Page 127 of Aurelia

She recoiled. “You spied on us.”

His eyes pulsed with loathing. “Yes. I saw you naked with your legs sprawled, reveling in his crude treatment. That is when I knew Crewe needed to leave the island because I needed time to plan.” Suddenly, his face fell. “When you accepted Sir Gideon’s request to call on you, I thought you could be saved.”

Aurelia watched in shock as a tear slid down his cheek. He was mad. Utterly, completely mad, his emotions changing radically in the blink of an eye.

He had killed a woman he supposedly loved, killed another he loathed, and now he would kill her.

“Crewe has always been good to me,” Arthur said in a rambling way. “He treated me like a brother. Not like his father, who thought I was lower than dirt.” He swallowed. “But Crewe wanted the money—that was all he cared about. He should have argued with the earl about marrying Rebecca. He should have defied his father for once. He should never have married Rebecca. She loved me!”

Arthur suddenly sobbed. “I promised her that everything would be fine. I said we could at least be together—that I could come to her bed—if she married Crewe and lived in the castle. Crewe hated her and didn’t even go to her on their wedding night. Instead, I did.” Arthur’s lips curved into a smile at that memory. But then, as quick as lightening, his face fell. “Something changed after Celsa was born. Rebecca said she was finished with me—that I had killed our love when I’d refused to run away with her. But how could I run away from Crewe?” Fury suffused his face. “She spurned me and went to Roland’s bed!” He glared at the skeleton. “She taunted me about it—telling me the vile things she had allowed him to do to her, boasting that she was pregnant by him. I could not let her have his child. I… could not.” He broke down and cried, babbling incoherently at the skeleton.

If he could kill a person he loved, he would be no help to Aurelia.

She looked at the manacles around her wrists and then glanced around her for a rock that was big enough to perhaps break one. But the only ones she could see were far out of reach.

Aurelia examined the manacles more closely. They were fastened together with a lock, and so she took a pin from her hair and poked it around inside the small hole. But no matter how much she jabbed at it, the lock stayed firm.

Aurelia squeezed her eyes shut as despair welled inside her.

Something cold seeped through her ankle boot and she gasped when she saw how fast the water had come in.

Arthur nodded as if she had spoken. “Yes, it shoots up the narrow path like the neck of a funnel. It won’t be long now.”

She bit her lip against the hysteria rising inside her. Think! Think! Think!

Aurelia looked from the manacles to the huge stalagmite the chain was attached to. Perhaps if she tried to—

“Aurelia!”

For a moment, she thought she’d imagined the voice.

“Aurelia!”

“Roland?” she said, the word scarcely a whisper.

“Aurelia! Can you hear me?”

“Roland!” Aurelia screamed. “I am in here!”

“I’m coming, darling,” Roland called back, his voice louder.

Aurelia sobbed, almost faint with relief.

“The water is already high at the entrance,” Arthur said in an eerily calm voice. “If he comes all the way up here now, he will never get out.”

Aurelia’s jaw sagged.

“Aurelia?” Roland’s voice sounded oddly watery, as if he were—

“Go back, Roland! You won’t be able to get out again. Don’t come in, Roland!”

There was no answer.

“You love him,” Arthur said, smiling that angelic smile she had once thought so charming.

“Please, Arthur—we were friends once. Help me!”

“I can’t,” he said sadly. “Celsa will be the Lady of Crewe. My daughter will be the mistress of everything.”