Page 21 of Visiting Miss Austen (Miss Austen #2)

Sprinting down the stairs, I had a sinking feeling that Mr Hart had engineered it so it would be impossible for me to escape. Sure enough, the main door in the foyer was locked tightly, and there was no key. My plan to greet the mail coach with my letter was foiled from the start, even if I had not fallen asleep.

There was nothing for it but to try the back entrance while I still had time. I raced into the kitchen, ignoring Mrs Webber at the sink, and down the stone hallway. The back door was missing its giant iron key too, and I already knew it was locked before I tried the handle and discovered that it was. Mr Hart had been toying with me for his own amusement. He knew there was no escape, but he thought it would be fun to see me try.

A wave of panic washed over me, and I fought back a sob. My peaceful, uneventful life in Derbyshire—where I was safe and had a husband who truly loved me—had never looked so good as it did at that moment.

Feeling hysteria threatening, I ran back to the foyer and looked around wildly. I was about to enter the parlour and attempt to squeeze through one of the small windows when I saw Mr Hart slowly descending the stairs, taking his time.

He paused on the bottom step and leaned against the banister with an amused expression. ‘Looking for these, little mouse?’ He dangled two iron keys from his finger, looking pleased with himself.

Grabbing a nearby antique vase from a table, I hefted it at him. It hit the banister and exploded into shards of china, causing him to jerk back in shock. ‘Do not call me that!’ I yelled.

I did not wait around to see if blood had been drawn but raced off to the kitchen. Mrs Webber, now chopping a cucumber swiftly on the bench, glanced up, startled. ‘Mrs Fitzroy, I thought I saw you running off just now. Can I help you?’

‘Where is Maurice?’ I whisper-gasped.

She gestured with her chin to the dungeon. ‘Down there, collecting potatoes.’

Her eyes dropped to the juice-stained ruined neckline of my dress and drove back up again to rest on my untamed hair. But I had neither the time nor inclination to explain my appearance .

‘Please do not tell Mr Hart where I am,’ I begged. I needed to tell Maurice what was happening and to enquire if he had a spare key.

She nodded and, to my surprise, crossed the kitchen and opened the small window above the sink.

‘I’ll tell him you went through there,’ she said, tapping her nose. I doubted he would believe I could squeeze through it but it might buy me some time.

‘Thank you,’ I said gratefully and slipped through the dungeon door and padded softly down the steps into the musty space.

Maurice was stooped over a tray of potatoes, picking out the good ones and dropping the rotten into a wooden bucket by the light of a lantern. The scene was medieval, and I felt like I had been transported back three hundred years.

He looked up and started when I emerged out of the darkness, my boots rustling the strewn straw.

‘Maurice, please help me,’ I said in a low voice. ‘Jane and Lucinda have taken the mail coach to the inn, but Mr Hart ... H-he is keeping me here against my will. I tried to get out, but he has locked both doors and taken the keys.’

Maurice’s kind brown eyes widened in the lamplight, taking in my disorderly appearance.

Alarm flickered across his face, but then his jaw tightened. ‘I thought he had stopped all that ...’ he murmured despondently.

‘I assure you he has not,’ I whispered. ‘He is behaving most wickedly with me ... and with his father.’

Maurice looked bewildered. ‘With his father?’ he echoed.

I glanced behind, fearing that Mr Hart had descended quietly without my knowledge and was even now reaching out to grab me.

‘I do not have time to go into detail. But he is planning to steal the castle off his brother and marry any woman with a big-enough dowry to keep him in the lifestyle he is accustomed to and then ruin her. I found out about his plan, and now he is trying to ruin me too.’

Maurice looked suitably shocked. ‘Master Dorian has always had a wayward streak, but I did not expect this of him. His father’s mental state is steadily getting worse. I have been trying to set him straight about which brother is which. But that lawyer, Mr Smith-Withers, keeps visiting him too. He must be trying to undo my work ... Oh, I cannot believe Master Dorian would do this to his own father!’

‘Shh. Yes, I am afraid he is. He is trying to get him to sign a new will ... But back to my problem, which is quite pressing. Do you happen to have a spare key?’ I was starting to feel like I was running out time.

Maurice shook his head, and I almost groaned aloud. I was doomed!

‘But there is another way ... ’

He took the lantern and shuffled over to a rectangle of stone in the wall that had one of the prisoners’ brass rings in it. He twisted the ring, then tugged on it sharply. There was a soft grating noise, and stone pulled out and swung open on some kind of hinge to reveal a narrow gaping space behind it.

‘You can climb in here.’ The opening was barely big enough to fit my head and shoulders, and I gulped at the thought of being shut up in the walls and no one ever finding me.

‘I ... I do not want to die alone in a hole,’ I said fearfully. How had my life been reduced to this? Being ravaged or dying in a hole!

‘It is not a hole,’ said Maurice. ‘It starts off like that, but it widens out into a tunnel, which runs between the castle and the inn ...’

‘Are you sure?’

Maurice nodded. ‘Apparently it does. The innkeeper told me about it one day when he and I were having an ale. He said his great-great-grandfather built it to rescue some prisoners. I came back here and immediately tested it out, and lo and behold.’

‘B-but this was not on Mr Hart’s tour.’

‘No, his family does not seem to know about it. And I was sworn to secrecy, so I have never told anyone. I assume the innkeeper was telling the truth, even though he’d had quite a lot of ale by that stage. Yet why would he make up a story like that?’

We stared at the hole together in silence.

‘So you have not been in there?’ I asked.

‘No, I cannot with my back.’ He lifted one of his lopsided shoulders helplessly. ‘Otherwise, I would go with you.’

There was a creaking noise at the top of the stairs as the door opened, and I stiffened in horror. ‘Oh, Felicityyyy!’ Mr Hart’s voice sing-songed. ‘Are you down there?’

Oh no!

‘Go, quickly now,’ urged Maurice in a low voice. ‘I will say I am collecting potatoes for supper and have not seen you.’

All my fears of being walled up in the castle paled in comparison to being caught by Mr Hart. Frantically, I inserted myself into the hole feet first and wriggled down until only my head remained. But at the last minute, I remembered my note to Maurice.

I drew it out of my pocket and thrust it silently at him.

‘Godspeed, Mrs Fitzroy,’ he whispered, taking it from my hand. But before I could say ‘Thank you so much. How can I ever repay you?’ and ‘Which way exactly is the inn?’ Maurice had swung the stone back into place, and I was left in total darkness, surrounded on all sides by thick stone. My fate now rested upon a drunken innkeeper telling the truth!

After listening for a few moments and hearing nothing but my own breathing, I felt behind me with my toes, and there was only empty space beyond. So I inched slowly backwards using my forearms to support me. This seemed to go forever, and I gathered that I was making my way underneath the walls of the castle. But there was not much space, and I grew hot, and it was hard to breathe, making me wonder if I was going to run out of air.

Just when I thought I could not bear it a moment longer, my feet and ankles left solid ground and poked out into the open. Gingerly, I wriggled back still further, unsure of what was beneath me and how far down it went. It could be some kind of pit. Eventually, my legs were hanging down at a right angle from my waist. I felt about with my toes, but they were dangling in mid-air. There was nothing for it—I was going to have to jump and trust that there was solid ground to catch me and that I did not break an ankle when I landed.

Of course, this was easier said than done, and I spent quite a long time talking myself into doing it. But I had no other choice—it was either that or stay here and die. Cursing Mr Hart with all my might, I pushed off from the ledge with a scream and fell on my backside in a heap a little way below, my elbows stinging from being rubbed raw. But the pain was nothing. The innkeeper had been telling the truth!

Eagerly scrambling to my feet, I felt all around in the pitch blackness, my fingers touching rough stone walls on either side. It seemed to be a narrow passage about the same size as the one that led from my bedroom to Mr Hart’s art studio. I did not think about the direction I was going but stumbled along it, keeping one hand on the wall for reassurance. The passage twisted and turned. At one point, it went down for so long that I felt like I was heading into the bowels of the earth, and I almost lost the will to live. Icy water dripped onto my head and down the back of my neck, and I realised I must be under the famous stream that Mr Hart was always rattling on about. This gave me some hope that I was heading in the right direction, though I had no reason to believe I was!

After stopping for a rest and wiping some of the refreshing icy drips over my hot face, I continued on. Soon after that, to my relief, the passage started sloping upwards—indeed so much upwards that I was forced to scrabble at the stones in front of me for purchase, then ripped my nails and wailed like an undead creature from the pain!

The only things that kept me going were my burning hatred of Mr Hart for putting me in this position (the smell of stale cream wafting up from my dress was a stark reminder!) and desperation to see my darling Max again.

I was relentlessly forcing myself upward when my head cracked against a wooden ceiling, and the pain jolted me out of my dry-mouthed stupor. There was nowhere else to go. This was the end of the passage. Feeling the smooth texture of the wood above, I assumed I must be now under the inn. But how would I get out? Maurice had been vague on the details.

‘Help!’ I croaked. ‘Let me out!’

Fearing that I was now going to be trapped under the floorboards, a new surge of energy rushed through me. I screamed at the top of my lungs and banged with my fists like a madwoman.

Suddenly, the ceiling split above my head and became a trapdoor. There were exclamations and hands grasping at me and voices saying urgently ‘Get her out!’ I looked up to see Jane and Lucinda peering down at me with expressions of amazement. As I was pulled up out of the hole into the light and warmth, and into their arms, I sobbed with relief.

‘You do not need to send the burly men to search for me, Jane. I am here! I am well! I am safe!’ I cried. Then I fainted clean away from sheer exhaustion and knew no more.