Page 85 of Lessons for Marquesses
King Henry had announced his intentions to execute the queen, Catherine Howard, at the desk. Not the finest moment in the monarchy, but people loved a scandal, particularly one that ended in a beheading.
Nicholas turned from the secret door. “I will have my agents appraise Chedworth and have an offer for Georgiana within the month.” By the time he paid for it, Farendon would be his. Georgiana could take the money and live with dignity. “I will purchase her racing string as well and negotiate with her directly. Any debts left after payment, I will also satisfy.”
“Nick, you are a friend, indeed.” Oliver pumped his hand in furious gratitude.
He would be gone before the quarter day, and Oliver would press him to pay for not fulfilling their contract for the match race. He would pay it gladly.
Georgiana would lose Farendon but she would be more than comfortable. He would be assured she was protected.
In her old bedroom, Georgiana sat at the edge of the bed listening to the house mourn in the night. Chedworth’s sorrow was in every creak, with no feet to make them, at the windows groaning in their casements, without wind to buffet them. She knew the pattern. Erratic cracks that one might think were just an old house settling into the earth. Paneled walls expanding and contracting with the weather. The shuddering would start. A door would close. And then the weeping.
Georgiana pulled her mother’s quilt over her shoulders and felt the innocence of her old self. She had once been vexed with the childish habit of coughing when nervous. At her throat would come a scratch that would turn to a cough, sometimes a fit. The day of her mistake, the affliction had disappeared. Simply disappeared, never to vex her again.
She went to the window seat, her fingers finding the ridge at the adjoining bookcase and pressing in, the surface yielded and the kick board popped open. The entrance was a square box with a ladder hooked on the inside edge. Where the chute ended appeared unfathomable, but she knew better. There were twelve rungs.
After fetching the candlestick, Georgiana fed her legs into the hole and counted. At thirteen, she touched down to the brick, enveloped in the musty scent of secrets. The passageway widened around a corner, allowing a choice. She turned east, her steps careful, her bare feet silent down the stairs.
Without a light, she could still find her way. Kitty, Julian, and she had played endlessly in the labyrinth of corridors and hidden doors as children.
She traveled down the east passage and stopped at the billiard room door, running a hand to the latch. She held the taper up, fluttering from an unexplained breeze. The icy knot of years past twisted at her spine. She pressed her thumb on the latch. The bar lifted with a click.
She stumbled back and fled west, up the stairs, and took the north passage at the juncture. Crouching at the low ceiling, curling in her shoulders to avoid scraping the damp, narrow walls, she forded the crossing. Stealing up a steep flight of wooden stairs, she was near the Green Chamber.
She held out the light, squeezing her finger in the candlestick loop to steady the flame. The Evil Leprechaun was a childhoodlark, but the silly compulsion to squeal and race away was strong.
A muffled shout echoed against the suffocating passage. Georgiana pressed a fist to her mouth, on the verge of squealing.
The shout came again.
She tracked the tortured cries that followed, identifying the voice, though she’d never heard Mr. Wolf shout, and stopped at the Green Chamber door.
After a moment’s hesitation, she opened it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
5 Years Prior
8 July 1758
Major Lewis had intentionally senthis company ahead as a decoy, drums beating, a fife’s melody floating in the thick summer air. So when the musket balls whizzed past Nicholas’s head with the French regulars pouring white and blue out onto the field to finish them off, he wasn’t surprised.
He picked out his first kill. As he bit off the end of the cartridge, spit it out, and primed the pan, he saw him through the smoke. Why waste fifteen seconds of work on a haphazard shot? The Frenchman fell back to the grass.
Another cartridge, another ramming, another dead.
Their column struggled to hold, bayonets were fixed, and the French tide continued to roll over them. Through the screams and the hiss of bullets and the clang of steel and the singular sound of a man’s guts being carved from his body, their captain called for retreat.
Ambushes made Nicholas angry. He didn’t want to die as a decoy. He gutted two men before he leapt over the dead and moaning swaths of red lying at the base of the fort.
In the forest was a fight. The foliage was thick, and muskets were useless. Men appeared like wasps, stinging before you knew you were stung. Dead before you knew you were dying.
Feet thudded toward him in the underbrush. He slammed the butt of his musket into the man’s head as he passed. The sound sickened him, urging him to run farther in. A figure leapt at his right. He lunged toward the man’s bare arm with the hatchet bearing down on his head. In one move, Nicholas sliced backhanded through the black painted stripes on his arm and up to his throat. From the growing, gaping wound, the man’s breath rushed out with the blood.
Another came at him. Nicholas thrust away the knife aimed for his side but not before it met its mark and slashed through his flank. Stung before he knew he was stung. They grappled with one another to find the best hold, to get close enough to kill.
Nicholas was below him and then, by sheer will, atop him. His opponent jabbed at his eyes, and Nicholas saw his chance, dodging the hand and sinking his teeth into the man’s nose. Still the man fought, even when Nicholas spit his flesh back at him. With an elbow aimed at the hole in his opponent’s face, Nicholas shoved what was left of his nose into his brain.
Heaving through a bramble, he found a deer trail and raced toward the end. It was here. He was here. The man who would stop him. Someone had to stop him. He ran faster, the sound of battle drawing farther away. He slammed chest-first into a white coat.
