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least.
     
     

Chapter 9
     
    Ed Bolt was dizzy, and his head felt like someone was pounding at it with an iron hammer from the inside of his skull. With a tremendous effort, he picked himself up from the cold stone floor and looked around.
    The room was dark, the only light filtering in through the barred window set in the door. The place was damp and dirty and smelled of mildew, and he knew he was still somewhere in the cellar. Even worse, he thought could hear something scuttling and scraping inside the wall.
    Rats?
    Rutting hell.
    Should he yell out? He didn’t think that would help. Likely all of the servants were part of this conspiracy …
    Damn degenerate demon arse-kissing so-called Rector!
    Was Julia part of the plot too? Somehow that was too painful to contemplate …
    He tried the door. It was locked from the outside, probably with some sort of padlock, as there was no locking hardware to be seen on the door itself. Squinting in the darkness, he searched for something to use to either pry the door open or to hack at the wood surface of it, but the room was bare save for several broken wooden chairs that had been abandoned in one corner. 
    There were more scraping noises now, coming from high in the rear wall, opposite the door.
    Ed turned. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the shape of a narrow fireplace there, covered by deep shadow. It looked as if there might have been an iron grate fastened there at one time, but there was only stone in the bottom now, blackened by long-ago fires, and a stone ledge was set in front of it.
    As Ed watched, a bit of dust and debris fell down into the fireplace from above. There was a yellow glow, growing brighter …
    “Hello?” Ed whispered up the chimney.
    A glass oil lamp descended into view, a length of cord tied around the middle of its base, balanced to support it. Flame sputtering, it jerked its way down and then settled on the floor at the bottom of the fireplace.
    In its light, Ed could see that the “cord” attached to it was made up of brightly colored silken ribbons tied together—hair ribbons, like a young lady would wear.
    Looking up the chimney shaft, he saw a pair of stocking-clad ankles in slippers, and the frilly hem of a green dress. Someone was wiggling her way down the dark shaft …
    “Julia?” he asked.
    “It’s me,” she whispered. “Be quiet, so no one hears, okay?”
    “Um … I’ll help you.” He reached up to grab her legs.
    One of his hands slid too high, finding her bare thigh under her petticoats.
    It was soft and warm and damp with her sweat, and he felt the soft and smooth flesh of one curvy buttock against his palm. He felt the muscle flex under the buttock… Was she squirming at his touch?
    “Uhh … sorry,” he mumbled. Though he truly wished he had an excuse to extend this contact…
    Be a gentlemen, he urged himself.
    He adjusted his grip so that he wouldn’t offend her.
    She quickly eased herself the rest of the way down.
    When Julia Powell emerged, crouching, from the fireplace, she was smiling, even though soot darkened her dress and streaked her hair. Her big eyes gleamed wetly in the lamp’s light.
    Still, Ed thought that she was beautiful. She wore a green silk dress now, which clung tautly to the full and ample curves of her body… And her fiery red hair blazed in the lantern light.
    “I came to help you,” she said, and her high-pitched, child-like voice didn’t contain a single note of fear.
    Ed coughed in surprise. She came to help me? Me, the cripple?
    “The fireplace in my room has loose bricks,” she explained. “I pulled more of them loose with the poker. The chimney there backs up to this one.”
    “And you just climbed down?”
    She nodded. “Uh-huh. It was kind of tight… Well, especially for me,” she said, looking down, seemingly embarrassed of her weight.
    “You know a way out of here?” he asked.
    “Well … no.” she said, looking down at her