Chapter Nineteen

CHAPTER NINETEEN

DIANA NOVEMBER 1918

"You sure you want to do this?" Joshua asked.

Diana was very much sure that she did not want to do this. In fact, she could think of twenty things she'd rather be doing on the first Saturday of the half-term holiday than voluntarily walking into an enclosed space.

But she'd been desperate on Wednesday to distract Joshua from the scratches on her neck, and exploiting his interest in the hidden passages had been the first thing that came to mind. Not that he'd looked particularly deceived, but he'd allowed himself to be redirected. For the moment. She suspected it would come up again. Maybe later today, when they walked to his family's farmhouse to take tea.

So now the two of them stood in a third-floor storeroom holding industrial torches, a mostly empty school beneath them. Fifteen boys remained for the holiday: scholarship students or war orphans with no easy homes to retreat to. The masters had gone too, except for Joshua and Luther Weston. This morning Clarissa herself had joined Weston and Beth Willis in accompanying the left-behind boys on an expedition along Hadrian's Wall, leaving Diana and Joshua to their exploring.

It wasn't fair that Joshua looked even better in flannels and a hand-knit sweater than he did in a suit. Diana kept fingering the scarf tied around her neck and then dropping her hand hastily before Joshua could be reminded of the scratches. At least they were healing nicely.

She must have done it herself. It was what she'd said to Joshua and what she kept repeating to herself over and over.

Maybe soon she'd believe it.

"Well," Joshua said, "let's see how good my memory is. If I'm right, this is where Clarissa and I emerged all those years ago when she showed me the secret passage."

He and Diana had to move boxes of old agendas and pieces of worn-out desks and chairs to get to the passage's opening. No one had bothered to conceal it beyond the piles of junk—it was simply a low rectangle cut into the wall that levered open to reveal, not the matching servant's room next door, but a narrow corridor between the two rooms. It couldn't be much wider than Joshua's shoulders, and she saw him raise his eyebrows at the sight.

"The space was certainly much bigger when I was young," he noted, but his grin belied any hint of apprehension he might feel. "Good thing I've got you. If I get stuck, you'll have to find an ax or something."

You're putting a lot of faith in a woman whose last experience in an enclosed space left her paralyzed and choking. She would never tell Joshua that. She would never tell anyone that.

With considerable sarcasm, she retorted, "Yes, I can see myself explaining to Miss Somersby now: ‘No worries, just one of your masters is stuck inside the walls of your house, and I'm going to ax him free. You don't mind if I bring down a ceiling or two in the process, do you?'"

Joshua laughed and touched her hand with his. "I'll go first."

Although his hand had only rested on hers for a moment, it felt cold when he withdrew. She watched his strong, straight back moving carefully down the hidden passage and, with a quiet sigh, followed.

It wasn't so bad. Although narrow, the passageway was the same height as the rooms it was carved out of and was constructed of the same wood and plaster. Their torches shone brightly, and for some time Diana saw little but dust.

"I knew it." Joshua's satisfied voice floated back to her, and she moved up to where he'd stopped.

He leaned his back against the wall, allowing Diana to see past him to where a second passage angled off from the straight path they were on.

"That direction"—Joshua gestured with his torch to the straight path—"leads to the stairs that go down to the second-floor linen closet in today's staff corridor. That's the direction Clarissa brought me years ago. She didn't tell me where this other passage leads."

"Maybe she didn't know," Diana offered.

"Let's find out, shall we?"

In spite of how tight her entire body was held, Diana felt the first thrill of curiosity and wondered how much of that she was picking up from her companion. Either way, she said, "Let's."

Unlike the path they'd been on, the offshoot passage rambled in twists and turns until Diana had no idea where they were in the house. Still on the attic level, at least—until they reached a stone staircase so tightly wound she couldn't see more than two steps at a time.

Joshua continued to lead the way going down, but now Diana kept close enough that she kept bumping him with her torch. She was not about to let him out of her sight in this confined space. Already her blood pulsed so loudly that she was sure he could hear it. She thought maybe he had when he began to narrate what he could see. Since there was nothing to see but stone, it was less informative and more just comforting hearing his voice.

"It's odd, don't you think," Joshua said, "that the spiral stairs were constructed of stone when the passageways are more like regular corridors. Only smaller and hidden. Maybe Gideon Somersby had a thing for the medieval and wanted to put touches of the old house into the new one."

"Where no one could see it but him?"

"Exactly. Possessive. A very Victorian male thing to do."

The staircase ended in a vestibule-type space that was just big enough for Joshua and Diana to stand together. She took his torch and directed both lights onto the wall where he pressed and prodded until finding the right catch. Cautiously, he pushed the door open just enough to peer through.

They were definitely in the family section of the house—unless Clarissa outfitted her schoolmasters' bedrooms in rich velvet drapes and thick carpeting. Diana turned off the torches as Joshua eased the door wide enough for them to slip through.

It was not only empty, but had the impersonal air of a room long unused. Although everything was clean and dusted—Diana ran a finger along a carved end table—the single-size bed was unmade, the mattress shrouded in heavy linen. The heaviness of the décor had a masculine feel to it and, on a hunch, Diana crossed the room and opened the door on the opposite wall.

It gave onto a room nearly three times as large, with an enormous mahogany four-poster bed and a matching wardrobe. The bedding was fresh, and the array of things—books, slippers, bedrobe, brushes—were a dead giveaway: Clarissa Somersby's room. And before it had belonged to her—

"Gideon Somersby, the original owner." Joshua had followed the same train of thought. "A very Victorian male in every way, including the dressing room off the marital bedroom that he could sleep in when his wife didn't want him."

"Allowing him to use his own private staircase to access the servants' quarters," Diana finished. "What do you want to bet only the prettiest maids were assigned to that attic bedroom?"

"I'm feeling pretty glad that my female ancestors who worked here lived at the farm," Joshua answered, a little absently. He had taken a step into Clarissa's room but no farther.

Diana felt the same hesitation, but her curiosity had sparked with the realization that Clarissa Somersby had a direct—and private—route to the school side. Even if the other end of that passage didn't go to the medieval core, coming out in the attics would allow her to get to the infirmary and Diana's bedroom without passing through any inhabited or heavily traveled corridors.

But why? Diana fluttered her fingertips at the silk around her throat as she tried to imagine the elegant, reserved headmistress creeping through that claustrophobic passage in order to slam things, knock on doors, and move objects.

And slip so silently across the floor that she could rake her fingernails down Diana's neck without her knowing?

No, the headmistress would not do such things.

But the grieving sister? The woman obsessed with rumors of a ghost boy? The daughter whose father was threatening to take her away from Havencross?

Diana stepped lightly through Clarissa's bedroom, not touching anything, just scanning it all to turn over later in her mind. She didn't see anything obviously suspicious or out of place. Volumes of classical literature, academic studies on private schools, bound school records by year, novels in French and German. Diana felt stupider by the minute.

There were two photographs framed in old silver on the bedside table, where they would be the first things Clarissa would see in the morning and the last things at night. One was an old-fashioned family portrait: Diana recognized a much-younger Sir Wilfred Somersby, with his wife surrounded by two little girls and a fat baby on her lap, and two older children standing on his other side—Clarissa looked twelve or thirteen, the boy next to her around the same age as the first-year students.

The same boy was the sole figure in the second photo. He had dark hair and the round face of the young, and despite the stiff clothing and pose, he looked ready to burst into laughter.

The lost Thomas. He reminded Diana of her own little brother. Unlike Clarissa, she might know where to physically find Harry today, but he'd lost the irrepressible joy of youth somewhere in France.

Joshua came up beside her. "You ready to go back?"

The thought of returning to that enclosed space was too much. "There's no point. We've mapped out the possibilities of that passage. Servants' quarters, staff linen closet, and headmistress's bedroom. The linen closet is boarded shut, and I highly doubt boys are sneaking in and out through here under Clarissa's nose."

"Are you all right, Diana?"

He was way too perceptive. As unhurriedly as she could, Diana moved across Clarissa's bedroom to the outer door. "I think we should leave the private wing before anyone finds us. If you want to go back through the passage, I'll meet you in the attic and we can put everything back the way it was."

"Diana—"

"Then we can cross off that passage and move on. Do you think Clarissa has the original house plans? Maybe she'll let us look at them."

Joshua stopped her by simply stepping in front of the door. "If you don't want to talk about it, Diana, that's all right. God knows there are stories I don't tell. But I don't want to keep throwing you into spaces that you don't … that aren't …"

His obvious care in trying to select the right words, and the two little creases between his eyebrows as he thought, forced a tiny crack in Diana's well-guarded defenses. "You're right, I don't love tunnels and darkness. Maybe someday I'll tell you all about it. And in the future I'll confine my exploring to maps—you can do all the legwork." Diana tried to match one of his grins, probably looking more demented than sexy. "Seeing as how we worked so hard to save that leg in the first place."

Where did he learn to look at a woman like that? Never mind , she thought hastily. I don't really want to know.

For a dizzying moment, she thought he'd kiss her. His eyelashes lowered as though he were looking at her mouth, and they both moved ever so slightly inward. But then his mouth quirked into one of his myriad smiles.

"Clarissa likes us both," he said, "but I don't think that will help if we're caught here."

Right. Clarissa. School. Tunnel. Ghost.

Diana shook away all the disparate thoughts in her head and followed Joshua out the door. He definitely had a better grasp of the house's physical layout because he led her out of the private wing and back into the school spaces without a single wrong turn.

And none too soon, because the boys were trooping through the great hall as the two of them came down the main staircase. Behind the mass of boys came Beth Willis, walking with her young Austin, and Clarissa Somersby bringing up the rear at her most imperial. She wore a divided skirt of dark plum tweed, the matching jacket impeccably tailored to her frame. Next to her, the perfect country gentleman in gray flannel with cap in hand: Luther Weston looked as though he'd been speaking to her for some time.

Why did Diana feel that Clarissa—as her eyes caught her nurse and assistant headmaster standing on the stairs—could review everything she'd been doing? It was probably a trick she'd learned in one of those school leadership books in her bedroom.

But it was Luther Weston's stare that truly unnerved her. Besides his evident dislike of Joshua, he seemed to have developed an irrational animosity toward Diana as well. She wouldn't put it past Weston to play tricks on her in the night. Or at least to use those tricks against her. Already he'd said Diana was too "imaginative"—not a quality one wanted in a school nurse. She would just have to keep any future ruses between herself and Joshua for now. As much as she wanted to believe that she'd scratched her own neck in her sleep, Diana would rather die than allow Weston to imply the same thing in public.