Free Eloisa's Adventure by Rebecca King Page A

she
turned around and lit several candles. Once she had placed them at
various points around the room, and it was sufficiently lit for
them to see what they were doing, they began to search the
cupboards.
    “Simeon,” she said quietly when she opened the door to the
pantry.
    One look
inside made her stomach churn. She jumped when he moved to stand
behind her because she hadn’t even heard him move. As she turned to
face the room again, she lifted her candlestick so he could see
what she had found.
    “From
the smell, they are fresh,” she whispered. She took a tentative
step into the room, and poked at the two loaves of bread that sat
on the small table on the back wall.
    Sure
enough, they were fresh, as was the ham, freshly cooked beef, and
cheese. She eyed the basket of fruit and vegetables at the end of
the table and picked up a fresh apple.
    Simeon
walked toward the door at the far end of the room and rattled the
latch.
    “Where
does that go?” she asked curiously.
    “It’s
the door to the wine cellar,” he replied. He picked up the
half-drunk bottle of wine from the table beside him.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t heavily dusted as he would expect it to
be if it had sat in the cellars for several months. It hadn’t been
in the pantry for any length of time either. Unless his eyes were
deceiving him, this had been opened recently. He turned to study
the rest of the shelves.
    “Either
the housekeeper is still coming here and keeping house, or someone
is using this place as a refuge,” Eloisa said, and tried valiantly
to ignore the loud rumble of her stomach.
    Simeon
studied the table in the middle of the pantry, and the rows of
carefully made preserves. He knew that the last time he had been
here the shelves had been full. His uncle’s housekeeper had made
new batches of quince jelly and strawberry jam just days before
George’s death. As a result, the shelves had been heavily laden.
Now though, there were gaps where there should have been
jars.
    Someone
had been helping themselves.
    He
turned to look at Eloisa, only for the quiet click of the door
behind her to halt his words. A dark scowl marred his brow as he
noticed the door had closed all by itself. He raced past her and
yanked on the latch only to stare at it in disbelief when it
refused to open.
    “Give me
a hand,” he snapped. He thrust his candle at her and used both
hands to try to yank the door open. It didn’t budge.
    Eloisa
lifted the candles so they could both see the latch. She frowned
when a gentle breeze wafted over her ankles. Her heart leapt into
her throat, and she lifted one hand to study the door that Simeon
had told her led to the wine cellar.
    “Simeon,” she whispered.
    “What?”
he turned to look at her and followed her gaze to the
door.
    A flurry
of awareness swept through her when she touched his arm, but she
forced it aside as she dragged him to stand where she was. “Do you
feel it?”
    “What?”
he frowned at the floor while he tried to focus on what she was
talking about.
    “There
is a cold breeze coming from the door.”
    “It’s
the cellars. It will be cold,” Simeon explained reasonably. It was
a struggle to keep hold of his patience. He was trying to get them
out of there and she was bothered about cold spots in the
room.
    Eloisa
glared at him for a moment but he was too busy wrestling with the
door to notice. She cautiously made her way over to the cellar
door. She felt as though some unseen force was telling her that it
was the only way out. She frowned and wondered if it was a flight
of fancy to even contemplate going in there, but Simeon wasn’t able
to get the main door open, and there really was no other way
out.
    She
pulled the door open and, once again, felt a gentle breeze tickle
her cheeks. From the safety of the doorway, she lifted her candle
and peered into the gloom. A small flight of stairs disappeared
down into inky blackness. She glared at the impenetrable gloom and
felt a shiver of foreboding