Hillary studied her for a second, putting sounds together with her look, then he understood, and that smile she’d rather not see wreathed his face again. “Ah, no, my dear Sylvia—this isn’t about revenge against you. No, no—you, it must be said, are merely an innocent pawn to be sacrificed in a deeper game.” His smile took on an ecstatic aura. “It’s your father, the good Reverend Buckleberry, whom I intend to strike and hurt—to flay with a flail that will cut deeply into body and soul.”
Horrified, Sylvia stared at Hillary while her mind raced, assembling the critical thrust of his plot—his revenge. He was correct in thinking that if she was killed—sacrificed in some brutal fashion—less than a mile from her father’s door, and he learned it was because of him...
She still couldn’t make sense of this. “Why?”
Hillary blinked at her. “Why?” He paused, head tilting as he considered her, then said, “I suppose it’s been to my advantage that you haven’t recognized me. As you were only a child at the time, I daresay you don’t remember, but my name, my dear, is Hillary Nunsworth, and at one time—a sadly short time—I was deacon of this parish. Your father’s parish. Unfortunately, your sanctimonious father took a dim view of the monies I was collecting—in my opinion, nothing more than my due—from the parishioners and reported me to the bishop. Thanks to your father, I was defrocked and denied the vocation I had trained for—along with my ability to make an easy living as a suitably respected member of society.”
His voice took on a darker, distinctly ugly tone. “Rather than being looked up to, rather than having people curry my favor, I was shown the vicarage door, and the village tu
rned against me. I was hounded out!” His eyes flared, and he trained his feverish gaze on Sylvia. “And it was all your father’s fault! Because of him, I’ve been forced to eke out a living exhorting money from the gullible in Bristol.” His eyes narrowed to burning shards, and he lowered his voice to a grating growl. “And day by day, week by week, month after long month for a good decade and more, I’ve nurtured and nursed my hatred for your father.”
As Nunsworth glowered darkly at her, Sylvia swallowed. Her heart was thudding in a panicky tattoo.
Then even more disturbingly, Nunsworth’s expression lightened and cleared. “And then, my dear Sylvia, a few weeks ago, I saw you in the city.” In conversational vein, he went on, “At first, I wasn’t sure it was you, so I asked around.” His gaze resting on her face, his expression one of pleased anticipation, he said, “When I learned that you were, indeed, Sylvia Buckleberry—well.” His lips drew back in a gloating smile. “I knew the time for my revenge had come.”
* * *
Kit didn’t wait to hear more. He’d already peeked around the hatch and found that, as he’d hoped, it opened into a deeply shadowed area of the mill’s rear section, out of direct sight of where Hillary’s—no, Nunsworth’s—voice placed him, which was somewhere in the middle of the main building.
There on the riverbank, daylight was starting to fade, cut off by higher land to the west. That would work to Kit’s and his helpers’ advantage; with any luck, when Kit went through the hatch, no sudden shaft of bright light would give him away.
He swiveled on his heel and pointed to Smiggs, then, with his hands, mimed that Smiggs should go around to the mill’s front door, wait until he heard Kit pounce, then come storming in to assist.
Smiggs gave a curt nod and, moving silently, vanished into the bushes.
Kit fixed the three boys with a stern look and mouthed, “Stay here.” He knew it was futile, but felt compelled to try to protect them.
All three looked at him with innocent eyes and said nothing.
Resisting the urge to roll his own eyes, Kit turned and, opening the hatch as little as possible, slipped through. He didn’t have time to argue with the boys, not with Sylvia facing a madman.
He found himself beside the old waterwheels. The entire area was shrouded in deep shadow and a low wall—about chest high—cut the area off from the main floor of the mill.
He carefully rose and spotted Nunsworth standing on the far side of a raised stone platform. He was looking down as he continued to talk, suggesting that Sylvia was sitting on the floor with her back to the platform.
Kit crouched and quickly made his way to the edge of the partition. He glanced around it, but Nunsworth’s gaze remained lowered, his attention fixed on Sylvia.
There was a large skylight in the ceiling above and behind where Nunsworth stood, and the soft, late-afternoon light illuminated a square of floor between Nunsworth and the main door. Kit glimpsed a figure sprawled, unmoving, on the ground not far from the door. A watchman? From the look of the man, he wasn’t going to be able to help.
Kit refocused on Nunsworth. The light from above made the shadows wreathing the rest of the mill floor appear darker and gloomier. Clinging to those shadows, placing his feet with care and keeping to a crouch, Kit ghosted forward using benches and tool racks for cover, eventually fetching up at the rear of the stone platform. He paused, but Nunsworth continued talking, enumerating and railing against all the supposed slights visited on him by the villagers.
The stone slab was roughly twelve feet by twelve feet in area, about waist high, and had rails running along three sides. As he’d neared the slab, Kit had seen that Nunsworth had tied Sylvia’s hands, arms spread wide, to the railing on the opposite side.
Kit glanced up and saw the huge iron plate suspended above the slab. Presumably when the mill was operating, the plate would pound down on crude brass sheet spread on the slab, flattening it to the desired thickness.
Given the way Nunsworth had positioned Sylvia, he didn’t plan on using the iron plate to enact his revenge; Kit took some small comfort from that.
Dismissing the gruesome thought, he crept to the corner of the slab and eased his way around it.
A whisper of sound from the depths of the mill told him that, as he’d expected, the boys had followed him inside. He had to trust that their sneaking skills were at least as good as his; he couldn’t afford to shift his attention from Sylvia and Nunsworth to check.
Nunsworth was a larger man than Kit had anticipated; he was as tall as Kit, of heavier build, and powerful with it.
Kit needed some weapon to tip the scales and bring this situation to a safe end—safe for Sylvia as well as the others. Inch by inch, Kit crept toward the next corner, scanning the benches and tool racks nearby for some implement he could use.
* * *
Sylvia had nearly eased her left hand from her glove. One tug, and that hand would be free.