Page 18 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
One, two, three seconds later. The beat stops.
Silence rings in my ears. My bones feel unnaturally still without the heavy bass.
“What happened?” I ask faintly.
“I told them to leave.” He says it plainly, without guilt or grandeur. It’s in that matter-of-fact tone that he admits how much my words matter. How much I matter. All I had to do is say that I didn’t want them breaking his things, and they stop.
“Does everyone listen to what you say?”
“Usually,” he says, his expression wry. “You’re an exception to the rule.”
It’s too unnerving, the way he looks at me. Taking me apart, uncovering every secret with methodical determination. That’s supposed to be my job. It would be better if he yelled at me. This subtle understanding is too much to take. “I’ll call Gabriel. Tell him about the message.”
“No.”
I pause, my hand halfway to my back pocket where my phone sits. “What?”
“What’s the point of telling him? He has no chance of figuring it out. Not until you do.”
The paper burns my fingers, everything it represents—both about Avery and about me. “This isn’t my area of study. Ciphers. Encryption. We should find someone else.”
“Is there anyone else you would trust with Avery’s life?”
Somehow I know the message is meant for me. Did Avery send this? Did she know that I would go to Damon Scott? We talked about him the night she disappeared. Could she have sent this to him knowing it would find its way to me?
And why bother putting it into code? She could have written Dear Penny at the top of a regular note. For that matter she could have scribbled something on paper when she left the hotel room.
“He has a right to know,” I say slowly. “He loves her. If she sent this—”
“If she sent this. We don’t know. What’s the point of getting his hopes up when it might be unrelated? Furthermore, she sent this to me. What if she didn’t want him to see it?”
My stomach clenches, because there are too many unknowns. “I don’t know what to do.”
A look of sympathy passes over Damon’s handsome face. “Did I give you the impression you had a choice? My apologies. You don’t need to worry. There’s nothing for you to decide.”
The certainty in his voice is a cold finger along my spine. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’ll be staying here until you solve this.”
It’s almost a relief, the pain. The end I’ve been waiting for. Waking up after a beautiful dream. “No.”
There’s a catch in my voice proving I don’t mean it. He smiles a little. “You can fight if it makes you feel better. I’ll enjoy pinning you down.”
And I realize how sometimes you end up in a web. Not through traps and trickery, but walking right through the front door. “So why don’t you?”
“I don’t have to. You want to stay. You need to know what that message means. And what’s more, you’ll get off on figuring it out. We’ll both enjoy this.”
“I won’t,” I say through clenched teeth.
A low laugh fills the large room. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and find out.”
The bed looms between us, once an innocuous piece of furniture, now a weapon. A wall. “I’m not sleeping in this bed with you.”
“Of course not,” he says, gesturing to a side door. “You’ll be in there.”
It’s too much to hope that there’s a hallway. A small little guest room with a lock I can turn on the doorknob. My feet are filled with lead as I find out.
The doorknob turns easily, revealing a very dark room. It takes me a moment to figure out what I’m looking at—not a closet. Almost as small, though. There’s a bed so thin and flat it must be a cot. And a chest of drawers. The furniture here is solid but plain, in contrast to the ornate carvings and heavy brocade in Damon’s bedroom. No other door leading out, only this one, leading in.
Beside the bed is a small bell attached to the wall. I stare at it, puzzled. And then turn to look over my shoulder. Beside Damon’s overlarge bed, there’s an old-fashioned switch.
My stomach drops as I realize what this is. Servant’s quarters.
Made for someone who serves the king.
Chapter Twelve
I spend the evening working at the plain desk, a stack of empty paper beside me where I can try out various ciphers. The Caeser cipher is a basic substitution of alphabet letters, really only child’s play. One displacement makes B mean A and C mean B. Two displacements, three. There are twenty-five distinct ciphers, assuming both sets of alphabets go in the proper order.
If the letters are jumbled, there are over 400 trillion permutations to try. And that doesn’t even get into homophonic substitutions. Or the infinite number of other forms of codes.
