Lyon stood stock-still in the dim, cool stable. "What?"
"Miss Diana ride with Massa Daniel."
"Oh, God! Where did they go?"
"I don't know."
Lucien looked at Tom, the stable hand, and nodded. "Very well. Lyon, we must round up men, not only to search for Diana, but to find Daniel."
Lyon nodded. He wasn't up to finding words. He felt sick and stupid and blind. And Daniel was with Diana. Would he hurt her? Had something in his mind finally snapped? Was Diana now a threat to him, or another girl he had decided to kill?
"Where is Salvation?"
"Miss Diana ride Salvation. Massa Daniel ride Tanis."
"Of course, I'm not thinking straight." Lucien ran distracted hands through his disheveled hair. "We must go to the village and round up some men to help us. Lyon, you take Egremont, I will go find Grainger."
"Tell the women to stay in the house."
"Yes, of course you're right."
Ten minutes later, Lyon reined in at the slave village. He was told that Diana and Daniel had ridden away a half-hour before. No one knew where they had gone. He organized three dozen men to search. He had to tell them the truth, and when he did, Bob, Moira's lover, stared at him in disbelief, then howled in fury.
Where to look?
"I hear Massa Daniel say something about showing Miss Diana a special place of his," said an old man who was squatting next to a fire.
Lyon left the slave village in an organized uproar. He galloped Egremont back to the great house. Thirty-six men would comb the island, every foot of it. He prayed one of them would find heralive.
Diana stared toward the massive rock that sealed the cave entrance. She was trapped, alone, and she would die here, without ever seeing Lyon again.
She fell to her knees, her mind as numb as her body. She didn't know how long she remained there, her mind blank, when she became aware of a strange raw sound and realized that it was coming from her. Low, ugly sobs. "Shut up, you stupid weak fool!"
Her voice bounced back to her and the sound, although magnified and eerie, made her feel better. She continued aloud, "I will not sit here and wait to die. I won't!"
She looked at the lamp. She guessed she had another hour of light, not much more. Perhaps less. She shivered, more from the cold now than from the deadening terror. "All right, my girl, you will do something. You will find a way out of here."
She rose and walked to the entrance. She set her shoulder against the rock and shoved against it with all her strength. It didn't move. Not that she'd expected it to, not really. She turned her back to it and stared beyond the lamp into the hollow darkness. There was another way out. There had to be. If she didn't believe that, she might as well curl up and wait to be plunged into darkness, for eternity, alone.
She picked up the lamp and walked swiftly toward the back of the cavern. It ended abruptly. This was the north side, the side that was nearest the sea. She'd carefully explored the opposite side of the cave, particularly after she'd discovered that narrow opening. Unfortunately, she hadn't grown any smaller, so she would not be able to squeeze through it. No, she had to search out the more-recessed northern side. She'd avoided it as a child. The ground sloped up at an alarming rate, and she'd fallen once on the loose rocks. "Careful now," she said aloud, and was again reassured by the sound of her own voice.
Nothing. There was nothing save the expanse of slimy walls, treacherous loose rocks, and the stalactites, glittering, wet spears in the dim light.
She forced herself to continue. She hummed softly to herself, trying to think of pleasant things. Oddly enough, it was the wild, untamed moors of Yorkshire she pictured in her mind, the rolling mists that flowed over the harsh ground, forming strange patterns around the roughhewn rocks in the early morning. Oh, God, she wanted so desperately to see Lyon's estate, Ashton Hall.
What if now she would never see it? Never know the pleasure of being mistress of Ashton Hall, Lyon's wife and lover and ---
The lamp flickered and she froze. "No! Not yet!"
The light grew steady again, but it was much dimmer now. "No," she said aloud again, and frustrated, frightened, she whirled about and slammed her fist against the cave wall. To her surprise, she felt something give way. She raised the lamp. Her heart began to pound.
Feverishly, she set down the lamp and began digging at the loose dirt against the wall. It came away slowly, but she didn't pause. Suddenly, just as she pulling away a large rock, the lamp went out.
"No!"
She fit her hands about the rock, closed her eyes, and jerked. The rock gave way. She heard it hit the cave floor and tumble down the incline. It rolled and rolled, the sound of it more frightening than she could have imagined.
It was then that she saw a beam of clear sunlight.