The Wrong Girl(17)

To my sickening horror, I realized that meant I couldn't return to Windamere. The Langleys would look for me there. I had to steer them away from Vi and disappear forever.

Tears pricked my eyes, but I forced them back as I pushed on along a narrow, winding path. My mind and heart, however, remained in turmoil.

Perhaps that's why I didn't see Bollard until it was too late. He stepped out from behind a tree and grabbed my arm.

I screamed.

He clamped a hand over my mouth, dragging me back against his body. He smelled like damp earth and moldy leaves, and he carried a shovel. I struggled, but he was much too strong. I bit his hand.

He grunted and let go. I scampered away, but my heel was higher than what I was used to, and I toppled over and fell on my hands and knees in the decaying leaves. Bollard caught me again and shook the shovel in my face. His lips pulled back in a snarl. I turned my head and tried to jerk myself free, but his long fingers locked around my arm.

"Let me go!"

He shook his head but said nothing.

"I have a right to go where I please."

Another shake of his head. Why didn't he speak? Was the man a mute? No wonder the manor was dubbed Freak House. I was beginning to think Sylvia was the only normal one there, although even she had an excessively sunny disposition that didn't seem natural.

Bollard pulled me along with him back to the house. I resisted every step of the way, but of course it achieved nothing. It was like a bee flying into a gale—utterly pointless.

Bees could sting, though. When we reached the courtyard, I threw the most terrible, ear-splitting tantrum, complete with colorful curses and the most awful names I could think of to call him.

It didn't halt Bollard's progress in the least, but it did draw the attention of the servants and Sylvia. Three of the former peered out of the ground floor service windows as we passed, their eyes as wide as saucers. Sylvia burst out the same door I'd used to escape and ran across the courtyard to us. Her face was a picture of pale horror, her bottom lip quivering. She blinked back tears.

What she had to cry about, I'd no idea. I ought to be the one in tears. Yet I had no intention of crying, nor any inclination. The shouting must have got it all out of my system, and I quieted when Sylvia grabbed my other arm. She let it go again with a gasp.

"Be calm, Violet, for Heaven's sake!"

"I'm finding that rather difficult at the moment," I spat. "All things considered."

She edged away from me. "What happened? Violet, did you...?" She glanced up at the rooms on the top floor of the eastern wing, and a shiver wracked her. I followed her gaze and saw August Langley watching us from a window. "Did you try to escape?" she whispered.

I lifted my chin. "Of course. Unfortunately Bollard here was doing a bit of gardening in the woods. What were you doing, Bollard? Digging a grave?"

Sylvia gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. She eyed Bollard's shovel with horror.

Oh God, if she were frightened, then perhaps my off-handed remark wasn't so absurd.

Where before I'd felt hot from my exercise and anger, now icy cold fingers wrapped around my heart. I couldn't dislodge the notion from my head. But if he was digging a grave at his master's behest...whose was it?

Mine?

Bollard marched me to the house and up the stairs to Langley's rooms. Sylvia didn't follow.

"Aren't you coming?" I called back to her.

She shook her head. "I haven't been summoned."

I'd been right about her. That sunny disposition was all a façade. She was as afraid of her uncle as I was. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I could do this alone. There was nothing to fear. Indeed, I had every right to be furious, and damnation, I would be!

One look at the anger in Langley's eyes had my heart in my throat again and my nerves jangling. If he'd been able to stand and approach me, I'd no doubt he would have slapped me. He still might order Bollard to do it. The servant held his shovel like a weapon and stood between me and the door.

"Stupid, stupid girl," Langley spat. "I'd thought you more sensible than that."

"Then it seems you were quite wrong." Wrong about more things than he knew.

Color flushed his cheeks, but his lips turned stark white. "Did I give you permission to speak?"

As if being kept prisoner weren't enough, he wanted to make me as mute as Bollard too! "I don't need your permission, Mr. Langley," I snapped. "I have a tongue and will use it." Something inside me rose with my anger and filled me up until I was brimming with it. Something familiar yet wrong. Something terrible and ill-timed. My limbs became heavy, my mind dulled so that I could no longer form words. My skin felt like a thousand needles had been injected into it.