“Are you hurt?” she asked.
He let his arms fall to the sides. “I’m slain.”
Footsteps thundered down the corridor. Abigail and Duncan reeled around the corner and into the library.
“My God,” Duncan said. He went straight to Ransom, surveying the dust and grime on his coat.
“There you are. We’ve been searching all over.” Abigail ran to Izzy, taking in her ripped garments and disheveled hair. Then she glanced toward Ransom where he lay on the floor. “My goodness. What’s happened?”
“We were . . . We were stuck.” Unable to find the words to explain it, Izzy motioned toward the priest hole and hoped the rest would be obvious.
Abigail screamed.
“Well, it wasn’t that bad,” Izzy said. “We did get out. And I’m so sorry about your gown.”
“It’s not that,” Abigail said weakly. She turned Izzy toward the priest hole. “Look.”
Izzy looked. “Is that . . . ?” She cocked her head to the side, moving closer until there could be no doubt. Then she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God. It is.”
There, tucked in the shadowed, dusty back corner of the priest hole, were bones.
An entire person’s worth of bones.
They hadn’t been alone in the dark at all.
The discovery brought a swift end to the dinner party. Centuries-old corpses had a way of doing that.
Ransom sent for both the magistrate and the vicar, and the two spent a full hour debating what was to be done with the bones. Whether reports needed to be filed; whether the remains could be buried on holy ground, and so forth. Even though he was found in a priest hole, he could have just as easily been a vagrant or a smuggler or a thief. There was no telling whether the dead man was even a Protestant or Catholic, so the men gratefully took Izzy’s suggestion that the bones be interred in the castle’s chapel.
They swept up the remains with as much dignity as could be mustered and laid them under a stone in the chapel floor. The vicar said a prayer.
And once the vicar had gone home, taking Miss Pelham and Izzy with him, Ransom was alone. He decided to honor the dead man in a different time-honored way. With heavy drinking.
He was on his second tumbler of whisky when he heard light footsteps traversing the hall.
“Is that a ghost?” he asked.
“I don’t believe in ghosts, remember?”
Izzy.
She walked the length of the hall. “Abigail decided she’d rather sleep at the vicarage tonight. I can’t say I blame her.”
“I can’t say I do, either.” He’d assumed Izzy would be spending the night at the vicarage, too.
But she hadn’t stayed at the vicarage. She’d come back to him.
His chest swelled with some unnameable, unthinkable emotion. He blamed the whisky.
She stopped by the hearth. “Why is the fire dying?”
“All the new servants left. No one wants to work in a haunted castle of horrors.”
“Oh.” She added wood to the hearth and gave it a stir with the poker. “What about Duncan?”
“Sent him down to the village pub,” Ransom said. “He needed a drink, and he’s not the sort to drink alone.”
“But he wouldn’t be alone. He’d be here with you.”
“I’m the sort to drink alone.” He tossed back another swallow. The earthy tang of whisky smoldered all the way down. “Why didn’t you stay at the vicarage with Miss Pelham?”
“She invited me. But I declined.”
“Not three hours ago, we found a dead man in the wall. And spent several minutes with him, in close company. You’re not frightened to stay here tonight?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “I’m always frightened, every night. You should know that now. But this is my house. I’ve waited too long for a proper home just to run away at the first—well, third or fourth—sign of unpleasantness.”