Page 76 of A Shadow Amongst the Roses

Sammy muttered in his sleep and curled deeper beneath the blanket. Eliza fed the candle another stub from the alcove niche, shielding the flame from the draft until it steadied, its light drawing the shadows back into order.

Somewhere far above, a door slammed. Not in the chapel. Not in the crypt. In the house.

Eliza went still.

She rose and moved to the foot of the crypt stairs. She did not open the door. She rested her fingertips against the iron and listened, her pulse counting the silence.

Nothing followed. No footsteps. No voices.

Only the storm.

Still, the sensation lingered, an alertness, sharp and unignorable, as though Hartleigh itself had marked the sound and not forgotten it.

She looked back at the small figure on the bench.

“No one will take you,” she murmured. Not from this place. Not tonight.

*

The rain hit him sideways.

Thomas bent into the wind as his horse slogged through the lower road that cut across Hartleigh’s outer fields. The storm had delayed him far longer than he’d intended, but he could not leave the last task undone.

Ashwood had ordered him to inspect the cottages nearest the ravine. If Thornhaven had suffered damage severe enough to collapse a roof…

He had to know whether Hartleigh had endured the same fate.

But when he reached the cottage in question, the one nearest the line of old elms, he found it entirely intact. The shuttered windows held. The roofline remained true. The supporting posts he had reinforced in the autumn stood firm.

Not a single beam had shifted.

He dismounted, checked each corner by hand, inspected the roof angle, and even tapped the stabilizing joists with the heel of his palm.

Sound. Entirely sound.

His breath fogged in the cold air.

Someone had wanted trouble at Thornhaven.

Someone who knew where to apply pressure.

Someone who understood which structures were vulnerable, and which were not.

The realization did not flare. It settled.

Thomas mounted again and ran a hand along his horse’s soaked neck.

“Easy,” he murmured. “We’re going home.”

He nudged the horse forward.

The road stretched dark and slick ahead of them. Between the storm and the detour, he was already hours past nightfall.

And well past the hour he had promised to return.

*

The candle burned low.