“You’re inmortaldanger. You’re a prisoner, mum. He’ll kill you and eat you and maybe not in that order. You’re a canary in a cage. A sheep waiting to be slaughtered. A—”
“I am not a prisoner. Don’t you think I’d know if I were being held against my will?”
“If you’re not, then prove it,” the boy insisted, casting nervous glances over his shoulder. “Let me help you escape. Come with me. Now, before they notice you’re gone.”
She wrested her arm from his grip. “This flimflam has gone on long enough. Listen to me. I can leave anytime I choose. I simply don’t choose to. I’m hardly a sheep waiting to be—”
“What’s going on here?” came a deep voice, followed by heavy footsteps.
The boy’s eyes widened in terror.
“Mr. Roper!” Violet exclaimed in relief. “I was just explaining—”
“What’s this?” He lifted Violet’s abandoned satchel and loosened the cord. The tip of a loaf of bread peeked out of its cloth cover. “You caught him stealing?”
“No.” Violet reached toward the bundle. “It’s not his. It’s mine.”
“She’s coming with me!” the boy cried, tugging desperately at her skirt. “Hurry. Come now!”
At that, Mr. Roper’s face hardened. “She’s not going anywhere.”
Before she could begin to comprehend the sudden change in his demeanor, she’d been hefted over his shoulder as if she were no more bother than a sack of laundry.
“Miss!” the boy yelled back as he darted out the open door. “I’ll be back for ye!”
“Let me down!” She struggled to slide free of the burly manservant’s unyielding grasp. The delivery boy was young and foolish, but his very real panic had managed to unsettle her. And now this! She was an employee, not a prisoner... so why was she being forcibly prevented from exiting, slung over a silent lackey’s shoulder as if headed to a dark dungeon? “Mr. Roper! Mr. Roper!”
As he turned a corner past the kitchen, Mrs. Tumsen stepped from an adjoining corridor. “Charles? What are you doing?”
Mr. Roper’s grip barely loosened at the sound of his given name, but it was all Violet needed to slip free. She twisted, rolling off his shoulder like a stone down a mountain. She landed hard against the marble floor, but was up and running into the darkness before anyone had a prayer of catching her.
Panting, half-shogging and half-hobbling with her heart racing faster than ever before, she finally collapsed against a wall and sank to the floor. With neither food nor water in her belly, her body was incapable of much more exercise. And without an explanation for Mr. Roper’s manhandling—and forcible detainment—her brain was incapable of coming up with a plan.
She rested her forehead upon her bent knees and concentrated on emptying her mind until her breathing returned to normal. Now more than ever, she could not return to her chambers. Although she had lost her satchel in the altercation with Mr. Roper, the sanctuary still seemed the wisest choice... if she could determine how to get there from here. Without a candle, or any reliable recollection of which direction she’d fled, she had no idea where in the abbey she might be.
She pulled herself up and forced her feet to move, slipping noiselessly down corridor after corridor. She was concentrating so hard on finding a path to the sanctuary that she almost missed the small sound coming from behind a door just to her left. She froze in her tracks to listen. Tiny, arrhythmic scratches came from the other side of the door, as if someone were locked inside and trying desperately to claw their way out.
Her heart nearly stopped.
She knelt to peer through the keyhole. Blackness. She could see nothing. If there was someone inside, they had been left there without a candle.
“H-hullo?” she called softly through the keyhole. “Is someone there?”
The scratching stopped.
The only sound in the entirety of the murky corridor was that of Violet’s own heart, and nothing more. She held her breath. Silence remained.
Perhaps she’d imagined it.Surelyshe’d imagined it. Despite the unquestionable appearance of being kept in the abbey by force, she had arrived here of her own free will. She carried a skeleton key, for goodness sake. If she were not meant to leave, this was surely a recent mandate. Mr. Waldegrave was hardly the sort to go about abducting and imprisoning young girls, despite what the villagers claimed.
Right?
She pulled herself to her feet and stared at the silent door. She reached forward, closed her fingers about the handle, and gave it a twist.
Locked. Of course it was locked. Every chamber in the entire abbey was locked. But she had a key, did she not?
She fished the key from beneath her bodice and slid it into the lock. Before she could change her mind, she slid the bolt free, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.
Empty. The chamber was completely empty.
