Boneseeker (14 page)

Thunder rumbles overhead. “Perfect.”

I feel the birth of panic, squirming to life in my gut.

She keeps ducking in and out of my sight. The rain will only decrease the visibility.

A little voice chastises,
keep her safe, keep her safe.

The forest rushes past on either side, the barely visible path becoming
in
visible as the brambles thicken.

“Arabella!”

Stupid.
I shouldn’t call to her. What if someone
is
watching, following? I just revealed our exact location.

A flash of black darts in and out of my peripheral vision. My head jerks to the side and front, trying to catch a glimpse. To find the smattering of black within the green forest.

I weave the horse faster like a barrel racer in and out of the thick trees.

Thunder groans into a cracking, sharp bark, in time with a white flash of lightning.

“For the love of ….”

My breath shudders out. She’s mercifully stopped, waiting for me at the cave’s yawning black mouth.

Dark Manifestations

Bella

Henry pulls the lantern off my saddle and lights it.

His dark blue eyes turn heavenward; his face illuminated in the lightning flash.

“Honestly Bella. Could you have picked a worse night?” Henry’s eyes are weary and for once, he is unable to disguise his frustration with me.

I shrug. “I know, you’re probably right, but we’re here now.” I sling my pack across my chest. “Ready?”

“No,” but he follows me into the dark. “From what Jeremy tells me, Stygian usually sends a few laborers out with the staff. He must be desperate to keep this dig quiet.”

“I expect he is. He won’t want the Smithsonian or any other institution, beating him to the dirt. Assuming you aren’t giving away any of our state-secrets to your friend there. What’s his name?”

“Oliver. Oliver Goodwin, if you must know.”

“I have a friend named Oliver as well.”

“Is that so?” His face appears disgruntled somehow. ”What is that strange look?”

I shrug, feeling the heat to my collar, and thankful for once, for the dark.

“Is this Oliver sweet on you, then?”

I pick up my pace, weaving through the rubble as best I can with the dim light.

Henry prompts apparently giving up the fight. “I also wrote to my old professor.”

Henry then passes me and stomps forward to take the lead. Stalagmites and stalactites surround us like stony teeth jutting from the cave’s mouth.

We carefully pick our way through them. “How far did Mr. Abner say it was?”

“He said we’d come to an underground pool. That was where they found the hand.”

The sound of dripping water intensifies with every step. I take deep breaths as my chest tightens.

It’s nothing. It’s your imagination. Be sensible.

The black before us and the black behind press in like a suffocating cloth against my mouth. Only the lantern holds my panic at bay. I feel the sweat pop on my brow.

“Henry?”

The dark is a slipknot; tightening, tightening on my windpipe, choking me.

“I hear the water. It isn’t far now.” Henry turns, highlighting my face with the lantern. “Bella! Are you ill?”

I jam my eyes together and the panic blossoms; the hair framing my face goes damp. “I—I.”

“What? What is it? We need to go back. We’ll go see father.”

“I’m fine.”

His voice turns steely. “You are not
fine
. Unless you consider wax-corpse to be a normal color. At least tell me your symptoms. I am not going a step further until you do. I can be just as immovable as you.” The lantern dims.

The light flickers and my heart pumps madly in time with its guttering flame. “Oh laws, Henry. Do. Not. Let it go out.”

“Claustrophobia,” he diagnoses, his blue-green eyes searching my face. “Yes.”

“You didn’t foresee this as a problem?”

“The other digs I visited were not in caves.”

“Ah.” He shakes his head. “Dance with me.”

“What? Are you mad?” My hands are shaking.

Henry’s arms wrap around me, pulling me flush against his hard body. I revel in every glorious inch of him. The panic lessens the tiniest degree.

I shake my head. “I’m so sorry, Henry. I—I am hindering the dig, just as Stygian said I would.”

“Drowning.”

“What? What’re you talking about?”

“I’m afraid of drowning. Have nightmares about it.”

My voice cracks, “Claustrophobia
feels
like drowning. On dry land.”

His hand balls the back of my shirt into a taut knot. The motion somehow feels desperate.

Something is rising inside me. Something I’ve always been able to control. Desire warms every inch of my body and I’m sweating, for a different reason. It blossoms as a hot-house flower in my mind, wrapping and deliciously warming every inch of my body.

I am so very grateful for the dark; my face is so hot I fear I shall combust.

I step on his foot. “I told you. I’m hopeless.”

“There is no such word in my vernacular.” He eases our bodies together in a slow, tight circle. Our boots crunch against the stones on the cave floor.

It’s the closest I’ve ever come to a dance. My brain is recoiling. I never allow anyone too close—permit them this power over me.

The pain of rebuffs…is intolerable. Better to avoid attachment altogether.

The metallic taste of fear floods my mouth, which I’m certain is from the heart-box melting and back flowing up my throat in a last-ditch warning.

Henry bows his head; his fine, straight lips inches from mine. “Do you remember when you commented on father’s particular attention to Violet at the ball?”

My mind flicks to the pages of my etiquette rule book, which father insisted I memorize. “Yes. It’s considered excessively attentive for a man to dance with his wife more than once at a social outing.”

His lips part. “I, would dance, each and every dance, with you—if you would have me.”

“I—” The panic is gone. The claustrophobia is gone. All that remains is Henry. His breath blows warm against my lips.

I feel something rough on my back, and realize I am flush against the cave wall.

His lips brush mine, softly, waiting.

They’re soft and hard and irresistible.

I press back harder. His lips part mine. My breath comes in quick, harsh gasps as I open my mouth, searching, exploring the velvet of his tongue.

His breath is as loud as mine, and somewhere my analytical mind worries we’ll use up all the air with our panting. I laugh against his lips.

“What?” He doesn’t remove his kisses; they just trail down my neck, toward my collarbone.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t think.”

I take his face in my hands and every stroke of his lips sends the hot sting of longing from my neck, down my back to my core.

His tongue traces my lower lip and I see the word
self-control
ignite and catch fire. Burning the rules.

My hands race down the front of his shirt.
I want him
. It’s dangerous and wrong
and
…and my heart pounds against my ribcage, silencing my protests.

Now, I understand how it happened.
How I happened. How my mother made her grave, selfish mistake.

To bed a Holmes, out of wedlock—this resulted in me in her belly and the loss of her most precious commodity…her chastity.

And to her leaving me, alone.

I must find the will to stop. History shall not repeat with me.

“Arabella—I—” Henry whispers.

The lantern goes out. Footsteps and shouts are everywhere. I feel a club strike my hand, then Henry’s back slide through my fingers as he crumples away from me in the dark.

A Stable of Choices

“Henry!”

He doesn’t answer. Hands seize my shoulders, jamming my back into the rock, trying to bash my skull.

The man’s whiskey-laden breath is on my forehead; my mind estimates the height of his crotch.

My knee shoots up, connecting with soft flesh.

The body halves, his hair brushing my hand on the way down.

My mind whirrs.
You are no match for him. Use a weapon.

My hands slips down to the knife anchored at my heel. I whip it out, flip it upside down, and grasp his hair with my left. I crash the knife’s butt down, smashing it against his head. His hair drops away as he hits the stone.

“Ah!”

“Get off!” Henry.

My mind estimates the lantern’s last location. If it hasn’t been kicked.

I drop to my knees, hand on the wall for perspective, and crawl along the stone floor. Keeping my left hand anchored to the wall, my right hand scrabbles in the dark, searching.

My stomach contracts. The dark. The dark.

Henry
. I no longer hear him.

I will away the invisible fingers squeezing the air from my lungs and suck in deep breaths.

My fingers finally brush metal, and I pull the light to me. I strike a match and the room illuminates. I sigh in relief at its yellow glow.

My attacker lies sprawled on the floor.

The second man straddles Henry, pinning his chest. The assailant’s eyes shoot to me.

Mistake. Always focus on the opponent.

Henry’s fist collides with the man’s jaw with a sickening crunch. I spring forward and kick, my boot connecting with the man’s kidney at the same instant Henry clocks his other side. Unhinging his jaw.

He howls in pain and crumples off Henry, scurrying backward.

Henry leaps up, and flings himself after him.

The man pulls a gun, halting Henry in mid-lunge.

“Just give me ‘im, and no one will get ‘urt.” He gestures to the man on the cave floor.

I’m searching, searching.

Black ink tattoo? Large ring?

My attacker struggles to his feet, woozily walking to his partner, steadying himself on the wall.

“Now you two—”

My eyes tighten. I aim and launch the knife. A yawning gash spews red as the blade slashes the man’s forearm but doesn’t imbed.

He gasps as the pistol and knife clatter onto the rocks.

His fingers splay and shudder and I spy the heavy, circular ring, now covered in blood.

The ring is emblazoned with an
R-
.

Henry dives, sliding for the pistol.

Both men dart into the tunnel, and are instantly swallowed by the dark.

Henry looks up from the floor, cocking his head.

“Next time—we listen
to me.
Next time I say it is too dangerous. It is too bloody dangerous!”

###

The Hudson Shoreline

Henry

The steamship is just over the hill; we decided not to dig at first light—feeling the need to report the attack. We debated returning last night, but the trek through the dark woods seemed unadvisable.

Arabella has been quiet since waking. I know this might start trouble. She’s anxious. But I must have this information.

I stare at her hands; her digits are white, clutching the saddle horn.

“Bella. Please tell me the contents of the inventory sheet.”

She stares straight ahead. “A fortnight prior, Newton brought me a bone.”

I laugh. “Normal behavior for any dog. I expect he was quite proud of himself.”

Her fingers turn bluish-white as she winds the reins tighter. “I believe it to be a portion of a long bone. Of a human. It was broken at one end. The epiphysis was slanted.”

I swallow. A human. “Where did he get it?”

“I told him, ‘Find’, and…he led me to the sausage plant.”

“What has this to do with Stygian?”

“I was called to his office, and quite innocently saw a paper with the sausage company’s letterhead.”

“Conjecture, at best.” But that didn’t stop the tingle on my scalp.

“I am aware. Stygian has made at least two trips to the plant that I am aware of.” She shivers, biting her lip. “The inventory list contained orders for 375 pounds of potash and 50 pounds of arsenic.”

My mind searches the chemistry. “I’m sorry. I’m not following. Perhaps I should…”

She grimaces. “My memory fails me. I suspect those two ingredients could dissolve bone, Henry.”

Revelation presses heavy on my chest. “You think he’s boiling evidence in the sausage vats? You think he was involved with the first party’s disappearance somehow?”

“Possibly. I need more proof. And I need to confirm my assumption. I’m not going to bloody get it here. But I didn’t dare turn down this assignment.”

“Does father know any of this?”

“No, and he must not. Henry, he would never allow me in such danger.”

The all-consuming fear returns making my mouth dry. “And I should, Bella?”

“Henry… I cannot be with you.”

Pain like a sucker-punch contracts my gut, followed by a flare of anger. “Who said I wanted you to?”

Her voice is caustic. “Yes, I know you have a veritable stable of choices. So why choose me, Henry?”

My teeth grind together. I should be reasonable, I should not speak. Everything about her makes me lose my reserve. Decorum commits suicide within five feet of her.

“I—I
don’t want a stable. I don’t know whether to throttle you or hold you down till you kiss me again. I won’t tell him Bella. You have my word.”

My insides ache. Like withdrawal from an addiction.

A picture of Holmes in one of his cocaine-ravaged periods pops to my mind. My mind draws perfect recall of the leather case where he kept the syringe, ‘
in a seven percent solution
’ father used to say, with a face full of disapproval.

What did Arabella do as a child, when his mind went on holiday?

I see the girl from my childhood, in her room, dogs all over her bed
.
Alone
.

A lump rises in my throat along with my father’s voice in my head, “She doesn’t know how to love properly.”

Fine, then I shall teach her.

I turn to look at her. Her stare is cold, but there’s a vulnerable quiver in her lips.

We’ve reached the embankment. Below, the docked steamer awaits.

“Henry! Come quickly!” Father bellows.