Chapter 20

20

U rgent knocking woke Roland and Grace just before dawn.

A tad bleary, Roland collected his wits as he looked around the unfamiliar room. His wife’s room. They had seldom slept separately early in their marriage, and he was happy that, with Grace’s secret come to light, she was willing to go back to sharing a bed—even if she had started to snore now that her pregnancy was progressing.

Grace was slower to rise, so Roland found his banyan and opened the bedroom door a crack to find Elsie and Briggs just on the other side. “What is it?” he asked them, sensing a problem.

Briggs answered, “Miss Fenton is in a state. Your young girl, Willa, seems to be missing.”

That woke Roland up entirely, and he could hear Grace struggle to a sitting position in bed. “What! Willa is missing?”

“Perhaps my lord would like to return through the adjoining door so we can… handle a discussion without bothering my lady?” Briggs suggested dryly.

“My lady is already bothered,” Grace said loudly, struggling with the tangle of the sheets.

Briggs did not let out a long suffering sigh but his face clearly implied it, and he mouthed the word ‘propriety’ at Roland over Elsie’s head.

“Yes, of course,” Roland said, giving Elsie an apologetic glance as he closed the door in her face. Elsie would give him a few seconds to depart before she opened it again, and he wasted no time in moving over to his room.

Briggs strode in and began selecting new clothing, disregarding the outfit lying on the bed. One that must have been previously selected for a different sort of day's events, Roland assumed. The clothes Briggs pulled now were among the older ones Roland owned.

“I imagine you will at some point be rooting around in the darker, less kept holes of the castle,” Briggs remarked in explanation. “No sense ruining a nice coat.”

“Perhaps I should wear the burgundy coat then,” Roland suggested, and Briggs gave him a look out of the corner of his eye. “No?”

“No.”

Fortunately, Briggs did not slap Roland’s hands away when Roland addressed his own hair to expedite his toilette. Small victories, he supposed.

“Miss Fenton and Wes are in the drawing room, waiting to speak with you when you are ready. I also took the liberty of rousing Sir Nathaniel. He should be joining you there to assist in anything. Hopefully you do not object.”

“You did exactly as I would want,” Roland assured his valet, as Briggs dusted off his shoulders and smoothed the fall of his coat. “Tell my lady where we will be.”

When Briggs stepped away, indicating he was finished, Roland did not wait for Grace. He strode directly to the drawing room, opening the door to find his brother had beaten him there. Thorne was ruffling the hair of the miserable-looking Wes, clearly offering some comfort.

Roland took to a knee in front of the lad to put their faces closer to being on the level. “You must tell Thorne and me everything you can about where Willa might have gone, Wes. I promise we will not be angry with you.”

Somewhat amusingly, Wes looked to Thorne for confirmation, but Roland did not take umbrage. Though the Sprouts were technically his wards, they seemed to have adopted Thorne as the nearest thing they had to a parental figure. They had flourished under Thorne’s attention in Brighton, and he would not begrudge them that. Thorne was able to do many things that Roland could not.

“The noises in the castle,” Wes began haltingly. “Lady Grace told us a story about how she had tricked her brother. Lord Felix was stealin’ her ink pots, you see, an’ getting her in trouble with the governess. Lord Felix said she was cracked, losing them herself. But she hid beneath her bed an’ caught him doing it.”

Roland nodded to show the boy he understood so far, and the boy wrung his hands a bit before continuing. “Willa wanted to see who was making the noises at night. She said it was prolly just the ol’ duke, and she was going to go hide in your da’s old room to see. The latch doesn’t catch real good. It’ll open if you push it right.”

“And what happened then?” Roland asked Wes gently.

“I—I didn’t go with her. I still thought it might be a monster… or maybe ‘the Snatcher.’” Wes brought his fist to his mouth, biting his knuckle in a valiant effort to keep from crying in front of Roland. “If I wasn’t such a scaredy-cat I would know. Maybe there was a snatcher, an’ he took her cause I wasn’t… I wasn’t there.”

Understanding, Roland directed his gaze at Thorne instead to let the boy keep his dignity as Wes broke off. Thorne pulled Wes towards him, and the boy threw his arms around Thorne’s waist, distraught.

“We’ve already checked the late Lord Percy’s room, top tae bottom,” Miss Fenton said when Roland looked inquiringly at her. “Where the lass has got tae, I dinnae ken.”

“Easy, lad,” Thorne said, resting his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Your sister might have gone wandering. Maybe she got turned around and she fell asleep in another part of the castle. Don’t worry. We’ll go looking for her.”

“I’m—I’m sorry… Lord Percy,” the boy sobbed against Thorne’s chest. “You’re mad at me and it—it’s my fault.”

“No, Wes, I am not mad at you, I do not think you are a coward, and it is most certainly not your fault Willa is lost,” Roland told him, getting to his feet and gripping the boy’s shoulder in sympathy. “We will find her and there will be no harm done. I promise.”

Relieved, Wes turned in Thorne’s grasp and hugged Roland so hard that he let out a surprised oof . Miss Fenton looked alarmed, and went to pull Wes away from Roland, but he stopped her. “It is all right,” he said, stroking the boy’s back.

The Sprouts had always been reserved around him, but Roland enjoyed being demonstrative with his brother and Grace. The boy’s trust moved him, and for a moment, he caught a small glimpse of what it might be like someday to hug the child growing in Grace’s belly.

It was into this tableau that Grace finally caught up with them. Seeing poor Wes’ state, her face went through a sea-change of emotions from alarmed to affectionate sympathy.

“Willa was inspired by your story to catch the late-night wanderer,” he explained to her over Wes’ head, lifting one arm to let her approach.

Grace plucked Wes away from Roland, giving him a squeeze and drying his face. “Well, then let us go find her. The others have started looking already. Shall you join them?”

Wes and Miss Fenton left, heading in the direction of the guest rooms, and Roland could hear people calling Willa’s name. As Thorne, Grace and Roland made to join them, they were surprised when Mrs Yardley exited the duchess’ suite, looking upset.

“My lord, Countess, I just discovered something that bears investigation,” she said, gripping her keyring so tightly her fingers were white where the skin pulled taut. “The duchess’ suite was unlocked. It is not the first time I have found it so, but before, I thought it had been a simple mistake, or perhaps a faulty mechanism.”

Quickly, they hurried towards the door and the suite of rooms that adjoined the duke’s. Throwing open the door, she pointed at a wall where one of the wall tapestries hung askew.

Thorne crossed the room in three steps, carefully pulling back the edge of the tapestry, revealing the edge of a dark hole behind it. “Mrs Yardley, did you know there was a passage in the wall back here?”

“I most certainly did not,” the housekeeper said, affronted. “If I had, it would have been boarded up immediately!”

Roland moved to one side of the tapestry, reaching up to lift the hanging rod off its hook. Thorne lifted the other, and they carefully set the large wall hanging aside, revealing a wood-framed hatchway—one large enough to accommodate a man.

Turning to Grace, Roland asked her, “Would you please get Withers?” and then he lit one of the tapers in the room, bringing it over to have a better look. Thorne stepped back, allowing Roland to hold the candle inside.

It was cold, and the candle’s flame flickered as a soft breeze disturbed the air in the passageway.

“Wherever this leads,” Roland said grimly as two sets of footfalls sounded behind him, “it finds its way to someplace outside.”

“It leads past the outer wall.” Withers sounded unhappy, and turning, Roland found the old butler standing there, jowls quivering with some emotion. “This was the secret tunnel built centuries ago to allow the Percy family to flee a siege. It has been boarded up for nearly fifty years—I ordered it done myself.”

Roland touched the rough wood framing the hole, which indeed bore a few gouges and splinters from nails, hammered in and removed. And then he stuck his head back inside, seeing the remnants of the old wooden planks, set aside. “Well, clearly, it is boarded up no longer.”

Thorne clenched his fists, turning to Roland. “If Willa lost her way inside the castle, it is only a matter of time before we find her. But if she went outside…”

She could freeze.

Almost as one, the men turned away from the dark hole in the wall. Thorne exited the room without a word. He didn’t need to speak. Roland knew he would be bundling up, then heading to the stable. It was exactly what he planned to do himself.

“Grace,” Roland told her gently. “Find someone to dress warmly and check the passage. Thorne and I will go out to check the place around the exit. I must assume that even if she had been underdressed, she could have returned before she got too cold in the passageway.”

Covering her mouth with one hand, Grace nodded. “Yes, of course.”

Thanks to Briggs’ planning, Roland managed to beat Thorne to the stable, though not by much. The horses were already saddled and waiting, ears pricking as they picked up Roland’s emotional state.

Anger would make Arion fractious. Letting himself feel the anger, however, was more productive than feeling the fear that lay just beneath it.

Thorne arrived before Roland could grow too impatient, and the men swung into their saddles, setting out at a fast trot into the biting cold. Withers had told them where the tunnel opened—near a yew tree and deliberately planted bracken that acted almost like a small labyrinth of living concealment. Behind it, the tunnel entrance had been turned upon itself. One would have to deliberately traverse a path around the nuisance plants and face the tunnel head-on to spot it.

But someone had. Roland could see, even as they approached, how the winter-withered bracken fronds lying on the ground had been crushed into the mud.

“Someone on horseback has been here, and recently,” Thorne said with a grimace. He hopped down from Horse, examining the area. “Hoof prints coming and going. A man’s boots.” Thorne poked his head into the tunnel from this end.

“Any sign of Willa?”

“Not in the dirt. But all that might mean is that he was carrying her. The hoofprints came in from the direction of the Lion Bridge. But they’re leaving to the east. If he was carrying a child, he would likely avoid the main crossing.”

Arion flattened his ears, and Roland forced himself to relax, thinking. “I would be ready to wager that we have discovered our ‘rat problem’ and that somehow Willa and our intruder crossed paths. Perhaps he was forced to take unexpected action as a result of it. He could have killed her in that case, but he did not.”

“Aye. We are missing a part of the equation. He has entered Alnwick Castle more than once, but stolen nothing that has been noticed? This person is no common thief, which begs the question… what has he been looking for? A child to ransom—or even snatch for another nefarious purpose—it does not tally well if he has been in and out of the castle more than once.”

“I do not know, but we need to go back. Our intruder knew this tunnel existed,” Roland said, gritting his teeth, “and I am entertaining a few unpleasant theories as to why Withers may have requested someone board up a tunnel nearly fifty years ago.”