The ruins stretched on as far as her eye could see, in some spots nothing more than a pile of stone, whereas other sections still had full walls standing. He led her to a spot where the wall had crumbled down to nothing and stepped over the threshold into the ruins. Cold stone chilled her feet through her thin slippers, and the damp night breeze scattered goose bumps across her body. In a futile effort at gaining warmth, she pulled her thin robe tighter. The scent of damp earth and moss permeated the air as they moved farther into the decaying building, past more piles of rubble, through tumbled-down archways and heaps of rotting timbers.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“It was a monastery,” Waters said.
They came to a steep staircase, which proved difficult to maneuver. The moss-covered stairs were slippery and lacked a railing, but with careful steps, she made it to the bottom unscathed. Water dripped into several puddles in an odd cadence, giving the large cavernous room a hollow feeling.
They said they were taking her to a dungeon, and they had made good on that promise. In the flickering light of the men’s lanterns, she saw that a torture cage hung loosely from the ceiling across from her, though, thankfully, it looked to be in rather poor condition. Several sets of manacles were fastened to the wall, the ceiling above them partially collapsed. She suspected the thing off in the far corner was a pit. She shuddered to think of being crammed into the tiny box with nothing but the dark surrounding her.
“I believe you are mistaken,” she said. “This couldn’t possibly have been a monastery. Monks are not predisposed to torture—upon themselves, perhaps, but not upon others.”
“This was an old castle before the monks inherited it,” Waters said. “They’ve been gone a while now.”
“If you two are finished with the history lesson, we have work to do,” Thatcher growled. He set his lantern down and scanned the open room. His deep chuckle shot doom through Esme. “Put her there.” He motioned to the far right wall.
Waters followed his gaze but made no movement. “In the manacles? Thatcher, a might rough, don’t you—”
But before he could finish his question, Thatcher silenced him with a steely glare. “Yes, you dolt, lock her up. She’s a prisoner, not your betrothed.”
Waters dragged her over to the far side of the room. The dungeon’s air was damp and stale. The ground was so moist that mud clung to her slippers with each step. The dirt beneath her feet lent an earthy smell to the air that made her feel as if they were outside. Only she knew they weren’t, and the likelihood of her escaping to the outside was slim. Even if she did, where would she go?
Panic rose in her throat, bitter and acidic as bile.
If only this were a scene from one of the adventure novels she read. In the books a handsome hero always came and saved the poor distressed woman. Esme knew that she had no such hero, handsome or otherwise, so it was likely she would rot hanging from those manacles. Or worse.
This time she didn’t bother to suppress her shudder. If lurid fiction were to be believed, ruffians such as these were likely to use her poorly. Regardless of how they might feel about her large bum.
Waters untied her arms, then slid her right wrist into the manacle. As he closed the cold metal around her, she watched him slide the pin into place, locking it on her arm. She tried to kick him, but her feet caused no great damage, even when they collided with his shins.
He had more difficulty with her left arm, both because of her attempt to dissuade him from chaining her to a wall and because the pin on the left manacle was severely rusted. But he managed to force it into place. It certainly didn’t look as if it would give way any time soon.
Something scurried beneath her feet and she kicked out, sending the unsuspecting creature flying toward the men. Rat. She smiled at the irony.
Each man held a lantern that provided enough light for her to see them from her vantage point against the wall. Above her, there was a fair-sized hole in the partially collapsed ceiling, through which she caught a glimpse of cloud-strewn sky. She herself was shrouded in darkness except for the faintest shaft of moonlight.
“Start against that wall,” Thatcher told Waters while pointing to his left. “You count forty paces. I’ll start over here.”
The men were several feet from their respective walls before Esme interrupted their counting. “At some point you’ll realize you have the wrong woman. I have no key, nor any notion of what we’re doing here.”
Waters went back to his wall and started again.
“Whomever you were looking for, I’m not her,” she said. “In fact, I’m certain you are unaware of this, but I am a very important person, and once my household discovers that I have disappeared, the whole of London will be looking for me. They’ve probably already notified the metropolitan police.”
That sounded good, in theory. But none of it was true. Her aunt would certainly miss her, as would Mr. and Mrs. Craddock, their two servants, but no one would believe Esme to actually be missing. She had always had the bad habit of going off on her own whenever the desire hit, such as when she traveled to Oxford to buy the journal of the man who’d researched Pandora’s box. She’d been gone three days and her aunt had barely noticed. So her household, as it were, was used to her disappearing every once in a while. Then again, they would know something was amiss by the state of her study. They would certainly know she would never treat her books in such a fashion. But they would not have noticed until long after the abductors had absconded with Esme.
Again Waters shook his head and went back to his starting point.
“Waters!” Thatcher yelled. “Get over here and hold my place; I’ll count out yours.” He aimed his pistol at Esme. “And you, shut up!”
The man meant it. Even without clear lighting she could see the coldness behind his steely blue eyes.
Waters, while obviously still a menace, was clearly no match intellectually for a woman of her ilk. Facing him alone, she’d easily be able to outsmart him—if not overpower him. Thatcher, on the other hand, had the look of a man fueled by malicious intelligence and ambition. He was by far the more threatening of the two.
She said nothing more for a long while as the men counted and recounted their steps.
“This is the spot,” Thatcher said. “Dig.”
They set down their lanterns and picked up shovels. This whole ordeal was growing stranger by the moment. Perhaps she really was having some sort of bizarre dream. She’d been reading at her desk, and she’d simply fallen asleep and was still sitting in her uncomfortable chair in her little study. She couldn’t very well pinch herself because of the current positioning of her arms. So she did the next best thing—she bit down on her bottom lip.
