Page 105 of Storm of Bells
The room I had found was a room nearly likeall the others. It had crates in one corner, dead flies, dust andcobwebs galore.
Only, there was one major difference…
***
Again, empty. How many of these rooms wouldI have to check before I found those dratted servants?
I was just about to turn and leave the roomwhen, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something peeking outfrom behind the pile of crates. Something suspiciouslyun-crate-like.
Peeking my head around the corner, I sawwhat it was.
A mattress.
The thing was lumpy, old, and stuffed withsimple straw, but undeniably a mattress.
Someone hadlivedhere.
It was quite evident that, whoever theywere, they hadn’t been here for some time. But the thin mattresswas undeniably right in front of me, as was the blanket. A blanketwhich, although appeared to be at least ten years old, looked stillto be in mint condition. Beyond the mattress was an overturnedcardboard box on which sat a chipped old mug and a cheapearthenware pot. Both were empty and covered in thick sheets ofdust. If I’d needed any more evidence that there were no servantsin these rooms, here it was. But their absence wasn’t what I wasfocused on right now.
Instead, my eyes zeroed in on a dark sliverbetween two floorboards. Something looked…off.
Taking a step forward, I cautiously broughtdown my foot on the floorboard in question.
It creaked, and shifted.
Gathering up my skirts, I knelt, slid myfingers between the two boards and pulled. Nothing moved.
‘Come on you stupid thing! Nnng!Move!’
I pulled again, harder, and—
Crack!
The floorboard came loose, sending mesailing back onto my derrière. For the very first time in my life,I was grateful for how well-padded I was in a certain area.Groaning, I pushed myself forward to inspect what I had unveiled.In the dark hole beneath the floorboard, I could see something.Objects, some angular, some round. All were covered in copiousamounts of dust and cobwebs.
Oh my God. If this was what I thought itwas…maybe I shouldn’t do this.
Or maybe you should. Maybe you really,definitely should.
I reached down into the hole.
Promptly, a cloud of dust, fly poo and deadspiders’ legs erupted upwards. Coughing and hacking, I rolled tothe side. Leave it to Rikkard Ambrose to install the world’scheapest burglar protection in the world! Once I had cleared mysinuses of any and all dust bunnies, I returned to the hole in thefloor and once again stuck out my hand. My fingers touchedsomething round and smooth. I pulled it out.
It was a stone. A round, smooth, almostordinary stone—if it hadn’t been for the colour. It was an odd,reddish-grey kind of brown that I had only ever seen once before.On the driveway of a certain estate in the utmost north of England,near the Scottish border.
My heart starting to pound faster. What wasa stone from the driveway of Battlewood doing here? I once againreached into the hole. One after another, I retrieved a silver pinwith a familiar coat of arms, a moth-eaten handkerchief, a strangeold pan with holes in it, a few faded pieces of paper, andlastly…it.
The miniature.
It wasn’t the usual kind of miniature.Usually, these tiny paintings only showed one person. This one,however, showed four. A family. I wasn’t exactly able to recognizethe little girl held by the woman. But her mother seemed veryfamiliar, as did the woman’s husband. And as for the teenageboy…
My eyes fixed themselves to his face. A bitnarrower than I was used to, and definitely less cold and hard. Somuch less cold and hard that it tugged at my heart to see. Butthere wasn’t really any doubt. It was him.
Tearing my eyes away from him, they slid tothe woman. No, not ‘the woman’. Lady Samantha Genevieve Ambrose. Amuch younger and less troubled Lady Samantha. There was a serenehappiness in her face that I had never seen before. Well…exceptmaybe recently. Sometimes, I saw glimpses of it when she looked atMr Ambrose and me.
But looking at her wasn’t nearly as painfulas looking at the face of a young, innocent Mr Rikkard Ambrose. Hiswide, sea-coloured eyes, a bit too big for his young face, lackedall the ice and darkness that I had grown so used to. He stoodrelaxed, as if the weight of the entire world for once wasn’tresting on his shoulders, and he looked…
What was the word I was looking for?
