Nothing, Padraig realized. She would never have her parents returned to her, or her childhood home. Even if Castle Dare were rebuilt, it would take years, and it would be Lucan’s by rights. She had risked her very life for nothing more than the truth—the truth for her brother and their parents, and for Caris Hargrave, and for Padraig.
And Padraig had punished her for it.
I’ve never lied about how Ifeel about you.
Padraig realized it was true. And he also realized that after his foolish pride had faded away, the whole truth about who Iris really was and what she stood for only made Padraiglove her more.
He stilled then. Aye, he did love her. He could no longer deny it. And rather than be frightened by the further realization as the scales fell from his eyes, they settled around him like his da’s old plaid—fitting and comfortable and absolutely correct. He was not fighting for Tommy Boyd to regain Darlyrede House, or even to win it for himself. Perhapshe never had.
Padraig was fighting for the very idea of Northumberland.
For home. For Lord and Lady Hood and Lucan and—yes, hopefully—for himself and Iris. For his brothers, yet strangers to him, and for the future of all their families. Thomas Annesley had been a frightened, injured, devastated young man with no family, no friends, the night he escaped from Darlyrede, and in Padraig’s mind, he reached back through the decades to speak tothat young man.
We’re here, now, Tommy. Let us help you.
The reign of terror visited upon this land—both from Vaughn Hargrave and the bandits currently infesting the hall—would stop, if it was the last thing Padraig did.
But first, heneeded an army.
Chapter 18
Iris screamed until her throat was raw, and now even the shallowest breath of damp, cold air seared her throat like fire as she lay shivering on the table. She realized now that no one could possibly hear her. The sizzling of the torch had grown louder as her ears strained for the smallest sound, but that hissing was broken only by the random, faint percussion of water dripping in some darkened corner.
Iris thought she had at last discovered where all the missinggirls had gone.
All this time she had assumed that Hargrave had stolen away with his victims to another location, or kept them prisoner in his own rooms, but she realized now that it would have been impossible to remove her from Lady Caris’s wing without the guards at the stairs seeing them, Rolf in particular. To keep her mind from breaking altogether with madness and fear, she sought to recall with the greatest detail the maps she had drawn in her notes. She must be somewhere beneath the west wing, under the oldest part of the hold. The far, dark end of the corridor, then—the entrance to this subterranean hell must be located there. Perhaps in one of the rooms on the opposite side of the passage—a secret door, perhaps, like the one in Iris’s own chamber, where the maps themselves were hidden.
She stifled a sudden sob. She should have given the portfolio to Lucan when he’d asked for it. No one would ever find it—or her—now. All her work, all the evidence, hidden away until, by the time it was discovered—years from now likely—none of it would matter any longer. Everyone would be long dead and the grief caused by Vaughn Hargrave would be nothing more than terrible, frightening fables.
She thought of Lady Hargrave and squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered the last hazy words she’d heard the noblewoman speak, how she’d sought to protect Iris from the monster that was her husband. How she had always sought to protect her, keep her close and away from the unpleasantness that swirled just beneath the glittering façade that was Darlyrede House. She thought of the locks on the doors to hers and Euphemia’s rooms, Caris’s bittersweet relief at learning that Euphemia was dead. She must have suspected her husband in the disappearances; she must have known all this time, at least partially, of his sick appetites. And still she had tried to save Iris.
What had Lord Hargrave done to silence her this time? The pain of not knowing was almost too much for Iris to bear.
A short squeak of hinges echoed in the stone vault like a scream and Iris felt her blood turn to ice. She waited for the sound of footsteps, her ears strained until she thought her skull would explode. But there was no sound, no shadow in front of the torchlight to indicate anyone had entered.
Iris’s heart seized in her chest as a weight dropped onto her abdomen, and her fear was so great that for a moment she thought she hadfainted again.
Satin had leaped onto her body from the floor and was now staggering to keep his balance on Iris’s heaving stomach.
“Satin,” she croaked as he carefully stepped up her chest toward her face. “How did you find me?” The cat butted and rubbed his head against her chin, and then in his careful, deliberate way, lay down, tucking his paws beneath his chest and looking about the room with slow-blinking disdain. His heavy warmth soaked into her skinlike sunshine.
She remembered Padraig’s skepticism of the animal.I prefer a dog meself.
“Fetch Padraig, Satin,” she whispered, and then gave a harsh, delusional giggle as he ignored the request to instead lick at the inside of his elbow.
Iris closed her eyes as the chuckle died away, and thin tears leaked from the corners and ran down the sides of her face into the cups of her ears.
“Good boy. Lovely boy.” Her whisper was a mere creak now. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave…”
* * * *
Padraig accompanied Ulric at the fore of the wave of men who crept up the eastern corridor, staying just beyond the torchlight, where one of the thieves from the wood stood as guard, facing the hall beyond. He was impressed by the manner in which so many of the king’s men moved soundlessly into place.
They stood in silence several more moments, giving the other half of the company ample time to circle the courtyard and approach from the kitchen passage. Ulric looked back at the soldiers directly behind him and Padraig and gave a series of hand gestures that were quickly relayed to the readied company.
Padraig understood the plan, and he flexed his fingers around the hilt of the sword Ulric had found for him, waiting, eager. Iris’s portfolio was secured in his satchel at his back, and although he’d allowed Satin to escape the chamber, Padraig doubted the cat’s presence would be noticed in comparison to what he and Ulric and the king’s soldiers were about to instigate.
The air was tense, heavy with the anticipation of battle, as Ulric held his open hand in the air and began to move forward, the company following on whispering feet.
