“Poor woman,” I muttered as he used the hammer to pull away the remaining bits of wood and debris, giving us access. “All this was hers once. She entrusted it to Elizabeth, and now to me. She’d be disappointed if she knew.”
Montgomery took my hand before I could continue down that dark line of thought. “You must stop doubting yourself. Come on.” We climbed through the broken portrait. The only light came from seams in the walls. Montgomery’s presence was nothing more than a shadowy figure until he lit a candle.
“If only Hensley were here,” I said, picking my way carefully along the uneven brick floor. “He could have mapped these passageways with his eyes closed.” I ducked under a jagged broken post. “I keep thinking that if Elizabeth could have gotten away from him and crawled into these passages, she might have survived.”
“It would be a death trap to be caught in here in a fire, with so few exits and so little ventilation.” He studied the map. “This way.” He turned left and climbed a flight of rickety stairs. We wound around a brick fireplace to continue down the branching hallways. I tried to ignore the thought of the hundreds of spiders that must be there and I didn’t see. Montgomery found a crack and peered through.
“What do you see?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, straightening a little too fast. “We should keep going.”
I bent down to look myself and jerked in surprise to find lifeless eyes staring back at me. A deer—one of the white statues from the winter garden. Behind the statuary, Lucy and Edward sat on the wall tucked between the stone fox and stone wolf, speaking in low voices I couldn’t make out. Edward’s pocket watch glinted in Lucy’s hand. She was trying to give it back to him, and he was folding her hand around it, insisting she keep it. His hands stayed wrapped around hers for quite some time, as though he didn’t quite want to let go. She suddenly leaned in and kissed him, and his initial surprise gave way to an embrace.
My cheeks went red.
“We should give them their privacy,” Montgomery said softly. “Let them have their happiness wherever they can find it. They might not have too many chances once Radcliffe gets here, even if we do manage to defeat him.”
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated. “If you or I can’t kill Radcliffe ourselves, then Edward stands the greatest chance of . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Of killing the father of the girl he loves,” I answered.
Montgomery looked away; the tension was too high, reminding me that I’d as good as killed the man I’d thought was my own father, a man who’d been like a father to him, too.
Montgomery stood up. “Come on. We’ve faced a lot worse than him. I’m not going to let a banker take us down, army or not.”
We kept walking, faster now, but I couldn’t shake the thought of Lucy in Edward’s arms. I remembered what it had felt like to kiss Edward—wild and passionate. Was it different now, without the Beast? I could never admit it to anyone, but in a way, I missed that dangerous side of him. For a brief period of time, there had been a creature even darker than myself.
I shivered.
“What’s wrong?” Montgomery was at my side in an instant.
“Just cobwebs. But look.” I pointed ahead, at the gap in the floor I had nearly fallen into my first week at Ballentyne, before Hensley had stopped me. “Another one of Lord Ballentyne’s traps. It’s three stories up. You’d fall to your death.”
Montgomery marked it on the map, and we took our care stepping over it. “Well, there are worse things than death,” he said in a tone that was strangely distant.
I cocked an eyebrow. “You mean you’d rather die than be caught by Radcliffe?”
“No.” In the faint light, his face twisted with indecision. “I mean that if I don’t survive Radcliffe’s attack and you do . . .” He paused. “In the forest, you said you would bring me back to life. I don’t want you to.”
A draft blew through the passageways, making me shiver. “It worked for Edward.”
“I don’t care if it works or not. I want to know that this life is the only one that matters. When you can never die, do you ever really live?”
I stared at him. “We have the secret to eternal life, and you don’t want it?”
“I want only this life. With you.”
“But I don’t want to lose you.” I intertwined my fingers in his, feeling the sturdiness of the ring around his fourth finger.
He pressed his lips to mine, silencing those thoughts. I kissed him harder, twisting my hands in his shirt. There was no telling what would happen when Radcliffe arrived. Like Montgomery said, we had to steal any moments of happiness we could.
“One last battle,” Montgomery whispered against my cheek. “One last stand, and then we’ll be left to live our lives however we desire.”
Here in the darkness and shadows of the hidden passages, I knew I’d never love him more.