Panic pounced on her suddenly, and Alice caught her breath, grabbed the handrail and started to descend the stairs rather more quickly than sense and caution prompted. She could not see clearly in the gloom and once or twice her foot slipped on the rotten stair. Her heart was beating in short sharp jerks and she could feel the panic rising in her throat. She wished she had not come. She had only wanted to help Lydia, but now, suddenly, it did not seem so impossible to imagine that Tom Fortune was the villain everyone believed and that Lydia had made a terrible mistake in running away to him and that she, Alice, had made an equally grave one in going to look for them.
On the first landing Alice stopped and tried to calm her breathing, telling herself that she was almost back on the ground and that soon she would be out in the daylight. She could see nothing but blackness below. The main door must have blown shut whilst she was upstairs, although she could not recall hearing the sound of it closing. She looked quickly over her shoulder, but there was nothing but darkness and silence above. She shivered, unable to shake off the feeling that there was someone watching her. Miles had warned her not to go out alone and she had done exactly as she had been told until her desire to help Lydia had made her forget her common sense. But now, with her hand gripping the rail for dear life and the blood pounding through her veins she could feel the gooseflesh tiptoeing along her skin and for a moment felt absolutely terrified.
She began to count the steps down to the bottom.
She paused and heard the echo of her steps above. But was it an echo? Or was there someone on the stairs above her, following her down into the dark?
She paused again, listening intently, every nerve and muscle strained and tense. There was silence and then the stairs creaked above her under the soft footfall of whoever was following her down.
Panic washed through her again. The footsteps had stopped when she stopped, and the building was deathly quiet, but she thought she could hear the soft breathing of whoever was above her in the dark.
Those quiet, furtive footsteps echoed hers, getting quicker and closer. Alice hurried down the stair, slipping, losing her footing for a moment as a tread gave way, every second expecting to feel someone reaching out for her or perhaps that push in her back that would send her sprawling down into the dark. She stumbled down onto the hard earthen floor, scrambled up and searched desperately around for the crack of light that would show where the door was. She heard someone behind her, breathing in sharp, short pants, and then her hand was slipping on the wooden latch and the door opened abruptly and she fell out into the daylight and ran.
After the darkness inside the windmill even the pale March light seemed too bright and blinded her eyes. Alice had lost the footpath and found herself stumbling across the moor, tripping in the heather and old bracken, cutting her stockings to shreds on the twisted roots and hidden rocks. She stumbled down a ravine and almost fell onto the road where she half sat, half lay winded for a moment on the verge until the rumble of approaching wheels roused her.
A carriage. Thank God. Someone would help her.
She scrambled up, waving her arms like the sails on the windmill itself, to indicate to the coachman to slow down.
The carriage passed her, then slowed to a halt, and the door opened from within.
“Miss Lister?” It was the Duchess of Cole’s voice. For the first time in her life, Alice realized that she was actually pleased to see the duchess. It was an entirely new experience.
“Dear ma’am…Your Grace…” She was scrambling up into the carriage before she had been invited, before the steps were even down. “If I could beg for your assistance…”
She collapsed on one of the plush red seats, breathing hard, one hand pressed to the stitch in her side. She was vaguely aware that her mud-encrusted boots would be dropping little flakes of dirt all over the carriage, but that was probably no more than the duchess expected from one brought up on a farm. Henry Cole swung the door closed behind her and tapped sharply on the roof. The carriage set off again.
“You seem to be in some disarray, my dear.” For once the duchess sounded almost benign. She was smiling at Alice. “Here, take a sip from this.” She rummaged in her reticule and extracted a hip flask. “It is brandy and most restorative.”
Alice accepted it gratefully and took a deep swallow. The spirit was fierce and burned her tongue but she was sure it would soon revive her. She smiled to think of the Duchess of Cole carrying a flask of spirits around with her. Wait until she told Mrs. Lister about that. Her mother would demand her own hip flask, with the family crest engraved on it of course…
“I am most dreadfully sorry to burst in upon you both like this,” Alice said.
“No matter,” Faye Cole said. Still there was that pleasant, almost warm, tone in her voice, which Alice had never heard from her before. “We were coming to find you anyway, my dear. There is something that we need to discuss with you.”
Alice looked up. The sharp pain in her side was fading now, her breathing steadying, and now that she had time to think, she realized that there was something in the duchess’s voice that sounded quite wrong, as though it had struck an odd note. Yet Faye Cole was still smiling in that gently benevolent fashion, as though Alice was the one person in the whole world that she most wanted to see, and Henry was nodding like a generous-minded godfather.
“Were you coming to see me to discuss Lydia’s future, ma’am?” Alice said hesitantly. “I am sure she would be delighted to be reconciled with you both.”
A pained look crossed Faye Cole’s face. “Dear me, no,” she said. “We want nothing further to do with
“So unfortunate for you that Lord Vickery left you all alone for a few days,” Faye Cole was saying. “But young men in love…Their judgment suffers as a result and I am sure he felt he simply
“Seduced you easily, I suppose,” Henry Cole put in with a knowing smile. “We all know Vickery’s reputation.” He shifted a little closer to Alice so that their knees were brushing. “Scandalous,” he added, smacking his lips, “but you are a ripe little peach for the plucking-”
“Be quiet, Henry,” the duchess said as Alice recoiled. “There’s no time to indulge your hobbies now. I want to talk to Miss Lister.” She turned back to Alice. “Oh, I have watched and waited, Miss Lister,” she said. “I knew that in the end I would have my chance. I knew that if Lydia called, you would come running.”
Alice’s head was spinning. She thought of the note, crumpled in the pocket of her skirt. “You mean that you
“Lydia was
Alice stared. Her heart had started to thud against her ribs. Her head was aching all of a sudden. The carriage had picked up speed without her noticing. It was ricocheting along the rutted country lane, rocking wildly from side to side. The pounding in Alice’s head seemed to echo the sound of the horses’ hooves. Surely one mouthful of brandy could not make her drunk, and yet the interior of the coach was now starting to spin in a manner that made her feel extremely sick. On the floor, tiny seed grains spun and danced, the same grains that had been on the dusty floor of the windmill, the same chaff that was clinging to Faye Cole’s cobwebbed skirts… Even as Alice registered surprise that the high-in-the-instep Duchess of Cole would venture abroad in dirty skirts, the significance of those grains of wheat hit her so violently that she gasped.
“It was you! You were in the windmill! You were the one who tried to push me down the stairs!”
“You have led something of a charmed life, have you not, Miss Lister?” Faye Cole said, baring her teeth in a smile that chilled. “Lord Vickery’s quick reflexes saved you that day on Fortune Row, and after that he would not let you from his sight. He even managed to spring you from jail when we were so sure that we had managed to have you locked up and out of the way. And today, on the stairs, you were almost within my grasp!” Her hand moved with the swiftness of a striking snake to whip a knife from beneath her skirts and level it at Alice’s throat. “Well, not
