Colin reappeared with a half-filled brandy glass and Jacob held it to the girl’s lips. She swallowed a mouthful, then spasmed into a fit of coughing.
“Now speak,” Jacob said. “You’re not in any trouble.”
“B-but thenecklace… Nicola said the master would beat me to death if he knew I took it, and that she’d tell him if I told on her, a-and—” She broke off, sobbing, and Jacob pressed the glass to her lips once more.
What does a necklace have to do with my wife’s disappearance?
“Susie, Lord Devereaux only wants to know where his wife is,” John said.
“I-I can’t tell you…”
“Can’t, or won’t? Do you wish to be dismissed? Lord Devereaux cares nothing for a necklace, but he does care for his wife. Where is she?”
“N-Nicola said she was just playing a joke on the mistress, seeing as they were such good friends. Like sisters, she said.”
“Oh, shedid, did she?” Jacob scoffed.
“What joke, Susie?” John asked.
“Th-the marble,” Susie said, before bursting into tears again. “I’m sorry! I’m sure she never meant for the mistress to come to no harm.”
What do you mean?
The maid stared at Charles’s hands.
“He wants you to continue,” John said. “What marble?”
“Th-the marble on the stairs. When the mistress fell, I wanted to tell her about the marble, but Nicola said she’d tell on me about the necklace, then she’d push me down the stairs so that I’d end up like Ma Lucy, or the old mistress. The master was away, and I wanted to tell him when he returned, but that was when Nicola said he’d…” Her breath caught and she dissolved into tears again.
Charles’s gut twisted in horror.
The marble he’d spotted at the top of the stairs…
Sweet Lord—was that why Nicola had lied about her stepmother’s death?
And my Olivia is outside somewhere, alone with her.
“Sweet fucking hell,” Jacob cursed. “You foolish girl! Where are they now?”
“I…”
Charles grabbed Susie by the shoulders, and she let out a whimper.
“N-Nicola said she was going to take her to the forest, and…”
She trailed off, and icy fingers squeezed Charles’s heart as he recalled the image of his wife tumbling over the edge of the ravine as she had almost done before.
But this time, he was not there to keep her safe. This time her only companion was the woman who had, most likely, brought about her stepmother’s death, and who saw Olivia as an obstacle to her ambitions.
What if she intended to remove that obstacle?
He leaped to his feet, then sprinted out of the house toward the stables, where Destriero stood patiently in his stall. Charles motioned to the stable boy to saddle the horse, then mounted swiftly and set offtoward the forest at a gallop.
Fear swelled in his mind—a thick, black wave of terror that threatened to burst. He spurred Destriero on, and as they plunged into the darkness of the forest, the wave crested and burst. He tilted his head upward and a roar came from his lips, pushed to the surface through ten years of silence and the terror that the thing he loved more than the mother he’d lost—more than his own life—was lost to him.
“Olivia!”
His voice reverberated through the forest as he tore ahead, the branches of the trees whipping across his face. Then he heard the rush of water, angry, boiling water, a great beast waiting to devour its prey, and he reined his horse in. With a scream, Destriero pulled up, just shy of the precipice.
