Page 109 of A Fearless Heart
“My ribs. My lungs. This bodice. This necklace.” Cady pulled the chain out to reveal the necklace’s pendant. “But I’ve owned this for years and years. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t think it means your actual heart, my lady,” Lucy said. “What do you care about? What do you love?”
“I…I don’t know. I love plants and gardens.”
The maid rolled her eyes. “No, no, no. That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Name something really dear to you.”
“Um…Trevor.”
“Why thank you,” her brother said from where he sat. “But I doubt that’s what the killer means. Though perhaps it is. I will certainly burn in hell, if such a place exists.”
Bond sighed. “My lady, you must take a moment andthink. Tell us what you care about most in the world.”
“I love Calderwood,” Cady admitted. “It’s my home and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“That’s a good start. Could it be a hint that you need to return to Calderwood?”
“Do you suppose whoever it is plans to set it on fire?” Trevor asked nervously.
“They had betternot,” Cady snapped. “But anyway, even if they did, the walls of the house are pure stone at least a foot thick. Even if they tried to set the gardens ablaze, they’d have to start again with each wall. They’re natural firebreaks.”
“Anyway, it’s not exactly burning in hell, is it?” Trevor noted. “It would be burning in Kent, which just hasn’t got the same ring to it.”
“So not the house or grounds,” Bond mused. “What then? Think, my lady. What would break your heart if you lost it?”
Cady swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat, and tears pricked at her eyes. “I’ve already lost the one thing I thought I loved.”
Minnie stood up. “It’s time for a meal. My mother always says that empty stomachs stop all thought.”
Cady was unwilling to interrupt the discussions, so they all went to the kitchens and sat at the big, rough-hewn table for the servants. Trevor looked around, amazed at this part of the house he hadn’t seen since he was a little boy. As they ate the food, Cady kept prodding everyone to say what was on their mind, in the hopes of inspiration.
I am also in Arcadia…
What was close to Cady’s heart? Not Gabe, not any longer, not since she learned the truth about him. Trevor, her brother, was of course close to her heart…but Trevor was with her, alive and well, so that didn’t make sense as a clue. And who had sent the clue? Was it even meant to help her, or was it merely a taunt?
“This is delicious,” Trevor said at one point, holding up a morsel of food. “What’s this sauce?”
“My mother adapted it from an old family recipe,” Minnie said. “It’s a reduction of plums with a little wine. We can find plums in the city markets, but I imagine it would be difficult in the country, except when they’re in season.”
“They were always in season at Calderwood,” Cady said absently. “Thanks to the glasshouse with the hot walls.”
Trevor wrinkled his nose. “I never liked that part of the gardens. I mean, I loved getting plums and currants in midwinter, but I just never felt good about the way that room heated up. You’d walk in and be sweltering like you were roasting in the sixth circle of hell, with the sun beaming in from the glass top to those bricks radiating heat from the inside. Never understood how that worked anyway. Seemed like magic.”
“There are flues running through the walls, and they pull hot air in from the coal furnace in the…center…” Cady trailed off, a new thought striking her like a thunderbolt. “Did you say hell?”
Trevor looked over. “The sixth circle of hell, yes. That’s the hot one, according to Dante.”
Close to your heart, burning in hell.Cady jumped up from her seat. “Trev, it’s the hot walls!”
“The what?” he asked blankly. They were all staring at her.
“I’m not going crazy! Think about it! He’s taken something close to my heart, who also happens to be the person investigating his crimes—Gabe. And he’s hidden him somewhere that’s like burning in hell—the walled-off space where the workers used to shovel coal into the furnace to heat all those glasshouses. Part of the building collapsed and it went unused for years, but the space is still there, like a secret set of passages and rooms right in the middle of Calderwood!”
“You mean to say that this killer is luring you back to your very own home?” Trevor asked skeptically.
“Where else would be less suspected? It’s genius, actually.”
“Cady, you can’t possibly be serious. If someone was skulking around Calderwood, the servants there would know!”
