Whispers at Midnight (41 page)

***

Amanda’s eyelids slipped down slowly as her
hand went limp against the arm of the chair. She was hearing the
warning voice again. This time it seemed to come from within her
head. A slight smile flickered on her lips. It was ridiculous that
a single glass of wine could make her so drowsy and delirious. But
she felt herself giving way to a euphoric lassitude, which was
strange, because she had really been too stimulated even to think
of sleep.

The gargoyle faces were all around her.
There were too many of them in this room. Too many, and all of them
calling her name. Perhaps Jubal Wicklow had been a little mad.
Perhaps he had killed Evelyn in a fit of jealousy. Poisoned her
perhaps, and buried her where she would never be found. She felt a
gush of air cold as ice sweep the room. It startled her but her
body made no response. Emma did, though. And Trudy too. They were
looking at each other as if they had been suddenly stricken by
fear. But it lasted only a moment.

Seeing Emma across the room, Amanda tried to
speak but found her tongue had grown thick and heavy. No words
came. The only sound was the clinking of her glass as it shattered
on the hardwood floor.

The bumping roused her a little. She was
being dragged roughly through the hall. She saw that great terrible
face of the Turkish King glaring down as her eyes flickered open
for a moment. Someone was talking from far away. She thought at
first it might be Ezra, but how could it be? His neck had been
wrung. The voice was so strange and distant . . . it must be the
king . . . telling her she should never have come to Wicklow.

Amanda drifted in and out of consciousness
and then she was being bumped and bruised as she was hauled down a
long set of steps.

“Hush, I tell you,” the voice was saying.
“She won’t be hurt. He just means to make her sign the papers. When
Wicklow is his, he will let her go.”

A musty smell of dampness flooded her
nostrils. The air was cool but thick, almost as if she had been
eased into a dark pool of water and was sinking slowly toward the
bottomless depths. She moaned helplessly as she sank further into
that silent, encompassing blackness.

***

The scuffling sound was dreadfully near.
Amanda stiffened with fright as her eyes opened to a terrible
darkness. She had the feeling of being in a large room, but there
could be none at Wicklow where the floor was made of rough-hewn
stone such as that on which she lay. She scrambled to her feet, but
not without feeling the ache of those bruises acquired as she was
dragged to this dark prison.

Her head throbbed and her thoughts were like
so many loose feathers floating in shadows. She could not even be
sure who her captors had been, nor could she begin to fathom where
they had taken her. Gradually, as she leaned her weight against the
cold stone wall and rubbed her temples, some fragments of her
memory came together.

When Wicklow is his, he will let her
go.
The voices shouted in her mind. Ezra had said, “When
Wicklow is mine.” But whom did he mean? She rubbed her head. She
had been drugged, but by whom? Emma and Trudy? Or were they victims
just as she was? Were they too somewhere in this dark room and
still unconscious?

“Emma. Trudy,” she cried hoarsely. “Are you
there?”

Her words echoed and came back in an eerie
mocking way. She tried again and got no answer. Her throat was
parched and aching. Hours must have passed since she had been put
in this place. She felt a pang of hunger gnawing at her stomach.
Someone would come soon. Someone who wanted her to sign a paper.
She had not been left to die. She must not even think that. If she
did, she would go mad all alone in this black, black room.

She sank back to the floor. There was
nothing to do but wait. Wait until her jailer came and let her out.
Gardner, she supposed. He had not gone back to Williamsburg. He had
only ridden out of sight and had returned when he saw Ryne gone.
But how had he gotten Emma and Trudy to help him if that was how it
had happened? She tried to remember those last moments in the
drawing room. Trudy had poured the sherry.

A dreadful thought crept into Amanda’s mind.
If Trudy had drugged her, she would have done it for Ryne, not
Gardner. Ryne, Ryne, Ryne. His name came swirling through her brain
and she heard herself saying in a faint, faint voice, “Please don’t
let it be Ryne.”

She must have sat there another hour slumped
against the wall, thinking that someone would come at any moment.
By the end of that time her alarm had overcome all the assurances
she could make, and she conceded it was possible no one would come.
A crushing fear twisted around her heart. There was no end to it,
no end to the fear that she had been left to die. But she would
not. She would escape. She must not let the horrible darkness make
her a docile caged animal who sat awaiting doom.

Cautiously at first, and then with a frantic
urgency, she felt her way around the stone walls, searching them
with her hands for an opening or a step that might lead out. She
counted the corners of the room as she felt the joining of the
stones that formed each one. The room was not nearly so large as
she had imagined. It was square, or closely so, and the fourth
corner she came to confirmed her fear that the door through which
she must have been carried was made of the same stone as the walls
and impossible to distinguish in the hostile darkness.

It was also in that corner that she found
the bones, the small skull, and what must have been the powdery
remnants of a dress. She knew it was Evelyn Wicklow because the
heart pendant was there and even in the darkness she could
recognize the shape. Evelyn Wicklow had died in this dungeon, and
Amanda Fairfax would too.

Convulsive sobs shook her body as she clawed
at the rough wall. Tears streamed hot and burning down her cheeks.
The foul odor, the stickiness of the floor, the darkness like a wet
black cloth smothering the air from her lungs seemed to surge and
grow and consume her. She screamed and screamed until her voice
died away in faint agony. This room was her tomb, her coffin. She
would never be found. She would die here beside Evelyn Wicklow’s
bones, not even knowing with certainty who had decided her
death.

The echo of her screams ceased but the
silence did not return. Above her she could hear the flapping of
wings and the shrill animal shrieks of bats disturbed by her voice.
One swooped close to her face in the darkness and she shrank down
to the floor to avoid it. Were they carnivores? Would they eat her
flesh when she was dead? Amanda sobbed anew at the horror of it.
There must be dozens of them up there clinging to the ceiling, and
each cry she made stirred them to flight.

But suddenly her fear turned to faint hope.
She was driving the bats out, and that meant that somewhere above
was an opening through which they came and went.

She shouted once and then listened for the
sound of the shrieks and flapping wings as the bats took flight.
After several more shouts she was able to tell by the sounds the
direction of their flight. The opening was not far from where she
stood, but high above her reach. She did not lose another moment
searching for a foothold on the rough stone. She might never leave
this room, certainly not alive, unless she could reach that
opening.

It was a treacherous gamble, and she fell
more than once, each time starting over until her hands were
scraped raw from the ordeal. But at last she was above the wall of
stone and could feel the opening. It was at that point that she
first realized she was deep underground, imprisoned in a shored-up
cave that might have become her grave.

Half an hour later she had squirmed and
struggled through the narrow tunnel and could see ahead a little
golden leaf of light that meant freedom. If only Evelyn Wicklow
could have climbed up, she might have gotten out too.

That last part of the tunnel was the
narrowest, and it was only by willing herself through that she was
able to squeeze out of what was little more than a slit in the
rocks. Amanda collapsed there, struggling for breath, dirty, her
gown torn and covered with filth, her face smeared with sweat and
soil, shoes lost, and hands swollen and bleeding.

The sun was setting, and had she been a few
minutes later in her escape there would have been no ray of light
to let her know she was nearing the end of that dreadful tunnel.
Amanda looked around to get her bearings. The Wicklow cemetery was
not far away. She could see the rising tombstones silhouetted
against the blood-red sky. Among them was a sinister figure of a
man wielding a shovel and digging beneath Jubal Wicklow’s
stone.

Her horror was no less than when she had
found herself imprisoned beneath the earth. That man could be no
other than her captor, and though she could not tell who he was
with the light fast fading away, she knew that she was still in
great danger if he should see her. She shrank back to the rocks and
crawled away. Her hope was to reach the stables and saddle a horse
without being seen. Only if she could reach Williamsburg and tell
her story to the authorities could she hope to be safe.

Amanda paused at the stable door, afraid now
of everyone. For who could be harmless if you did not know your
enemy? From within she heard the nicker of a horse and the sound of
harness being hooked up.

A voice she knew and had hoped to hear was
speaking.

“Go, man. Go to Gardner. You know what to
say. Do not lose a minute. Time is short. Now, go. Go!” he
shouted.

“Aye, sir,” Groom’s voice came back. “You
can depend on me.”

Amanda ran for the cover of the trees beside
the stable and then slipped into the hedge garden behind Wicklow. A
moment later the door was thrust open and the wagon rattled out.
Groom snapping his whip over the horses’ heads and Gussie beside
him holding tightly to the seat. The horses threw up a cloud of
dust as they gained speed and clattered down the lane.

Amanda ran into the darkness and a few
minutes later found herself inside Wicklow, almost without knowing
it. They were all involved, all intent on her death. She was
conscious of a chill that ran along her spine. What a diabolical
plan they had set against her. With a sudden whimpering cry she ran
to the stairs, not knowing where she went or why. But a groan from
the drawing room stopped her abruptly. She turned back, and with
sickening terror gripping her, peered inside.

“Emma!” she shouted. The woman was bound and
gagged and tied to a chair pushed into a corner of the room. “Who
did this?” she asked as she hurried to Emma’s side. Hastily Amanda
pulled the gag from the struggling woman’s mouth.

“Untie my hands,” Emma croaked. “Hurry.”

Amanda fought with those knots, but her sore
hands were slow to loosen the tight bonds. She was just pulling the
last of them free when a heavy step sounded behind her and Ryne’s
voice came in a growl.

“Stop!” he demanded. He had a pistol leveled
at the women and the hammer already pulled back in a threat of
death.

Emma screamed and cowered behind the chair.
The look on Ryne’s face was pure black rage.

“No, Ryne, don’t!” Amanda cried as stark,
glittering fear shone in her eyes.

“My God.” His livid face paled as he saw
that the dirty, ragged creature before him was Amanda. “You look
like you’ve been buried alive.” The pistol dropped to his side. A
snarl issued from Emma Jones’s teeth as she suddenly hurled her
weight into Amanda. The unexpected blow sent Amanda crashing into
Ryne and sent him reeling backward. The pistol he held fired and
the bullet buried itself in a table behind Amanda.

The moment was all the leeway Emma Jones
needed to dart past him. An instant later the heavy front door
slammed behind her.

“Emma, come back!” Amanda cried
desperately.

“Let her go,” came Ryne’s caressing voice.
He moved to Amanda where she lay on the floor. His arms closed
gently around her. “It doesn’t matter now.”

Amanda fell against him, holding, clinging,
loving as she gave way to exhaustion. She was only just beginning
to understand a little of what had happened. It didn’t matter much.
Nothing did but that her world had come back alive and Ryne was
here where he ought always to be, locked in her arms.

She awoke before daylight. The rose bedroom
was lit with a dozen candles. Ryne had not wanted her to wake up in
darkness. He was there beside her where he had waited all through
the night. Gussie was in the room too, fussing around and cleaning,
but she waited until Amanda’s eyes were fully open to start her
grumbling.

“Never liked the woman,” she mumbled.
“Neither one of them. Should have kept a closer eye. You too.” She
pointed an accusing finger at Ryne.

He nodded but his eyes never left Amanda’s
face. A loving glow had settled in them and Amanda hoped never to
see it leave. A smile trembled over her lips as she reached for his
hands.

“It was . . .”

“Cecil Baldwin. He wanted the gold and
Wicklow. Most of all he wanted this.” Ryne held the ruby pendant so
that the candlelight caught and glowed in the facets. The beauty of
the stone was breathtaking. Amanda could almost understand why
Cecil had acted as he did. But how could he have known the Heart of
Happiness was still at Wicklow?

“Why? He was wealthy.”

“Wealthy yes, but obsessed. He told us his
history. The name given him at his birth in England was John Cecil
Mott. Later he took his mother’s name and came to Virginia.”

“John,” Amanda said. “Jubal wrote of a man
named John. He wanted to kill him but Evelyn would not allow
it.”

“A pity she did not let him. John Mott,
Cecil’s father, was the man who killed Jubal, and he was probably
responsible for Evelyn’s death too. Cecil was only a lad when his
father came here to challenge Jubal Wicklow. John and Jubal had
quarreled over who owned the ruby. Later there was more bad blood
between them when Jubal eloped with John’s fiancée—Evelyn.”