Miss Grantham looked rather distressed. “Indeed, I fear you must be very uncomfortable,” she owned.
“I am.”
“Well, I do not see what harm there can be in setting your legs free,” she decided, and knelt down on the stone floor to wrestle with Silas Wantage’s knots. “Oh dear, they have bound you shockingly tightly!”
“I am well aware of that, ma’am.”
She looked up. “It is of no use to sound so cross. I dare say you would like to murder me, but you should not have tried to threaten me. It was very ungentlemanly of you, let me tell you; and if you thought I could be so easily frightened into giving up your cousin, you see now how mistaken you were! I have brought you here to get that mortgage and those dreadful bills from you.”
He laughed shortly. “You have missed the mark, Miss Grantham. I don’t carry them upon my person.”
“Oh no! But you can write a letter to your servants, directing them to place the bills in a messenger’s hands,” she pointed out.
He looked down at her bent head. “My good girl, you’ve mistaken your man! Bring on your thumbscrew and your rack! You will get nothing out of me.”
She tugged at the knot. “I don’t mean you the least harm, sir, I assure you. No one will hurt you in this house. Only you will not leave it until those bills are in my hands.”
“Evidently my stay in your cellar is to be a prolonged one.”