Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)(83)

“I’ll go alone,” she said.

“No,” he said. “No, you can’t go alone. It’s not safe.” That place wasn’t safe, not for anyone. It never had been. But he’d be damned if he’d let her think that he—who’d faced down Napoleon’s Imperial Guardsmen and hamfisted prizefighters alike—was afraid of a damned cellar, filled with nothing but cobwebs and shadow.

Her light swayed as she transferred it from one hand to the other, and for a moment, the features of her face were caressed by soft, smoky light. With her free hand, she reached through the mist to take his. “We’ll go together. And we’ll do it quickly.”

He allowed her to lead the way to the cellar entrance. She seemed to know the way better than he did. It was well-hidden now, obscured by haphazard piles of masonry. Hand in hand, they picked their way over the strewn boulders and found the stairway. The rocks teetered and clacked a bit as they scrambled over them.

The cellar must have been built from a natural cave that his ancestors had widened and deepened with time. Or perhaps they’d quarried the stone for the house, then built right over the empty pit? At any rate, it made an ideal place for storing food and spirits—protected from the elements, cool and dark. Silent. It made an ideal place to keep secrets, too.

As they descended into the dark pit, the sounds of the wind outside were muted. Meanwhile, their every step and sigh echoed off the walls. This place caught every sound, trapped it to rattle about and amplify. Each footfall, each spoken word … each crack or blow … seemed to have the strength of dozens.

“Cora?” Meredith called out into the darkness. The name volleyed around the room, losing a bit of its consonant edge with each echo, until all that remained was a round, hollow ball of “Oh” bouncing about the dark.

She called again. “Cora, are you here?”

No answer.

Rhys would have added his voice to hers, but his throat had gone dry. His jaw seemed locked in place.

“She’s not here,” she finally said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait.” The word creaked from his throat. He coughed and tried to master the emotions rising in his gorge. “We don’t know that she’s not here. We only know she hasn’t answered the call. She could be hurt, or asleep. We have to check the whole cellar, every corner.”

She was silent for a moment. Then finally said, “All right.”

Sweeping his light around, Rhys noticed a great many crates and casks filling the room. Odd. He would have expected to find it stone-empty, especially after all this time. Looted by the locals long ago. Perhaps the rumors of ghosts had kept them away.

He knew they’d descended to the bottom of the staircase when his final footfall hit the ground with a thud that shivered his hipbone. He stumbled over something that felt like a wire.

“Cora?” Meredith called. Her voice was a bright, clear beacon in the blackness. “Cora, are you in here?”

No answer from the girl.

There was, however, an answer from God … in the form of a low, menacing groan at the top of the stairs.

“Oh, Lord.”

Chapter Twenty-one

There was a crash of thunder. A crash of stone.

And then a chorus of a hundred small collisions, each one bashing blindly into the next.

The difference was palpable, instantly. It had nothing to do with the lighting—pitch black was pitch black—but rather to do with the air. The cool, misty breeze was instantly sucked from the space, replaced with puffs of grit, and rank, ancient damp. The air was choked with earth and secrets, as if they’d been sealed in a tomb.

“Tell me,” said Meredith, “that sound wasn’t what I think it was.”

“It was,” he confirmed. “We’re trapped.”

Her fingers tightened around his.

“We’ll be all right,” he said.

At the same moment, she said, “We’ll be fine, you know.”

And after speaking over one another, they laughed a bit together. Fitting, that each of them should think of comforting the other. They were each of them so accustomed to being the stronger in any given pair.

Once the last bits of their echoed laughter had seeped into the cracks of the stones, Rhys took the lamp from her hand and held it aloft between them. Bravery aside, she was trembling a bit.

“Don’t be concerned. You’re with me. And I’m indestructible, remember?” It was this very place that had made him so. There was no way in hell he’d die here. Clearing his throat, he went on, “We need to look for something dry and wood. Something that will burn.”

“Do you mean to start a fire? It’s not that cold.”

“No, but this lamp won’t last all night. And once we have a bit more light, I’ll go up and assess the damage.” From the quality of the air, Rhys suspected the cave-in was complete, but he would check it himself to be certain.

Keeping her hand in his, he scouted the immediate area for wood. As his luck would have it, he stumbled into a crate almost instantly. He bent and began prying the boards apart with his bare hands. It was rough going. For a crate stored for more than a decade in a damp, underground room, the wood was surprisingly strong and dry.

Once he had the top of the crate pried off, Rhys waved the lamp over it to see what was inside. Brushing aside a thick layer of straw—again, remarkably fresh and dry—he uncovered several rows of bottles. Strange, that his father would have left this much of any spirit lying about, untouched.