Page 85 of So Wild A Heart

“Oh, yes.” She smiled. “I am rather resilient.”

“Yes, I can see that you are. I was going out for a ride, and I thought I would stop in and see if you would like to go with me. Over to the abbey ruins, perhaps?”

“No, I had better not. I’m waiting for Mr. Strong to return. We have to finish the books today.”

“Oh, surely that can wait,” the older man said jovially. “It is a beautiful day for a ride.”

“No. I’m sorry. I cannot.”

“Oh. Pity.” Uncle Rupert reached into his jacket and, much to Miranda’s amazement, pulled out a pistol. He leveled it at her. “I am afraid that I must insist, my dear.”

Miranda stared at him, her brain suddenly numb. Uncle Rupert? “It is you?” she asked. “You are the one who—”

She broke off, turning as the door opened, and Strong stepped into the room. “Mr. Strong!” she cried with relief. “Help me.”

But Strong only glanced at her nervously, then looked toward Rupert. “People will see the gun,” he said agitatedly. “You cannot walk out of here carrying that, sir.”

“I am afraid you’re right, Strong.” Uncle Rupert started toward Miranda.

Miranda stared at them, stunned. The two of them were in on this together! Suddenly it came to her like a blow to her skull.

“The estate!” she cried. It was the only thing that connected the two men. “You have been cheating Devin on the estate!”

Uncle Rupert sighed. “That is your problem. You see? You are simply much too clever for your own good.”

He stopped beside her, and before Miranda knew what he was about to do, he raised the pistol and brought the butt end down sharply on her skull. Everything went black, and she crumpled to the floor.

It was completely dark when Miranda came to, and for an instant she was terrified that she was back in the dreadful cellar again. But then it impinged on her consciousness that there was light coming in through some large cracks in the ceiling. She knew that the cellar had not looked like that.

Her head was splitting. She sat up gingerly and looked around her. There was a little more light than there had been yesterday in the cellar, and she was able to see that she was sitting on an earthen floor, earthen walls all around her. The light from above came through in four lines the shape of a rectangle. A vague shape of stairs went up to the rectangle. She was again underground, she thought, this time with a trap door instead of a regular door and earthen walls instead of stone ones. She supposed it could be another part of the cellars, or perhaps even some other outbuilding of Darkwater.

Or it could be the abbey ruins.

That thought took hold of her mind, and the more she contemplated it, the more she thought that the abbey was the likely answer. They would not want to risk her being quickly discovered again, as she had been yesterday. No doubt they would think it better to get her away from the house. But how had they managed to carry her unconscious body out of the house without anyone noticing?

She sat for a while longer, gathering her strength. She knew that she would have to make the attempt to open the trap door, but right now she felt too sick and weak from the blow Rupert had given her to do much of anything.

Sighing, she leaned back against the wall. Rupert had accused her of being too clever. The truth was, she thought, she hadn’t been clever enough. After weeks of going over the books and looking through the estate business matters, she had not caught on to the fact that Rupert and the estate manager were cheating Devin. No doubt they had a false set of books which they had shown her. They must have been collecting more money in rents than they showed in the books and pocketing the difference. The estate must not be in the terrible shape the two of them had pretended.

She remembered now her questions about one of the tenant farms and how much more prosperous it looked than the records indicated. Why hadn’t she realized what that meant? It had been foolish in the extreme to simply take Strong’s explanation on faith.

The fact was, she had been too distracted to give the estate the full attention she should have paid to it. There had been the renovation of the house and grounds, of course; those things had taken away a good deal of her time. But the biggest distraction had been Devin himself. She had been too busy trying to get him to fall in love with her to really notice much of anything else.

Unfortunately, it looked as if she might have to pay for that inattention with her life.

She thought about the first “accident.” It had happened immediately after she met the estate manager. She recalled his amazement when she had told him that she would be running the estate herself. No doubt until then he and Uncle Rupert had expected to be able to continue the same game that they had been playing with Devin’s estate all along. Perhaps they had even thought that they would now have her money at their disposal, as well. Upon hearing the truth, Strong must have rushed to arrange the first “accident,” knowing that she would be exploring the library that afternoon.

When that failed, Uncle Rupert had invited her out for a ride along a trail where a limestone rock could conveniently split her skull open. Then there had been a lull of a few weeks without accident. Perhaps when their books had held up to her inspection they had decided that murder would not be necessary. But in the past week or so, they had now tried to kill her three times: the drug in the hot chocolate, which Elizabeth had drunk; the cellar; and now this. Something had frightened them into renewed action. She wondered what it was.

Of more immediate importance, of course, was when Devin would return home and when he would set up another search for her. Given the fact that he had become convinced that Leona was the culprit, she had to wonder if he would even worry about the fact that she was not in the house. All she could do was hope that he would. But even if he was worried about where she was, how could he realize that she was at the abbey?

No, she thought, she could not afford to trust in Devin’s rescuing her. She had to make plans for herself. The first thing, of course, was to find a weapon that she could use against them when they came back—provided they were planning to return, of course, and had not simply thrown her into this room to die a slow death of thirst and starvation. She shoved aside that discouraging thought and began a slow perambulation of her prison. One hand trailing along the earthen wall, she walked, sweeping the floor beside her with one foot, searching in the almost nonexistent light for something she could fashion into a weapon. A few times she came upon small rocks, which she pocketed, but after circling and crisscrossing the room, that was still all she had.

Miranda sat down on the bottom step and examined her discoveries: three rocks, two a little larger than pebbles and one that would fit into the palm of her hand. She thought for a moment, then removed her handkerchief from the pocket of her dress. Spreading it out on her lap, she centered the three stones on it and neatly tied them up in it so that she had a small sack with the rocks firmly lumped together, and therefore larger and heavier than they were singly, and with the advantage of having a knot of material beneath the rocks by which she could grasp and wield the makeshift weapon. It was not, perhaps, the most dangerous weapon she could have—she wished sincerely that she had decided to carry a pistol or a knife strapped to her leg—but it was better than being unarmed. Besides, she would have the element of surprise on her side. Uncle Rupert and Strong would not expect her to have a weapon; she was obviously not the sort of female they were accustomed to.

She heard a sound above her head and went still, listening. There was the neigh of a horse, then the faint sound of a voice. She thought about shouting—it could, after all, be a stranger, or even Devin looking for her. But common sense told her that it was Rupert or Strong, or both, come to finish the job, and the best thing for her to do was to appear as weak and helpless as possible.

Therefore she hurried back to the wall where she had been when she came to, and she slumped down upon the floor, closing her hand around her weapon and thrusting it into her pocket.