“What is happening?”
“I—I don’t know.” Her look drifted off of his face to the stone at his left. It moved. She blinked hard, her eyes darting to all the dark corners surrounding them. “This tight space. Is the wall moving, Theo? Is it getting closer to me?”
“What? No. Don’t be daft, Violet. This tunnel is solid.”
She found his face in the shadows. “It is. Don’t you see it? It’s getting closer, Theo—just look.” She pointed to the far wall, her finger thrusting wildly in the air.
Theo looked to his left. When his gaze returned to her, concern had replaced the annoyance in his eyes. “What is happening to you?”
“This tunnel—it, it is so tiny. I don’t—I don’t like spaces like this, Theo.”
“Why did you come down here then, Violet?” His voice dipped, his words slow, almost as if he was afraid to startle her.
“I didn’t know I would react like this. I told you on the way through that first tunnel. But you kept moving and I thought I would be fine, but I am not fine. I am not fine, Theo.” Her voice pitched into a shrillness that echoed deep into the tunnel. “The walls are moving and they are going to crush me and crush you and I am going to run out of air and—” Her words cut off, her gasping breaths stealing any last shreds of reality she had grasp of.
Theo grabbed her forearm. “Let us move. Let us get to the surface.”
Her head dropped forward, her chin bumping onto her chest with every gasp as she searched for her feet. Why wouldn’t her feet move? She couldn’t feel her legs, much less make them move. Yet she was still standing. She shook her head. “I cannot. I cannot move my feet, Theo. I cannot—cannot move through there again.”
His left hand released her arm and slid around her back. “Then forgive me for how I am about to make you move, Vee. But I need to get you above ground.” He yanked her into his torso, pressing the front of her body flat against his.
All Violet could see was blackness. The black of his jacket. The sudden glimmer of white from his linen shirt. She had the sensation of moving.
He was moving her. Moving her through the tunnels, around the twists and turns.
Were her feet moving? No. She didn’t think so. Her fingers found fabric, muscle to dig her nails into.
He squeezed their melded forms through the tight passages in the rock, both of their bodies scraping the stone walls.
But he was fast. Or maybe she had lost all sense of time and place.
In the next instant, he had stopped and set her gently to her feet. Solid ground under her, she could feel her legs again, feel her toes.
He bent to the side, setting the Davy lamp down on the floor of the tunnel, and then he grabbed her left shoulder, steadying her as he withdrew his left arm from around her body.
His right hand still on her shoulder, he stepped back, allowing space between them as he violently shook his left arm.
Violet swayed and her shoulder blades skimmed against wood. Wood—not stone.
He grabbed her with both hands before she tilted too far and fell. He spun her in place, and she opened her eyes to find they were at the base of the main ladder.
His voice was next to her ear, his breath heavy on the skin of her neck after the exertion of carrying her through the tunnels. “Just the ladder now, Vee. Just a few steps upward. You have to climb. You cannot depend on me to keep you upright.”
She could barely hear him, barely make out his words as a brutal wave of terror hit her, sending her body into a violent shake.
“Dammit, Vee, I need you to climb. I am right behind you.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t move. Her mouth opened with a strangled whisper. “But—”
“No. You have to climb, Vee. Your legs, your arms moving. I cannot chance you falling. I will be behind you—directly behind you—but you must hold onto the rungs—no matter what.”
No matter what?
She craned her neck to look back at him, forcing words through the panic crushing her chest. “What—what would happen?”
He growled, his mouth pulling back in an exasperated line. “My arm—it gives out—and if I lose grip, if I fall, you will fall—and I cannot chance that.” An angry hiss expelled from his lips. Several heartbeats skipped past before he spoke again, his voice defeated. “So hold onto the blasted rungs, Vee, please. Keep your feet about you.”
She nodded, turning back to the ladder. “You will be behind me?”
“Yes.”
“You will not fall away from me?”
“I will damn well try not to.”
She sucked in a long breath of air and grabbed the rung in front of her. He got her this far. She had to do the rest herself.
“That is it, Vee. Both hands. Now your right foot.”
Her right foot a lead anchor, she lifted it, her thigh shaking from the strain. She dropped it, the arch of her boot landing on the bottom rung. She gasped as all feeling left her body.
And then something warm. Theo pressing himself against the length of her back. “I am right here, Vee. Directly behind you. And you can move. I know you can.”
Her head dipped downward, and for the life of her, she had never done anything as difficult as forcing her left foot up onto the next step of the ladder.
Her left boot clunked onto the wooden rung.
“Good. Now the next. Don’t think, Vee. Just move. Up with your hand.”
Violet did as ordered. Step after step up the ladder, she could not move without his demands, the next movement directed into her ear. But the orders worked. Theo’s voice prodding her upward. Upward into the air. Into the land she belonged in. The one with birds and trees and lakes and fields and rivers. Upward.
The first breath of fresh air hit her lungs and she almost collapsed at the sheer relief of it.
Two more steps, and she swung herself over the ladder’s top rung and onto the ground. Real ground with dirt and grass in it. Her fingers dug into the soil, her arms quivering as feeling flowed back into her muscles.
She looked over at Theo, her face contorting in horror as his left fingers—on the only hand currently attached to the ladder—slipped off the side rail just as he stepped onto the third rung down.
For an achingly slow second, he flailed, his right arm swinging in a circle, grasping at balance. His left foot slipped off the rung
His body froze in midair, completely still for a breath, until the whole of him started to tip backward.
Her body dead weight, Violet couldn’t move, couldn’t help—only watch in terror as he fell away from her.
A vicious growl, and Theo twisted his body as his right foot fell off the ladder, his right fingers managing to snag the side rail just above the top rung. He grunted as the momentum sent his body slamming hard into the side of the shaft.
But he was hanging. Swinging. Not falling to his death. That was all Violet cared about.
He hung for a long moment, his body a swaying pendulum. Another grunt, and he swung his left leg upward, catching the heel of his boot onto the ground next to the shaft. Straining, he contorted the rest of his body upward, following his foot.
The bulk of his weight heaved onto solid ground, and he loosened his hold on the ladder and rolled away from the opening. He landed on his back inches from Violet’s feet. His eyes closed, he gasped for breath, the back of his right forearm slung over his forehead.
Blood rushing back into her legs, she nudged him none-to-kindly with her toe. “Theo, y
ou just scared me half to Hades.”
“So sorry to have vexed you, Violet.”
She unclenched her fingers from the ground, the fear that had gripped her from being below ground now paling in comparison to watching Theo almost fall to his death. She watched his chest rise and fall with quick breaths, the instant surge of anger at him for that scene morphing into concern. “Theo, what was that? You said your arm gives out—but that—it was well beyond that, it went dead. What is wrong with your arm?”
His right arm above his eyes shifted upward as he cracked his eyelids to her. “Not exactly the shining armor hero that was necessary in that situation?”
“Hero? No, Theo, you got me out of there—I frankly don’t care how it came about—you got me out of that coffin.” She shifted onto her knees and her fingers went lightly to his left bicep, still limp by his side. “Why did your arm give way?”
He jerked, rolling away from her touch and scrambling to his feet. “It’s damaged. Damaged like the whole of me.” His voice seethed through gritted teeth.
She stared up at him. “But—”
He spun away from her, storming toward his horse. “Let us get back to the house.” He didn’t bother to turn back to her with the words.
Mouth agape, she watched as he grabbed his reins, swinging up onto his horse using only his right hand.
He was off, his horse disappearing into the woods before she could shake herself into movement.
She sat there, her body still trembling. Minutes passed before the quaking eased and she was convinced she could depend on her legs to carry her again. Slowly, she found her feet and walked over to her mare.
Theo hadn’t even waited to assist her onto her horse.
She tugged the leather reins from the branch they were secured to. With a sigh, she tucked one around the pretty brown mare’s neck.
No bother.
At this point, she’d been alone long enough to be perfectly capable of mounting a horse on her own.
She didn’t need Theo.
Didn’t need him at all.
{ Chapter 6 }
He needed that book.
Where in blazes had he left the damn thing?
Theo shuffled through the bottom two drawers of the heavy walnut desk. His great-grandfather’s desk, or so his four-year-old mind remembered. He had only overheard his father telling his eldest brother that fact—weighing upon Caldwell the importance of the desk.
Why had the desk been so important? If Theo had stayed in the room that day, instead of wandering off, maybe he would possess that fact. But those words of his father’s had been for Caldwell. The eldest son. The heir.
Not the third son. The spare of the spare.
He slammed the drawer closed, irked it didn’t bang as loudly as he had intended.
Leaning back in his chair, his hands gripped the edge of the desk as he surveyed the shelves in the study, looking for a crevice he had set the book into amongst the ledgers.
He had misplaced that leather-bound book more times than a man should and still have any right to expect it to be found.
A knock on the study door thudded into the room.
Before he could bark away the person on the other side of the wood, the knob turned and the door opened.
Thompson, his butler and one of the last four servants he kept on at Glenhaven, didn’t appear. Instead, of all people, Violet stuck her head into the room.
She wore a simple blue muslin dress, her chestnut hair smoothed into a loose chignon—far different from the debacle it had become at the mine when he had last seen her.
He braced himself as she stepped into the room, shutting the door behind her with a distinctive click. Not quite a slam, but a click that held a note of a forthcoming deluge. Still, silent air just before a storm.
She stepped to the center of the room, her dark blue eyes pinning him. “Where have you been, Theo? You left me out by the mine alone. Heaven knows what could have happened to me. When I arrived here, you were gone. When I woke this morning you were still gone. For the last day I was left to twiddle my thumbs for goodness—”
“I didn’t leave you, Violet.”
Her hands planted on the curves of her hips. “What?”
“I didn’t leave you. I circled back and followed you from the mine to the estate. I would not abandon you in the woods, Violet.”
Her hands flew upward. “But you would abandon me here at the house?”
He looked to the black marble fireplace mantel and shrugged.
She didn’t respond to his avoidance, didn’t say a word. Only silence echoed in the room, harsh, louder than she could ever yell at him.
He forced his look back to her. “I was irate and I didn’t want to explain myself to you. I didn’t want to explain what happened.”
“So explain yourself now.”
Explain what? That he had an appendage that was often useless? That he could barely now function in society? That he was not the man that he once was—not by far? That where once he was strong, now he was weak? That his life had deteriorated, day by day, year by year, since he had removed himself from her world five years ago?
His chin nudged forward, his mouth tight. It was his turn for silence.
“Explain, or I leave, Theo.”
“The Vandestile ball is tonight.”
“Yes, and I didn’t want to attend the affair as it was—you very well know that fact. Mr. Nullter will just have to accept my deepest regrets.”
Theo stared at her. Her cheeks were flushed pink above the determined set of her chin.
He had been an arse, disappearing like that. He knew it. But he also knew he didn’t want her to leave. This place—Glenhaven—was so much easier to be in with her present. He had recognized that strange fact the first day they arrived. The weight of the estate—of the responsibility—hadn’t hit him as harshly when he had stepped through the front doors with her by his side.
Violet spun, walking to the door.
And now she was about to leave.
“It was out of place—my arm.”
Her feet stopped, but she didn’t turn around.
“My left arm was out of place—removed from the socket—for a long time, months, and it was ripped about often enough in that state to ensure constant pain. That is why it does not work now. Why it randomly loses all control.”
“Months?” Her body tensed, her head dropping slightly forward. Even from across the room, he could feel the air around her spike in defense against what he said.
“You do not want to hear this, Vee.” He attempted to keep his voice even. “Believe me, you do not want to know. Let us just be done with the conversation.”
Her shoulders lifted in an exasperated sigh and she turned around to face him. “You think to determine what is appropriate for my ears?”
“I still retain enough remnants of gentlemanly inclinations to know this is beyond what any lady of society should hear.”
“When do you imagine it was, Theo, that I became such a delicate flower that I cannot hear the truth of what happened to you?” Her arms folded across her stomach. “Was I a delicate flower at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen? No. You never would have shied from telling me anything in those days. Do you think I am naïve to the fact that the world is a brutal place?”
“If you are not naïve to the realities of what happened to me, Vee, then your life has taken a tragic turn from all that I had hoped for you.”
She stiffened. “It was torture, then?”
He nodded.
“Is that what your scars are from?” She pulled her right hand free from her left arm to point at his eyebrow. “The one on your face? The one on the back of your hand?”
He started. His face he could do nothing for. But he thought he hid the scar along the back of his hand well. He met her blue eyes. “The face, yes. The hand, no.”
“How? What happened to you when you disappeared after Alfred’s death? Adalia never told me.”
Theo flin
ched. He rarely heard the name of his second brother uttered. The middle brother, the peacemaker, the smart one—Alfred’s death at the hoof of a horse had broken Theo, broken Caldwell, broken Adalia in a thousand ways none of them would ever understand.
So he had run. Run from what he couldn’t have with Violet. Run from Alfred’s death. Run because he wasn’t strong enough for any of it.
He was well acquainted with his own cowardice, but he wasn’t about to admit it to her.
His look slipped from her face to the bookshelf next to her. “I disappeared to do one of the only things I could. What was expected of me as a third son in a time of war. Service to the crown.”
His gaze travelled back to her face. “The scar on my hand happened soon after I landed on the continent, courtesy of the first man I ever killed. The torture happened years later—a gift in-kind from our dear Boney.” He gave a slight shake of his head, the side of his mouth curling. “I had come home to finally assume the title and was in London but for a breath when they captured me at the docks. I had knowledge that Boney’s men—the Band of Vipers—wanted to pry from my head. Names, locations they were intent on getting me to betray. So they held me prisoner—here, on English soil—for months. Months of torture, beatings. Months of filthy blades carving my skin. Months of red-hot pokers searing into my flesh. Shall I continue?”
The edges of her eyes cringed as though she could see the blades flashing before her eyes. “That was the mess Adalia got tangled into? That was when she and the duke found you?”
“Ada told you what happened to me?”
“No. She said very little about the events. But the random fragments that she did share with me make much more sense now. She did say it was a miracle you were alive. A miracle that you survived.”
He sighed, his shoulders lifting. “Yes, if you consider a body riddled with scars, a mind that will offer no peace, and this blasted arm that dies on me without warning, survival. I was left weak, Vee.”
“There is strength in survival, Theo,” she said softly, her arms tightening around her waist.
He stared at her. How she had said the words, he wasn’t sure if they were meant for him or herself.
Of Sin & Sanctuary: A Revelry’s Tempest Novel Page 6