A floorboard squeaked under my boot and they all turned. Edward stood.
“Montgomery,” Edward said. His skin had gained some color, though he still moved with just the slightest bit of stiffness.
Montgomery held up a hand to silence him. “No. Let me speak first. It was wrong of me not to accept that you were back. It caught me by surprise, but I shouldn’t have raised my pistol. I’ve played a hand in my fair share of experimentation, and I’m not one to judge how we are brought into this world, only our nature as we are now.” He absently rubbed the scar on his thumb where his blood had been drawn to make Edward. “I’m glad to see you standing here, and I’m proud to call you a brother.”
He held out his hand, and after only a slight hesitation Edward stepped forward to take it. Lucy squeezed her pocket watch tight, beaming to see them no longer at odds.
“I suppose, if we’re making amends,” Edward said in a lighter tone, “I should apologize for all the times I tried to kill you. Don’t take it personally.”
Montgomery gave the hint of a smile. “As I recall, I also tried to kill you a few times.”
“Then we’re even.”
They broke apart, and I smiled to think of the four of us on friendly terms: no more misunderstandings, no more sickness or anger. Our friendships had even overcome death itself.
Now we just had to overcome Radcliffe.
I went to the windows, looking down on the flooded courtyard and the road beyond. For all I knew, Radcliffe was already in Quick, just waiting for the road to drain. “We don’t have much time, and there’s much to be done. I have a plan that involves all of you. I want to know your thoughts.”
We stayed up until dawn discussing how to prepare for Radcliffe’s arrival and the logistics of trapping his men in the courtyard to electrocute them. Montgomery said that he and Balthazar would dig a trench around the rear of the house to force Radcliffe into the courtyard, while Edward and Carlyle reinforced all the doors and ground-floor windows, and Lucy agreed to work with McKenna to stock the barn cellar with supplies to keep the girls warm and well fed during the siege.
Rain fell against the windows. “Let’s hope the rain holds until we’ve prepared the house,” I said. “The longer it rains, the longer it will take for the road to drain.”
Montgomery squeezed my hand. “We’ll be ready for him.”
The following day was a flurry of activity. The rain continued, steady and cold, turning the gardens into a soggy mess. We laid out thick wooden planks along the courtyard to walk across as we went about gathering weapons and ammunition. To my surprise, when I handed Lily and Moira each a rifle and started to explain how to fire, they just laughed.
“Mistress, we’ve been hunting foxes since we were three years old,” Moira said, and took the rifle with a well-practiced hand.
By midday, when we took a break to eat some sandwiches McKenna had prepared, the trench was dug and most of the windows were boarded up, and I was starting to feel like we might have a chance after all.
“I’ve been thinking about the secret passageways,” I said. “In case Radcliffe’s men do get into the house, the passages could be extremely useful to help us move around unnoticed, but I only know a handful of them.”
McKenna arranged the sandwiches, thinking. “I have the previous mistresses’ ledgers in my study. One of them tried mapping the passages in the 1770s, though the map’s been damaged. Parts aren’t readable, but it might be a good place to start.”
She fetched the map and brought it back to the library, where Montgomery and I pored over it. “You and I already know how to travel through the passages without getting hurt,” he said. “It won’t take but a few hours to fill in the blank sections of the map.”
Frowning, I looked outside in the direction of Quick. The rain was already lessening, and there was still so much left to do. But the passages could save our lives. “Let’s do it, then.”
While everyone else continued readying the house, Montgomery and I went upstairs to the second floor hallway, to a watery portrait I’d never given much thought to before. Amelia Ballentyne, read the plaque. Her hair was a fair shade of red, but otherwise she looked very much like Elizabeth: her defiant stance, the crooked smile, the mischievous glisten in her eye.
Montgomery raised his hammer and smashed it into her face.
I flinched as the canvas and wooden frame shattered, reveal the gaping chasm of a secret passageway beyond that had been long sealed away.