According to the constable, a few years ago, the ground upon which the gaol was erected had sunk several feet in a heavy rain, submerging a good part of the stone structure beneath the mud, rendering it useless.
He further advised her to stay away from the site, as it was dangerous. She assured him she had no intention of going there, adding a shiver of revulsion at the thought. Then, smiling sweetly and bidding him good day, she immediately headed off in the direction of the place.
As the constable had indicated, the moss-covered gaol slouched in the middle of a deserted boggy patch at the edge of town. One of the stone walls had crumbled, and long vines of ivy climbed over the top and reached into the sunken doorway. A wattle fence surrounded the area, preventing children and livestock from wandering too near and perhaps falling into the ruins.
Desirée skirted the fence in the mist, looking for a good place to make entry. Halfway around, she found a low spot in the wattle crossbars and, beyond that, a path of hardened ground leading to the gaol.
She frowned. Someone had been using this trail regularly, for the grass was worn away in the middle and bent flat at the edges.
Glancing quickly about for witnesses, she hoisted up her gown and climbed over the fence. Then she retrieved the key from her bodice and crept toward the gaol, hoping a family of wolves hadn’t decided to take up residence in the sunken den.
Sweeping aside the ivy curtaining the entrance, she peered in. It was as black as coal inside, and she hesitated, worrying the iron key between her thumb and finger, wondering if the treasure was worth the possibility that wild animals or unsavory men might lurk in the dark.
As her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she noticed a set of wooden steps had been placed at the entrance, leading from the ground above to the submerged floor below. At least she’d not have to clamber down to the lower level.
Gripping the key, she carefully stepped down the five stairs and onto a stone floor, slick with mud. It was still as dark as night, but to her right, the wall began to grow less and less dim, until she saw the widening flicker of reflected flame illuminating the stones.
Someone was coming! Her heart tripped at the sound of footfalls scraping from within the gaol. She swung around, ready to mount the steps and flee.
“Is that you, m’lady?” a gruff voice called from within the passageway.
Desirée froze.
She heard the man grumble as the pool of light grew larger upon the wall.
“Lady Philomena?” he asked, rounding the corner.
Desirée glanced down at the key in her hand. Perhaps this was where Philomena kept her treasure. Improvising quickly, she whirled back toward the man’s voice and straightened with authority.
“Ye’re not...” the man growled, coming to an abrupt halt. “Who are ye?”
Desirée lifted her nose. “I’m Lady Philomena’s maidservant.”
The man looked like a burly old bear, stirred from his winter’s sleep. But then, Desirée supposed, dwelling in this crypt of a gaol, anyone would be filthy and irritable.
He studied her twice from head to toe, then muttered, “She sent ye?”
“Aye.”
“I s’pose ye’ve got the key?”
She dangled it before her.
“Come along, then,” he said on a sigh, hobbling back around the corner.
She followed him into what was more like a tunnel than a hallway. Moisture seeped in at the low ceiling and narrow walls, and the dank odor of earth and rotting food and rat droppings swirled around her in a fetid cloud.
Stopping at a heavy iron door on the right, he waved his torch close, indicating the lock.
“’E’s in there.”
He? Misgiving fluttered in Desirée’s breast. She’d expected the locked cell to contain a cask of gems or stacks of coins or some other form of wealth. She hadn’t expected a “he.” What...or who...waited behind the door?
She had to find out. It was too late to change her mind. She thrust the key into the lock. It fit perfectly.
“May I?” she said, indicating the torch.
He frowned but surrendered it to her. At her nod of dismissal, he retreated to his well-stocked lair at the end of the passageway, where he slumped down onto a three-legged stool, picked up a foaming flagon, and took a bite of something he’d left on the small table beside him.
Desirée turned the key carefully, ready with the torch should the occupant of the chamber be less than hospitable. The door made a dreadful creak as she pushed it slowly inward, and there was a scuffling within as someone or something sensed her presence.
Leaving one hand on the door, she swept the torch forward, illuminating the small cell.
“’Mena?” someone croaked.
She gasped. In the corner stood a man, or what was left of a man. Though his clothing was that of a noble—a surcoat of richly embroidered tawny wool with a fine linen shirt beneath—it was filthy and shredded to dirty rags. His hair was matted, and he had a beard that reached to the middle of his chest. There were holes in the pointed toes of his leather shoes, and his face and hands looked as if he hadn’t bathed in months.
“You’re not Philomena,” he said, shielding his eyes from the unaccustomed light. “Who are you, my lady?”
Desirée doubted she had much to fear from the man. Despite his unkempt appearance, he possessed the attire and manner of a gentleman. But of what value to Lady Philomena was he?
She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Did my wife send you?” he asked tightly.
Wife? Was Lady Philomena this man’s wife? Desirée answered with caution. “Aye.”
He raked her once with a glare, and then bit the words out between his teeth. “You can tell her I won’t be persuaded, no matter what form of temptation she dangles before me.”
Desirée had learned that sometimes the best strategy was the truth. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not interested in your...charms.”
“Ah.” The man thought her a hired harlot.
“And I won’t be a party to murder.”
Desirée blinked. “Murder?”
He emitted a dry, bitter bark. “She didn’t tell you? My dear Philomena didn’t tell you why she locked her husband in this godforsaken tomb?”
Though his voice was full of hatred, she noted that he staggered slightly on his feet, catching his balance against a wall. For all his show of determination, the poor wretch was as weak as a runt pup. He probably hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks.
She needed to know more, and the best way to get a man to talk was to convince him she was his ally.
“Are you hungry?”
He swallowed reflexively.
She retreated to the door and opened it a crack. “Gaoler! Come here! And bring me what’s left of your supper. This man is half-starved.”
“What?” the gaoler whined. “He ate only yesterday. I slipped him a crust under the door. This is mine. I’m not goin’ to-”
“Shall I tell my lady,” Desirée said, curling her lip, “you’ve been mistreating her husband?”
“Mistreatin’?” With a loud sigh of exasperation, he did as he was bid, but he grumbled all the way to the cell.
When Desirée confiscated the half-eaten pork tartee and closed the door again, the man eyed the food with keen hunger. Only his nobility prevented him from snatching it from her.
She stepped closer, reeling from the stench of him. “What’s your name, my lord?” she murmured, handing him the pastry.
He sank to the floor and fell upon the food with such grateful haste that he couldn’t answer immediately. When he’d swallowed a bite, he murmured, “George.”
“George. Well, George,” she said carefully, “‘tis true your wife sent me here to try to change your mind. But now that I see how you’re suffering...” She bit her lip.
He forced down a half-chewed bite of tartee. “Aye?”
“I want to help you.”<
br />
“Help me?” He looked up at her mistrustfully. “You would do that?”
She nodded. Then, ignoring the odor of neglect wafting off of him, she crouched beside George, propping the torch upon the floor. “Tell me everything.”
CHAPTER 27
Philomena didn’t like the smug expression on the Kabayn whelp’s face today. The wench was up to something. She should never have let the woman return to Nicholas Grimshaw’s cottage with only her miserable pet and the lawman’s livelihood for leverage. Despite Philomena’s threats, that menacing shire-reeve might be tracking them even now.
But Philomena had no other choice. She desperately needed that key. It was the only way to unlock the gaol cell where she’d cached her husband. If she lost it, if her husband was not miraculously returned to Torteval after his father’s death, she risked losing their entire inheritance. And she’d labored far too long and hard at this scheme to do that.
So as she traipsed through the tall weeds of the fallow field behind Torteval toward the old mill, her slender dagger jabbing at the small of the woman’s back, she scanned the fog-shrouded woods and wondered if the sinister shire-reeve lurked in the shadows.
When she at last shoved Desirée through the mill door, slamming it shut behind them, the wench surprised her by whipping around and stepping back a pace, out of dagger’s reach.
Philomena would have advanced on her, but her nose began to twitch from the presence of that infernal cat, and she was suddenly overcome by the impending urge to sneeze.
She saw through watery eyes that Desirée was retrieving the bagged beast from the hook on the wall. For one horrible moment as the wench lowered it to the floor and loosened the top of the sack, Philomena suspected the wench might use the beast as a weapon, throwing the wretched thing in her face. She cocked back her dagger and fired it forward toward the animal, simultaneously emitting a rib-jolting sneeze.
The dagger stuck in the floor, missing the cat, which streaked off to a shadowy corner of the mill. Only then did Philomena grasp the consequences of her impulsive throw.
The Kabayn woman, realizing her sudden advantage, wrenched the blade loose and, with a grim smile of victory, flashed it before her.
“I believe my terms have changed,” she said, tossing the knife in a casual but threatening manner, back and forth between her hands.
Philomena began to tremble with rage and frustration. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Was it too much to ask that people die when they were supposed to, that servants follow her commands without question, that there be no negotiating or nasty surprises...or cats?
“Don’t be a fool!” she snapped. “You’ve got your bloody cat. All I want is that key. If you make trouble—“
“I want the gaming box, as well.”
“The what?”
“Nicholas Grimshaw’s gaming box. Your men stole it.”
Philomena narrowed her eyes. She remembered that gaming box. The servants had been playing draughts on it in the great hall. She’d taken it away from them, because it had been distracting them from their work. Afterward, she’d decided to keep it herself, for the craftsmanship was too fine for their grimy paws.
She chewed the corner of her lip. If it were any other circumstance, she’d have told the maid nay, found some way to kill her on the spot, and pried the key from her cold, dead fingers. But she couldn’t afford to make any more mistakes at this point.
Things had already gone awry. Too many people knew. She’d had to kill the damned lawyer with her own hands, for God’s sake. Now, not only did she have to finish off her father-in-law, but she had to find a way to get rid of the witnesses. And there was already too much blood on her hands.
Perhaps if she ceded this once, if she gave the wench her wretched gaming box, she’d go away.
“Very well,” she bit out. “You’ll have your stupid trinket. But you’ll have to come back to the hall to get it, and if you try any trickery, I swear I’ll put you in a sack and throw you into the river.” She punctuated her threat with a brain-rattling sneeze that at last sent the cat bolting across the mill and squirming out under the door, hopefully fleeing as far away as possible.
Things went smoothly enough on the return to the hall. The woman tried no tricks, and the shire-reeve didn’t burst out from the woods. When they entered the solar, Philomena had begun to think she’d overestimated the wench’s wiles. Perhaps she did simply want what was stolen from her.
Then she closed the door, and everything changed.
As Philomena proffered the gaming box with an insincere smile and at last felt the precious key drop into her palm, she was treated to an unwelcome warning.
“I’d use that key very soon if I were you.”
She smirked. “You don’t even know what ‘tis for.”
“I didn’t,” she admitted. “But Nicholas Grimshaw did.”
For an instant, the smug smile stretched tightly on Philomena’s face, and the air seemed to freeze in her throat. Dread pounded in her heart like a lump of lead. “I see,” she managed to croak.
“After the shire-reeve left for work this morn, I had a visit with your husband.”
Philomena’s mouth went dry.
“He told me everything,” she continued. “How you feigned his kidnapping and imprisoned him because he didn’t have the stomach to go along with your plans to poison his father. How Lord William, believing his son was dead, summoned his lawyer to rewrite his will, naming not you, but his nephew as heir, and how ‘twas you, not Hubert Kabayn, who murdered the lawyer and destroyed that will. How, after his father is gone, you plan to stage George’s miraculous return to claim his inheritance, which you expect he’ll share generously with you if he knows what’s best for him.”
Philomena began to tremble again as her plans unraveled before her eyes. She glanced down at the knife, still held firmly in the wench’s hand. Could she overpower the woman, recover her dagger, and silence the meddling bitch forever?
“Don’t even think of it,” Desirée said, tucking the gaming box under her arm and brandishing the knife. “If I don’t return, the shire-reeve will know whom to blame. And I don’t think you’ll be able to strip him of his title when the hangman’s noose is about your neck.”
Philomena felt sick. All her plans...all her patience...all her devotion...were they for nothing?
Despite the panic writhing in her spine, she couldn’t lose control in front of her nemesis. Nor could she allow fear to paralyze her. But she needed time to think.
“The wise cheat knows when the game’s over,” the wench added. “You’ve lost. Give up your scheme. Free your husband. The fool still cares for you. Perhaps he’ll forgive you.” Then she bit out between clenched teeth: “But know this. If you continue this butchery, I’ll see you hang from the very gallows where Hubert Kabayn took his last breath.”
With that dire promise and a curt nod, the woman departed, leaving Philomena breathless and shaken. But shock was soon replaced by rage, and once the wench was out of hearing, Philomena vented her frustration upon the room, knocking over the floor candles, shredding the bolsters on the chairs, smashing the crockery against the plaster walls.
Her only regret afterward, as she stood panting among the ruins of the solar, was that the steward hadn’t been there for her to vent her wrath upon. Then at least she’d have been able to preserve her pretty things.
Much calmer after her outburst, she began to think more clearly. It was preposterous to imagine that overweening maidservant might have gained the upper hand. The world revolved around Philomena’s wishes, because she’d always managed to outwit or cajole or intimidate those who stood in her way. She’d beaten, kidnapped, and murdered men to achieve her ends. She wasn’t about to be outmaneuvered by the granddaughter of a common thief.
Somehow there was a way to get out of this. Indeed, before long, an idea wormed its way into her brain.
Perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps there was a way to preserve at leas
t part of her plan and be rid of this bothersome wench once and for all. It would involve expert timing, a profound sacrifice, and a good deal of risk, but in the end she might get what she’d wanted all along.
If the woman had visited George this morn...alone...and left him in the cell...
It was time to pay Lord William a final visit.
Less than an hour later, Philomena hummed a tune as she made her way from his chamber with the empty flagon. With the amount of arsenic she’d put in his wine this time, he’d surely be dead by sundown. She almost wished she could stay to play the grieving daughter and watch him in his final, painful throes of dying. It was the least she deserved for having to suffer the indignity of being rebuffed as his heir in favor of his nephew.
But she had other things to tend to.
Snatching up one of the daggers from the kitchen, she donned her cloak and set out on the road toward the old Canterbury gaol at a brisk pace. By the time she arrived at the horrible spot, she was out of breath and drenched with mist and sweat. Wrinkling her nose, she stole into the dark, dank place once again, struck by its similarity to a tomb. It was fitting enough, she supposed, for that was precisely what she intended.
She’d always meant to kill her poor husband eventually, after he’d inherited his father’s wealth. What troubled her was killing him before Lord William was dead, when there was still a slim possibility that the will might be contested. But she was out of options. Her best hope now was to get this over with quickly.
“Gaoler!”
When the gaoler came hobbling around the corner, she longed to shove the dagger into his fat gut, for he’d doubtless been stealing George’s food for weeks now. But she needed him as a witness, so she choked back the urge.
“M’lady,” he said in surprise.
“I’m here to see him.”
“Again?”
“What do you mean, again?”
“Your maidservant came to check on him earlier.”“Maidservant?” she demanded, feigning confusion. “I sent no maidservant.”
He shrugged. “She had the key.” He narrowed his eyes in displeasure. “And the bloody wench gave him my supper. My supper.”
Danger's Kiss Page 25