Swallowing, Kendall turned away, squinting to examine the interior of the space.
What was this building? They appeared to be standing in a hallway that disappeared into darkness. Perhaps there was another exit.
Placing one hand on the wall, he slowly walked into the shadows, carefully testing the floor with a foot before stepping. The farther he moved from the door, the colder the air became. The flagstone sloped downward, and eventually his right foot encountered a descending stair.
“Your Grace?” Lady Isolde’s panicked voice whisper-called to him. “Kendall?!”
He looked back. A Lady-Isolde-sized cutout stood before the door. As he had done, she placed a hand on the wall and began tentatively walking toward him.
“I am here,” he said. “You need not come this way. I fear it leads to an ice house. There will only be the one door—the one behind you.”
She stopped. “Oh. I suppose that is why this building is constructed into the hill. The earth is an excellent insulator.”
Kendall returned to her.
Dread tasted of soot in his mouth.
What were they to do? They had to escape before someone found them together.
“We can’t call for help,” she noted. “Anyone could come.”
Anyone . . . like the bevy of ladies and their mammas who had already rushed past.
“But surely my maid, Fiona, will realize what has happened soon,” Lady Isolde continued, voice unnaturally high. “She will fetch Michael, the groom waiting with the carriage. They will search and find us. Together, they can . . .” Lady Isolde drifted off as she undoubtedly reached the same conclusion Kendall had.
The maid and the groom would have to ask for the key. Someoneelse, aside from servants, would have to know about this incident. But who? Sir William? A housekeeper at the old Kew Palace?
And how much would Kendall and Hadley have to pay to purchase silence and discretion?
Kendall pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing in and out, counting the breaths until he could speak without bellowing his rage at . . . something. The wind for trapping them together? Fate’s cruel jest?
“What are we tae do?” she asked.
“We wait,” he replied, dread tasting acrid on his tongue. “The door was ajar, so perhaps a servant was here and will return soon.”
“Aye.” Her head nodded in the faint light. “And if the door is fitted with a costly, self-locking mechanism, someone must wish this space tae be well-tended. Surely they will be by tae check.”
Kendall detested the thread of admiration he felt at her astute deductions, at the sense that her mind worked similarly to his.
No good would come of such comparisons.
He merely needed a way out of this hellish predicament.
Kendall prowled theperimeter of the hallway, his large body absorbing more than its fair share of space.
Isolde hated that she couldn’t look anywhere without the heat of his simmering rage blistering her skin.
Shifting, she adjusted her shoulder blades where they leaned against the brick wall beside the door.
Kendall paced the visible section of the hallway like a caged wolf. The overwhelmingly masculine smell of his cologne—dark amber and sandalwood—assaulted her with each flip of his frock coat.
He had already spent an inordinate amount of time inspecting the door hinges and the locking mechanism itself.
“The hinges won’t budge,” he announced after an hour of prying atthem with a Barlow pocketknife. “The screws are inset in the door jamb, and the pins in the hinges are forged into place. The door itself is far too thick to batter through with sheer force.”
The angry defeat in his voice had abraded Isolde’s frayed nerves.
They were well and truly trapped.
