If the others were captured, Charlotte would still run.
She had to.
Her lungs burned as damp air clawed painfully at her chest. Her legs grew heavy, but she did not stop.
She ran blindly through the twisting darkness, only slowly realising the footsteps behind her had vanished.
Sarah.
Lucy.
Had they been caught?
Tears stung her eyes, but still she ran.
She was their only hope now.
She rounded a sharp corner—
And collided violently with the chest of a man.
Charlotte screamed and lashed out blindly, kicking and striking wildly in an attempt to break free.
Strong hands seized her shoulders.
‘Charlotte—it is me!’
Even in the dim tunnel light, she recognised Lord Stanley.
Chapter 38
‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded, scanning her face and arms.
Charlotte’s features crumpled. She threw her arms around his neck and clung to him desperately.
‘How did you find me?’ she choked out. ‘I thought—I thought I was going to die.’
For one suspended moment, Charlotte did not think—did not question or reason—she simply held on to him, her fingers gripping the fabric of his coat as though letting go might cast her back into the darkness she had only just escaped.
His arms came around her at once, firm and unyielding, drawing her tightly against him with a force that surprised her.
‘I thought I had lost you,’ he said, his voice low and strained in a way she had never heard before.
There was no composure in it now. No careful restraint. Only raw, unguarded fear.
Charlotte closed her eyes briefly, breathing in the familiar scent of him—clean linen, leather, and something faintly of woodsmoke. It grounded her in a way nothing else could.
‘You’re here,’ she whispered, though her voice trembled.
For those few fleeting seconds, the cold stone floor, the iron bars, the terror, the suffocating darkness—all of it receded, as though it belonged to some distant nightmare rather than the reality she had just endured.
Then awareness returned.
They were not alone.
Charlotte became acutely conscious of the space around them—the flicker of lantern light against the damp tunnel walls, the scrape of boots, and the low murmur of voices hastily subdued out of respect for the moment they were witnessing.
She opened her eyes and glanced up.
