Page 100 of A Figure of Love

He pushed through thorny brush that clawed at his boots and buckskins. Sounds of snuffling and whining came from around the corner of stone ridge he was following. His heart was beating with a combination of expectation and dread when he found the cluster of dogs running back and forth in front of an opening into the rock which had once been boarded up. All but the two bottom planks had been pulled from the wall in rotten pieces. The dogs were nosing at the remaining wood and dancing around, their bodies twisting with excitement. Something white caught his eye beside one of the chunks of wood and Gareth leaned down. It was a small scrap of paper, folded several times. He unfolded it slowly, his heart alternating between excitement and dread; he recognized Oliver’s handwriting. It was part of a larger note, the words written with the graphite pencil Gareth had given him, the sheet of paper from the small pad of paper.

“Carry this with you,” he’d said, giving the boy one of the same pads of paper he always carried. “When a good idea comes to you, you do not want to be without a way to record it.”

Gareth thought the words were Oliver’s notes to himself about the automaton he was making as a surprise gift for his mother.

He carefully re-folded the note and tucked it inside his coat. One of the hounds came near enough to sniff at his face and Gareth gave the animal a pat and then scratched between its ears, just the way he’d seen Oliver do a hundred times.

“He’s in there, isn’t he?” he asked the dog, knowing as he did so how ridiculous such a thing was. But the dog seemed to like it, wagging its tail twice as hard at the sound of his voice.

Gareth stood and approached the opening on feet that were heavier than blocks of lead. The brush had been trampled and then pushed back in a poor effort to cover the hole. Gareth lifted the light until it illuminated what lay behind the boards.

“Good God.” He barely forced the words out through his frozen jaws.

∞∞∞

“It is an hour after he said he would join you. We must do something.” Serena told herself she had shown amazing restraint for the past thirty minutes.

McElroy looked up from the plan of the estate the draftsman had made. “He must have found something around here—this old chalk mine.”

Serena stood at the edge of the desk where he was seated and looked at the map even though it was burnt into her mind.

“Gareth had the mine entrance closed up the very day he first saw it.” She could not bear the thought of either Oliver or Gareth anywhere near the old mine, which the locals considered not just haunted, but terribly unstable in places. She had threatened Oliver to within an inch of his life if he was ever discovered poking around in the ruins, which Flowers, her construction foreman, said hadn’t been used for hundreds of years.

“We used to dare each other to go in them, as young ’ungs. ’Twas stupid, but boys are stupid,” he’d admitted when Serena voiced her concerns. “But Mr. Lockheart has closed up the last of ’em. The other openings either caved in on themselves or was boarded or rocked over years ago.”

She remembered those words now.

“There are other entrances. Entrances that were closed up a long time ago.”

McElroy regarded her with a steady look. When he wasn’t smiling, he looked far older, deep lines carved around his overlarge mouth and dozens of smaller lines mapping the skin around his green eyes. “I know I have only my gut to go on, but Gareth must have found something. He is, as you might know, punctual to the minute.”

Serena’s mouth curled into a smile at the thought of him ordering her to meet him at the river in an hour and twenty-three minutes.

“You might have also realized he is also not fond of dark, cramped spaces.”

She nodded, fighting down a flare of jealous anger that this man knew more about Gareth than she did. “I knew he didn’t care for the dark, but I knew nothing about small spaces.”

McElroy did not enlighten her. “I am going to take the dogs and follow the trail from where we split up.”

“I am going with you.”

He cocked his head as he looked up at her, and finally shrugged. “Fine. I don’t have the time to argue with you and you have the look of a woman who will do whatever she damn well pleases.”

Serena decided she liked the Irishman better and better upon further acquaintance. She turned away and headed for the door.

“I only need my cloak and I am ready.”

∞∞∞

The cavern beyond the entrance was far wider and taller than Gareth expected. It was certainly twice as spacious as the diagrams he’d seen of a Cornish mine that Dec had been keen on acquiring.

The lantern only illuminated a few feet around him, even though he had removed the shutter and set it ablaze. There was no way he could have entered this black hole without it. Even with the light, his insides churned and his hands trembled as he investigated what was essentially a big, winding cavern. No smaller tunnels led out from this one, which must have served as some sort of staging area in the distant past. No, there were only two ways out of this vast cavern that he knew of: the way he’d come in and the blocked-up entrance.

One of the dogs was on its hind legs, its paws resting on the top of the board he’d climbed over. Gareth looked at the anxious animal to avoid looking at what occupied the far end of the big cave: a hole that dropped straight down into Hell.

A choked laugh broke from between his chattering teeth. Even with his shriveled sense of humor he could appreciate the irony. A cave, with another, smaller, cave inside of that. All the situation lacked was crippling hunger pangs and a swollen, bloody back from Mr. Jensen’s leather strap. Oh, and rats—he should never forget the rats.

There was no time for hysteria, and he knew it. At the very least, the note proved Oliver had been here. It might have been days ago, or he might be down there right now.