Accursed Abbey: A Steamy Regency Gothic Romance (Nobles & Necromancy Book 1)

by Tessa Candle

The man's eyes grew round. “How can I know? I do not remember dying. Only this place cannot be purgatory.” He looked about in a way that suggested he was looking at some vast inner space within the mirror and not at the tiny room that housed it. “For surely the object of purgatory is purification, not...” he trailed off.

  Canterbourne shuddered and did not ask him to continue. “Can you tell me, has he brought a girl here?”

  “A girl? Oh yes. A sweet maiden, with heavenly blue eyes and hair like ripe wheat.”

  Miss Berger, Canterbourne thought. At least it was not Miss Whitely. Perhaps she might yet be spared.

  “She was too much a child of God for him, however,” the monk continued, though it was visibly painful for him to do so. “He could not get her to take the so-called sacrament, even though he dressed me up as a priest and made me preside over it to lend it the appearance of propriety. She would not partake, even though he drugged her. Her stout little soul would not submit to a moral corruption of which her virtue made her instinctively aware.”

  Canterbourne smiled sadly at the thought of that poor child, defying evil even when she was all alone in the world, save for the guardian who tormented her.

  Then the monk sighed and a deep sadness echoed within him. “But in the end, Orefados merely pried her jaws open and forced it upon her.”

  Canterbourne shook his head. “The man is a vile beast. But has there been another girl here?”

  “No, no.”

  “Do you know what his purpose is in all of this?”

  “He is sly and has kept his secrets from me.” The monk's face showed a deep bitterness, and a light of insane fascination burned within his eyes. “I crave them, you know, his secrets. I long after that arcane knowledge of ultimate power, even though it has brought me to this prison, and even though I also revile it. It is hard having this Judas within my breast. I wish this place were purgatory, that my corruption might burn away within that chastening crucible.” He looked around again inside his mirror world and shuddered.

  “So is there nothing you can tell me?”

  “I can only tell you that he has planned a second ritual, for he has laid out his blasphemous emblems again. And his purpose is not to sanctify, but to defile. However I have not seen the girl again since. I know not what he has done with her.”

  “She escaped him. She is safe now.”

  “Escaped him?” The monk shook his head. “Surely not. He wanted her to run away. The chase is part of the ritual—or at least part of its enjoyment. The thrill of the hunt and of discovery were the means he used to ensnare me, and he cannot resist such enticements, himself.”

  Canterbourne was disturbed by this revelation. Was Miss Berger not truly safe at the cloister? Surely even so great an evil could not enter that sanctuary.

  “I must go now. It is almost dawn in this land, and by then I must find hiding.”

  Canterbourne's stomach clenched with the mortal fear these words inspired in him. Why should the man find hiding? But he could not bring himself to ask. His own nightmare was horrifying enough—he did not need to steal a glance into the monk's.

  The cleric's face was fading. “Farewell, and give Giuseppe my affection and my thanks for his prayers to Saint Jude.”

  “Do not go!” Canterbourne called to the fading image. “Can you not tell me more?”

  But the monk was gone. Canterbourne kicked the sacraments off the bench. Then recollected himself, looking around for Silverloo.

  The dog's face appeared from the shadows underneath the mirror and he walked boldly to the clay goblet on the floor and pissed upon it.

  Canterbourne felt a surge of love for the little scamp. Even if Miss Whitely were not so utterly charming and adorable, he would have to ask for her hand just so that he might never be parted from Silverloo.

  He patted the furry rogue. “Good lad. Now I suppose we must return to that damnable maze and find your dearest friend.”

  Chapter 32

  The first pale traces of the eastern sun were stirring behind Elizabeth as she ran in fits and starts, at turns animated by horror or paralysed by exhaustion.

  The sun was a goddess, chasing Elizabeth through the shrubby woods, sending golden rays to stir up the hateful sylphs under her command into joining the chase, tripping Elizabeth and whispering little taunts all around her.

  But Elizabeth could push the madness aside now. The worst of her drugged delusion had passed, and she could see her aunt and uncle's cottage before her as she stumbled down a final hill and almost rolled onto the back lawn. She lay there for a few moments to catch her breath before forcing herself to stand again, like a newborn fawn on shaking legs.

  She paused at the well to draw herself some water and drank deeply. She had been parched, but too frantic to notice it. With her last reserves of strength she ran into the house.

  Elizabeth did not know what she was expecting. Perhaps, against every reasonable inference that might be drawn from past behaviour, she still believed in her aunt and uncle's concern for her. Perhaps she had a notion that, confronted with the disappearance of their niece, they would be frantic and would greet her at the door with embraces and expressions of their great relief that she had returned.

  But when she opened the door there was only silence. Were they so indifferent as that? She looked about for Silverloo. He was nowhere to be seen. She called him. He did not come or answer her. She went to her room. He was not there.

  She began to panic. Where could he be? She supposed she should be concerned with her aunt and uncle, but Silverloo was the darling of her heart and had always been her faithful companion. Had that fiend, Orefados, done something with him?

  She knocked on her guardians' bedroom door, but no answer came. She peered inside just long enough to see that the bed had not been slept in.

  Perhaps they were still in the kitchen. They had no doubt been drugged, too. She felt a pang of shame for her earlier reproach of their neglect. Then cold fear crept up her spine. What if they had been poisoned by the dose?

  As she rushed to the kitchen, she could see that many items of her aunt and uncle’s obsessive clap-trap had been knocked onto the floor. Had there been a struggle? The kitchen door stood open. She passed through it with a feeling of dread.

  She gasped at the scene before her. Her aunt and uncle sat slumped across the table as though dead. She reached out a trembling hand to shake them. They were warm. She thanked the heavens. But they were unresponsive to her jostling.

  Then her uncle snorted slightly and smacked his mouth, inadvertently eating some of the peas in which his face rested, before settling into a proper snore.

  She shook her head and laughed at the absurdity of her situation. She sobered quickly. Silverloo was still missing.

  She went about the house calling for him. She knew he was not there, but she had to kindle the little flame of hope. Then she went out to search the yard, although she knew that she was going through a charade. If Silverloo were anywhere nearby he would come to her—or at least call to her with his sweet little bark, if he were restrained.

  She was overcome with despair for a few moments and collapsed, crying on the grass. Then she stopped herself and stood up, the beginnings of a headache throbbing behind her eyes. She could not afford to be a weeping little ninny. Orefados almost certainly knew where she was, for where else would she go?

  It was amazing that he was not there already, waiting for her. But Elizabeth was not going to rest upon her luck. She pressed her hands to her eyes and thought.

  She went to the woodshed and searched in the gloom until she found what she needed hanging on the north wall. An axe should do for the mad bastard. If he returned, she would not go meekly. She hefted her weapon onto her shoulder and returned to the house.

  Chapter 33

  A strange conviction gripped Canterbourne as he and Silverloo made their way back to the manor and began to traverse the maze of hallways. It was something that Martinus had said about the thrill of
the chase and about Orefados' way of cozening people. What if, for reasons Canterbourne could not know, the mad lord was trying to ensnare him.

  The man had tried to do so from the very beginnings of their acquaintance with his nasty little secret-holding, sealed box. And when Canterbourne had resisted this trick, Orefados had tried other means to persuade him to look inside.

  But then an even darker thought manifested within Canterbourne’s troubled mind. What if Orefados had lured Canterbourne back to his lair again by abducting Elizabeth? No, even before that. By allowing him to find the distraught Miss Berger on the road, had Orefados not set the stage for Canterbourne's return to Abbazia Pallida? Might that have been intentional?

  But how could the bizarre conjurer have known all the little causes and effects that would lead Canterbourne back to the manor to rescue Miss Whitely? He could not. It was not possible. And yet, after all he had seen and heard this evening, Canterbourne had to readjust his ideas of possible and impossible.

  He felt like a fish wriggling on a hook. He suddenly knew, as he and Silverloo neared the green door of the parlour, that Orefados was on the other side of it. He could not say how, but he knew it with the same conviction that had forewarned him of Miss Whitely's peril.

  Silverloo and he exchanged a solemn look as he walked to the door and, having given over knocking entirely, simply opened it.

  Chapter 34

  When Elizabeth returned to the house, axe in hand, her aunt and uncle had bestirred themselves. They emerged from the kitchen doorway looking quite befuddled.

  “Elizabeth! What has happened to you? You are all scratched and bedraggled!” Her aunt's voice was rusty from her recent slumber. A film of yesterday's dinner still clung to her surprised face.

  “Whatever have you brought the axe for?” asked her uncle, who was rubbing his eyes in some confusion.

  “I can imagine I look a fright,” replied Elizabeth, “for I have certainly had one. Lord Orefados drugged us all with his wine, then he and his servant abducted me.”

  The look the Whitelys exchanged did not seem entirely surprised, and Elizabeth began to form a suspicion that they knew more than they ought.

  “And you have made your way home again.” Mrs. Whitely tapped her fingers to her lips. “Very well. Why do you not go freshen up? Your uncle and I will handle everything. You do not need that axe.”

  “I think I shall keep it with me, just the same.” Elizabeth did not like the look that Mr. Whitely was giving her and stepped backwards, gripping the axe even more tightly. “You would not believe the bizarre evil I have endured at that man's hands. I feel certain his madness will lead him to return for me.”

  “But surely you are over-reacting,” said her uncle. “His lordship is a little eccentric to be sure, but you will get used to him in time. We all have our ways about us.”

  “What do you mean, I will get used to him?” She looked at the guilty face of her aunt, who seemed to regret her husband's choice of words. “Did you two know he planned to abduct me?”

  “Now calm yourself, my dear.” Mr. Whitely took a step toward her, then halted as Elizabeth lifted the axe into position that she might swing it. “You are over-excited. Lord Orefados did not abduct you. We consented to his marrying you.”

  “To his marrying me?” Elizabeth could not conceal her shock and anger. What pure, unmitigated gall. “Well, I certainly did not consent to marrying him—nor shall I. I cannot believe that you conspired to permit him to do whatever bizarre ritual he had planned. But make no mistake, I will not marry that man, nor will I stay within his reach. If you will not see him put in prison for what he has done, I shall go home to England, for I shall never feel safe with such a madman around.”

  Her aunt and uncle looked about to protest, when the front door opened and Mrs. Grissoni entered. “Good morning Sir, Missus, Miss.” She smiled at them all, only squinting a little at the unusual appearance of all three, and not remarking at all upon the axe that Elizabeth still held at the ready. “But aren't the mister and missus late to the vines? Is there something amiss?”

  The mention of the vines seemed to cast a spell over the delinquent guardians. Neglecting their own niece might be quite tolerable, but, “The vines! Oh the vines!”

  Without further comment to Elizabeth, without washing the food off of their faces or changing the clothes that they had slept in, they marched like automatons, picked up the bucket of odd tools with which they laboured so pointlessly, and left for the vineyard. It was just as if nothing had happened.

  When they were gone, Mrs. Grissoni took a pruning knife from a shelf.

  Elizabeth stepped suddenly backward.

  Mrs. Grissoni laughed and shook her head. She reached out to lift up the cord that hung, forgotten, around Elizabeth's neck.

  Elizabeth relaxed and permitted her to cut the yarn.

  Mrs. Grissoni held up the red line with a look of suspicion. “What is it, Miss? Some English fashion?”

  “Do you not know?” Elizabeth began to laugh hysterically as tears streamed down her face. “It is all the crack in Paris and London to affect the look of a woman who has only escaped ritual sacrifice by running all night through the brambles. The true paragons of such a mode of costume substitute a crazed look for a quizzing glass, and eschew parasols altogether in favour of axes.”

  Mrs. Grissoni looked a little puzzled, then tilted her head with a little smile of understanding. “Then I think you must be...” the woman squinted to recall the English term, “a nonesuch, Miss.”

  Elizabeth set the axe on the floor and half laughing, half crying, fell into a slump against the wall. Mrs. Grissoni patted her shoulder.

  Chapter 35

  When Canterbourne entered the parlour, Orefados sat smiling in the chair where Canterbourne had waited on the vile magician at their first meeting. The mage sat by candlelight in his saffron robe. A wooden plate was before him, carved with the sorts of minute symbols that covered the walls of his hallways. Over this receptacle he peeled a boiled egg with his filthy, pointed fingernails. His face threw unpleasant shadows in the glow of the tapers and seemed to disappear into those spots of gloom, as though he were turning invisible in patches.

  “Lord Canterbourne.” His voice was a little hoarse, but held no glimmer of surprise. He gestured at a chair with hands stained red and blue-black, so that they seemed to be decaying. “Will you not join me?”

  “I do not mean to stay long.” Canterbourne hesitated. He wished to lash the man with his sword were he sat, but decided he would get more information out of him if he played along with the lord's madness. “But thank you.” He sat down across from Orefados and tried not to grind his teeth.

  “I am so pleased that you have come to call again. And so soon. I had feared you might never return, and yet here you are presented to me in my parlour not a day later. Why...” His voice became a squeak. “It is almost as if you cannot stay away.”

  “I find myself in the awkward position of hunting for someone. I think she might be here.”

  “There are no women here.” Orefados grinned. His teeth looked even more darkly stained than when Canterbourne was last subjected to their display. “I have left my harem in Alexandria.” He ran a blackened tongue over his lips. “Do you care for an egg?”

  A tarnished silver chalice held several of the proffered treats, and Orefados' grimy fingernails tapped it in a gesture of invitation that made Canterbourne wish never to eat another egg in his life.

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Pity. They are a special delicacy, you know. Not ordinary eggs, but laid by cockerels through an ancient ritual and infused with the sweet taste of jinni. The birds are fed upon nuts within which these spirits have been imprisoned, you see.”

  This description made the eggs that much more revolting, but also struck Canterbourne as a patent absurdity. “The improbable laid by the impossible.” He lifted a brow, but did not add, and eaten by the unthinkable.

  Orefados only til
ted his dark head. “What of some wine?” His eyes glistened in the candlelight as he snapped his filthy fingers.

  The servant entered with fine crystal goblets and a decanter.

  “I am most obliged, but I believe I shall abstain.”

  The man sighed, but held up his own glass of the garnet liquid, swirling it slightly to better display the colourful animation of the strangely teeming drink. He shook his head. “You English lords and your abstinence. You do not know what you are missing.” He drained the contents of his goblet in a single quaff and smacked his lips.

  Canterbourne marvelled at the calmness with which he was received. Surely it was completely apparent that he had trespassed Orefados' property and intruded into his home. And yet here he sat, being offered refreshments in the parlour as though it were not the wee hours of the morning, and he had not shown up without announcement.

  Indeed, he had a sneaking feeling that Orefados knew why he was there better than Canterbourne did. Had the madman orchestrated this entire meeting? Canterbourne cleared his throat. “In fact, what I am missing is Miss Whitely. And I had understood that she was here.”

  “I do not know who gave you such an understanding, but I assure you that she is not. As I have said, no women. More is the pity.” Orefados’ gleaming eye seemed the product of affectation rather than of true lust.

  Perhaps the bizarre magus was too jaded even for the normal vices of mankind.

  Orefados smiled maliciously and continued, “You were quite the man about town at one time, were you not? Well, not town exactly.” He snickered. “But Bath, so shall we say, the man about tub? Quite a light hand with the ladies' skirts, I understand.”

  Canterbourne swallowed. It was not entirely a falsehood. He had been reckoned a bit of a menace. But he had been young and a little rebellious, and the young widows of Bath were happy to oblige him. But he was hardly notorious. He knew not how Orefados should have known of this reputation unless he had taken the trouble of enquiring into Canterbourne's life.