Page 45

“May I walk you back, Mrs. Dixon?” Blake rose. “It would be my pleasure to uphold the noble and heroic behavior of Mr. Kane.”

Lillias hesitated, her frown softening. “Thank you.”

Grace stood. “We will meet you here tomorrow?”

Lillias nodded and then paused. “The more brains we have to help us locate this will, the better, Grace. Not everyone has to take up the mantle of a would-be detective to make accurate decisions.”

With that particularly misguided barb hanging in the air, Lillias and Blake exited the hotel. Grace resisted the urge to make a face at the door, settling instead for a resigned sigh.

“How will we search the castle with Mr. Kane among us?” she asked, turning to Frederick. “And what if we find it while he’s there? Is he likely to attack one of us to retrieve it?”

“Perhaps,” Frederick admitted, resting his elbows on the table, his steady gaze meeting hers. “But perhaps having Mr. Kane close is precisely where we need him to be. It’s easier to keep an eye on someone when they’re in your midst rather than scheming in the shadows.”

“Unless he’s already several steps ahead of us,” she countered. “He does have a ghostly sister stationed inside the castle. We could be walking into a trap.”

“Perhaps, but we have several things in our arsenal Mr. Kane does not.” He took Grace’s hand.

Grace arched an eyebrow. “And those are?”

“Your clever head and newfound friendship with Mr. Locke.”

Grace’s grin twitched. “Mr. Locke was very kind.”

“And I daresay from our brief acquaintance with him, he is not only amenable to you but also knowledgeable.” He raised a brow. “And we have a very alive Mr. Dixon.”

She grinned, her tension easing even more. “That is true.”

“And Blake.”

Grace’s laugh loosed. “Indeed, he is quite the charming addition to our arsenal, but you’ve forgotten one key addition.”

Frederick raised an eyebrow, his lips curving slightly. “And what’s that?”

“You, my dear Lord Astley,” Grace answered, watching his smile broaden. “You’re the calm to my—”

“Dizzying inventiveness?”

She laughed. “Which I’m sure you mean in the best way.”

“Without a doubt.” He spoke the words so gently, she felt certain he meant them in a way she didn’t fully understand but liked a great deal.

They moved toward the stairs to their room, but before they alighted, Grace turned to him. “You know, Frederick, I was thinking that for our search of the castle tonight, we really ought to take a rope.”

“And how are you certain this is a secret way into the castle?” Grace asked as she kept close to Blake on the path through the trees.

Frederick followed a few paces behind, his lantern swaying with his movements, while Tony brought up the rear, muttering occasional complaints about roots and brambles.

Frederick sighed. What a ragtag troupe they made: his fiercely determined wife, his infuriatingly clever cousin, and Tony—whose sole contribution thus far appeared to be an impressive inventory of complaints.

If someone had told him a year ago that married life would involve midnight excursions in pursuit of a potentially murderous businessman and his questionably spectral sister, Frederick might have called them mad. Yet here they were.

Blake turned slightly, his lantern casting a mischievous gleam across his face. “You question my ability to commune with the local fae and extract their secrets?”

Grace’s quiet laugh filtered through the darkness, the sound pulling a grin from Frederick. If they were bound to die in a trap set by a deviant businessman and his pseudo-dead sister, he might as well do so with some of the people he loved best.

Well, except Tony. He barely knew the man and hadn’t been particularly impressed thus far. But will-hunting in a haunted castle beside his beloved wife and his best friend? That wasn’t the worst way to go.

“I’m so glad to hear that the local fae were so obliging,” Grace said, shaking her head with silent laughter.

“I may have followed our enigmatic Mr. Kane after escorting Mrs. Dixon to her hotel,” Blake admitted with an exaggerated tip of his chin. “He led me straight here.”

Frederick’s brows rose. “Remarkably convenient, isn’t he?”

“Suspiciously so,” Blake agreed, his grin ruthless. “Though Mrs. Dixon seems convinced he’s the very paragon of helpfulness.”

The castle wall loomed ahead, its jagged silhouette rising through the trees.

“How can the two of you speak so casually when we’re quite literally walking through the forest at night toward a castle where the man who tried to murder me could be in wait?” Tony’s voice pitched higher than usual, the tremor betraying his unease.

“Would it help to speak more formally, sir?” Blake quipped, sparing a glance over his shoulder as they stepped into the castle’s clearing.

“Never mind,” Tony muttered, deflated.

Grace, brushing a stray leaf from her sleeve, interjected with an air of pragmatism, “If Mr. Kane came this way after meeting us earlier, it’s a clear sign he knows he’s not supposed to be here without an official escort.”

“And,” Frederick added, “he’s either searching for the will or—”

“Preparing his sister to frighten us tomorrow,” Grace finished, her gaze lingering on the looming stone walls.

“I usually avoid performances before the curtain officially rises,” Blake said, striding toward a small door at the base of one turret. “But in this case, I think an early viewing might be worthwhile.”

The door creaked open with a groan that reverberated like an ominous note on a church organ, revealing a spiral staircase winding into the castle’s depths. Blake raised his lantern, the flickering light licking at the cold stone.

“Now, Lady Astley, where did Mr. Locke suggest we begin our search?”

“Upstairs,” Grace said, her voice hushed as her gaze darted toward the narrowing staircase. She placed a hand lightly on Blake’s arm. “And Blake, just so you know—I wouldn’t advise splitting up.”

“Oh?” Blake arched a brow, his tone the picture of polite curiosity.

“Novels,” Frederick cut in, deadpan. “Bad things happen when parties split up. Ghosts, murderers, malevolent housemaids—it’s always worse alone.”

Blake’s grin was wicked. “Good advice. Since we are possibly making contact with a fictional ghost in the land of myths and legends, we ought to stick to the rules of fiction, indeed.”

“Laugh all you like,” Grace’s voice lilted with her own good humor as she followed close behind him up the stairs, her fingers brushing the cold stone wall for balance. “But just wait and see. My fictional knowledge has been proven true more often than not.”

“I’ve no doubt of it,” Blake replied, casting a glance over his shoulder. The lantern light deepened the mischief in his eyes. “Fiction usually comes from somewhere very nonfictional.”

Frederick smiled at their whispered banter, a pleasant distraction in the deepening darkness of the stairwell. The air felt damp, thick with the scent of earth and stone, and much cooler than an early July evening. It creeped into his bones, nearly inciting a chill.

When they reached the first landing, a hallway stretched out before them to the right, the passage dark except for the faint moon glow casting pale light through the windows.

“Douse your lantern,” Blake whispered, extinguishing his own. “Too easy to spot.”

Frederick obeyed, leading the group through the shadowed hall. The massive windows they’d admired earlier that day now seemed eerie, their pale light giving shape to the wide, yawning darkness on either side. However, the windows’ placement above the stairs offered a clear view of their next move.

Frederick turned to address the group when a strange sound filtered in from somewhere above them. It sounded like something scraping against stone as if stone-upon-stone or metal-upon-stone. Frederick stopped in his tracks, his ears straining.

“Well,” Blake muttered, his voice low but still managing to sound irreverent. “If I were a spectral horse trying to lure someone to their doom, I’d definitely start with that noise. It’s the right mix of creepy and obnoxious.”

Grace shot him one of the most confused looks. “We’re not near enough to water for kelpies, dear Mr. Blake.”

“Ah,” Blake had the decency to look utterly flummoxed. “So what’s the proper culprit, then?”

Grace caught on to his teasing. “Perhaps a brownie. They’re shy creatures, but famously helpful. They might tidy up while we search.”

“Convenient,” Blake said with a wink at Frederick. “Imagine waking up to a cleaned castle after all this nonsense.”

The banter dissolved as they reached the grand staircase. Grace pointed toward the upper floor. “Locke mentioned the laird’s favorite room—at the end of the hall.”

Frederick’s gaze caught on the mantel nearby, where two kelpie carvings loomed, their wild eyes gleaming in the moonlight like warnings.

They climbed the stairs, their footsteps a slow, groaning rhythm on the ancient wood. Each creak seemed louder than the last, as if the castle itself whispered for them to turn back.

At the top, the air grew sharper, colder, the fine hairs on Frederick’s arms standing to attention. The corridor stretched out before them, lined with closed doors on either side. At the very end, a set of double doors waited with anything but welcome.

“Stay close.” Frederick’s voice breathed near Grace’s ear bringing her a step nearer, and that is when he noticed something that sent a chill through his body.

The scraping had stopped.