Read Online My Scandalous Viscount by Gaelen Foley - Free Book Online Page A

dry-mouthed.
    This passageway obviously led somewhere. She’d follow it and find another way out. Yes. Then she could sneak back to the parlor and resume her wilting-violet pose on the couch, and he’d never be the wiser.
    Very well, she thought, nodding to herself. She wasn’t sure which way to go, as the passage stretched both to the right and the left. With a shrug, she opted at random for the left, summoned up all her determination, and set off, lifting her lantern high. The flickering glow cast an eerie light in the close, narrow space. Carissa took comfort in knowing that while she might hate the sight of blood, at least she wasn’t claustrophobic. With each step forward, she grew more intrigued than scared.
    The smell inside the walls was damp and musty with age. Having seen Dante House from the outside many times before whenever she had traveled along the Strand, she knew it was one of the row of ancient Town mansions that sat beside the Thames, a relic of the Tudor period.
    Now inside the walls, she could feel the weight of its great age, and could only wonder at all the upheavals in London the house must have witnessed over the centuries. It groaned like it was haunted.
    Cobwebs fluttered in the draft.
    The secret passage turned and twisted like a labyrinth, trying to trip her up on uneven steps, taking her up and down ladders, offering branched paths here and there that left her wondering which way to turn.
    It was all a delicious mystery—like Beau himself—but she knew she did not have much time to explore and had not yet come across an exit. The inky black maze seemed to distort her sense of time and sense of space, as well, so it was hard to judge where the deuce she was inside the house, let alone how many minutes might have passed. Maybe ten? At the same time, she was trying to hurry and not to tax her strength too much after her ordeal.
    When she came to another dark intersection, she debated whether to go to the right or the left or straight down on the ladder that descended into empty space before her. If she did not have the lantern, she thought, she’d have stepped into that hole and broken her neck.
    She held the lantern over it, trying to see what might lie beyond the darkness; but biting her lower lip, she decided that there was only one way to find out.
    Climbing carefully onto the ladder in her long, bloodstained evening gown, she hung the lantern over her wrist and gripped the top rung. Then she began her descent, laughing to herself to think of any club member who might happen to see her like this. She might well be mistaken for some macabre lady ghost haunting the old building.
    Reaching the bottom of the ladder, she stepped off into another wood-planked passageway, but here, she could feel a slightly stronger draft floating past her cheeks. It made her lantern flicker.
    She cupped her hand before the flame. “Don’t you even think about it,” she breathed. But the threat of losing her light did not deter her from pressing on into the darkness, smiling in spite of herself.
    What would Beau say if he knew what she was up to?
    Ahead, her lantern’s glow revealed an opening. “What’s this?” she murmured softly.
    A little room opened up before her, perhaps twelve by twelve, but she furrowed her brow to spy its main feature: a gaping hole in the middle of the floor. At nearly ten feet in diameter, it took up most of the room.
    Why would they want a giant hole in the floor?
    Mystified, she lifted her gaze and saw a sturdy rope hanging down from the ceiling, with thick knots at regular intervals. The knotted rope descended into the center of the hole—like a ladder, she thought—but it was out of reach unless you took a running leap.
    Of course, if you missed or did not hold on tightly enough, you’d fall, she mused. What on earth? Cautiously walking over to the edge, she peered into the hole, wondering what was down there. She must be at the level of the house’s deepest foundations,