Trailing fingers along the rain-slicked walls, Emma sprinted down the grassy corridor until she reached the banquet room, where the constant strobe of lightning showed a scene of utter chaos. Stakes and leaves and flattened stalks littered the graveled path, and vines streamed from the arbor’s dome like pennants in the wind. Derek tried to rush ahead, tripped, and sprawled, but Emma hauled him to his feet, and together they staggered forward to the far end of the room and the corridor beyond.
They left the green door banging on its hinges as they stumbled down the chapel garden’s stairs. Waterfalls spilled from the raised beds’ low retaining walls, and the flagstone path was a mire of clinging mud. Emma longed to reach the stillness of the chapel, to slam the door on the storm and catch her breath, but although Derek strained against it, the chapel door refused to budge. Teeth chattering, Emma darted forward to add her weight to Derek’s, and the door slowly gave way, moving inward inch by inch, until the gap was wide enough for them to slip inside.
Emma paused to wipe her glasses, then gazed about in stark confusion. Peter’s orange emergency lantern lay on its side on the granite shelf, pointing toward the back door. The back door had been left wide open, and the force of the wind that ripped through the doorway had shoved the benches askew and held the front door shut against them. The old wheelbarrow had been wedged into the gaping doorway, and a rope stretched tautly from its wooden handles into the seething darkness.
“What the—” Derek turned to Emma, but she was already tugging on the rounded door, held fast once more by the roaring wind.
“Don’t touch the barrow until we’ve had a look outside!” she shouted. “We don’t know what that rope is holding!”
Derek seized a pitchfork and used it to lever the front door open. It banged shut again behind them as they raced up the stairs and out of the chapel garden. Together they ran along the garden wall, but when they swerved into the rocky meadow, the wind slammed into Emma and drove her to her knees.
“Go!” she screamed when Derek stopped to pull her up, and he barreled ahead, while she groped blindly for the wall on hands and knees, searingly aware of the long fall that lay only a few yards away.
The knuckles of her flailing left hand scraped rough stone and she struggled to her feet. Hugging the stone wall, she stumbled forward until she reached the corner, rounded it, and saw the faint pool of light outside the chapel’s rear wall, where the rope stretched, glistening, over the edge of the cliff and straight down into the devouring darkness. Derek was almost there, the rope was almost in his hand, when Peter’s lantern faded and winked out.
“No!” Derek’s anguished cry rang out above the roaring wind, and Emma froze, paralyzed by fear. Then, through her rain-blurred glasses, Emma saw the air begin to shimmer.
The glow was all around them. It came from nowhere and from everywhere and grew brighter by the minute, until the rain glittered bright as diamonds, bright as Peter’s tears, streaking downward like a million falling stars. Emma saw her bloodied knuckles, saw the blades of stunted grass, saw each rock and leaf and puddle as clearly as though it were midday.
Derek saw the rope. He lunged for it, and Emma leapt to help him as he dug his heels into the rocky ground, hauling fiercely, hand over hand, his muscles straining against his rain-drenched shirt. The rope bit into Emma’s palms and fell in coils behind her, but she looked only at the point where it slithered slowly over the cliff’s edge.
All at once, a hand came into view, white-knuckled, clinging to the rope. Then Peter’s face appeared, and as his shoulders rose into the light, Emma saw that he was tied fast to the limp and pallid form of Mattie.
Derek eased them onto solid ground, then flicked his penknife open and cut the rope. As the light began to fade, he hugged his son, kicked the wheelbarrow aside, and shoved the boy toward Emma, who swept him into the safety of the chapel, where she held him at arm’s length, scarcely believing that he was alive and in one piece.
Peter wobbled slightly on his feet, blinked dazedly, then stiffened. His mouth fell open and he tried to raise his arm to point, but his eyes rolled back in his head and he tumbled, fainting, into Emma’s arms. Emma glanced over her shoulder as Derek stumbled in, carrying Mattie, and in the last fluorescence of the fading light, she thought she saw the lady in the window, clad in white.
22
The moment Derek closed the back door, Grayson, Gash, and Newland came barreling into the chapel. They’d been struggling with the front door for some time, their efforts hampered by flapping slickers and the blankets they were carrying.
“Dear old Kate,” Grayson said, draping a blanket across Emma’s shoulders. “Jolly brilliant of her to think of the flares, what?”
Shivering, Emma pulled the blanket tightly around her. She’d tried to get a clearer look at the window, but the lights, and everyone’s attention, were focused on Mattie, who lay on the rear bench, unconscious. “Grayson—” Emma murmured.
“Hush.” Grayson squeezed her shoulder and turned to watch Newland, who was crouching beside Mattie, checking her pulse. “Not a word, my dear, not until we’ve got you all back in the hall.” Newland looked up and Grayson nodded. “Right, then. Everyone ready? Off we go.”
Derek cradled Peter in his arms, Gash and Newland carried a blanket-wrapped Mattie between them, and Grayson put an unexpectedly strong arm around Emma’s waist as they left the chapel to face the storm once more. Emma felt lightheaded, and she moved through the mud and the pelting rain on legs that had turned to rubber. The castle ruins closed around her, then fell away, and the light in the dining-room windows hovered like a dream on a distant horizon.
Kate and Hallard were there, bearing ornate candelabras, since the electricity was still off, and they led the motley parade to the library, where Dr. Singh was waiting. Chilled to the bone, Emma told Grayson to go ahead with the others, then made her solitary way up the darkened staircase and through the silent corridors to her room, oddly comforted by her ability to find her way without a light to guide her.
The rose suite was warm and dry and quiet. Emma let the rain-soaked blanket slide from her shoulders, dried her glasses on the quilted coverlet, then knelt on the hearth and fumbled with numb fingers to start a fire. She gave up, finally, pulled the coverlet from the bed, and huddled beneath it, too exhausted to move. She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she was aroused from her stupor by the sound of a voice from the hallway.
“Emma, honey. It’s me, Syd. You think maybe you could get the door?”
Syd Bishop’s candles were balanced on a round tray. “Room service,” he announced, placing the tray on the low table between the pair of overstuffed armchairs. “Hot coffee, and a bowl of chicken soup. I’d go straight to hell if I was to say it’s as good as my grandma‘s, God rest her soul, but I’m tellin’ ya, Madama musta stole her recipe.” He filled a cup with steaming coffee and handed it to Emma, wincing when he saw her bloodied knuckles. “Ouch. Caught yourself pretty good there, huh? And what are you doin’, sittin’ here all this time in wet clothes? C’mon. Let’s get you changed before you catch pneumonia.”
Syd’s years behind the scenes at fashion shows had not been wasted. He knew how women’s clothing worked and was disarmingly matter-of-fact about nudity. He stripped off Emma’s dripping clothes and tucked her into her blue robe, wrapped a towel around her head, and sat her in an armchair without spilling a drop of her coffee or bringing the faintest blush to her cheek.