“Not very beachy,” she ventured. “This has nothing to do with the clue?”
He shook his head. “No. This is for you.”
As they emerged into greater darkness, he helped her to her feet, then hooked his torch into a notch in the wall.
She frowned. “Where are we going now?”
“Nowhere.” He stepped out of the way. “We’re here. Look around.”
She lifted her torch. Orange flames sent murky golden light shimmering along a spiderweb of tall, narrow tunnels, branching forth in all angles from where they now stood.
Eyeless skulls grinned down at them from every surface. Here, the walls were not made of stone, but rather row after row of interlocking bones.
Elizabeth gasped. “Catacombs.”
She ran forward to inspect the closest wall, passing the torches from one side to another to display skulls in strange patterns amongst the thousands of stacked femurs and ulnas and rib cages.
Off she went down one of the tunnels, leaving Stephen to hurry behind her lest he be left in the darkness surrounded by the remains of the long dead.
When they reached another opening like the first one, piled high with bones like a beaver’s dam of sticks, she spun to face him, mouth agape.
“Do you like it?” he asked quietly.
“This is the most romantic evening I have ever experienced,” she answered, her eyes shining. “You are the cleverest suitor in the world.”
“It isn’t difficult,” he demurred. “If I see something one hundred percent Elizabeth, I give it to you.”
She slotted her torch into the wall, then threw her arms about his neck. “Let me give you one hundred percent ofthis.”
She kissed him. Passionately. Of her own free will.
He held her tight. For the moment, there was nowhere he’d rather be than here, in the darkness. Kissing Elizabeth.
Relinquishing another previously guarded part of his heart.
28
Afew days later, Elizabeth paged through the library’s many books referencing beaches, oceans, and seaside resorts in the hopes of inspiration. Her eyes were on the hunt for the next clue, but her mind was filled with memories of Stephen. The catacombs. The kiss.
Though she sometimes still worried he viewed her disability as weakness, Elizabeth loved that Stephen not only accepted the more bloodthirsty aspects of her personality, but actively indulged that side of her, without any missish shudders or prudish recriminations for her to act like a proper lady.
Who decided what was proper? She was happy how she was. Stephen was happy howhewas. Why should they dampen their true natures because polite society frowned on berserkers and tinkers? As long as they were comfortable with and as themselves, she didn’t give a damn about anyone else’s opinions on the matter.
Which she supposed made them rather similar to the late earl and countess, who hadn’t let a little detail like complete lack of artistic talent stop them from covering four walls in painted seascapes.
Well, two walls in seascapes. The other two contained a riot of shell-like color blobs, recognizable only by their classic spiral shape. Elizabeth paused with her finger in the middle of a treatise about the English Channel. The earl had drawn the colorful shell-blobs, and theclue was for him. Which perhaps meant the sea was irrelevant, and the blobs were the important bit.
Or were the strange colors the key? She tossed her tome aside and reached for her journal, where she’d listed as many details as could potentially be useful. The quantity of shells per wall, the list of associated colors, as well as how many examples of each.
As to which colors were used, the answer appeared to be: all. Unless Elizabeth was on the hunt for a rainbow, the answer didn’t seem to lie in the hues. There were twenty-five shells on the northern wall, and only twenty-two on the southern face… but if that was meant to imply some great meaning, she couldn’t guess what it might be.
Which left the shells themselves. The least remarkable aspect, given that they were all the same spiral shape. Rather than varying the assortment with any number of shell types commonly found at any given seaside from Brighton to—
All the exact same spiral shape.
Her heart leapt. The classic spiralwasthe clue. And what else in a medieval castle shared a classic spiral form?
“The stairs,” she breathed, and shut her journal in triumph.
