THE STABLE BLOCK WAS ONE LONG ROOM WITH ROOF BEAMS AND small, high windows. There were wooden stalls for long-gone horses. Evangeline could see that the walls were whitewashed and the cobblestone floor sloped toward a central drain. The unused part of the stable had become a storage area for broken-down carts and farm equipment. The two nearest stalls now served for an auto workshop.

Over by the workbench, Sir Owain’s chauffeur was putting on a serviceable leather apron. He tied its strings behind him, blind, and with his attention momentarily absorbed she knew she ought to make a move; but she was hit again, this time by an overwhelming memory of sensations triggered by the sight of the apron. The male, stale smell of sweat and old leather. Like cooking bones.

She’d wasted a moment. Now he’d turned to the bench and was looking along the tools that hung there. While his back was to the car, Evangeline slid across the seat and punched the parchment out of the broken window on the opposite side. Then she reached out and groped around for the handle to let herself out.

It wasn’t easy. Not hard to find the handle, but hard to turn it at that angle. By the time she’d thrown the door open and was spilling out, he’d reached her. He came around the back of the car and grabbed her, dragging her out and down onto the stones before she got a chance to gain her balance. She tangled in her skirts and went sprawling.

She was scrambling to rise, but he put his foot underneath her and hooked her over onto her back. Then he put one foot on her chest and leaned toward her, pinning her down with his full weight. She thought her ribs would break but had not the strength to throw him off or the breath to scream. She grabbed and scratched at his high leather driving boot, but it made no difference.

He said, “Where is it?”

She gasped. “What?” she tried to say, but no breath came out.

“I know you took a box from the cottage. The old man saw you. I went all over that place, and I never saw any box there. What have you done with it?”

In fear and pain, Evangeline cranked her head around and tried to look toward the car so that she could point to the pannier on her bicycle. But it wasn’t there. He’d lied, and hadn’t brought it.

Which meant he’d almost certainly lied about everything else; no Sebastian Becker, no Stephen Reed, no final resting place for Grace’s body. He’d set out only to find Evangeline and bring her here for this. A drive through town with her bicycle displayed on the back of the car would have been a poor excuse for stealth.

With no bicycle, she couldn’t appease him with the box he wanted. In which there was nothing anyway. She fought against his weight and he pressed down harder, and she felt her chest begin to crack. In her terror, she could think no more than a few seconds ahead. What could she do? What could she give him to make him stop?

Her eyes became fixed on the livery buttons on his uniform coat.

The livery button in Grace’s box, the button that Evangeline had disregarded, was a match for them.

Her fear was no less. But her mind was no longer so clouded.

There was the corner where she’d once stood. He’d brought them here from the moors, later to take them out again and leave them for dead. Grace had been screaming, and young Evangeline could not bring herself to turn around and see why.

Forgive me, Grace, she thought.

He had one foot on her, the other on the floor. His stance was extended, like a fencer’s in a lunge. Evangeline was pinned, but she was young and she was supple. She drew in both legs and kicked upward, feet together, hard into his jewels, which presented an open target.

The result was instantaneous and spectacular. Far more so than she could have imagined. This bit of wisdom had been shared between the sisterhood at their meetings, but few had ever seen the results.

He did not scream. It was much worse than that. He folded around the middle, turned white, and fell to the ground. There he squirmed like a cut worm, hugging himself and making tiny, high-pitched kitten sounds.

She scrambled to her feet and away, fearing his reach and recovery. As she got to the stable doors, she heard him vomit. She ran out into the yard and almost lost her footing on the cobblestones, looking all around for a way to run. She saw an archway and ran for that. Beyond the archway were derelict greenhouses. Beyond the greenhouses was woodland.

She knew what she should have done, of course. While he was helpless she should have gone to his workbench, selected a suitable hammer or a wrench, and beaten him like a jellyfish on a rock until there was no harm left in him. Now he would come after her when he was able, and he wouldn’t give her the same chance twice.

He wanted the button. The button would betray him. Plucked from his uniform jacket, bearing Sir Owain’s crest, kept by Grace for all these years. Grace had always known their attacker, but she’d kept it to herself—kept it from her. To what purpose, Evangeline could not imagine. She would have an angle; Grace always had. But as with her teachers, with the church, with the law, Grace had always played a defiant and potentially dangerous game.

He would follow her, Evangeline had no doubt. The beast of all their myths stood revealed, not as the monster of Sir Owain’s tragic imaginings, but as a nobody with a horrific soul. Behind all the nightmares stood the reality of the cold floor, the pitiless appetite. He would deal with her and then go looking to retrieve the evidence against him.

She dared not stop. If she stopped, he would find her.

She did not even know his name.