“Is it some kind of secret passage?” Izzy asked, still breathing hard.
He withdrew his hand from her quivering flesh and lowered her skirts as much as he dared. However, he held her pinned against the shelving with his hips, keeping her feet well off the floor. God only knew what muck or misadventures lay at his boots.
With his free hand, Ransom felt around the space. “More like a secret closet. If this was ever a corridor, it’s been closed off now.”
“It must have been a priest hole. A hiding place. They built them in the sixteenth century when Catholicism was made illegal. There should be a way out of here. A lever, or—”
“Let me.”
He scouted the shelves, pulling and pushing on each ledge. Nothing. He tried throwing his weight against one side of the panel in an attempt to make it rotate back the other direction. Nothing.
“Duncan and Miss Pelham are certain to come looking for us,” he said. “When we hear footsteps, we’ll shout for help.”
She caught his coat. Her breathing was a labored rasp. “Just don’t let go.”
“What is it? Are you hurt?”
He felt her head shake no. Her hands found his coat lapels and curled in fists. “It’s just . . . so dark, and I . . .”
“And you’re not fond of the dark. I recall.”
She ducked her head, burrowing into his shoulder.
Gods above. She hadn’t been exaggerating. This was not merely fear but terror. He could feel it in the tremors that raced beneath her skin. He could hear it in the quickness of her breath. The same woman who stood defiant in the face of bats, rats, ghosts, and dukes was utterly petrified . . .
Of the dark.
Ransom couldn’t bring himself to tease or gloat. All his angry lust had dissipated into the murky gloom. Sliding his arms around her back, he pulled her against his chest and clutched tight. Because he understood that fear, as well as he knew his own heart. He’d been that miserable soul, alone and terrified in the fresh hell of darkness.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s dark, but you’re not alone. I’m here.”
Her quaking continued. “It’s s-so embarrassing and childish. It’s been this way since I was nine.”
“What happened when you were nine?”
That seemed rather late in life to develop an aversion to darkness. Maybe talking about it would banish the fear. At the least, it would fill the silence.
“I used to spend summers with my aunt in Essex. She had no daughters. Just a son, Martin. I might have mentioned him.”
“The one who tossed you in a pond?”
“Yes.” Her chest rose and fell with her accelerated breaths. Her story came in short bursts of words. “That’s the one. Miserable, horrid boy. He was jealous, hated me. He wanted me gone. Whenever he caught me alone, he would strike me and call me cruel names. When his casual tormenting didn’t work, he tried throwing me in the pond. And since that didn’t get rid of me either, he caught me in the garden one day, dragged me into the root cellar, and locked me there. It was some thirty paces from the house, and, naturally, underground. No one heard my screams. A full day and night passed before they found me. And Martin got his wish. I cried so hysterically, Aunt Lilith sent me home. I’ve hated the dark ever since.”
Things began to make sense to him. “That’s why the bedtime stories began. Because you were afraid of the dark.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you’re always downstairs when I wake in the morning. Because you’re still afraid of the dark.”
She exhaled slowly. “Yes.”
With a gruff curse, he ran his hands up and down her back. “That cousin of yours was a vile little bastard. I hope he got what he deserved.”
“Not at all. He’s a full-grown bastard now, and he reaped every reward for his vile behavior.”
“How so?”
“My father’s only will was older than I am, drawn up when he reached his majority. I never even knew it existed, and he never revised it. But it left everything to his closest male heir, so . . .”