Beneath Blackwood House
Chapter 07 - Beneath Blackwood House
The service tunnel beneath the winter garden was barely tall enough to crawl through.
Tessa moved first, dragging the canvas bag of tapes and blood samples behind her. I followed with the iron key clenched between my teeth and my mother’s ledger pressed against my ribs beneath the ruined wedding dress.
Above us, Julian and Helena searched the potting room.
Wood scraped.
Glass broke.
Julian swore when he found the false bottom empty.
“She has the ledger.”
Helena’s answer came colder.
“Then stop searching like a frightened boy and think where she would go.”
I had expected her to sound angry.
She sounded disappointed.
That was worse.
The tunnel sloped downward beneath the estate. Mud soaked my knees. Cobwebs dragged across my face. The air smelled of coal dust, iron, and old water. Somewhere behind us, the service hatch slammed open.
“They know,” Tessa whispered.
A flashlight beam cut through the darkness at the far bend.
We crawled faster.
The tunnel forked beneath a rusted sign bolted to the wall. One arrow pointed toward the river. The other pointed east, beneath the main house.
Tessa hesitated.
“The river exit may be watched.”
“And the house?”
“It comes up inside the old laundry cellar.”
“Closer to Adrian.”
“Closer to everyone.”
Footsteps entered the tunnel behind us.
We went east.
The passage narrowed until my shoulders scraped brick. Tessa’s breathing became uneven. Blood from her head wound ran along her cheek, but she kept moving.
At the end stood a corroded iron ladder and a trapdoor sealed with a wheel lock.
The wheel would not turn.
Voices echoed behind us.
“West team at the river,” a man ordered. “East team with me.”
Gabriel Ross.
Blackwood House’s head of security.
I had seen him once during the wedding, standing behind Helena with an earpiece and the blank face of a man paid to notice everything without appearing interested.
Now he was leading the search.
Tessa gripped the wheel with both hands.
It did not move.
“Let me.”
I wedged the iron key through one of the spokes and used it as leverage. Rust cracked. The wheel shifted half an inch, then another.
A flashlight appeared around the bend.
The trapdoor opened above us.
Cold air rushed down.
A hand reached through.
I nearly screamed.
Calvin Bennett looked into the tunnel.
“Move.”
My father pulled Tessa up first, then me.
We emerged inside a dark laundry cellar lined with copper pipes and shelves of folded linen. Calvin closed the trapdoor and dragged a rolling cabinet over it just as voices reached the ladder below.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
“Trying one useful thing before I die.”
He wore a maintenance coat over his suit. A ring of stolen keys hung from one hand.
“Where is Adrian?”
“They moved him to the west medical wing during the blackout.”
“Who moved him?”
“Shaw and four guards. Julian told the staff you suffered a panic episode and left the property voluntarily.”
I stared at him.
“They are erasing me already.”
Calvin looked at the blood on Tessa’s sleeve.
“They have cars at every gate. I can get you to the loading dock, but not both of you.”
Tessa opened the canvas bag.
“The samples have to leave first.”
My father took two vials and the encrypted drive.
“Where?”
“St. Catherine’s Hospital. Ask for Dr. Miriam Cole in toxicology. Give them only to her.”
Calvin put the items inside a detergent carton.
“What about Nora?”
“I stay,” I said.
He looked at me as if I had lost my mind.
“If you leave, Julian invokes the loan clause and claims abandonment,” I continued. “He also controls the story. I need to be in this house when Adrian wakes publicly.”
“If he wakes.”
“He will.”
The certainty surprised even me.
Tessa squeezed my arm once.
Calvin moved toward the service stairs.
Before he left, I stopped him.
“If you betray us—”
“I know.”
“No. You don’t. You have spent years thinking apologies are deposits against future harm. They are not. If you give Julian those samples, there is nothing left between us to save.”
My father nodded.
Then he disappeared through the laundry door carrying proof that could destroy the people who owned the building around us.
Tessa and I changed clothes in the staff locker room. She found navy scrubs. I put on a housekeeper’s black dress and wrapped my hair beneath a scarf. The disguise would not survive close inspection, but Blackwood House employed sixty people and most powerful families saw uniforms before faces.
We separated.
Tessa went toward the medical wing through the staff corridors.
I took the main stairs.
At 7:12 a.m., I walked into the breakfast room while Helena and Julian were discussing my disappearance with two attorneys.
The room fell silent.
I carried a silver coffee tray because the prop had been sitting outside the door and anger was easier to hide when everyone first saw a servant.
Julian stood.
“Nora.”
I placed the tray on the table.
“Good morning.”
Helena’s gaze moved over the housekeeper’s dress, the mud beneath my nails, and the small cut on my lip.
“Where have you been?”
“I could ask the same about my husband.”
Julian’s smile returned too slowly.
“You became distressed during a power outage. Security searched the grounds.”
“Security drugged me and left me in the winter garden.”
One attorney looked sharply at the other.
Helena did not move.
“That is a serious allegation.”
“So is attempted murder.”
Julian laughed once.
“You have been a Blackwood for less than eight hours.”
“And already the hospitality is memorable.”
I walked to the long windows overlooking the river.
“Where is Adrian?”
“Receiving treatment,” Helena said.
“As his wife, I want to see him.”
“You do not control his care.”
“Then let’s find out who does.”
I removed Adrian’s hidden letter from inside the housekeeper’s uniform and placed it on the breakfast table.
Not the ledger.
Not the tapes.
Only the page stating that Dr. Shaw was not to be trusted and naming an attorney I had not noticed the first time I read it.
Evelyn Price, independent counsel.
Julian saw the name.
His expression changed.
Helena closed her eyes briefly.
I picked up the room’s landline.
“Would either of you like to call her,” I asked, “or should I?”
Before anyone answered, the doors opened.
Gabriel Ross entered with three guards.
His eyes found the mud on my shoes.
Then the letter.
Then Julian.
“Mrs. Blackwood,” he said, “I have orders to escort you from the estate.”
“Whose orders?”
Gabriel looked directly at Helena.
No one spoke.
May you like
Then he turned back to me.
“Your husband’s.”
