Lord Cavendish Returns (11 page)

“
Let’s see if we can relight your candle, and then we can
search the -,” she hated to even say the word ‘crypt’. It reminded
her of the dearly departed who lay at rest there. She sighed
instead, and pointed with a trembling hand, “- down there, to see
if there is another candle anywhere.”

Rather
than move to follow her though, Harper turned to face the door.
“Hello? Can anyone hear me? Hello?” His heavy fists thumped the
door over and over but only silence greeted their ears.

Arrabella moved to join him and placed the candle at their
feet while they both banged on the door. They thumped for several
more minutes until the sides of their hands began to ache and they
were forced to accept defeat. Whoever had closed the door had long
gone, or was in a part of the church that rendered them unable to
hear the cacophony he and Arrabella had made.

“
What do we do now?” Arrabella whispered solemnly.

“
Think logically,” he replied matter-of-factly. “We need to
use the candle light we have left to see if we can find something
we can use to keep the light going.”

They
both made their way carefully down the narrow steps and found the
short stub of Harper’s candle, but the wick had been snapped off. A
quick search of the narrow space revealed half of a candle located
on a table beneath the stairs, but that was it.

“
We have to keep this for when yours runs out,” Harper
declared firmly, and lifted it out of her reach when she tried to
light it.

“
What?”

He
studied her eyes for a minute and was confident that she was
keeping control of her panic reasonably well, but hated to tell her
anyway. “We have no idea how long we are going to be here,
Arrabella, so we have to preserve the light we have left. We don’t
need two lights going at the same time.”

Arrabella sniffed and tried to ignore the tears in her eyes.
She wanted to argue with him but, in all honesty, she couldn’t
because she knew he was right. “How can you be so calm about this?”
she whispered.

“
Because I spend a lot of time in the dark and have grown
accustomed to it,” he replied dryly.

“
How? I mean, what do you do that requires you to be in the
dark so much?”

“
I work for a government organisation called the Star Elite. I
was drafted into it when I left the army and have been working for
them ever since,” he sighed.

He
watched Arrabella gather her skirts around her and perch carefully
on the edge of one of the steps. As soon as she was settled, he
took a seat beside her.

“
You are a spy?”

Harper
smiled and heaved a sigh. He wanted to say no but in reality he
probably was; he certainly spent a lot of time watching people and
gathering information on their activities. “It is one of many
things I do, but spying on people to gather information is one of
them. Unfortunately, the people I spy on do most of their misdeeds
under the cover of darkness so I seem to have spent most of the
last several years working in the night and sleeping during the
day.”

So many
questions tumbled through her that she wasn’t sure where to
start.

“
Can I ask you something?” Harper asked gently before she
could say anything else.

“
Of course.”

“
Can I hold you? I am really not cold, but you are shivering.”
He ran a hand down the cold bare flesh of her arm closest to him.
“You will freeze down here with just that shawl.”

Arrabella wasn’t quite sure what to do. She wanted him to but
then she didn’t want to encourage him or lead him to believe that
he could take whatever advantages of her he wanted now that they
were confined in the crypt.

“
I am perfectly respectable, I promise,” he assured her. He
made no attempt to touch her while he waited for her agreement but,
as soon as she nodded, he eased sideways on the step and drew her
against his chest. She sighed and settled against him when his
warmth encased her.

“
I don’t like the dark,” she whispered several moments later
when the fragile flame on the candle began to waver and
die.

He
immediately bent down and lit the last candle.

“
How long do you think we are going to be down here for?”
Although she was quite happy to spend the next several hours
wrapped in his arms, she was horribly aware that the cleaning
ladies weren’t due in until lunchtime tomorrow. The prospect of
spending all that time in the dark was something that she hated to
even contemplate, even with Harper right beside her.

“
I don’t know,” he sighed. “Do you know of any tunnels like
the ones that are reported to be in Hambley Wood
church?”

Arrabella peered around the rows of crypts that lined each
wall and shook her head. “I don’t think so, not here. The old
vicarage is further away, you see, and the graveyard goes all the
way around the church.”

“
So there is only the one doorway,” Harper sighed. “To get
out, we are going to have to break it down because the hinges are
on the outside.” He mentally ran through the contents of the chests
they had searched through earlier for anything they could use to
try to break the lock, but they hadn’t contained anything other
than books and papers.

“
We may as well use the rest of the light to try to get out,”
she whispered but made no attempt to move and was grateful that he
didn’t try to get up either.

“
Arrabella,” Harper whispered and waited until she tipped her
head back to look up at him. “I am sorry I got you into this
mess.”

She
lifted her head and turned to frown at him. “This is more my fault
than yours. I should have left a note on the door or something, or
even locked the main door to the church behind us so that nobody
could get in.”

When she
didn’t immediately settle back down against him, he tightened his
arms and waited patiently until she relaxed and rested her head on
his shoulder. It was second nature for him to place a tender kiss
on her forehead and rest his cheek against the silken curls on the
top of her head.

He
couldn’t see through the darkness but she closed her eyes and
savoured the tender gesture. Something warm around her heart began
to blossom and unfurl and, in that moment, she knew that something
deep inside her had changed forever. It didn’t frighten her or
weaken her in any way, it made her considerably stronger and braver
than ever before. The stoic calmness about his man; his compassion;
his gentleness and consideration toward her was something she knew
was second nature to him. He might work with the War Office and
fight heaven only knew who, but it wasn’t who he was, it was what
he did. She didn’t know how she knew that she would always be safe
with him, she just did.

A
warning voice reminded her that she had known him less than a day
and shouldn’t make assumptions about his character, but she quickly
blanked it out. The fact that he had taken care of her, and saved
her from a nasty fall down the stairs, was more than enough of a
reason for her not to question his respectability.

Respectability. She felt a cold wave of dread settle over her
as the word registered on her conscience. Until now, she hadn’t
really stopped to consider what she was doing.

“
What’s wrong?” He felt her tense and wondered if she had seen
a spider or something. He tipped his head so that he could look
into her face. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He demanded when she
didn’t answer him.

She
couldn’t tell him; but then she couldn’t keep it from him either.
When he continued to stare down at her, she knew that she had to
tell him. “The ladies who clean the church are due in mid-morning
tomorrow.”

“
Please tell me that they will go into the ante
room.”

“
Yes, they will,” Arrabella sighed. “But that isn’t the
problem.”

Harper
lifted his brows and waited. When she tried to push away from his
chest he merely tightened his arms and held her still. She had
finally stopped shivering and had relaxed completely against him.
Unless someone opened the door at the top of the stairs, neither of
them were going to move anywhere for the time being.

“
The cleaning ladies won’t let us out?” He murmured teasingly
with a wry smile. Right at that moment he didn’t care if they
didn’t.

“
Yes they will, but they are going to get a shock when they
open the door, aren’t they? Not only at finding us down here, where
there should only be dead people, but upon learning that we have
been down here all night in the dark, alone, together.”

Harper
grasped the direction of her thoughts and nodded wisely. If he was
honest he was not bothered one iota what the cleaning ladies, or
anyone else for that matter, thought. “Alone,” he added carefully
when she didn’t say anything else.

“
God, I am never going to live the scandal down,” she grumbled
but didn’t attempt to push away from him again. “I am not telling
you because I expect anything from you. You know, by way of a
declaration or anything. I hope you know that,” she added after
several moments of silence.

This
time Harper grinned openly. “Let’s face it when we get to it,”
Harper whispered. “We may have died of frostbite by then anyway.”
He sighed and sensed that she wasn’t convinced. He didn’t know how
he knew she wasn’t reassured, he just did. That thought made him
frown and he studied the stonework opposite for several long
moments.

How was
it that he had gone all of his life and never really felt all that
close to another person, yet within a matter of a few hours of
having met Arrabella, he felt as though he had known her all of his
life? So well in fact that he was confident that he knew what she
was thinking when she was thinking it. He usually found most women
irritating after a while and couldn’t wait to take his leave of
them. With Arrabella, however, he knew that he could spend the rest
of his life with her and still want to talk to her some
more.

“
What’s your earliest memory?”

“
Pardon?”

“
What’s your earliest memory?” He peered down at her. “Mine is
of hauling Joseph out of the pond at the end of the garden. It
hadn’t been touched for several years and was green and disgusting.
He came out covered in gunge and stank to high heaven. Mother
wouldn’t let him into the house and he had to suffer the indignity
of standing over a bucket in the yard while mother threw cloths at
him.”

He
savoured her melodic laugh. It was such a joyous sound, and so
infectious that he immediately began to regale her with tales of
his youthful exploits that had her in fits of laughter and left him
smiling in fond remembrance.

When the
laughter faded, he sighed and kissed the top of her head again. “I
don’t care what the ladies think in the morning,” he murmured
softly. “If any of them criticise you for what has happened they
shall have me to answer to.”

He
wasn’t sure whether she had heard him and listened to her steady
breathing for a moment. Her soft sigh confirmed what he suspected;
she had fallen asleep. Although the hour must still be early, fear
and anxiety had clearly gotten the better of her overwrought
emotions.

With
nothing else to do, and nobody to talk to now, he rested his head
against the wall behind him and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER
FIVE

He must
have fallen asleep too because he was stiff and sore when the cold
draught that tickled his cheeks eventually woke him up. He opened
his eyes and cursed at the darkness that encased them, only to
frown when he noticed the thin sliver of light that lit the steps
above them. The small hairs on the back of his neck stood on end
when he realised that something was wrong – seriously wrong. He
slowly turned his head, and wished that he had remembered to bring
his gun when he realised that the door was now open.

“
Harper?”

He
glanced down at her and almost groaned at the sight of her
slumberous blue eyes. It took a lot of effort not to dip his head
and kiss her but, right now, he had to keep his mind on the job and
get them out of there while they had the chance.

He
nodded toward the door. “Something odd is going on,” he kept his
voice low for fear of frightening her. “It appears that we are
free.”

He
couldn’t believe that he had left them vulnerable by actually
falling asleep, but it was evident that while they had been dozing,
someone had unlocked the door. Whether they had known Harper and
Arrabella were down in the crypt or not had yet to be discovered.
He strongly suspected that their entrapment was not a mistake, but
had been a deliberate move by somebody only why they chose to
release them again several hours later heaven only knew.

“
What?” Arrabella snapped out of the wonderfully contented
feeling that enfolded her and stared at the shaft of light above
their heads with a mixture of horror and relief. “Who?
When?”

He
couldn’t lie to her. “I have no idea,” he growled. “But I am damned
sure that I am going to find out.”

Arrabella pushed awkwardly to her feet and waited for Harper
to stand up. “Why didn’t they call down to us, Harper?”