Chapter 64 A Trapdoor
Chapter 64 A Trapdoor
Beatris
The servants did not move when I walked past them. Neither did they stop watching me.
By the time I returned to my room, whatever excitement Alexander's departure had stirred in me had already begun to die.
I closed the door harder than I meant to. So much for freedom.
Alexander was gone, and yet I felt him more keenly now than when he stood a few feet away.
He had known. Not that I wanted to search the forbidden room. That would have been too much, even for him. But he had known I would do something.
And he had prepared for it before leaving.
A humorless laugh slipped from me.
"You really don't trust me."
The words vanished into the room. It should not have stung. But it did.
I crossed to the staircase and looked down again, this time with more care. The servants below were not scattered across the grounds at random. The pattern became clearer the longer I watched.
One maid lingered with a basket she had no reason to hold for so long. A footman stood beside the stair with the stillness of someone pretending not to be useful. Their attention moved less like people working and more like people waiting.
I straightened. They were not guarding the whole wing. They were guarding the obvious way in and out.
That was enough. I changed into a darker dress and waited.
Afternoon sank toward evening. The house quieted by degrees. By the time the fire in my room had burned low and the last sounds of movement had faded, the west wing had returned to its old, suffocating stillness.
I slipped out and closed my door gently behind me.
The corridor stretched before me, dimly lit by the wall lamps. Their glow only made the shadows seem deeper. Every step felt louder than it should have, even though my slippers barely whispered against the floor.
I was not going there because I wanted to. That mattered.
The forbidden room still lived in my mind like a wound I had failed to close. I had not forgotten what I had seen there, the pale face, the blood, the terrible calm in Alexander's eyes when he turned and found me.
And beyond that, the portraits. Eudora on every wall. Eudora in every dress, every pose, every impossible expression.
I hated looking at her. Not because she frightened me. Because she unsettled me in ways fear alone could not explain.
Every time I looked at her face, I felt the same wrongness move through me, as though I were staring at a version of myself that had been stolen, buried, and painted back into existence without my permission.
I did not want to see her again.
But if the visions had shown me anything, it was that the truth would not come to me gently.
If there were answers anywhere in this house, they were in that room. And if I wanted them, I would have to go back.
The door stood waiting at the end of the west wing, dark and still beneath the weak light.
For one breath, I stopped before it. Then I forced myself to move. The metal was cold under my fingers. The door opened without resistance.
The smell met me first, wax, old wood, and something metallic buried so deeply into the room it no longer needed blood to announce itself.
I stepped inside.
I kept my eyes low at first, unwilling to let them drift toward the walls. I could feel the portraits there anyway.
Watching
I crossed to the desk and searched its drawers first. Old papers. Dried ink. Sealing wax. Empty compartments. Nothing useful.
I opened cabinets next. Searched shelves. Ran my fingers along the spines of books in case one hid a lever or hollow space.
Nothing.
I crossed to the side table near the chaise. Checked beneath it. Checked behind it. Lifted the edge of the rug before the fireplace and found only more dust.
Still nothing.
The room seemed determined to keep its secrets. Frustration began to burn through the fear.
Time slipped past unnoticed. My shoulder began to ache from the strain of reaching and lifting and kneeling on the hard floorboards.
"There has to be something."
Had Catherine already found everything worth finding?
With a weary breath, I sank onto the old couch near the fireplace. The cushions gave beneath my weight with a long, tired sigh. I covered my face with both hands.
"I've searched everything."
I let my hands fall into my lap.
Then
"...under..."
I froze. My head lifted slowly. The room remained still.
"I'm imagining things."
The words sounded weak, even to me. Then it came again. Clearer this time.
"...the couch..."
The voice was faint, frayed at the edges, but clearer than it had ever been before. It was there. And to my own surprise, what moved through me first was not fear.
It was relief. The voice was helping me.
I set down and pushed myself to my feet. The couch was heavier than I expected. My shoulder protested at once, and pain pulled through my side as I shoved harder, but I kept going until the velvet legs scraped across the floorboards with a low, dragging groan.
There.
A square outline cut into the wood. I stared. Then crouched slowly and brushed my fingers over it. A trapdoor. Cold ran through me.
For a second, I could do nothing but kneel there, staring at the hidden shape beneath the floor. Fear rose first. Then curiosity.
Then the sharper, colder thing that had been driving me for days now.
Need.
This could lead nowhere. It could lead somewhere I would wish I had never found. It could lead to the exact kind of truth that changed everything.
I sat back on my heels and stared at the trapdoor, my pulse beating hard enough to make the silence around me feel alive.
Better to die searching for answers than live forever as a prisoner in this house.