The Crimson Shard (20 page)

“For the good,” said Amelia firmly.

“How can we know that, miss?” asked Sunni. “We aren’t meant to be in this time. I’m afraid we’ll change things that aren’t supposed to change. What if you are meant to live your life one way, but because you’ve met us, you decide to live it differently?”

Amelia smiled. “But that
is
life, Sunniva! Each day brings unforeseen events that move us in one direction or another.”

“Y — yes. But what if you are meant to marry Mr. Martingale, and suddenly you fall for Mr. Catterwall instead, because you’ve been thrown together today. And what if that means the children you are
supposed
to have never exist in the future?”

Amelia’s face blazed red. “Neither of those gentlemen would ever marry me.”

Sunni wasn’t so sure about that, given the way Martingale smiled at Amelia.

“I am not certain our lives are predestined, Sunniva. Though it is interesting to wonder about,” she said. “And I am still happy, even if just for today.”

Sunni smiled politely. A sudden breeze rushed in, sending the shrubbery wild and pelting them with rain.

“Oh!” Amelia covered her head with her shawl and began scurrying toward the mansion. “Come inside now.”

With a sigh, Sunni followed. She rounded the shrubbery’s natural screen and saw Amelia darting up the steps. In that moment, she got the queasy feeling that she was being watched. She whirled around, checking all the lonely paths and squinting into the misty sheets of rain obscuring the far end of the garden. The fields beyond were deserted.

She sensed something lurking in the hedges and trees. Whoever it was — whatever it was — felt close by.

“Sunniva!”

Startled, Sunni ran, knocking her skirts into hedges and dragging the hem through puddles.

“Sunniva!” Amelia called again from the mansion door. “You must come in from the rain.”

When Sunni rushed in, panting, Amelia stared at her. “What is it? What happened?”

“I thought I saw something,” Sunni gasped, accepting the dry cloth Amelia handed her. “But it was nothing.”

Amelia guided Sunni to the drawing room, where Blaise was quietly sketching a fireplace with twin carved lions on either side. When they entered, he smiled feebly. But seeing her wan face, he asked, “What’s up?”

“I just got caught in the rain,” she answered. “You all right?”

“Better than I was,” he said.

Amelia looked over Blaise’s shoulder at his sketch.

“You are gifted at drawing,” she said. “Come, I will show you the picture gallery if you are interested.”

She led them through stately rooms, which were stiff and formal and looked like no one ever spent time in them. Finally she threw open a door and said, “Our grandfather collected art and antiquities. He filled the library with his statues and urns, and this room with paintings. They come from Florence and Flanders and everywhere in between.”

The huge room was covered from eye level to ceiling with paintings, large and small. They were hung so close to each other, it was almost hard to make out where one ended and the next began. Landscapes were next to saints, and portraits were stacked above still lifes.

The rain-soaked light from the tall windows barely lit many of the paintings, and some were completely in shadow.

“There are so many,” said Sunni, turning in a circle, trying to take them all in.

“The light is too poor,” said Amelia, moving to the door after a few minutes. “Come and look at them properly when there is sunshine.”

She and Sunni stopped when Blaise did not follow.

“Come on, Blaise,” called Sunni.

Reluctantly, he followed, but he kept looking back over one shoulder.

Blaise sat sketching by the cluster of candles in his room. It was late, and the house was utterly silent.

He and Sunni had stayed up after dinner, learning a card game from Amelia, while Henry attended to business with farmers on the estate.

“Amelia must be bored out of her skull,” said Blaise to Sunni as they climbed up to their bedrooms. “Knocking around this mausoleum all on her own.”

“She told me how happy she is that we’re here,” said Sunni.

“That’s good —” he started to say, but noticed her doleful expression. “Oh, right, maybe not.”

“We’re not supposed to be here. We have got to get home,” she whispered as she entered her bedroom. “’Night, Blaise.”

“’Night.” Blaise hadn’t told her what was bugging him about the picture gallery. He didn’t want to say anything till he’d checked it out himself — and he must be wrong, anyway.

At some point he told himself he ought to go to bed, but once he was under the covers, his mind went over and over everything that had happened. When he finally dragged his thoughts away from the painful subject of being lost in the wrong century, they strayed to another place he couldn’t avoid for much longer: the gallery.

He threw the covers off and, candlestick in hand, ventured into the corridor. Its oppressive blackness made him reconsider for a second, but the itch in his brain was too insistent. He set off for the grand double staircase, trying not to think of the portraits staring down at him in the dark.

On the third step, he heard something. A knock, a rattle, it was hard to tell where it came from. He waited for more, but nothing came, so he continued to the ground floor. Padding carefully in his stockinged feet, Blaise headed for the central door that led toward the picture gallery. With a click, it was open and another black corridor was ahead of him.

A sigh of air blew toward him and made the candle flicker.

He tiptoed to the second door on the right. It opened soundlessly, and he padded forward, relieved that he had found the right room.

As he moved around, the candle picked out details in the shadowy paintings: a saint’s hand, a pomegranate bursting open, a hunting dog running in a forest.

The painting he needed to see was in a far corner, near the ceiling. He held the candle up as high as he could, but even standing on a chair, he could not make its light reach far enough.

He stepped down and sighed at his own stupidity for not waiting till morning.

Another breath of air came from behind him, sending his flame dancing wildly. Blaise turned around, but before he could see anything, the candle went out and a hand was clamped hard over his mouth.

A
tremendous explosion blasted through Sunni’s head, and she jerked awake. Lights were flickering past her door, visible though the gaps, and one stopped outside.

“Sunniva?” Amelia knocked frantically, then pushed inside. “Are you there?”

“What’s going on?”

“I do not know! Stay in here and lock your door.” Amelia slammed the door shut and vanished down the corridor.

“Wait, where’s Blaise? Is he all right?” Sunni felt in the dark for her shawl, wrapped it around her shoulders, and moved carefully to the door.

Slipping outside, she joined Anne, who was passing with a lantern, and they hurried downstairs together. Loud voices and lights emanated from the gallery, where a man’s voice was yelling something about a “villainous snake.”

Everyone in the household was gathered in a semicircle, candles aloft, looking at something on the ground. Sunni pushed toward the front and gaped at the sight of Henry Featherstone, in a dressing gown, aiming a musket at Blaise and a strange man, who were crouched together against the wall like cornered spiders.

Blaise’s nightshirt and awkward bare legs were bright against the man’s dark clothing, but brighter still was the glint of the dagger at her friend’s throat.

Sunni cowered behind the others, her heart in her mouth.

“Villainous snake!” Henry shouted again. “No housebreaker shall walk free from here!”

The man scraped the blade against Blaise’s skin and rasped, “That is what I offer. I leaves with this boy in a carriage, or I gives him a bloody necklace.”

Henry did not seem to be breathing. Only a fly sitting on the barrel of the musket would have noticed it lining up with the burglar’s right shoulder. Three seconds later, it blasted a shilling’s width of flesh off the man and the picture gallery had a crater in its wall. A dusting of plaster bits covered the floor where Henry had already fired into the ceiling.

The housebreaker dropped his dagger and groaned. Blaise broke away, and the assembled household descended upon them. Two footmen dragged the bleeding man into a corner, while Sunni and Amelia helped Blaise to his feet.

Slowly, Henry lowered the musket, but the fire didn’t leave his eyes. “Where is the other snake?”

“He got away, sir,” said one of the footmen. “Across the fields at the back.”

The housebreaker let out a wheezing laugh that chilled Sunni to the bone.

Henry slung the musket over his shoulder and retrieved the dagger from the floor. With it, he set about digging the spent musket ball from the wall. “Get rope, Rowley, and secure this miscreant. Bind the wound and carry him to the library. I shall want him alive long enough to tell his tale.” He curled his lip. “And to die on the gallows.”

The maidservants drew in their breath. Henry spun around and said, “Enough gawking. Back to your beds and lock yourselves in. And not a word about this to another soul! If I hear of anyone talking, he or she shall be chased out of this house.”

He nodded at wide-eyed Amelia. “Take yourself off to bed, Sister, and I shall check your door before I retire. Make certain you have locked it well. Sunniva, Blaise, you come with me.”

A short time later, Henry sat in his wingback chair with the musket balanced across his knees, candles illuminating the statues around him. Hodge was stationed at the library door with a pistol in case the injured criminal made a run for it, but the man was tied to a wooden chair, a red bloom spreading over the cloth that bound his shoulder. His head lolled back as he stared at Blaise and Sunni with bloodshot eyes.

Sunni could barely stop shivering under his gaze.

“Nearly had you,” the housebreaker croaked. “But others shall succeed.”

“I gave you no permission to speak,” Henry thundered.

“It matters not. I am as good as dead now.”

“Do you recognize this man?” Henry asked Sunni and Blaise.

“No, sir,” said Blaise. Sunni could only shake her head.

“I knows you both,” the housebreaker said. “You was pointed out at Smythe’s theater. There’s a reward on your heads.”

“Offered by whom?” Henry demanded.

“The man that wants them.”

“Throgmorton?”

“Aye.” The burglar aimed a black-toothed grimace at Sunni and Blaise. “What has you told him? The truth?”

Henry glanced curiously at them, and Sunni’s stomach lurched.

“Yes,” she whispered.

The man went on, spittle gathering at the sides of his mouth. “That you run away from the Academy?” He leaned forward as much as the ropes would allow. “With them two nightsneaks? Where are they now, eh? Abandoned you, did they? They will be hunted down as well!”

Sunni couldn’t breathe. She recoiled even though the man was several feet away from her.

“They ain’t saying much,” the housebreaker hissed at Henry.

“You have said enough — and none of it new to me. Rowley!” Henry shouted. The coachman hurried into the room. “You and Hodge take this scoundrel out to the stables and keep armed watch over him till morning, when I shall turn him in myself.”

The housebreaker gasped in pain as the two men untied his restraints and marched him into the passageway.

“I shall see you out,” said Henry, following them.

The housebreaker could be heard puffing, “I ain’t alone. Others will take the boy and girl. Tonight. Or tomorrow.” His voice faded down the corridor. “Who knows?”

When they were alone, Sunni put her head down between her knees and tried to breathe normally.

Blaise laid a quaking hand on her back. “Are you going to be sick?”

“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “H-he nearly cut your throat. I don’t know what I would’ve done if —”

Blaise quickly withdrew his hand when Henry strode back in.

He shook the library shutters and said, “How did these culprits enter? The windows and doors were locked.”

“Maybe they had a skeleton key,” Blaise said.

“Perhaps.” Henry checked the shutters again and said, “There is a weakness somewhere in this house, and I will root it out. This house will be fortified against their cunning.”

“Did the thief say anything else to you, sir?” Blaise asked.

“Nothing you had not already told us.”

He caught sight of Sunni’s drawn face when she sat up and wiped her clammy brow. “Are you ill, Sunniva?”

“Just a bit dizzy,” she said. “Must be the shock . . .”

“Yes, ’twas a shock.” Henry glared at Blaise. “What, pray tell, possessed you to wander about in the small hours of the night?”

Blaise crossed his arms tight over his nightshirt. “I couldn’t sleep. So I thought I would go downstairs and look at the paintings in the gallery.”

“By the light of a single flame?”

“I didn’t see much,” Blaise admitted. “He jumped me as soon as I got there.”

“You are extremely fortunate that I heard the commotion,” Henry said. “Barton, Kelley, and I will take it in turns to watch for intruders. Return to your beds now and lock your chamber doors.”