“I promise I will!”
“Yeah, that’s nice, but we need to make sure of it.”
“Why, what on earth kind of party are you having, anyway?”
“The regular kind. But before that? A search party of the entire grounds. Didn’t your grandmother ever tell you that many hands make light work?”
“Don’t you dare go near the Petrovics’ cottage,” Elsa shouted. “You leave them alone, Archer, I mean it.” If they found the provenance document there, or if Hugh had already told them Tatiana had it, would anything stop them from tearing the cottage apart to find the aviary? Danielle would not be able to cope with that. She shouldn’t have to. Neither should Tatiana.
“We need you out of the way. It’s for your own good, doll. Greed makes people grumpy and violent. If anyone thinks they’re on to something and you swoop in and take it for that gardener, you’re liable to get hurt. Wouldn’t want your other leg to go gimpy, now, would we? And it isn’t like we’ll let you rot in here. Someone will let you out later.”
“No, you let me out now,” Elsa insisted, but receding footsteps told her he was already walking away.
With no way to measure its passing, time had lost its meaning. All Elsa knew was that the search party must have endedbecause the jazz party had started about ten tunes ago, and still no one had come to let her out.
She had found the chair and dragged it close to the keyhole so she could sit while waiting. Her voice hoarse from competing with trumpets and trombones, she pounded the end of her cane against the door. She wasn’t afraid of the dark. But being alone, cast aside and forgotten ... well, she couldn’t think of much worse. As a child, it had happened too many times not to leave a mark on her even as an adult.
She hadn’t been chosen for teams because she couldn’t help score points. She hadn’t been chosen as a friend, either, usually. She was different, when she longed more than anything to be the same, to fit the mold everyone else seemed to have been made from. Different was not good enough. Different was wrong. And being wrong was shameful.
Elsewhere in the house, people her age were dancing the Charleston and King Tut Fox Trot. She could feel the music, hear their laughter, and smell their cigarette smoke. The house itself seemed to buzz with a frantic gaiety.
Elsa might as well have been miles away, here in this forgotten pocket of darkness. Though she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, she pulled off her glasses and cleaned them on a fold of her skirt, again and again. But this was applesauce. It didn’t make her vision better or erase the terrible voices in her mind that told her to be better,dobetter, unless she wanted to be alone forever.
Elsa shook her head to dislodge those old feelings that threatened to twine around her. Shame was bondage, and right now, she needed to be free to think clearly. Grasping her cane, she felt in its grooves and curves the little birds Luke had carved to remind her she wasn’t alone.
He wasn’t here. But God was, or would be if she only asked.Lord, draw near, she prayed.Be with me now. Clearmy mind, and steady my nerves. Please send someone toopen this door.
She kept pounding her cane on the door to the library.
Had the taxi she’d requested to return for her already come and gone? Did anyone besides Archer know she was in here? She’d told Jane she was here to visit the Petrovics. Unless Archer told her otherwise, she’d have no reason to wonder where Elsa was.
Cool air touched her silk-stockinged ankles, a whisper from the gap under the door that led to the tunnel. Luke had made it all the way through and out the other side, but could she? Her lungs tightened just thinking about her last attempt.
Minutes stretched into what felt like hours. The music faded or stopped, or Elsa simply began losing her senses. Archer still didn’t return, and neither did anyone else. For all Elsa knew, Archer could be passed out sozzled somewhere, or he could have forgotten her.
Well then. She was no longer a little girl playing hide-and-seek, waiting to be found by peers who couldn’t be bothered to look for her.
Elsa would find her own way out.Lord, be my light. Show me the path.
CHAPTER
23
The tunnel was exactly how she remembered it, only darker. The air was thick and cold, and growing heavier in her lungs with every step. She wished she had conserved her energy instead of spending so much calling for help that never came.
Without the lamp, she proceeded slowly, using the cane to tell her where each step ended before taking another. Using her other hand, she felt the wall alternate from crumbling dirt to rotting wooden scaffolding.
She pressed on, controlling her breathing, counting every step. When she reached twenty-three, she sat on the floor and scooted to the edge of the drop-off. When she felt the ground three feet below with her cane, she stood on that solid ground and inched forward, always testing the terrain with the cane before trusting her next step.
It was exhausting. She ought to have asked Luke for more details about the tunnel. Was there another drop-off somewhere? How long was the passage, anyway? Did it ever get so narrow he’d had to squeeze through sideways?
That thought alone brought a sharp pain to her chest. Her leg didn’t ache all that much right now, and she figured she had adrenaline to thank for that. But there wasn’t much to be done about the fact that she was having trouble breathing. Goingslower may calm her heart rate, but that meant spending more time underground. Going faster might get her out sooner, but only if she didn’t pass out on the way.
A silent prayer on her lips, she kept going, kept counting her steps if only to assure herself she was moving forward. By the fiftieth step, her head pounded. By the sixtieth, she was fighting a rising tide of panic.
She was in too deep to turn around, even if she wanted to. She could only hope the end was near.
At some point after that, she forgot to keep counting.
