Page 7 of Mistress of Darkness

“Sir?” Parks said.

His valet stood in front of him with a brush in one hand and a pan filled with crystals in the other. “Nothing, Parks.” He looked around the dining room, which had almost been cleared. “When you’re finished with that, find your bed. We won’t be having dinner. Tell the others as well, if you would.” He glanced up at the ceiling again. “I’ll be inspecting that in the morning.”

“Very good, sir,” Parks said, glancing upward as well.

As Robert climbed the stairs he realized that his hands were in fists. In fact, he clenched them so hard that the skin of his knuckles stretched tight. A heated rage had been building inside him ever since he’d had to push Gwen to the floor. As he passed her door, he paused, listening, wanting nothing more than to go to her this instant and quell her fears. But the room was quiet and he hoped that the brandy had worked its good effect.

As he turned away, he resolved to order the servants to check every bolt and screw of every room he’d planned on using. He was going to keep Gwen safe, so that she would never fear again.

* * *

As the days passed,Gwen found that the fright of the chandelier had gone, probably due to Robert’s efforts to assure himself that all else was safe. But it was also growing obvious to her that Christopher was not coming to Dredthorne Hall. His silence was compounded by the complete lack of any message from Regina, and Gwen was ready to give up on ever finding her poor missing sister. Clearly, the young woman did not want to be found and had made every effort to keep her family from knowing where she had gone. Where she had learned such stealthy skills, Gwen could not imagine.

In the week since she had arrived, Robert had turned some of the running of the household over to her. Though she suspected it was to keep her mind occupied, she relished the challenge. The day after the incident with the crashing chandelier, when Robert had ordered the servants to pore over the house for any other such issues, she had supervised them and noted a few lanterns that were in need of service or repair. However the rest of the house was fairly sound, if rather in need of a revitalizing uplift. Gwen began to divert some of the servants from their normal tasks to the upkeep of the rooms they were using; cleaning, of course, and some moderate repair. She also oversaw the restoration of broken doors and torn paper-hangings and made note of rooms where the damage was so profound that new wall coverings would be needed. Gwen was a little surprised that she was actually good at organizing.

Instead of their usual long walks around the grounds, Robert had taken the mornings to discover what had happened to his brother. He had started by writing feverish letters to his parents, to London, to an address Christopher had once stayed at it in Paris, and to anyone who may have heard from him—but there was no trace of where Christopher had gone. No one had seen him, at least no one who would admit it to the elder Sheraton brother.

At about the same time, Gwen had begun to use her spare time to organize notes from the journals in the library. She could at least attempt to trace a narrative trail of the courtesan who had gone missing. In the evenings, over dinner she would relate all of her latest findings.

But what she never mentioned, for fear that it would make her seem silly, was that, when the house was quiet, she sometimes thought she heard a woman crying. Her dressing room could become eerily silent, without even the sound of the wind. It was at those precise moments that the temperature would feel as if it were dipping a little, though she couldn’t be certain that it wasn’t her imagination. Then a low, barely audible moan seemed to emanate from nowhere, followed by the muffled sound of sobbing, but never long enough for her to trace.

To complement her hours of ghost hunting through the books in the library, Gwen spent her afternoons physically scouring the hall, looking for the source of the sounds, but to no avail.

Likewise her hunt for hidden doors and mysteries, hoping to find a hint of what had happened to the vanished Miss Wilson, regularly ended in disappointment. A courtesan of such fame and notoriety should not have just gone missing; it should have been a scandal, something noteworthy, but she had found nothing to indicate that anyone at all had noticed. The expeditions throughout the old hall had not uncovered any more than her work in the library had—and today was no exception.

As she climbed the stairs and entered her chamber, Gwen was once again forced to admit defeat. She sat down on her bed, discouraged, and tossed her notes onto the desk. As usual at such moments, her thoughts turned to Robert. He’d become more and more protective of her since the chandelier incident. It was almost as if he’d come to feel responsible for her. Or perhaps even deeper emotions were at play.

She waved a hand in the air. “What nonsense.”

He’d certainly made no such declaration, despite there being ample opportunity. She stood up as if that act alone would stop her wild speculation. When it didn’t she decided to select her dinner dress, even though it was early.

But as she approached the dressing room and the late afternoon light spilled in, she saw an imperfection in the floor, where it abutted the wall. Though the inspection of the house that she’d done with the servants wouldn’t have revealed so small a thing, perhaps it was worth taking note.

She frowned as she drew closer. The imperfection wasn’t only in the floor; it travelled up the wall. In fact, a thin, crumbling line of plaster appeared when she moved aside the small chair. Now she could see that the faint crack ran from the floor up to the very ceiling. This was more than a small imperfection.

As she’d seen the men do during their examinations, she rapped the wall next to the crack, dislodging a billow of dust. Waving her hand in front of her face, she retreated for a moment and let the particles settle. When she returned, a closer inspection revealed a seam of some sort—and it had to be intentional. It was perfectly straight and fractionally wider now. Using her fists and braving the fine powder that rained down, she quickly discovered a second seam, parallel to the first and about a yard away. As she stood with hands on hips staring at the two lines, a thought occurred to her. With both hands on the walls and her feet firmly planted, she gave the wall a shove. To her astonishment, it moved inward at one seam, and outward at the other.

“A revolving door,” she whispered. “A hidden one.” Or formerly hidden.

But beyond its dusty threshold was only pure darkness.

She raced to her nightstand, lit the candle, and brought it back. There, at the limit of its light, was a low passage. The tunnel was about half her height so Gwen was forced to kneel down. With the candle in front of her, she slowly crawled forward. For what felt like an eternity, she made her way through more dust and the occasional cob web. But there was no option but to press forward unless she wanted to back out, since there wasn’t enough room left to turn around. As she began to worry, thinking that she would at any moment be led to a dead end, the passage dropped out in front of her.

Her eyes and the candle light settled on the stone steps of a stairway. She gasped in delight and held the small flame higher. Maybe this passage would hold the answers to her questions about Miss Wilson.

Carefully she slid down the first steps until she could stand. Still proceeding cautiously, she descended the stairs, traveling to what had to be the first floor, only to find a wall that barred her way.

But was it really a wall, she wondered, lifting her candle to it. This time the seams in the plaster were obvious. Using her shoulder, she pushed the revolving door, but only a little. There was no telling what or who might be on the other side.

The door creaked softly from long disuse, and almost immediately the scent of dinner wafted through the crack and crept into her nostrils. Gwen frowned. Why was there a secret passage, long abandoned, from her dressing room to the kitchen? Why would someone possibly want to go into the kitchen in secret, other than a late night snack, without the servants realizing it?

The bustle and clatter of this evening’s dinner preparations must have covered any noises that Gwen had made because no one gave any sign of noticing. She peered out into the cook’s kitchen through the crack. She must be between the ice chest and a thick wooden counter. There was a small table immediately in front of the door, and it seemed to be the pie preparation station.

This passageway made no sense on its own, but perhaps it somehow related to all the other secrets of Dredthorne Hall. She closed the revolving door.

The next mystery for her to solve was how long it would take for her to crawl back up to her room. When she finally emerged several minutes later with dust and dirt covering her in a fine layer, she sneezed repeatedly, shaking her head. Though she was no closer to finding out what had happened to the courtesan, she was thrilled with her discovery. But now it truly was time to get ready for the evening’s dinner. This passage hadn’t given her any real secrets, she was fairly certain of that. But it meant that there might be other mysteries in the hall, other passageways that might lead to places that even Robert had not yet discovered. And one of those expeditions might lead her to the answers regarding the mystery that was plaguing her: the disappearance of the courtesan.

When Frances arrived, she said nothing at the state of her clothing; she did, however, tsk over Gwen’s abused hair.