His gaze locks onto me.
Onto my face. My hands. The untouched food.
"Out," he says, and it takes me a moment to realize he's not talking to me.
The staff member who'd been adjusting the curtains vanishes without a word.
He crosses the room in four strides. Crouches in front of my chair. His hands grip the armrests on either side of me, caging me in, and his face is inches from mine.
“What happened?”
I shake my head, not knowing where or how to start.
"You're shaking. You haven't eaten. Mrs. Lyme said you looked like you'd seen a ghost." His eyes search my face, and whatever he finds there makes his expression go darker. "Who hurt you?"
"No one hurt me."
"Bailey."
"I'm serious. No one—"
"Then what?" He's so close I can see the gold flecks in his irises, the tension in his jaw, the barely-leashed fury vibrating through him. "Tell me what's wrong so I can fix it."
"You can't fix this."
"Try me."
I open my mouth. Close it. The words are stuck in my throat, tangled up with fear and exhaustion and the memory of that smell.
His hands tighten on the armrests.
"If you don't tell me," he says quietly, "I will assume the worst. I will have every member of my staff questioned until someone tells me what happened to my wife. I will—"
"There's a body,” I blurt out. "In the passage. Behind the chapel—”
“Tell me you had someone with you.”
“I...can’t?”
Devyn rises to his feet...andgulp.
Because he’s looking at me now like I’m about to be the second dead body in this house.
“What part of ‘staying out of trouble’ did you not understand?”
“To be fair...I didn’t even realize I was getting into trouble—”
“Did you not think that I would have had my men comb through the estate for any hidden passage that Abigail could have used?”
“I—”
“Did it not occur to you that whoever caused her disappearance could also make you disappear?”
“Well, now that you’ve, um, mentioned it—” I stop speaking. Because right now, Devyn is looking at me like he doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to kill me again and again.
"Do you not think it’s strange that you were able to find a hidden passage that my people were unable to find?”
I can only shake my head. I honestly don’t get what he’s saying—
