The silence after Paul Barton's departure wasn't peaceful; it was charged. It pressed in on Sandra, thick with the echo of his warning and the chilling emptiness of the vast dining hall. The untouched broth mocked her. She pushed the bowl away, the porcelain scraping loudly on the table, the sound unnerving in the stillness. Ghostly servants reappeared, clearing the single place setting with silent efficiency, their eyes averted. When they vanished back into the shadows, Sandra was left utterly alone.
The walk back to her room, guided by a silent footman who materialized only when she stepped into the corridor, felt like a march to the scaffold. The key turned in her door lock again – the soft, final *click* a punctuation mark on her imprisonment. The fire in her room had dwindled to embers, casting long, dancing shadows. The cold meal tray from earlier sat untouched on the small table.
Sleep remained impossible. Paul Barton's face haunted her – the cold beauty, the piercing grey eyes that saw too much and revealed nothing. His words echoed: *"Curiosity is a dangerous indulgence... matters that do not concern you."* It wasn't a request; it was a threat. A threat wrapped in velvet, delivered by a man whose hands, she noticed with a shiver, had looked strong and capable.
She paced the cold floor, her mind racing. *Doors that are closed.* He'd said it twice. What lay behind them? The truth about Isabella, Eleanor, Clara? Proof of his monstrosity? Or something else entirely? The locked doors of her own prison felt like a taunt.
Hours crawled by. The castle groaned and settled around her, ancient timbers protesting the weight of time and secrets. The wind howled down the chimney, sounding like distant, mournful cries. Sandra huddled by the dying embers, pulling a thin shawl tighter around her shoulders. Fear warred with a desperate, clawing need to *know*. To understand the cage she was in.
Then, she heard it.
Faint. Thin. Almost lost beneath the wind's moan. But unmistakable.
A sob.
It wasn't close. It seemed to drift from somewhere deep within the castle, perhaps from the direction of the locked wing Mrs. Thorne had forbidden. A woman's sob, choked and despairing. It hung in the air for a moment, then faded, swallowed by the silence.
Sandra froze, her blood turning to ice. Was she imagining it? The product of frayed nerves and gothic horror stories? She strained her ears, holding her breath. Nothing. Just the wind and the settling stones.
Then, it came again. Slightly louder this time. A broken, heart-wrenching sound that seemed to echo through the very walls. It wasn't an animal. It was human. Female.
*Isabella? Eleanor? Clara?* The names screamed in her mind. Was one of them still here? Locked away? Driven mad? Was *this* what happened to the wives who failed?
The fear was paralyzing. Every instinct screamed to hide under the covers, to ring the bell for Mrs. Thorne, to obey Paul Barton's command and bury her head in the sand. But the sob came again, a desperate wail that seemed to pierce the stone. It wasn't just fear she felt now; it was a surge of horrified empathy. Someone was suffering. *Here.* In this monstrous castle.
The resolve that had hardened within her during her research flared, burning through the icy terror. She couldn't just sit here. She couldn't ignore it. Paul Barton had locked her doors, but he hadn't forbidden her to listen. And he hadn't found her yet.
Moving with a stealth born of desperation, Sandra crept to her bedroom door. She pressed her ear against the cold wood. Silence in the corridor. No sign of Mrs. Thorne or the silent footmen. Taking a deep breath, she grasped the heavy iron handle and turned it slowly, praying the lock only worked from the outside. To her immense relief, the mechanism clicked, and the door swung silently inward. He hadn't locked her *in* tonight. Yet.
The corridor outside was pitch black, illuminated only by the faint glow of a single guttering sconce far down the hall. The air was frigid. The sobbing had stopped, leaving an even more oppressive silence. Sandra hesitated, her heart hammering. Where had it come from? Left, towards the main stairs and the forbidden wing? Or right, deeper into the servants' quarters?
Driven by the memory of that despairing sound, she turned left. She moved like a shadow, barefoot on the icy stone, keeping close to the wall. The castle felt different at night – alive with watchful darkness. Tapestries stirred in unseen drafts. Moonlight filtered through high, narrow windows in slanted, silver beams, illuminating swirling dust motes. Every shadow seemed to hold a shape.
She reached the junction where the main corridor branched towards the grand staircase and another, narrower passage veering sharply left. A heavy velvet rope was strung across this narrower passage, a clear barrier. *Boundaries. Doors that are closed.* This had to be the forbidden wing.
The air emanating from the roped-off passage felt colder, damper. It smelled of dust, decay, and something else… faintly floral, like dried roses and sorrow. Sandra ducked under the rope. The darkness beyond was absolute. She felt her way along the rough stone wall, her fingers encountering cobwebs and crumbling plaster. The corridor descended slightly, turning corners, leading her deeper into the heart of the castle's oldest section.
Moonlight finally pierced the gloom ahead, spilling through a large, arched doorway that stood slightly ajar. Sandra approached cautiously, peering through the gap.
The room beyond was vast, shrouded in dust sheets. Moonlight streamed through tall, arched windows, illuminating ghostly shapes: furniture covered in white, chandeliers wrapped like cocoons. Portraits hung on the walls, their faces obscured by drapes. It felt like a tomb for memories, forgotten and deliberately hidden.
Her eyes scanned the room, drawn to a movement near the far wall. Nothing. Just dust motes dancing in the silver light. The sobbing had stopped completely. Had she imagined it? Or had the source fled?
Disappointment warred with relief. She was about to turn back, her courage waning, when a glint of silver caught her eye near the base of a covered chaise longue. Something small and metallic lay half-hidden in the dust.
Sandra crept forward, her bare feet silent on the stone floor. She knelt, her fingers brushing away the grime. It was a hairpin. Exquisite. Delicate silver filigree shaped like a tiny rose, set with a single, minuscule pearl. It was old, tarnished, but unmistakably fine. It wasn't hers. It didn't belong in this dusty crypt.
She turned it over in her palm. Whose was it? Isabella's? Eleanor's? Clara's? A tangible piece of one of the vanished wives, lying forgotten in this forbidden place. Proof that they *had* been here. That they *had* existed beyond whispers and grim announcements.
A wave of sadness washed over her, mingling with the fear. She closed her fingers around the cold metal, the tiny pearl digging into her skin. This small, beautiful thing felt like a silent plea from the past.
"Lost?"
The voice, low and dangerously calm, came from directly behind her.
Sandra gasped, whirling around, the hairpin clutched tightly in her fist. Paul Barton stood framed in the doorway, blocking the moonlight. He was dressed in dark trousers and an open-collared white shirt, sleeves rolled up, as if he'd been working. His face was in shadow, but she could feel the intensity of his gaze. It wasn't curiosity in his voice; it was icy fury.
He took a step into the room, his movements utterly silent on the stone. The air crackled with tension. "This wing," he said, his voice deceptively soft, "is forbidden. Did Mrs. Thorne neglect to inform you? Or did my warning mean nothing?"
Sandra scrambled to her feet, backing away until her shoulders hit a dust-covered table. "I… I heard something," she stammered, her voice trembling. "A noise. Like… crying."
His expression didn't change. "The wind plays tricks in old stone, Miss Middleton. Especially on overwrought imaginations." He took another step closer. The moonlight caught the hard line of his jaw, the glacial fury in his eyes. "What do you have in your hand?"
Panic seized her. She instinctively closed her fist tighter around the hairpin. "Nothing. It's nothing."
"Show me." The command was absolute.
"No," Sandra whispered, defiance sparking through her fear. "It's mine."
A muscle ticked in his jaw. In two swift strides, he closed the distance between them. His hand shot out, not towards her fist, but to grip her wrist. His touch wasn't brutal, but it was iron-hard, unbreakable. It burned through the thin sleeve of her nightdress.
"Everything within these walls," he hissed, his face inches from hers, his breath warm against her chilled skin, "belongs to me. Including the dust. Including the trinkets left behind by ghosts." His grey eyes bored into hers, stripped of all detachment, blazing with raw, controlled anger. "Give. It. To. Me."
His grip tightened, not enough to bruise, but enough to make her gasp. She felt the terrifying strength in him, the brute force coiled beneath the elegant surface. This was the monster the city whispered about. Not a ravening beast, but a man of chilling power and absolute, terrifying control. He could break her wrist without blinking. He could make her vanish.
Trembling violently, tears pricking her eyes, Sandra slowly, reluctantly, opened her hand. The delicate silver rose hairpin lay in her palm, glinting dully in the moonlight.
Paul Barton stared at it. For a split second, an emotion she couldn't decipher flickered in his eyes – pain? Recognition? Rage? – before it was ruthlessly extinguished, replaced by glacial hardness. He plucked the hairpin from her hand, his fingers brushing her skin, sending an involuntary shiver through her.
He held it up, examining it as if it were a poisonous insect. "Some doors," he said, his voice low and lethal, "stay shut, wife. Some rooms are best left undisturbed. And some pasts..." He closed his fist around the hairpin, the delicate metal vanishing in his large hand. "...are dead and buried. Do you understand?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He released her wrist, the sudden absence of his grip leaving her arm throbbing. He turned and walked towards the doorway, pausing only to look back, his silhouette stark against the moonlight. The fury in his eyes hadn't dimmed.
"Find your way back to your room, Sandra," he commanded, the use of her first name feeling like a violation. "And do not wander again. The consequences next time will not be… gentle."
He disappeared into the dark corridor, leaving her alone in the dust-choked silence, the ghostly sobs replaced by the frantic pounding of her own terrified heart. The tiny pearl's impression still stung on her palm, a silent reminder of the perilous line she'd crossed. She had touched the forbidden past, and the monster, beautiful and terrifying, had shown his teeth. The hairpin was gone, but the echo of his fury, and the chilling feel of his grip, remained. The gilded cage now had visible bars, and the keeper had proven he was more than capable of enforcing them.