Page 112 of Foes, Friends and Lovers
The afternoon was waning, the sun sinking toward the horizon and sending shadows stretching across the rubble-strewn ground.
He crested the rise and stepped onto the plateau on which the ruins lay, scattered in clumps over the ground between him and the house. He paused, and a cry rose behind him. With everyone else, he swiveled and looked back.
Lower on the track, people clustered together, then from the center of the group, Millie pushed through and came hurrying on to Gregory and the Fergussons, who had halted around him.
Others gave way, smiling as they saw what Millie held in one hand. Nearing Gregory, she waved a piece of white cloth.
Beaming, she halted before him. “It’s hers—Miss C’s!” Between her fingers, she spread the material. “See? Here.” She pointed at a corner. “CF.”
“Let me see, lass.” Rory bent and peered at the handkerchief, then straightened and nodded at Gregory. “It’s hers, right enough. She always was good with her needle.”
Looking down the slope toward the river, Gregory scanned the area across which the rough track had led them. “There’s no reason she would ever have come this way, not of her own accord, so she must have dropped the handkerchief when Ecton brought her here.” His heart lifted, and he turned to face the ruins. “Blackie was right. She’s here somewhere.”
The pronouncement was greeted with exclamations of relief, and everyone still on the track came hurrying up. On reaching the cusp where Gregory and the Fergussons were standing, scanning the ruins and getting their bearings, the rest of the party spread out along the lip of the rise.
Blackie pointed at the single half-ruined arch that was all that remained of the church’s glory. “Sure as eggs are eggs, she’ll be in the crypt. The entrance is behind the altar.”
Gregory remembered and, with hope rising, started picking his way over the rubble. Approached from this direction, the way to the church was much less clear than when coming from the house.
The others spread out, flanking him as everyone scrambled over the jumble of toppled stones.
They had to go around the remnants of an old wall—part of the monk’s dorter—before they could see the area in which the entrance to the crypt lay.
Gregory reached the wall first. Eagerly, he rounded its end and came to an abrupt halt.
Rory, following at Gregory’s heels, bumped into him, making Gregory stumble forward.
Then Rory stopped, too, and stared. “What the devil?”
Grimly, Gregory felt his face set. “The devil, indeed.”
Others scrambled up and around the wall, fanning out about Gregory and the Fergussons as curses filled the air.
Julia was as incensed as anyone. “The bastard’s tried to bury her!”
Gregory stared at what Ecton had wrought.
“It wasn’t like that before,” Henry growled.
“No,” Joshua agreed. “Our painters would have noticed and said something.”
“No way those stones fell by themselves.” Hamish pushed past and went to take a closer look.
“Them blocks used to be balanced up there.” Blackie pointed to the top of the wall at the rear of the altar. “They was leaning a bit. He must’ve tipped them off.”
Patrick, too, walked forward, frowning at the three massive rectangular blocks, each as long as a man was tall and half as wide and deep, that had fallen from the wall. Then he swung to face Gregory. “Where’s the crypt door?”
Silently, Gregory nodded at the three massive blocks. “Directly behind those.”
“It was Ecton,” Hamish called, grim certainty in his voice. “There are ropes half buried here.”
Others went to look, and curses rained freely on Ecton’s head.
Frowning, Rory muttered, “But why?”
Feeling very much as if every emotion inside him had shut down—that his entire inner self was a calculating void—Gregory replied, “Because he assumed Caitlin would be the only witness to her kidnapping.” His mind pieced together the information and supplied him with Ecton’s likely plan. “Ecton didn’t expect to be seen by anyone other than Caitlin, but although he was, he didn’t care. Hattie was the only other person who saw him, and he could rely on his rank to dismiss or discredit any testimony she made.”
Patrick was nodding. “If you’d signed those papers—as he was sure you would—he might have told you she was here or somewhere else, but regardless, by the time you discovered this, he would have been far away. Off to London, most like.” Patrick turned bleak eyes Gregory’s way. “This was his way of ensuring you didn’t go straight after him, and by the time anyone caught up with him, he’d deny all knowledge. He would have said you were making it up, that you’d lost to him at cards or some such thing and had to sell to him to cover your debts.” Patrick looked at the tumbled stones. “Something like that.”
