“Lucien, Lucien.” I kept beaming as I stroked my hand up his arm and curled it around his neck. “Have you no understanding of women?”
“Evidently not.”
“Let me show you exactly what I’ve always dreamed of doing to you.” I pulled his head down toward mine, and as soon as his eyelids drooped and his mouth parted, I clutched his neck and rammed my knee into his groin.
Dredmore shifted to deflect my blow with his hip, which I had expected, and tried to shove me to the floor, which I had not. I curled over under his weight, spun on my heel, and got out from under it at the last possible moment. He landed on the floor; I ran.
Connell, who was standing guard at the end of the hall, ran toward me and tried to seize me, but I dropped to my knees and slid between his legs, leaping up on the other side to hurl myself at the banister. I hoisted up my skirts, put a leg over, and took a long, perilous slide down to the next landing, where I jumped off and took the steps to the first floor two at a time.
I saw the front entry and knew I was going to make it. I was going to best Lucien Dredmore, and I was never going to let him forget it, either.
A figure stepped out of the shadows to block my path to the door, and I gaped at Dredmore’s face.
I whipped my head back to glance at the stairs. He hadn’t followed me down; I was sure of it. “How did you do that?”
He smiled a little. “Guess.”
The only thing that could have gotten him downstairs so instantly was magic. What if he could do all that they said he could? Cast spells, exorcise spirits . . . kill with a touch . . .
I whirled, hauled up my skirts, and ran in the opposite direction. I didn’t hear Dredmore shout or footsteps behind me and looked frantically for the chute or tube he had used to get to the first floor ahead of me. I found nothing, not even a bucket-waiter. All the windows and doors I stopped at to try wouldn’t open.
I made it to the kitchen and hurried toward the first weapon I saw, a thin-bladed boning knife left sitting on a cutting block. Did I want to stab Dredmore in the heart? Many times. But could I actually do that? As I reached for the blade, my hand trembled, and I stared at it, suddenly and completely terrified out of my wits.
“Are you finished?” Dredmore asked me from where he stood, just inside the kitchen. “Or would you like to scamper around the house a bit more?”
I drew my hand back from the knife, and glanced at a cook’s stool sitting by the banked hearth. Every door in the kitchen was locked, but the one leading out to the garden had a long panel of glass in the center.
I grabbed the blade, turned, and threw it at a spot on the wall beside Dredmore, who instinctively ducked. That gave me enough time to get to the stool, pick it up, and hurl it through the doorglass.
Jagged shards tore at my arms and hips as I stepped through the opening and out onto a pavilion. I shook bits of glass from my sleeves as I hurried down the steps, looking this way and that for a path leading away from the manor.
“Charmian.” Dredmore sounded angry now.
No path appeared, but a formal garden formed neat beds of flowers around a dark spiral maze of rose hedges almost twice my height. I trampled innumerable posies, violets, and zinnias as I rushed into the maze.
There were no helpful gaslamps and no way to navigate through the fragrant darkness; the only way I knew I’d taken a wrong turn was when I ran into a thorny wall of canes, too densely packed to let me squeeze through them. I stopped to catch my breath, think, and listen.
“Stay where you are,” I heard Dredmore say from some point in the maze to my right.
“Eat dirt,” I called back.
“You’re wounded,” he said. “I can smell your blood.”
“Leeches always can.” I went left and nearly knocked over a pedestal bearing a marble bust of, who else, Lucien Dredmore.
The cold stone chilled my hands as I tried to lift and toss it, but it was too heavy to move. I settled for picking up a handful of the ornamental pebbles surrounding the base of the pedestal. They weren’t large enough to inflict any serious damage, but with a good hard throw one might blacken his eye or knock out a tooth.
I couldn’t see the tops of the rose hedges, so I had no idea if I was heading in the right direction. The tonners loved hedge mazes, as did Rina, who always regretted that living in the city had prevented her from planting one.
“Not one of those dull old branching mazes, either,” she’d told me once. “I like these new island mazes. There are so many wrong turns and corner traps that you can send someone into them and not see them again for days.”
Travallian Castle had been built by one of Lucien’s ancestors at the turn of the last century; it would be safe to assume the maze was branching. That meant that there was only one path to the center, and one path out.
I emptied my reticule on the ground and used it to wrap my hand, then followed the hedge by touch to the next gap, which I ducked in. I kept my hand on the hedge as I followed it to the next dead end, and then around until I found another gap. The rose thorns snagged and tore at the fabric, but I kept going until the hedge became smooth black stone.
I stepped into the center of the maze and saw a gazebo by a small pool of water. The reflecting pool was being fed from a black-and-white stone fountain. As hot and tired as I was, I didn’t go near the water but circled around it, looking for a place to hide. I had to go round four full-size marble statues of Lucien Dredmore. I stopped by the fifth to unwrap my scratched, painful hand.
The statue reached out and clamped its stone hand over my wrist, making me scream.
“Release,” Dredmore said from the gap in the black stone wall, and the statue’s fingers uncurled.
“Sweet Mary.” I backed away from the thing and heard gears turning as the arm lowered. “What is that thing? A mechanized statue?”
“The property is protected by movement-triggered sentinels.” He started toward me. “They’re too heavy to knock over, invulnerable to injury, and utterly impossible to escape. Quite efficient in detaining uninvited, unsuspecting guests.”
I backed away. “Well, then, since I wasn’t invited, I should go.” I darted to the gap opposite the one I’d used to find the center, only to come up against another of the mechanized statues standing in it. I dodged its stone hands and ran smack into Dredmore.
“Hello again.” I offered a smile. “Lovely maze. What’s the forfeit?”
“Come here.” He dragged me over to the pool, holding my hand under the gaslight to examine it. “What were you thinking?”
“I’ve been thinking . . . run away, escape, call the authorities, have you arrested and charged with assault, see you imprisoned for several decades.” I yanked my arm, but he wouldn’t let go of me. “You know. The usual things.”
He forced me to kneel down on the pool’s narrow ledge and immersed my wounded hand in the icy water.
I yelped. “Damn you, Lucien, it’s freezing.”
“It will stop the bleeding.” He tore his cravat from his throat and used it to blot my palm, examining it again before wrapping the neckcloth around it. “Walsh might have beaten you to death tonight.”
I pretended interest. “For standing up for his wife? Does that generally merit a death sentence?”
“This has nothing to do with Lady Diana.” Dredmore tied off the cravat. “Walsh is involved in some sort of conspiracy against the Crown. He’s been seen with Talians, and they’ve not come here for the fishing.”
“Talians? Then why are they here?” I demanded. When he didn’t reply, I yanked my hand away. “All right. Why would he want me dead if I know nothing about this business of his?”
“You do know something. You simply don’t know what it means to Walsh and his plans, and neither do I.” He gave me a long look. “But he does.”
Kneeling there as we were, him tending to my wounds, me wanting to pummel him, and the two of us
