The Gilded Cage by Lucinda Gray Page B

is sniffing along the ground at my feet; suddenly she goes taut, giving out a low growl that raises goose bumps on my neck. I cast a quick glance into the trees, but she’s worrying at the dirty snow.
    â€œWhat have you found, love?” I whisper. My heart seizes as I spy a paintbrush, half-submerged in muck. I fall to my knees and reach a tentative finger out to touch it. The handle is dotted with clots of dried red.
    Growing up on a farm, you instinctively know the look of blood, the close, metallic smell of it. Every animal we ate, my father first bled from the throat, and I’ve seen animals giving birth more times than I can count. This is not paint or dirt.
    I gaze at the terrible proof in my hands and in the snow at my feet, weak with a strange mix of relief and horror. Pain, too, knowing that George must have suffered here, alone and scared.
    Stella’s growl rises in intensity, and I move to calm her. Then I see the gaunt, dark figure watching me silently from the other side of the rise.

 
    CHAPTER 11
    T HE OLD POACHER approaches steadily, his strange bright eyes on mine. He carries a crook before him, and I can’t tell whether he means it to threaten or to imply that he’s harmless. I feel like a fool for tossing my branch aside.
    I stand slowly, certain that a sudden move will bring him bearing down on me, crook or no. Stella hides behind my legs, and I decide to be brave on her behalf. “I know who you are, Mr. McAllister. What right do you have to walk on my land?” My voice is shrill in my ears.
    He laughs, a hard bark. “Well, well, the little lady of Walthingham. You call this your land, do you?”
    I bristle, my fist tight around the paintbrush. “It’s mine by law. I am the lady of Walthingham Hall, and you’ll explain your presence on my grounds at once.”
    â€œOr what, you’ll set your dog on me?” He laughs again, his eyes spinning toward Stella in a way that makes me wonder if he’s drunk. “It’s no good deed you’re doing, keeping that runt alive. Poor little thing, she’s good for naught but drowning.”
    The brutal twinkle in his eyes when he says the word “drowning” makes me dizzy. He must know the coroner marked that as George’s official cause of death—and now here he is, sniffing around the last place I know George to have been alive. I jab the paintbrush into the air before me. “Perhaps I’m not the only heir of Walthingham Hall to have met you here on this hill. Perhaps you have come back not to dishonor yourself with theft but to hide the proof of what you’ve done!” My voice shakes, unsure. But McAllister barely seems to hear my words, looking at the brush in my hand with a small frown.
    â€œWhat are you holding there?”
    I move the brush behind my back, defensive. “Did you not hear me? Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
    Again he ignores my words. “Is that all you’ve armed yourself with, out here in these woods? You think there’s nothing here that can harm you but the crows?”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? What do you know about these woods?”
    Leaning heavily on his stick, he moves closer. His gait is slow and dragging, and some of the fear goes out of me. “I was gamekeeper here since my own father died, when you weren’t even born. It was I who taught your father to fish. I know more of these woods and what they hold than you can imagine. And I know that you’re a silly chit meddling in affairs you don’t understand.” He moves closer to me, and my body goes rigid under the force of his gaze. “You’ll be better off going home to your velvets and your balls. This is no place for girls like you.”
    Stella has edged out from behind me and is sniffing submissively at his feet. He nudges her hard, making her yelp. “Or for a beast like this.”
    He turns and begins limping away as I