milky eye. It had the brightness and density of Greenwich fog.
She wondered what part she was to play here. She would be alert. Whatever hint Sebastian or Stephen Reed might give her, she would fall into the role.
She was nervous, there was no denying it. Her heart was racing now. It would not do to let it show.
Evangeline closed her eyes and mastered her breathing. She was strong. Nothing could daunt her. She told herself this, over and over.
When the jarring of the vehicle caused her to snap her eyes open, she looked out of the one good side window and saw that this was not the usual way to the Hall.
They were on the estate, but this had to be one of the less-used roads. The track became rougher as they went along it. Perhaps the chapel had its own approach? As far as she could remember, the chapel and its little graveyard weren’t so far from the main house. Not that she knew the main house well. There had been a time when Sir Owain and his family had thrown open the grounds every summer to host garden parties for local people, but the house itself had stayed out of bounds.
Something was wrong here. She’d glimpsed the Hall through the trees, but they weren’t making the final ascent to it. Instead they zigzagged through a screen of conifers on a track that ended at a complex of stables and estate workers’ buildings, all shuttered up and deserted. She knocked on the partition window to ask the driver for an explanation, but the driver didn’t respond.
She didn’t know his name. Once numbering as many as three hundred souls-including stonemasons, gardeners, gamekeepers, and laborers-the estate’s workers had always been a self-sufficient community apart from the town. Evangeline stared at the back of his head with a sense of growing, formless dread that threatened to coalesce into a certainty at any moment.
These buildings were not completely disused. Part of the stables was now the landaulet’s garage space. But looking all around she saw broken glass and boarded windows, tall weeds, a clock tower whose face had no hands. The driver braked to a halt in the overgrown stable yard and went to open up the stable doors, ignoring all of Evangeline’s attempts to get his attention. When she tried to open the door to get out, there was no handle on the inside. They’d been removed. Both of them.
Her heart pounding, Evangeline sank back into the buttoned leather. Her nails dug into the seat as she gripped it on either side of her thighs. The same disabling panic that had gripped her in the Greenwich tunnel was threatening to overwhelm her now.
As he walked back to the car, the driver glanced at her once. Though he’d been around for as long as she could remember, take him out of Arnmouth and she could never have picked him out of a London crowd. She did not know him. His was the anonymous face of the anonymous servant. And yet the past was beginning to unfurl for her now, like a dark flower in bloom.
The car rolled into the stable and stopped. The engine died, and all was silence. The driver stepped down from behind the wheel and went to close the doors behind them. Evangeline suddenly launched herself forward and tried to slide open the partition between the cab and the driver’s bench, but found it locked in place.
Meanwhile, behind her, the daylight was being shut out of the stable, one half at a time.
FORTY-NINE
The stable block was one long room with roof beams and small, high windows. There were wooden stalls for long-gone horses. Evangeline could see that the walls were whitewashed and the cobblestone floor sloped toward a central drain. The unused part of the stable had become a storage area for broken-down carts and farm equipment. The two nearest stalls now served for an auto workshop.
Over by the workbench, Sir Owain’s chauffeur was putting on a serviceable leather apron. He tied its strings behind him, blind, and with his attention momentarily absorbed she knew she ought to make a move; but she was hit again, this time by an overwhelming memory of sensations triggered by the sight of the apron. The male, stale smell of sweat and old leather. Like cooking bones.
She’d wasted a moment. Now he’d turned to the bench and was looking along the tools that hung there. While his back was to the car, Evangeline slid across the seat and punched the parchment out of the broken window on the opposite side. Then she reached out and groped around for the handle to let herself out.
It wasn’t easy. Not hard to find the handle, but hard to turn it at that angle. By the time she’d thrown the door open and was spilling out, he’d reached her. He came around the back of the car and grabbed her, dragging her out and down onto the stones before she got a chance to gain her balance. She tangled in her skirts and went sprawling.
She was scrambling to rise, but he put his foot underneath her and hooked her over onto her back. Then he put one foot on her chest and leaned toward her, pinning her down with his full weight. She thought her ribs would break but had not the strength to throw him off or the breath to scream. She grabbed and scratched at his high leather driving boot, but it made no difference.
He said, “Where is it?”
She gasped. “What?” she tried to say, but no breath came out.
“I know you took a box from the cottage. The old man saw you. I went all over that place, and I never saw any box there. What have you done with it?”
In fear and pain, Evangeline cranked her head around and tried to look toward the car so that she could point to the pannier on her bicycle. But it wasn’t there. He’d lied, and hadn’t brought it.
Which meant he’d almost certainly lied about everything else; no Sebastian Becker, no Stephen Reed, no final resting place for Grace’s body. He’d set out only to find Evangeline and bring her here for this. A drive through town with her bicycle displayed on the back of the car would have been a poor excuse for stealth.
With no bicycle, she couldn’t appease him with the box he wanted. In which there was nothing anyway. She fought against his weight and he pressed down harder, and she felt her chest begin to crack. In her terror, she could think no more than a few seconds ahead. What could she do? What could she give him to make him stop?
Her eyes became fixed on the livery buttons on his uniform coat.
The livery button in Grace’s box, the button that Evangeline had disregarded, was a match for them.
Her fear was no less. But her mind was no longer so clouded.
There was the corner where she’d once stood. He’d brought them here from the moors, later to take them out again and leave them for dead. Grace had been screaming, and young Evangeline could not bring herself to turn around and see why.
He had one foot on her, the other on the floor. His stance was extended, like a fencer’s in a lunge. Evangeline was pinned, but she was young and she was supple. She drew in both legs and kicked upward, feet together, hard into his jewels, which presented an open target.
The result was instantaneous and spectacular. Far more so than she could have imagined. This bit of wisdom had been shared between the sisterhood at their meetings, but few had ever seen the results.
He did not scream. It was much worse than that. He folded around the middle, turned white, and fell to the ground. There he squirmed like a cut worm, hugging himself and making tiny, high-pitched kitten sounds.
She scrambled to her feet and away, fearing his reach and recovery. As she got to the stable doors, she heard him vomit. She ran out into the yard and almost lost her footing on the cobblestones, looking all around for a way to run. She saw an archway and ran for that. Beyond the archway were derelict greenhouses. Beyond the greenhouses was woodland.
She knew what she should have done, of course. While he was helpless she should have gone to his workbench, selected a suitable hammer or a wrench, and beaten him like a jellyfish on a rock until there was no harm left in him. Now he would come after her when he was able, and he wouldn’t give her the same chance twice.
He wanted the button. The button would betray him. Plucked from his uniform jacket, bearing Sir Owain’s crest, kept by Grace for all these years. Grace had always known their attacker, but she’d kept it to herself-kept it from her. To what purpose, Evangeline could not imagine. She would have an angle; Grace always had. But as with
