The woman marched toward the pony cart with her cane held high, like a field commander leading a platoon of marching soldiers into battle.
She handed a bit of carrot to the pony, then tossed her cane inside the gig and ripped off her dainty gloves. With her bare hands, she wrenched open the wooden crate. From its depths, she withdrew… two enormous battle-axes.
Stephen stared in disbelief as the woman raised each into the air. Beneath the feminine poofs at her shoulders, muscles visibly flexed in what had previously seemed to be deceptively soft flesh. Axes held high, she marched back to the front door without slowing her pace or panting for breath. She looked like a Valkyrie descending upon a battlefield.
Whowasthis woman? The latest intimidation tactic by Richard Reddington? Was the archer not enough?
“Tell Reddington I’m not to be bothered,” Stephen called out through the window.
The woman jerked her gaze up to the turret, her previously pretty face a twisted mask of fury. “How dare you imply I hold any affiliation with that scoundrel!”
Interesting.
Before Stephen could apologize for his erroneous assumption, thewoman let out a primal scream—earsplitting enough to break glass—then began striking at the ten-inch-thick oak door with enough force to rattle the iron hinges.
There was no chance of anyone cutting through wood that impenetrable with an ordinary blade. Or perhaps, Stephen amended, there was no chance of anyoneordinarydoing so.
Beth the Berserker was anything but ordinary.
Five minutes later, neither the screaming nor the thrashing showed any signs of slowing. As the woman struck at the door with her axes, shards of wood flew up at all angles, spraying the air around her as though she were caught inside a dust storm.
He either had to get rid of her, which seemed unlikely, or allow her in—which was forbidden. Then again, at this rate, Stephen wouldn’t need to “allow” anything. It might take Miss Berserker three days of frenzied chopping, but one way or another, this woman was slashing and hacking her way in.
“Very well,” Stephen murmured. “Have ityourway.”
He rose to his feet and pressed a lever.
7
The door to the castle swung open.
Elizabeth lowered her twin battle-axes with a smile. “I knew I was good at diplomacy.”
For the space of a heartbeat, she waited for a butler to appear, then hurried across the threshold before whoever had opened the door decided to close it in her face.
The heavy oak door clanged shut behind her.
Elizabeth stood still as she assessed her new environment. She was now in some sort of antechamber the size of a cozy parlor.
“Antechamber” was perhaps the wrong word.Antemeant before, implying that this room led somewhere else. But the only doorway in sight was the one she had stepped through.
There was also no butler. Noranyonewho might have been the person to open the door for her, then close it behind her.
She gazed about in bewilderment. “What the dickensisthis?”
The center of the small stone room was empty. The walls and ceiling, on the other hand, were lined with ropes and pulleys and wheels and strange artifacts.
Hard as she looked, there was no other exit. The two windows on either side of the door were the narrow, slotted sort for firing arrows. Loop-hole embrasures, she believed those were called. A kitten couldn’t squeeze through those narrow openings, much lessElizabeth. And the exterior walls themselves were four feet thick. It made no sense. Why would the front door lead nowhere?
“One of the interior sections must be false,” she murmured.
It’s what a Wynchester would do. What the Wynchestershaddone, on any number of occasions. At the Puss & Goose in London, they kept a secret room that was only accessible through the back of a wardrobe.
Not that there were any wardrobes in here. Just a spiderweb of rope and wires, with a staggering number of strange objects attached to or suspended from the peculiar net.
She took a step forward.
The stone beneath her feet immediately gave way, falling two inches without warning.
