Page 54 of Lady Audacious
They reached the flagstoned floor of the cellar without mishap and Reuben lit the wall sconces from his candle, casting a dim light over the dank space. There were empty racks for wine bottles lining one wall and an ancient table covered in dust positioned centrally. Reuben prowled around, still with the candle in his hand, looking into dark corners and behind several cupboards that were filled with discarded odds and ends.
‘You see,’ Odile said, standing beside the stairs with arms folded. ‘I told you it would be futile.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’ He passed the candle to her and started moving one of the cupboards aside.
‘What have you found?’ she asked, stepping forward expectantly.
Reuben didn’t answer. The cupboard was heavier than it had at first appeared and it took all of his strength to move it over the rough flooring. Straining, he eventually managed it, revealing a hidden doorway.
Odile gasped. ‘How did you know?’
‘I noticed the scrape marks on the flagstones and assumed that this cupboard must have been frequently moved sometime in the past in order for the flooring to become permanently scored.’ He grinned over his shoulder as his hand hovered over the handle to the exposed door. ‘Ready?’
She nodded, seemingly too nervous to speak. He caught her hand in his free one and gave it a brief squeeze. He then pushed the door open with some difficulty. It stuck and he was required to put his shoulder against it and heave. It abruptly gave way and Reuben tumbled into the room. He sensed Odile close on his heels and heard her sneeze when the stale air and the dust they had stirred up caught in their throats.
‘Heavens, what is that awful smell?’ Odile asked, covering her nose and mouth with her hand.
‘Something got trapped in here and died, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I can’t stay in here until it’s gone. I will run and get a broom.’
Before Reuben could offer to provide that service, she was gone. She returned quickly with the required broom, a bucket and, unusually for her, a stout pair of gloves covering her hands.
‘Here, let me.’
Reuben had already discovered the source of the smell. The remains of some hapless rats—more than one—in a far corner. He swept the bodies into the bucket, left it at the bottom of the stairs and the air in the claustrophobic room immediately seemed a little less fetid.
‘Now, what do we have here?’ he asked, finding more sconces which he lit, filling the area with flickering light. Reuben wasn’t fanciful, but even he was unnerved by the dark atmosphere and felt very uncomfortable in the cold, uninviting and windowless room.
‘Oh!’ Odile let out another gasp. ‘It looks like one of those laboratories that I have read about,’ she said in an awestruck voice, taking in the walls lined with shelves, upon which neatly-labelled bottles sat, all of which had once contained herbs. Some still did. There were scales and measures on a table in the middle of the room and several books with pages that crumbled to the touch. The books were about herbs and their healing properties, and from Reuben’s brief inspection they appeared to be perfectly harmless.
‘Or a stillroom,’ Reuben added, rubbing his chin in confusion, ‘but there is no need to hide stillrooms in cellars.’
‘Then we were right to suppose that they were producing something that they should not have been.’ When Odile put into words what they were both thinking, the desire to pull her into his arms and comfort her grew more compelling by the second. To be orphaned and have no recollection of one’s parents would be daunting enough. To eventually discover that they might have been somehow breaking the law would devastate her, shattering the illusions she had built up in her mind. All this time waiting for answers, only to wish that she had not found any. Reuben couldn’t begin to imagine how that must have felt.
‘There is nothing in the evidence to support that theory,’ he said, with more conviction than he actually felt.
‘Precisely, and that is what makes me convinced I am in the right of it. There are plenty of empty shelves and gaps on the ones that still have jars on them. If I had to guess, I would say that someone left here in a hurry and took the incriminating evidence with them.’
Reuben privately agreed with her, but wasn’t ready to say so. ‘All we know is that Smythe was behaving suspiciously, but we have yet to establish that he had any connection to your parents.’
She sent him a disbelieving look. ‘I know you are trying to comfort me, and I appreciate your sensitivity, but it will not serve. If my parents were not involved with Mr Smythe before their deaths, then why was this house and so much money left to me?’
‘There must be a rational explanation. Perhaps your parents helped the man in all innocence and he exploited their expertise. It’s possible,’ Reuben insisted when she sent him a dubious look. ‘Perhaps his conscience got the better of him when they died and he set up the trust so that you would be provided for when you reached your majority.’
‘Hmm.’ She didn’t seem convinced—which didn’t surprise Reuben because he wasn’t either. She prowled around the room, opening drawers and examining the dried up contents of the jars. ‘There is nothing here to help us,’ she said, clearly struggling to keep the disappointment out of her tone. ‘All these herbs, by themselves, are harmless. If the poisonous ones I found in the garden were once stored here, they no longer are, so we are no further forward.’ She let out a resigned sigh. ‘I would suggest attempting to find Mr Smythe, but for the fact that it is a very common name and we have absolutely no idea where to start looking.’
‘You give in too easily,’ Reuben replied, actively feeling beneath the drawers and under cupboard shelves, seeking hiding places that he was absolutely sure must exist. ‘If we are right and Smythe left here in a hurry, I hope he left something behind in his haste.’ He felt something give beneath the pressure of his fingers as he spoke. He pressed harder and the bottom of a drawer sprung upwards. ‘Ah ha!’
‘What is it?’
She stood on her toes directly behind him, anxious to look round his shoulder. He was acutely aware of the soft swell of her breasts pushing into his back and somehow managed to withhold a groan. She had absolutely no idea what effect she was having on him—an effect that grew stronger the more time he spent in her company. The attraction complicated his life in all sorts of ways he could do without, and yet doing without her enticing presence was already unthinkable. There was nowhere else he would prefer to be at that moment other than in that dank cellar, alone with the woman who increasingly fascinated and frustrated him.
‘A letter, or part of one.’
Reuben found the strength from somewhere to move away from the enticing feel of her body and took the scrap of paper to one of the sconces.
‘The writing is faded. It’s hard to make it out. Have you seen this hand before?’ he asked, passing the fragment to her.
