She nodded. “He wants the ring. Give him the ring, and he’ll release them.”
“I thought he wanted to ruin me.”
“Yes,” she said hastily. “He does. And wants the ring besides.”
Griffin merely cocked an eyebrow at her, then waved his pistol toward the door. “Come. There is room enough for you in Sir Hadrien’s comfortable carriage. By the time we reach Crocker’s hell, you should have the wrinkles in your story neatly pressed.”
Affronted, Mrs. Christie drew her shoulders back. “I’m not going with—”
“Very ugly,” Griffin said calmly. “Children will hide behind their mother’s skirts when they see you.”
“How often does someone come?” Olivia asked. A thin strip of light was visible around the door. She pressed her eye to it and tried to see activity on the other side. After a few minutes of varying her position, she gave up. She turned around and leaned back against the door. “Alastair?”
“Hmm?”
She realized he’d nodded off. “How can you sleep?”
“Always sleep when I’m in my cups. Have to.”
“Not this time. I need you awake.”
“Course you do. Sorry.”
Olivia repeated her question.
“Don’t know precisely,” Alastair said. “Two times a day, perhaps. Can’t tell by what they feed me. Soup mostly. Bread and broth. Drink helps. Fills the empty.”
She understood that well enough. “Do you ever hear anything? This place seems to be so quiet, as if no one is around.”
“Mostly like that, more or less. Voices come and go. No one ever answers me. Sometimes, though, the house fairly rumbles. That’s a bit unpleasant, I can tell you.”
“Rumbles?”
“Mmm. For hours. The bottles shudder, the door vibrates. I can feel it in my bones.”
That’s when Olivia knew. She was familiar with that sensation. “We’re not at Mrs. Christie’s at all, Alastair. We’re in a hell.”
“Too right, we are. In hell.”
Olivia didn’t correct him. At the moment she decided he had described their location better than she.
Mrs. Christie and Sir Hadrien shared the bench across from Griffin. He noticed they edged away from each other, taking up their respective corners as much as the space allowed once the carriage was underway.
Griffin held the pistol on his lap casually pointed toward the door. “How long have you and Crocker been partners?” Griffin asked, nudging Mrs. Christie’s kid slipper with the toe of his boot.
“Partners with Johnny Crocker? I never have.”
Griffin sighed. “I’d hoped you would not be tedious about it. Who is the gentleman villain?”
“Gentleman villain? I have no idea what you mean.”
“We call him the gentleman villain,” he explained, watching her closely. “Olivia’s abductor. The same man who attacked her in my establishment not long after she arrived. The same one who tried to enter again through a window and succeeded only in frightening a child. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Slightly built, but athletic. By Olivia’s account, a natty dresser.”
“I suppose I might know half a dozen gentlemen who largely meet that description.”
“I need the name of only one. The right one, of course.”
Mrs. Christie shrugged her slender shoulders. “I don’t know that any one of them is responsible for the things you said. It would be wrong to give you even a single name.”
