Slowly, she left the bed and made her way towards the door. Immediately, she was hit by the cold gust of wind from an open window nearby. The house itself felt dreadfully empty as well.
I wonder how Simon managed to survive here all alone all those years.
Rachel swallowed hard and shook the thought away.No more thinking about Simon.
It was how she had gotten into this rotten mess to begin with. If she had kept to the original terms of their marriage and not let herself fall in love with him, then his absence would not have impacted her as it did now.
Rachel reached the grand staircase, glancing down at the steps. The downstairs area looked far too dark.
“One of the staff must have forgotten to light the lamps,” she muttered to herself.
It must have been an oversight. She decided to take it upon herself to do the task. If nothing else, it would give her something to do.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and began to feel around the room. It was too dark to see anything properly, but she spotted one of the lamps.
“There,” she said, feeling the wall with her hands. If she could just light it up, then it would be fine.
Slowly, she reached for the matchbox that was usually kept in one of the drawers under the lamp, but before she could light it, there was a crack in the air. Like someone had lost their footing and stumbled.
“Is someone there?” she called out, startled. “Agnes?”
Maybe the housekeeper had heard the sounds of her moving about and came out to inspect.
But there was no reply. With shaking hands, she returned to the lamp, though she chided herself for being so scared.
“Don’t be so foolish,” she muttered under her breath, struggling to light the match. “No one can be here at this time of the day.”
She struck the match and finally lit up the lamp, and light spread around her. But that was when she noticed the shadow on the wall in front of her.
A cold dread curled around her spine as she realized she wasnotalone. It all happened very quickly after that. Hurried footstepssnuck up behind her, and then a pair of arms grabbed her from her sides.
A blood-curdling scream escaped her lips, and then everything around her seemed to dim.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“This better not be a waste of our time, Rowan,” Simon warned his friend. The pair was riding down a dirt-filled path in a part of town that Simon had not been in before.
“You seem to have a lot of faith in me.” Simon could feel Rowan rolling his eyes as he spoke. “But a little patience will do you good. You need to trust me here.”
“I trust logic,” Simon corrected without hesitation. “And logic tells me that an abandoned estate is an unlikely place to find the culprit whom we have been tracking for a long time now.”
“You say that,” Rowan shook his head as he dismounted his horse. Overgrown shrubbery surrounded the lawn, and it looked like no one had set foot in there for years. “But you do not seem to have an alternate lead either.”
“I am just pointing out the obvious,” Simon said, dismounting as well. The horse neighed as he pulled it to the side. “I cannot see why someone would hide in a place like this. It would be far too much of an obvious choice.”
“I was told that we should find them here. My source told me, and I trust them,” Rowan maintained, though his voice sounded tired.
“You’ve yet to explain why this source of yours is trustworthy enough for us to chase shadows in the night,” Simon quipped.
“Because this source hasn’t failed me before,” Rowan answered simply. “And because I am not in the habit of leading you on wild chases for my own amusement. If you had a better lead, we wouldn’t be here,” Rowan pointed out.
Simon could not argue with that. He realized that he was being too harsh with Rowan, for he was only trying to help out.
“Tell me, where else should we go? Follow another dead-end trail? Wait for them to slip through our fingers?” Rowan continued.
“Fine,” Simon exhaled. “You have made your point, but I still am not interested in wasting my time. If this lead is false, I will eliminate it now and move on.”
Rowan muttered something under his breath.
