* * *
I woke, chilled and stiff, with a throbbing headache, to feel something wide and solid shoving me across the floor. I came awake with a jerk as the opening edge of the heavy door pinched my thigh against the floor.
“Ow!” I rolled clumsily, then scrabbled to my hands and knees, hair hanging in my face.
“Claire! Oh, do be quiet, p-please! Darling, are you hurt?” With a rustle of starched lawn, Mary dropped to her knees beside me. Behind her, the door swung shut and I heard the click of the lock above.
“Yes—I mean, no. I’m all right,” I said dazedly. “But Hugh…” I clamped my lips shut and shook my head, trying to clear it. “What in bloody hell are you doing here, Mary?”
“I b-bribed the housekeeper to let me in,” she whispered. “Must you talk so loudly?”
“It doesn’t matter much,” I said, in a normal tone of voice. “That door’s so thick, nothing short of a football match could be heard through it.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.” My mind was beginning to clear, though my eyes were sticky and swollen and my head still throbbed like a drum. I pushed myself to my feet and staggered to the basin, where I splashed cold water over my face.
“You bribed the housekeeper?” I said, wiping my face with a towel. “But we’re still locked in, aren’t we? I heard the key turn.”
Mary was pale in the dimness of the room. The candle had guttered out while I slept on the floor, and there was no light but the deep red glow of the fireplace embers. She bit her lip.
“It was the b-best I could do. Mrs. Gibson was too afraid of the Duke to give me a key. All she would do was agree to lock me in with you, and let me out in the morning. I thought you m-might like company,” she added timidly.
“Oh,” I said. “Well…thank you. It was a kind thought.” I took a new candle from the drawer and went to the fireplace to light it. The candlestick was clotted with wax from the burned-out candle; I tipped a small puddle of melted wax onto the tabletop and set the fresh candle in it, heedless of damage to the Duke’s intaglio.
“Claire,” Mary said. “Are you…are you in trouble?”
I bit my lip to prevent a hasty reply. After all, she was only seventeen, and her ignorance of politics was probably even more profound than her lack of knowledge of men had been.
“Er, yes,” I said. “Rather a lot, I’m afraid.” My brain was starting to work again. Even if Mary was not equipped to be of much practical help in escaping, she might at least be able to provide me with information about her godfather and the doings of his household.
“Did you hear the racket out by the wood earlier?” I asked. She shook her head. She was beginning to shiver; in such a large room, the heat of the fire died away long before it reached the bed dais.
“No, but I heard one of the cookmaids saying the keepers had caught a poacher in the park. It’s awfully cold. Can’t we get into b-bed?”
She was already crawling across the coverlet, burrowing beneath the bolster for the edge of the sheet. Her bottom was round and neat, childlike under the white nightdress.
“That wasn’t a poacher,” I said. “Or rather it was, but it was also a friend. He was on his way to find Jamie, to tell him I was here. Do you know what happened after the keepers took him?”
Mary swung around, face a pale blur within the shadows of the bed hangings. Even in this light, I could see that the dark eyes had grown huge.
“Oh, Claire! I’m so sorry!”
“Well, so am I,” I said impatiently. “Do you know where the poacher is, though?” If Hugh had been imprisoned somewhere accessible, like the stables, there was a bare chance that Mary might be able to release him somehow in the morning.
The trembling of her lips, making her normal stutter seem comprehensible by comparison, should have warned me. But the words, once she got them out, struck through my heart, sharp and sudden as a thrown dirk.
“Th-they h-h-hanged him,” she said. “At the p-park g-gate.”