Tall, Dark & Lonely (Pyte/Sentinel #1)(34)

“He’s not lying, Miss. Solomon,” Ed, a very shy boy, said. He hardly ever looked up from his book. That in itself let her know Chris wasn’t lying. Plus he never bothered lying to her in the past. He took his punishment like a man when he got caught. Not once since she’d taken this position had he complained over the circumstances of his punishment.

“I don’t understand why Mike isn’t here along with you,” she said.

They all scoffed in disbelief. “Look at us,” Chris gestured to their worn out clothes. “They’re not going to listen to us over that preppy prick. He and his friends come from money. They don’t care what we say and they lied about Carol. They said Mike was protecting her from me if you can believe that shit.” She didn’t. Chris would never hit a woman. Everyone knew that.

She nibbled on her lower lip and looked at her classroom door to make sure that it was closed. “Okay, guys, everyone move to the back. Talk quietly and you can play those video games I know you have hidden in your bags. If that door opens pretend you’re doing something constructive.”

Chris winked at her. “Heart of gold, Miss. Soloman.” They quickly went to the back of the room leaving her to her search.

She scrolled down the webpage she found on the Adlard family. Surprisingly there was a lot of information on the family. The family was old and noble. It could be traced to the Roman invasion, but thankfully she didn’t need to go that far.

After two months of avoiding each other she got tired of waiting for answers. So this morning she dug the note she kept out of her purse and decided to see what she could find.

It was his fault. Every time she waited to talk to him or left notes he ignored her. He walked right past her with only a polite hello. If that was the way he wanted to act so be it. She could find her own answers. She didn’t need him.

She limited her search to the nineteenth century. Ephraim probably used a fake name on that note. He probably forgot what surname he was currently using. She would find out.

“Aha!” She found his name.

“Is someone coming?” Ed jumped.

“No, it’s fine,” she said without looking up. He probably stole the name. That was it. She read about his supposed father first, a Duke. Yeah right. According to this webpage his first wife was attacked by a mad man when she was pregnant with one Ephraim William Howard Adlard.

She read on. The Duke remarried a woman who was rumored to beat Ephraim and call him “the thing”. Odd. His second wife gave him five more children, three girls and two boys. According to family history she pushed the Duke to disown Ephraim to line her own son in third place for the title. The Duke initially refused.

Hmmm, interesting. Ephraim suffered from a weird medical condition that left him looking like a little boy until the age of sixteen. At sixteen he went into a coma. The website at this point touched on some rumors.

One story stated that he woke up from his coma changed into a man. He didn’t resemble his brothers or father. He attacked a maid and was dragged off by Magistrate Nichols. She wrote down that name. His second brother inherited the title and brought his brother home twenty years later. He still looked young, but died a few years later.

The second story was simple. They had him dying in the coma. Nothing helpful there. The third story continued from the first, but had him die at the hands of Nichols. The author believed the first story because of compelling evidence below.

“Oh, a picture.” She clicked the thumbnail. A large portrait popped on the screen. It was of a man and woman and eight children. That wasn’t helpful. She was about to close the page when she saw the "next" button. She clicked it and gasped loudly.

She didn’t need to read the description to know who the young man was standing next to a much older man, woman and five kids. It was Ephraim. His hair style and clothes were different, but that was him. According to the caption he was posing with his brother, sister-in-law and their children. Ephraim was reported to have died two months after the portrait was finished.

Shaking her head in disbelief she typed in Magistrate Nichols. What she read there turned her stomach. The man was sick. He was compared to Jack the Ripper several times. He lived to torture and kill and loved the fact that the government encouraged him. He went missing in 1835. Years later a secret entrance was discovered leading to his famous dudgeons where skeletons were found in small cells. In a room that could only be described as a torture chamber they found a dozen skeletons. One of those bodies they believed was Nichols’ body based on a pendant found among the bones.

It dawned on her. Ephraim lived in the dudgeon. He lived in one of the tiny cells she looked at now. He survived years of torture and somehow came out whole. She couldn’t believe it. It broke her heart to think of the things he lived through.

“Are you okay?” a voice whispered.

She jumped, startled and looked up into kind green eyes. Chris was leaning over her desk watching her. She cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m fine, Chris. Why?”

He picked up the box of tissues on the desk and handed them to her. “You’re crying.”

“Oh!” She wiped her face quickly. “Just a sad story on the web.”

Chris nodded slowly. He didn’t believe her, but he wasn’t going to push. “Stick with puppies and rainbows then, Miss. Soloman. I don’t like seeing you unhappy.” He walked back to his friends.