WolfeStrike (De Wolfe Pack Generations #2) - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,76

so she went to the door to summon a servant to let them know that she was awake and that they could stoke her hearth. Putting her hand on the door latch, she tried to lift it only to realize that it was fixed in place.

The latch wouldn’t budge.

Curious, Isalyn tried to force the latch to lift several times before realizing that it was a futile effort. Peering at the lock itself, she could see that the bolts were firmly in place, meaning the tumblers had been turned in order to move the bolts into their locked position. She could not imagine why the door would be locked, so she assumed that it was merely a mistake. Someone had accidentally locked her in. She began to knock on the door, calling to anyone who was within earshot and asking for help with the door.

That went on for several minutes before she realized there was nobody within earshot to help her. She wasn’t frightened, nor was she angry, but she was annoyed. The sun would soon be down and her chamber would be plunged into chill darkness, so it was important for her to catch the attention of a servant to help her. She didn’t want to be stuck in a freezing tomb all night.

Giving up on the idea of banging on the door and yelling for help, Isalyn went to the shuttered window that faced the wall walk, thinking that she could open up the shutter and speak to one of the soldiers and ask them for help. That seemed to make the most sense, so she made her way over to the shuttered window only to discover that the shutters were locked.

Just like the door.

And the only window that was open was facing over the pigsty.

Now, it was starting to occur to Isalyn that this was no accident. She had received a strange sense of scrutiny from the chatelaines since she had arrived, and now she was in a chamber that was cold, without a fire or food, and with a locked door and one locked shutter. She would have not been suspicious had it only been the door, but now she was starting to put the pieces of the puzzle together and realize there was a pattern.

Her hostesses were making sure that she was not only uncomfortable, but trapped.

It was starting to make sense as to why Isabella had accompanied her to her chamber. The woman had known something that she had not. When Barbara and Lenore had come to the hall to take Isalyn to her chamber, Isabella had looked at the women with an expression that suggested a coldness.

Guardedness.

Considering how friendly Isabella had been towards her, that change in manner had been sudden and strange.

Maybe there was a reason for Isabella’s coldness towards them.

Isalyn was thinking that perhaps she should have given Isabella’s change in manner more credit. This was her first visit to Blackpool and she didn’t know the people, nor did she have any reason to be suspicious of anyone. But in hindsight, there had been signs all around her that she had ignored. She didn’t want to be immediately suspicious of a new place and new people.

Now, she was paying the price.

Going to the window that overlooked the pigsty, Isalyn peered over the ledge to see just how far of a drop it was down into the pigsty. Had her hostesses put her on the ground floor, she could have simply jumped out the window with little effort, but being that she was on the first floor, there were more logistics involved with it. She had no doubt that the pair had known that.

But she wasn’t going to let that stop her.

The yew tree was at the window that had the locked shutters. Isalyn could see it through the pattern of the shutters. Locking those shutters had been to keep her from climbing out onto that tree and making her way to the ground. When she remembered that she had thanked Barbara for shutting them, she felt like a fool.

She had thanked the woman for locking her in.

Sheer rage was beginning to take over at this point. Thinking quickly, she ripped the linens off of the bed in preparation for her escape. The coverlet and the two linen sheets beneath were firmly and carefully tied end to end, creating a rope that she tied off on one of the legs of the bed.

Throwing the rope from the window, she climbed onto the ledge