I hurried to take Michael’s arm, lest Philip change his mind. As it was, I was worried Gage would make another protest, but he surprised me by remaining silent.
Michael led us into the entry hall and up the central staircase. At the top, he turned right, away from our assigned bedchambers. A door opened a few feet down the hall to reveal another set of stairs. Though less grand than the approach to the first floor, the flight to the second was still far from ordinary. Rich wooden panels covered the walls from ceiling to floor and the same red carpet as the central staircase ran up the middle of the stairs. A large window covered the wall on the landing, allowing plenty of moonlight to spill into the shadowed space. It looked out onto the front drive, providing a fine view of the trees straddling the lane that led away from the estate.
At the top, he guided us through a heavy door on the left, which he opened with an ornate key. “The nursery is back in the other direction. Facing the firth.”
I nodded but could not manage a reply. Tension had mounted tighter and tighter inside me with every step we took that brought us closer to Will. As we turned right down another passageway, I realized my fingers were gripping Michael’s arm like talons through his coat. This part of the manor house seemed deserted, but the walls and floor were well maintained.
Michael came to a halt outside a door near the end of the hall. He lifted his arm to knock, and then hesitated with his hand hovering there next to the wood. I could feel his doubt quivering inside his muscles, his uncertainty that bringing me here was the right thing to do.
I inhaled deeply to calm my racing heart and pressed my hand to his biceps, hoping he could sense my good intentions, my desire to help. The floorboard creaked as either Gage or Philip shifted behind us. I closed my eyes to pray they wouldn’t voice an objection now.
The sound of knuckles wrapping lightly on wood brought my eyes open with a snap. A few seconds later, the same stoop-shouldered man I had seen at the top of the stairs opened the door. Mac’s head was covered in grizzled gray hair and his face was lined with age, but he still appeared hale and hearty—more than capable of handling a man half his age. I knew that his slouch was more a matter of poor posture than a crooked spine.
He eyed each of us belligerently, studying me a moment longer than the others, before stepping back from the door to let us into what looked to be a parlor.
“They’re here to see William,” Michael told him while I took in the sturdy but elegant furnishings. “How is he?”
Mac grunted and lifted his hand toward a door on the far side of the room. “See for yoursel’.”
I followed Michael across the room. He rapped once on the gleaming wood and then turned the doorknob.
The room was dim, lit only by the fire crackling in the hearth. It cast flickering shadows over the walls and furnishings, revealing an unmade bed and a toppled chair. I swallowed the acrid taste of fear coating my mouth and stepped over the threshold. Beyond the signs of recent distress, I could tell the room was clean and well kept. No must or smoke fouled the air.
Inching forward, my toe brushed against something. I looked down to discover a simple sheet of paper, but as my eyes traveled along the gleaming wooden floor, I realized it was merely the first in a tangled trail of parchment and charcoal sticks littering the room. I bent closer to examine the foolscap and saw that it was covered in drawings.
Most were merely childish scribbles, as if the artist had been too overwhelmed to do anything more than thrust his elbow back and forth in the most elemental of movements. But others were inscribed with terrible images. Of pain and anguish. Of despair. Of men and women shuffling around a courtyard, some barely clothed, hopelessness dragging down their faces. On one page two men grappled while others cheered them on; in another a man scratched at the wall with his fingernails. And in still another a man huddled over his knees, surrounded by scribbles of darkness.
Blinking away the burning wetness from my eyes, I focused on the room before me, searching for the artist. And I found him, hunched in the far corner, scrabbling at the wall with his charcoal, as if, having run out of paper, he was forced to inscribe his memories onto the blank canvas of the wall. I sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of him. His hair standing on end, his shirt hanging open over one pale shoulder—the flesh covering it so thin that I could see clearly the sinew and bone.