Secret Sisters (32 page)

KEEP READING FOR AN EXCERPT FROM THE NEXT HARDCOVER BY AMANDA QUICK

'Til Death Do Us Part

AVAILABLE APRIL 2016 FROM BERKLEY
BOOKS

She belonged to him.

He was locked inside a cage the size and shape of a coffin. A dark thrill heated his blood like a powerful, intoxicating drug.

When the time came he would purify the woman and cleanse himself with her blood. But tonight was not the time. The ritual had to be followed correctly. It was a crucial part of the sacrament. She must be made to comprehend and acknowledge the great wrong that she had done. There was no finer instructor than fear.

He huddled inside the concealed lift, listening to the sounds of someone moving about in the bedroom on the other side of the wooden wall panel.

He peered through the narrow crack in the paneling. Excitement sparked when he caught a glimpse of the woman. She was at her dressing table, adjusting the pins in her deep brown hair. It was as if she knew he was watching and was deliberately taunting him.

She was passable in appearance but he had seen her on the street and had not been particularly impressed with her looks. She was overly
tall for a woman and her forceful character was etched onto her face. She was dangerous. It was all there in her unnerving eyes.

No wonder he had been sent to purify her. He would save her from herself.

She was not the first woman he had saved. Perhaps this time he would finally be cleansed.

The lift had been installed inside the thick walls of the old mansion for the purpose of conveying an elderly, infirm lady from one floor to another. But the woman had died a few years ago, leaving the big house to her granddaughter and grandson. He had been told that neither of them made use of the device. Having been locked inside the cage for what felt like an eternity, he understood why. The air was close and still and the darkness was almost as absolute as that of the grave.

The woman rose from the dressing table and moved out of sight.

He was free to descend in the lift at any time. It was operated by an arrangement of ropes and pulleys that could be controlled from either inside or outside the compartment.

He'd had a helpful chat with one of the many tradesmen who came and went from the mansion on the days when the woman held her salons. The man had informed him of the usefulness of the lift for conveying heavy items between floors. He had also mentioned that the woman and her brother never used the lift. Evidently the woman had a fear of being trapped inside the cage.

He heard the muffled sound of the bedroom door opening and closing. And then silence.

He slid the cage door aside and opened the wooden panel. The wall sconce had been turned down quite low, but he could make out the bed, the dressing table, and the wardrobe.

He moved out of the lift. The heady exhilaration he always experienced at such moments roared through him. With every step of the ritual he came closer to achieving his own purification.

For a precious few seconds he debated where to leave his gift. The bed or the dressing table?

The bed, he decided. So much more intimate.

He crossed the room, not concerned about the soft thud of his footsteps. The guests were gathering in the library on the ground floor. Voices were raised in conversation and someone was playing a piano to entertain the crowd. No one would hear him.

When he reached the bed he took the velvet pouch out of the pocket of his overcoat and removed the black jet ring. A fashionable item of memento mori jewelry, the stone was engraved with the image of a skull. The woman's initials were painted in gilt on the black enameled sides—
C. L.
When the time came, a small twist of her hair would be tucked into the locket concealed beneath the skull stone.

He slipped the ring back into the pouch and placed the gift on the pillow where she could not fail to notice it.

He stood still for a moment, savoring the intense intimacy of the experience. He was in her most personal space: the room where she slept; the room where she believed herself to be alone; the room where she felt safe.

That sense of safety would soon be destroyed. She belonged to him. She simply did not know it; not yet.

He started to go back to the concealed lift but paused when he saw the framed photograph on the wall. It showed the woman as she had been some ten years earlier, a girl of sixteen or seventeen. She stood on the brink of womanhood, still innocent and unknowing, but already there was something disturbing about her eyes.

Her brother was also in the picture. He appeared to be about nine or ten years of age. The two adults in the photograph were no doubt the children's parents. He could see something of the man in the boy.

He took the picture down from the hook and hurried to the lift. Stepping inside, he closed the panel and then the cage door. Darkness
as deep as the black jet stone in the ring enveloped him. He dared not light a candle.

He groped for the cables and breathed a sigh of relief when they worked. He lowered the lift to the ground floor.

When he emerged he found himself back in the small antechamber behind the rear stairs. There was no one about. The elderly housekeeper and her equally aged husband, the butler, were busy with the social gathering in the library.

In the old days, when the mansion had housed a large family and a dozen or more servants, it would have been nearly impossible to slip in and out of the place unseen. But now there was only the woman, her brother, and the old housekeeper and butler in residence.

He made his way out through the tradesmen's entrance. A moment later he was lost in the fog. Once he was safely in a hansom he allowed himself to sit back and reflect on the satisfaction of his night's work.

The woman with the unnerving eyes would soon understand that she belonged to him. It was her destiny to be the one to cleanse him. The connection between them was a bond that could be shattered only by death.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!