Devil in My Bed (28 page)

Aidan gazed down at the little pile of inconsequential items. A crumpled lacy handkercheif, a button, a small commonplace stone—

No. A chord of memory sounded in his mind. Not so commonplace. He remembered spying the oddly shaped stone in the park and later dropping it into Madeleine’s cupped palm with some jest about giving her his heart.

Which she’d kept for years, apparently.

She kept my heart.

“Mellie—” His voice was rough, harsh. Melody drew back, her little face clouding. Aidan took a breath, reaching deeply for patience. “Mellie,” he asked in a gentler tone, “where did you find those pretty presents?”

She blinked at him for a long moment. Then, apparently reassured that he wasn’t upset with her, she stuck her hands back into her pinafore pockets. “In the magic cupboard.”

Aidan felt his patience begin to splinter and cast a helpless look at Colin.

Colin knelt quickly beside the chair. “Cap’n Melody, you found the buried treasure!”

She blinked and her little rosebud lips opened in amazement. “I did?”

Colin nodded. “You discovered Captain Jack’s secret hoard! Where did you find it?”

Melody giggled. “I told you. The magic cupboard. Like that one.” She lifted a chubby little hand and pointed to the wall of Aldrich’s room.

Aidan and Colin turned to look at the wall, frowning. Then they stared at each other in consternation.

“The dumbwaiter!”

Aidan put Melody down to stand on the floor and followed Colin from the room at a run. They rushed down the hall and back to Aidan’s room. He crossed the room in great long strides and yanked at the door to the dumbwaiter.

It was empty. Aidan sagged back in disappointment. “There’s nothing here.”

Colin leaned forward to peer at some dark scratches on the old wood. “Is that . . . writing?”

Aidan ducked his head into the dumbwaiter, then emerged swearing. Snatching a candleholder off the mantel, he bent to catch the wick on the coals. Then, armed with light, he wedged his wide shoulders back into the dumbwaiter. The black marks rendered themselves into smeared letters.

Please . . . help . . . locked in . . . (smudge)

Locked where?

Danger . . . Lord Whit (smudge) . . . prisoner . . .

Lord Whit—? Lord Whittaker? That blowhard? What the hell did Madeleine have to do with Lord Whittaker?

Madeleine’s voice in his mind, urgent and frightened. I married a monster.

In the attic outside the drying room, Wilhelm pressed his eye to the spy hole and savored the view as Madeleine wept in despair. She stood on the far side of the rickety, old wardrobe as if she thought herself hidden from him, but he had a clear view of her blotchy, tear-streaked profile. Such pain. Such unbearable anguish.

How very lovely.

Her raw sobs were muffled and distorted by the large stone room, but he treasured them just the same.

Where was her valiant bravado now? Where were her high moral standards and her condemnation?

He had read once that a person could die of lack of water within a few days. Should he point that fact out to Madeleine, or did she perhaps already know? He’d wager that if he opened this door right now, she would offer him anything and everything if only he would allow her to go back to Whittaker Hall with him to be his obedient wife once more.

“Sorry, pretty bird,” he whispered to the door. “I need the horse-faced heiress more than I need you.”

Besides, he was enjoying it all vastly.

Speaking of entertainment, he wondered how the desolate Blankenship was faring. Ah, so many victims, so little time.

“Good-bye for now, my dying darling,” he said to the door with a tender caress. “I think it’s time to torture your lover a little bit more.”

Humming a sprightly tune very quietly to himself, he trotted down the attic stairs. At the bottom, he turned the latch with a slow, practiced hand and peered through the tiny crack he created.

No one was in sight but he could see that Blankenship’s door was open and he could hear voices in the rooms—agitated, urgent voices. Hmm. Some new developments, perhaps?

Curious, he opened the door slightly wider, still alert to any sign of occupancy in the hall. No, it was all clear.

With a self-satisfied smile, he slipped through the door and shut it silently behind him. Now he was simply a member idly touring the club. He was not on his own floor, which might be unusual, but certainly broke no rules.

Keeping out of sight of anyone in Blankenship’s rooms, he moved to lean against the wall outside the door and listened.

“Colin, get in there and see if you can read where she’s being held prisoner!”

What? Read what, where?

“Damn that Whittaker. Why don’t we just find him and beat it out of him?”

Bloody hell! How do they know?

“We can thrash him later. I just want to find Madeleine. Where does this dumbwaiter shaft lead?”

“To the cellar I suppose. Perhaps up to the attic?”

That thrice-damned bitch! That lying, twist-tongued whore! Wilhelm’s fury overwhelmed him. He was going to beat that beautiful, betraying face into a gory pulp!

He turned to race back into the attic—

Behind him stood the child with one finger in her mouth, watching him with giant blue eyes.

In her prison cell, Madeleine swiped at her eyes with both hands. Another sob lodged in her throat but she dared not give in to it.

She’d sensed Wilhelm at the door just as she’d been leaning into the dumbwaiter shaft, pondering her odds of successfully climbing down it. Worried that he would figure it out, she’d decided to divert him with a few false tears.

Unfortunately, the simmering panic that lived just below the edge of her self-control had stowed away on those tears, shortly making them very real. She’d been unable to stop, unable to quiet the harsh sobs that ripped from her throat, unable to keep her eyes from leaking, no matter how tightly she’d clenched them shut.

By the time the tears had run their course, she’d realized he was gone once more.

I hope you enjoyed that, you warped hyena, may you rot in hell!

As for herself, she felt weakened, not cleansed by the outburst. However, there was no time for weakness. She opened the dumbwaiter doors once again.

At a strange new sound, she whirled to face the door, her heart in her throat. He was on his way back.

She heard him climbing the stairs, his footsteps heavy and furious, with no care for secrecy. She knew that angry tread, had heard it in her nightmares both sleeping and waking.

She knew what it meant for her.

He had found her out!

Instinctively, she backed away from the door, though there was nowhere to go. Escape was impossible.

The only other exit from this room lay behind her, a window leap that would leave her shattered on the cobbles below. Closing her eyes, she drew in a breath. God help her if she didn’t prefer such a quick and cowardly end!

Wilhelm was at the door now, working the key in the lock. The cold glass was at her back, her palms pressed to it. The wave of rage from the other side of the door made her blood run cold as the lock somehow found the temerity to defy Wilhelm’s key. A howl of fury and the heavy thud of a fist on the wood made her lurch backward, hard.

With a startling crack, the glass behind her gave way.

Aidan didn’t know what made him turn. Had he heard something? A small noise behind him—a scuffling sound, a quiet click? There was no one in sight.

He relaxed and turned back to Colin, who had his head and shoulders packed tightly into the dumbwaiter with a lighted candle. Perhaps not the safest position to be in.

“I can’t make it out.” Colin withdrew his head, only slightly singed about the eyebrows. “I say we simply search up and down the shaft. She’s somewhere in Brown’s. It shouldn’t take long to find her.”

Aidan blinked. “Of course. Let’s go.”

Colin peered past him. “Wait. Where’s Melody?”

“Aldrich has her still.”

Colin shook his head. “I thought she was right behind us.”

A chill went through Aidan. That noise behind him—it could have come from the hall. “I have a very bad feeling . . .”

Quickly he ran for Aldrich’s room, Colin close behind him. They burst in to see the old fellow tottering about, tidying up Melody’s tea party. He looked up and blinked at their intrusion. “Did you find your lady already?”

“Is Melody here?”

Aldrich frowned. “Indeed she is not. She left with you.”

Colin’s brow creased with worry. “Do you think she’s hiding again?”

“No. Come with me.”

They ran back to just outside Aidan’s room. “I heard something just a moment ago—” He bent to pick something off the floor. It was the heart-shaped stone. It had fallen just outside the concealed door to the attic.

“Melody couldn’t have opened that,” Colin protested. “The catch is far too high.”

Aidan felt sick. “Whittaker!”

In moments they were in the attic, staring at a strange sort of prison cell they had never realized was there.

One with no prisoner in it. There was only the dumbwaiter shaft gaping wide and an open window, hanging off one broken hinge.

Aidan pushed Colin toward the dumbwaiter without a word, then ran for the window. Colin peered down the shaft but there was nothing to see but the faint gleam of light from where the similar aperture remained open down in Aidan’s room partially blocked by the dumbwaiter cart.

He turned just in time to see Aidan leap out of the window.

Climbing from the farthest window onto the portion of the roof where she’d stood with Aidan—was that only four days ago?—was a more daunting journey than she’d realized. Unfortunately for her, she had a very good imagination. It supplied her with all sorts of gory images of her body smashed to the ground far below.

She shut them off with an act of will and grimly made her way down the ledge. Without Aidan’s strong guiding hand, and somewhat worse for wear after two days without food, the brief stretch of stone ledge lengthened into what seemed like miles.

I’m going to fall. I shall fall and I shall die and Aidan will never know how much I love him.

It was possible that that was the least of her current worries, yet the thought repeated itself, a strangely steadying litany that guided her shaky steps and weak knees along the wall to the place where the sloped mansard roof met the dormered window which Aidan had showed her before.

Wilhelm was behind her now. She could hear him cursing bitterly at her. Her slipper slithered on the damp, pigeon-dirtied stone. For an instant, she felt her weight shift in the wrong direction, giving in to the pull of vertigo.

Falling!

She wrenched herself back into balance, pressing herself into the eaves of the dormered window.

Right. Her worry for Aidan was a worthwhile subject, but perhaps one better contemplated at another time.

At last she attained the roof. Slithering up over the railing ungracefully onto her belly, she stood on shaky legs and ran across the roof to the next building.

It was impossible. The club next door was so much larger and more imposing that the wall was at least a full storey higher!

Turning, she gazed over the roof at the next building. It was the same. She would never make that climb, even without her current weakened state. Panic began to claw at her throat. He was so close behind her!

Then she heard a childish cry cut the air.

Melody?

Wilhelm appeared over the edge of the roof and he wasn’t alone. He had a small, struggling burden under one arm. Within Madeleine, every dormant maternal instinct went on full alert.

No more running. She turned to fight for her child.

Aidan peered over the edge of the roof. “Look! Madeleine’s all right!”

Colin had both feet on the ledge, both hands white-knuckled on the vertical gutter pipe and both eyes tightly shut. “No. No looking. Ever.”

“Does the bastard have Melody? I can’t see her.” Colin looked. “That’s quite a woman you have there, Aidan.”

Indeed. Madeleine actually had Whittaker on the retreat. White-hot fury made her dark eyes burn in her pale face. Then Whittaker turned, and Aidan saw Melody dangling limply from his grip. Madeleine and Melody—everything he had in the world. Father or not, they were everything to him. His family. He prepared to spring over the edge of the roof. Time to kill the bastard.

Colin held him back. “No!” he hissed. “Look at where he’s standing. If you jump him, you might both go over the edge. Melody, too!”

Colin was right. Aidan subsided with a silent snarl. “We need to get him away from the edge and closer to us. We need to signal Madeleine somehow—”

Abruptly he grabbed Colin and pulled roughly at his surcoat.

“Ack!” Colin clutched at the gutter in panic. “Are you trying to kill me?” he whispered in panic.

Aidan looked at the apple in his hand, the one he’d just plucked from Colin’s pocket. “I’ve found a signal.”

Madeleine saw the shiny green apple come from nowhere and roll across the roof behind Wilhelm, who faced her with Melody in his grip.

He turned at the rolling sound, but the apple had already tumbled into the gutter, out of sight. It didn’t matter. Madeleine knew precisely where it had come from.

Moving quickly, she picked up a fallen tree branch from last night’s storm. I must distract him. She brandished her wooden weapon and advanced slowly on Wilhelm. “Put her down,” she snarled.

He snarled back, his evil eyes hot with rage. “Drop that branch, and I’ll think about killing her quickly.

Keep making trouble for me, and I’ll make her scream for days.”

The threat was ugly. Madeleine felt nauseated at the way Melody, pale and limp with terror, hung so helpless and tiny in the monster’s grasp.

I’m so sorry, mousie.

Stay focused.

She had a job to do. She took a half-hearted swipe at Wilhelm with the branch. She didn’t get anywhere near him, but he stepped back slightly in response.

She waved the branch again. “I’m going to survive this, you madman, and when I do, I’m going to tell the world what you’ve done! You’ll be running for your life and hiding as well. There won’t be a cave in all of England where you’ll be safe!”