Page 42 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
The door to the wine cellar was locked as well. I dropped to my knees again. It was a simpler design, intended to keep hungry footmen at bay, not thieves—but for whatever reason it was giving me trouble.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked, more amused than horrified.
I shrugged. “Cabinets, closets. Cellar doors. You wouldn’t believe how many times Mr. Owen has sent me on an errandonly to find that the master of the house has lost the key to the trunk where he’s kept his dusty twelfth-century volume ofFancy Lords and Dubious Ladies.”
“You’re having me on.”
I fumbled, dropping the pick, and it skittered across the slate flags. “About the book only. I haven’t found that particular title… But you would be shocked at the number of times I’ve had to unlock a desk drawer or seventeenth-century bookshelf to recover some inane tome. Bawdy books too. You would not believe how many copies are kept under lock and key as if the nude form is something to be ashamed of. Besides, it’s been far easier to do it myself than to have to wait on a locksmith.”
He let out a low laugh then bent over and picked up my tool, dropping it into my outstretched palm.
“Thank you.” I brushed the hair back from my eyes and looked up at him. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Never.”
I grumbled, jamming the pick back into the keyhole, and with one last click, the lock gave way. Ruby 2—Locks 0.
THE“OLD”WINEcellar was more modern than the one I had in Exeter, in stark contrast with the rest of the house. Tile, floor-to-ceiling in sterile white. Made to be easily cleaned out and washed down—but why one would want to wash out one’s wine cellar baffled me. My breath came uneasily. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’d seen bloated bodies along the roadside back in France. Wounded men scarcely more than walking corpses, half starved. I’d inured myself to that sight during the war. Carnage no longer shocked me. Nor death. But somehow, seeing Edward in the orchard was beyond anything I’d experiencedacross the channel. It was real. In a way that little had been since long before the archduke had the audacity to get himself shot.
I took in a deep breath and stepped inside hoping I wouldn’t be casting up the contents of my stomach. Yet what had been horrifying in the orchard was oddly less so here… in every conceivable way. Edward lay naked on the wooden worktable. A surface more suited to storing produce than cadavers. His hands were folded neatly over his chest, and his entrails tucked back inside, but he hadn’t been sewn shut. Hadn’t been touched at all besides the washing.
Ruan wasted no time in reaching the body. His hands running over Edward in the same reverential fashion as before. He stooped down, bringing himself eye level with Edward’s bluish-green-tinged belly. The scent of death hung in the air, faintly. But ever present.
“The wounds are clean.”
I snorted. “I’d assume so, Mrs. Penrose wouldn’t allow anything else here. Have you seen the state of her cupboards?”
He glared up at me. “No. I mean they’ve been cut cleanly.”
“Oh?” I moved closer to him, glancing down—against my better judgment—at Edward’s lifeless form. I touched his chilled body with my bare hand.
“You aren’t frightened.”
“Not like this, no. I admit when I saw him at first it was a bit…”horrifying. “Off-putting… but now? He’s not here anymore. It’s a bit of flesh and blood and bone. And those things aren’t troubling at all.”
Ruan closed his eyes again, holding his hand over the body in the same fashion he had in the orchard. An eerie stillness filled the room, and something else. That sensation in the air, sharpness—like an electric storm.
“What are you doing?”
He opened his eyes then, and I could have sworn there was a bit of silver there. But it disappeared as quickly as it’d come. A trick of the light—nothing more.
“I was listening.”
I turned to the door. “For what? Everyone’s asleep, and I suspect most of the house would as soon someone make off with his body than to wake up with him still down here.”
“Not for that.”
“Ah…” I blew out a breath and began to pace the edges of the room. Each trip around, Ruan remained unmoved. By the time I made the third lap, I was downright frightened. He wasdoingsomething in his inaction.
“You did that in the copse too. When I saw you there. What are you… listening for?”
He bit his full lower lip, and my mouth may have dried in response. Oh, good God, I was lusting for a man over a dead body. Was that what that feeling was? The one I’d been too lackwitted to pinpoint. If so, this was… not good. It was this place—Cornwall—all it did was engender infidelity, lust, and murder. First Edward and his numerous inamoratas and now here I was having veryappealingthoughts at a mostunappealingtime.
“I’m not sure. I don’t understand it entirely but sometimes I can hear… oh, why am I even telling you this when you don’t even believe in any of it?” He raked a hand through his dark curls, tugging slightly on them.
“Hear what, Ruan?”
“Things. I don’t know how to describe it. Why it happens. But sometimes I get a sense of something.”
