J
onas raced into the church and swung down onto the crypt steps. He’d paused at the inn to ask Edgar where Em was—faint hope—but Edgar had confirmed she was “taking a walk.”
He’d sworn and sent Edgar to fetch Thompson and Oscar from the forge and meet him at the church. There’d been no time for explanations; he’d left Edgar to it and pelted up the rise to the church. With Filing and Issy gone for the day, and Henry out walking, there was no help to be had from the rectory, and no time to summon Lucifer and his men.
With luck one of the locals who’d been in the tap would carry the news to the manor.
He slowed on the precipitous steps. The door to the crypt stood open, but within all was dark. He went down the last steps quietly; he was virtually at the bottom before he could confirm that the mausoleum door stood open. The faintest of faint glows came from within. Remembering that Em had to return the treasure to where it had been found, he slowed still more and cautiously, silently, approached the mausoleum.
Pausing at the top of the mausoleum steps, he listened intently. At first, nothing but aching silence reached his ears, then, faint and distant, but distinct, he heard muffled footsteps.
Not Em’s footsteps—a man’s.
Jonas silently flowed down the mausoleum steps, pausing on the last to scan the darkness—instantly seeing that the reason the lantern glow was so dim was that the source was approaching along one of the underground tunnels that gave off the mausoleum, leading back into the limestone ridge.
God—and presumably the villain—knew what lay beyond the tunnel.
The lantern bearer was nearing the mausoleum proper. Jonas stepped down to the rough floor and slipped into the dense shadows; choosing a large tomb, he crouched behind, looking around its corner at the tunnel entrance.
A man came striding out of the tunnel. He stepped clear of its mouth and looked up. Hadley! Jonas frowned. Was he the villain, or had he simply been curious and gone down to see…?
Then Hadley lifted the hand not holding the lantern, and Jonas saw a canvas sack—heard a telltale jingle.
He was looking at the villain who’d been pursuing the treasure, who’d attacked him, and stolen the twins away—then lured Em away.
Where was she? And the twins?
Hadley walked to the nearest large tomb and set the sack down on the flat lid. Placing the lantern alongside it, he opened the drawstring closing the sack, then tipped it up, spreading some of the contents on the tomb lid.
Gold and jewels winked in the lamplight.
Hadley’s smile was pure avarice. It remained in place as he scooped the items—the Colyton treasure—back into the sack and retied the drawstring. Then he picked up the lantern and, still smiling, headed for the steps.
Jonas slipped around the tomb behind which he was crouching, chose another close by the foot of the steps. He waited, listening to Hadley’s footsteps near, watching the lantern glow brighten.
At just the right moment he stood and swung into the narrow aisle—directly in Hadley’s path, blocking his way to the steps.
Startled, Hadley halted.
Jonas seized the sack and wrenched it from the artist’s grasp. “I’ll take that.”
Hadley came to life with a snarl. He lunged for the sack.
Jonas fended him off and flung the sack far behind him. It clattered against the end wall.
Reversing the direction of his arm, he plowed his fist toward Hadley’s gut. Hadley leapt back and used the lantern to push the blow aside.
Hadley lost his grip on the lantern; it fell, rolling away, the light flickering wildly. Regaining his balance, Jonas saw Hadley groping in his pocket, furiously tugging to free…a pistol?
He didn’t wait to find out, but launched himself at Hadley.
Hadley left off freeing his weapon to grapple with him. Gripping each other’s arms, they swung this way, then that, wrestling in the restricted area between the tombs.
Although Jonas was an inch or so taller, Hadley was heavier; neither had any real advantage as they lurched back and forth in the confined space. The tombs of long-dead Colytons battered them as they bounced between the unforgiving stone, neither able to gain the ascendancy.
Then he managed to free his right arm; he plowed his fist into Hadley’s jaw, the blow fueled by fury and escalating uncertainty over Em’s and the twins’ whereabouts, their safety, their well-being.
Hadley reeled back, weakening his hold on him. With a gasp, Hadley grabbed the chance, broke from his clutches, and rolled back and over a free-standing tomb. Before he could move, Hadley popped up on the other side, a pistol in his hand.
Jonas dived to the side, but felt the ball rip a fiery path across his upper left shoulder.
Hadley didn’t wait to check the damage; he flung the now useless pistol after Jonas, making him duck again, then raced around the tomb, heading for the spot where Jonas had flung the treasure.
Voices reached them from the crypt above. Hadley skidded to a halt.
“He must be down there.” Thompson’s bass rumble boomed down the mausoleum’s steps.
“So let’s go down and look, then.” Oscar’s reply was followed by heavy bootsteps on the stone stairs.
Jonas used one of the tombs to get back on his feet. “Quickly! Down here!” Edging backward, he put himself between Hadley and the tunnel from which he’d come.
Eyes wide, Hadley looked from him to the stone steps—the only way up, now blocked by the descending bulks of Oscar and Thompson.
Hadley glanced toward the treasure, out of sight at the far end of the mausoleum, then glanced over his shoulder—at the mouth of the second tunnel at the opposite end.
If he went after the treasure, he’d be trapped at that end of the mausoleum with Jonas, Oscar, and Thompson between him and all exits.
With a snarl of frustrated fury, Hadley seized the dropped lantern, still alight, whirled and fled—across the mausoleum and down the second tunnel.
Frowning, Jonas watched the light fade.
Coming down the steps with another lantern, Oscar had seen Hadley flee, too. Sweeping the lantern beam around the mausoleum, he located Jonas in the deepening gloom. “What’s up?”
Jonas wasn’t sure, but finding Em and the twins was his priority. He waved. “Give me that lantern. Do you have another?”
“Aye.” It was Thompson who answered, following his brother down the steps holding another lighted lantern high. “These are the last two, as it happens. There should be four—don’t know where the other two have got to.”
“Hadley—he’s our villain—just ran off with one lantern down that tunnel.” Jonas indicated the far tunnel with his head. “I think Em must have the other.” He hoped she did; he had a suspicion—more an impression—that she didn’t like being in absolute dark.
He turned to the tunnel behind him, playing the lantern light into its mouth. “Hadley came out of this tunnel, carrying the sack Em must have put the treasure—or at least some of it—in.” In a few succinct phrases, he outlined Hadley’s scheme, and what he believed Em had done in response. “I flung the sack against the wall back there—you could retrieve it and hold on to it.”
“Aye.” Thompson nodded his big head. “But you’re bleeding. Was that a shot we heard?”
Jonas flexed his shoulder, suppressed a wince. “Just a flesh wound. The pistol’s lying around the tombs somewhere—Hadley hasn’t got it, and I doubt he’s carrying a second.”
“So where do you think Miss Emily and those girls are?” Oscar asked.
Jonas walked to the tunnel he’d been studying. “I think Hadley’s left them somewhere down this tunnel.”
“Gawd! Hope they haven’t wandered off.” Oscar shuddered.
Jonas hoped so—prayed so—too. People got lost—forever—in the caves. “I’m going down to look, but you two stay here.” He looked to the other tunnel, the one down which Hadley had fled. “I don’t know where that tunnel leads, either, but I suspect Hadley is waiting for all of us to go after Em and the girls, letting him slip out behind us.”
“Well, he won’t do that.” Thompson settled his lantern on a tomb, his expression the epitome of belligerent. “But you take care down there, and give us a ‘hoy’ if you need help getting those ladies back out.”
“I will.” Jonas paused on the threshold of the tunnel. “If I need to go too deep”—if Em and the girls had wandered away—“I’ll come back and tell you first.”
The brothers mumbled agreement. Raising the lantern, Jonas strode into the tunnel.
It was longer than he’d hoped. He hurried as much as he dared, as fast as the unfamiliar terrain allowed. The pain in his shoulder made jogging unwise; he’d be no use to Em and the twins if he swooned.
Oscar’s and Thompson’s voices faded as he pressed deeper into the ridge. His mind ranged ahead, assessing the probabilities of what he might find. It had been years—decades—since he’d gone caving, and as the mausoleum had been shut for all those years, he’d never explored these tunnels, or the caves they most likely connected with.
One heartening discovery was the dearth of connecting passages; he didn’t have to wonder which way he needed to go.
Hurrying as fast as he was able, he prayed he wasn’t—wouldn’t be—too late.
T
hey’d heard a muffled bang in the distance, soft but distinct, and a long way away. Em didn’t want to think what it might have been. Hadley slamming the mausoleum door, sealing them inside?
She told herself not to think of such things, to concentrate on getting all three of them safely to the passage, and then back to the mausoleum. Jonas would find her note sometime that evening, and then he would come and free them.
All they had to do was reach the mausoleum and wait there.
All in absolute, utter, and complete darkness.
Don’t think about it.
She focused instead on the continuing, fractionally strengthening, brush of cool air past her face. More definite now, she had no difficulty using it to steer them, but their progress was still excruciatingly slow. The rocky and uneven floor was bad enough, but the slimy columns that they had to find by touch were worse. She often had to detour a considerable way to find space enough for all three of them to pass; entirely understandably, neither twin would let go, or even change their position at her sides.
Arms outstretched, the lantern swinging from one hand, she shuffled and stumbled along, the girls doing the same on either side. Regardless of her self-lecturing, the dark was so dense it felt like a physical weight pressing on her eyelids. She’d closed her eyes long ago; it was too disorientating looking into blackness dense enough to have one questioning whether one’s eyes still worked.
Despite telling herself that the faint breeze meant they really weren’t shut in there, that the dark was just dark, and there truly wasn’t anything else alive in the cavern, her fears were starting to build, swelling like a balloon in her chest, squeezing against her lungs, making it difficult to breathe.
But the twins were relying on her to lead them out of there; she had no time to swoon.
“Are there mice down here?” Bea whispered.
“I doubt it.” Em answered in as matter-of-fact a tone as she could muster. “No food, so no mice.”
“Oh.” Bea fell silent.
Gert piped up. “What about spiders?”
“Too damp.” Em certainly hoped so. She had enough fear to handle without such crawly creatures.
Suddenly the flow of air increased. She frowned; that should mean they were getting close to the passage entrance, but she thought they were still some distance away.
Could there be two passages?
She hadn’t seen another, yet…the gush of air coming toward her seemed…broader.
Halting, she forced herself to take stock. Eyes closed, concentrating on the flow of air across her cheeks, slowly she turned her head in an arc from left to right.
She—her senses—weren’t wrong. The air was now flowing to them from two different angles.
Two different passages.
Which was the one leading to the mausoleum and safety?
All that Jonas, and later Henry, had let fall about the massive, interconnected cave systems in the region, and how people got lost in them, never to be seen again, replayed in her mind.
Keeping her voice as unconcerned as she could, she asked, “Did either of you notice another passage or tunnel near the one from the mausoluem?”
“There was another opening,” Gert said. “Another passage like the one Mr. Jervis brought us down. It was to our left when we came into this place.”
Thanking heaven for observant children, Em nodded. “Good. So from this direction, the passage to the mausoleum is the one to our left.”
Making decisions about directions with one’s eyes closed was unnerving. Opening hers, she turned her face so the breeze from the wrong tunnel, the one to the right, was blowing directly in her face. That, she told herself, squinting into the dark, was the wrong direction.
She frowned, and squinted some more. Was it a trick of her eyes, or her mind, or were the walls inside the wrong passage starting to lighten? To become visible.
Out of the silence, echoing footsteps reached them.
Men’s bootsteps. Hadley? Or rescue?
Or both?
Her hyperacute senses detected two sets of footsteps coming toward them—the first and nearer pounding along, almost running, the other further away, quick strides hurrying, but not at the same clip as the first man.
The nearer man was approaching via the tunnel to the right, while the other, slightly slower man was coming from the mausoleum.
The only fact she could discern from the sound of the steps was that both men were wearing heeled boots, not the flat-soled work-boots laborers wore.
Hadley-Jervis-whoever-he-was had been wearing boots. Jonas always wore boots.
Ahead of them, still yards away but not as far as she’d thought, the end wall of the cavern to which they’d been heading grew more distinct, defined by the strengthening glows increasingly illuminating each tunnel.
Both men had lanterns.
One man was rescue and safety, the other was danger.
Which was which?
The twins stayed blessedly silent; she felt their grips tighten on her skirts.
In a burst of clarity, she realized that while she and the twins would be able to see the men clearly, the men wouldn’t immediately be able to see them. She and the girls were still far enough back from the tunnel mouths to be outside the immediate sweep of a lantern. The cavern about them seemed limitless, swallowing all light, yet with their eyes accustomed to the dark, they could now see clearly.
She scanned their immediate surroundings; several paces back, on their right, stood a series of the ubiquitous limestone columns. They were what had screened them from the airflow from the passage to the right until they’d stepped beyond them.
She glanced down at the twins, then shifted to gather one in the curve of each arm. She bent low. “Stay quiet,” she ordered in the barest whisper.
She steered them a few steps back and across behind the screening columns. “Let’s get down,” she breathed. She crouched, and they obediently sank down beside her, pressing close. Setting the lantern on the rocky floor before her, she draped her arms protectively over both girls. Head bent to theirs, she murmured, “I want you to let go of me, just in case I have to move.” She felt their fingers slowly, reluctantly, uncurl, releasing her skirts. “I need you to keep your faces down—don’t look up. Stay here, huddled down, unless I or Jonas call you out.”
The man in the right passage thundered toward them.
“No sound,” was the last thing she dared say.
Hadley burst into the cavern, breathing hard. He pulled up just inside, weaving, then held his lantern high and swept the light in a wide arc, peering deep into the cavern.
The light passed over their heads; Hadley’s attention was fixed far beyond them.
He muttered a curse, then raised his voice. “Emily!” His call was a forceful whisper, quite different from his earlier taunting.
When nothing but silence replied, he went on, “I’ve changed my mind. Come out and I’ll lead you to safety.”
Em smothered a derisive snort.
The second man was coming steadily closer; the nearer he came, the clearer his footsteps, the more certain she was that it was Jonas.
Safety. Protection. Security.
How he’d known to come looking for her down there, and so soon, she didn’t know; she could only be thankful that he had.
Under cover of the echoing footsteps, she breathed to the twins, “Stay down. Don’t move.”
Hadley could hear Jonas coming; still breathing in gulps, eyes wild, after one last searching look around the cavern, he turned to face the other passage.
A second passed, then he looked down at his lantern. He moved, keeping to the right of the mausoleum passage, then carefully set the lantern down, angling its beam at the entrance of the other passage.
To shine in Jonas’s eyes as he stepped into the cavern.
As Hadley straightened, Em saw his right hand slide from his pocket, saw light glint along a blade as, softfooted, he stepped back from the lantern and swiftly circled around the glow of light.
He passed within two feet of them.
She held her breath, but, his attention fixed on the passage from which Jonas would come, Hadley was no longer looking for them. He didn’t so much as glance their way as they cowered in the lee of the columns.
As he passed between her and the oncoming light, she more clearly saw the wicked-looking knife in his hand.
Jonas’s footsteps echoed, growing louder and louder.
Hadley swiftly continued until he stood to the left of the mausoleum passage, so when Jonas stepped into the cavern, he—Hadley—would be on the other side to the lighted lantern.
Jonas would look toward the lantern, and then…
Silently Em rose; picking up her spent lantern, she started to move, to glide around, circling without a sound until she stood two yards behind Hadley.
The light from Jonas’s lantern filled the mouth of the passage; he stood holding it aloft, directing light around the cavern, squinting against the glare from the other lantern.
He’d halted just inside the passage; poised to leap murderously forward, Hadley couldn’t yet pounce.
Then Jonas stepped into the cavern. “Em?”
Hadley moved.
“Hadley has a knife, Jonas! He’s this way.”
Hadley whirled, blinking furiously as he tried to see her, but he’d been looking into the light, and she was far enough away from the stationary lantern’s beam to be all but invisible.
Her muscles twitched, but she held her ground. As long as she didn’t move, he wouldn’t be able to see her.
Jonas had swung her way. Then Hadley moved sideways—Em heard Jonas curse as the light from his lantern washed over her.
Hadley’s eyes locked on her. With a snarl, he lunged for her—hand extended, fingers hooked to grab her.
Jonas flung his lantern at Hadley. It struck him on the back of the neck, the blow enough to make him stagger, then swing back to face Jonas—turning away from Em.
Jonas dove after the lantern. The blackguard wanted to use Em as a hostage—that’s why he’d raced back to the cavern.
He collided with Hadley and they went down; in the heat of the moment, he’d forgotten his shoulder wound, but a searing jolt of pain as he landed reminded him.
Hadley hadn’t forgotten the wound, nor Jonas’s head wound, either. His face contorted in a vicious snarl, he fought to put pressure on Jonas’s damaged shoulder, Jonas’s weight as well as all he could bring to bear.
Jonas gritted his teeth and clung to consciousness. The only way to ease the building pressure was to flip onto his back, putting his still-tender skull on the rock floor, simultaneously allowing Hadley the advantage of being on top.
An advantage Hadley immediately pressed, trying to strike downward with the knife clutched in his fist.
Jonas caught Hadley’s hand and fist, wrapped both his hands about them, and braced his arms as Hadley bore down.
His arms began to tremble.
Circling the shifting men, Em saw the quiver in Jonas’s arms.
Saw the blood on his shoulder, seeping into his coat around a nasty-looking tear.
Anger, red hot, erupted through her. Setting her lips, she hefted her until then useless lantern, weighed it, gauged her swing, then stepped forward and swung the heavy base at Hadley.
With a solid
thunk
, it connected with his skull.
He froze, then, easing back, dazedly shook his head.
Jonas dragged back one fist and plowed it into Hadley’s jaw.
The sharp crack echoed through the cavern; Hadley’s head snapped around, then his body slowly followed, eyes closing as he slid sideways to topple onto the rocky floor.
Off Jonas.
Em looked down at the result of their joint efforts—Hadley was well and truly unconscious—then she dropped the lantern and flung herself on her knees beside Jonas. “You’re bleeding!” She gently touched his shoulder. Her face paled. “Good God—did he actually shoot you?”
Turning her head, she sent a glare Hadley’s way. “Hadley, Jervis, whoever he is.”
“It’s just a flesh wound.” Sitting up, lips compressed, Jonas set her aside, then managed to get to his feet, along the way confiscating the knife that had fallen from Hadley’s hand. He pocketed the blade, then turned to face Em as she rose.
Felt anger, and more, erupt as the last minutes—especially the moment in which Hadley had lunged at her—replayed in his head. He met her bright eyes, felt fury blaze in his. “What the
devil
did you mean by coming here without me?”
She blinked, taken aback. “You must have read my note—I had to pay his ransom and rescue the twins.”
He nodded. “That much I comprehend. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t see fit to tell me even though you’d promised you would—when you
promised
you’d share any troubles. Remember that?” Planting his hands on his hips, he thrust his face close to hers, ignoring the throbbing ache in his shoulder. “And while we’re about it, what about minutes ago, when you deliberately called his attention to you?” He jabbed a finger at her nose. “And don’t try to tell me you didn’t know he had a knife!”
She’d backed one step, but his last comment, somewhat to his surprise, had her narrowing her eyes, spine stiffening as she abruptly stood her ground. “Don’t be a dolt. He was going to leap on you—with his knife! What did you expect me to do? Stand there and watch him stick you with it?”
He wasn’t going to let her use such an excuse. “What I
expected
—”
“Can we come out now?”
The plaintive voice floated out from the dark, effectively cutting through their mutual absorption. Both drew back, then exchanged a fraught look.
“Later,” Em said, voice low, eyes still narrow, lips still thin.
He nodded tersely. “Later.” That discussion wasn’t over, not by any means.
Em turned to where she’d left the twins. “Yes, it’s all right to come out now. You’re safe.”
She wasn’t sure she was, and was even less sure Jonas was, but with Hadley stretched out at her feet, her sisters indubitably were safe once more.