“Can’t hear a thing,” Warren yelled. “The blast!”
“Oh, dear!” Adelaide said, ringing her hands.
Lord Mortimer nodded and shouted something. The sound was muffled, but it sounded as if he’d said something about normal. At that Eldren began to laugh. Normal. Nothing in their lives had ever been normal and perhaps, for the first time, he had hope that it might be. He laughed harder until he collapsed on the sand, clutching his sides as tears streamed from his eyes. They had succeeded. Somehow, they had managed to break free of the darkness that had hovered over his family, slowly choking them, for hundreds of years. Misery, pain, death, insanity, abuse—all of it had been the work of Igrida and she was no more.
“It’s done,” Adelaide said, kneeling beside him. “It’s really done.”
Words were meaningless to him at that point, so Eldren did the only thing he could to show her how he felt. He kissed her soundly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The train was bound for London. The servants that had elected to join them in their new home were seated across several cars. Adelaide and Eldren were sharing a private car with Leola and Lord Mortimer. It was only two short days after the explosion. The village of Machynlleth had opened their homes to the lot of them, as had the local hotel and the small inn above the tavern. Father Thomas had also housed several people in the church.
Warren had taken Frances back to the asylum. She was to be kept under constant supervision until the child was born. Ultimately, she had accepted his bargain. In exchange for lenience and for remaining in the asylum rather than facing prison and potentially hanging, she’d agreed to bear the child and hand it over to him.
Adelaide feared that it might be a mistake. She worried about the ramifications for Warren. He was taking on the rearing of a child that wasn’t his. He had only just managed to give up drinking and there were no guarantees that his abstinence could be maintained.
“He will be fine,” Eldren said. “Deaf as I am, I can all but hear the wheels turning in your mind right now.”
Adelaide smiled. “Am I that transparent?”
“Yes,” he said. “And you’re worrying needlessly. I think this will be the making of Warren. And if it isn’t, we’ll be there to help him.”
“You don’t think it’s too much for him? He’s taking over the mines, he’s going to be raising a child alone. Frances’ child, at that. It’s a terrible thing to say, but part of me fears that somehow it might be tainted by her blood,” Adelaide admitted. “I feel like a horrible person for even thinking such a thing!”
Madame Leola leaned forward and laid her hand on Adelaide’s. “My dear, we have all thought it. Have we not, Lord Montkeith?”
“Eldren,” he corrected. “And yes, we have.”
Adelaide smiled, relieved to see that her only friend and her husband had formed a bond of their own. “We should be talking of happier things. Such as your wedding. When and where shall you have it now?”
“St. Paul’s,” Lord Mortimer said. “It’s where I attended church as a boy, though heaven knows they wouldn’t recognize my face now. It’s been ages.”
“But it will not be a grand affair,” Leola hastened to add. “We’re both far too old for such things. Just a quiet ceremony at the church and a small gathering of friends afterward at Lord Mortimer’s townhouse. You will both come, of course. I can’t imagine not having you there as you’ve both been instrumental in bringing us together this way.”
Adelaide considered that. “How strange that without Frances’ wickedness, the love you all have might never have been brought into the light? So many positive things have come from such ugliness. Had it not been for the death of my father, I would never have come to Cysgod Lys and married Eldren.”
“Tragedy is the vehicle of fate,” Eldren said.
“So it is,” Adelaide agreed. “But we need no more of it. We are all where we ought to be and with whom we ought to be.”
Lord Mortimer raised Leola’s hand to his lips. “So we are. Even blind, old fools like me.”
Warren entered the mine office in Chester and met with the foreman. If anyone had questions about why he looked as if he’d been beaten half to death, no one dared ask them. Nicked and bruised from the flying debris from the explosion, but also from his experiences on the moor earlier, he was in no mood to provide answers to anyone. There were things he’d experienced on that moor, while alone there and shoveling dirt on Igrida’s remains, that he’d not told anyone about. Not Eldren nor Adelaide. Those were his demons and he wouldn’t visit them upon anyone else.
But Frances knew. He’d stopped in to check on her, not out of concern for her, but to be certain that she was keeping to the spirit and letter of their bargain. She’d smiled slyly at him that morning and uttered something that even then reverberated within him.
“You’re not the same,” she’d smirked. “And you never will be.”
“What do you mean?” He’d demanded.
She looked up at him with satisfaction shining in her eyes. “The dead have touched you, Warren. They’ve marked you. And the others will know. Every spirit that ever crosses your path will know. For the rest of your days, you will be haunted. Or you can crawl back into a bottle and try to block it out.”
He’d knelt down before her then so that they were eye to eye while she was strapped into a restraint jacket. “You are right about one thing, Frances. I’m not the same. Nor will I ever be. And I’ll not be crawling back into a bottle for you or anyone else. I can face the dead. I’ve done it before and I can do it again. Make no mistake… the greatest weakness I ever had in life was you. But I’m cured of that.”
Her smirk didn’t fade, but it did transform into an expression of such hatred that it was startling. “Are you so certain? This child is mine, Warren. It’s been inside my body while I committed acts so terrible you cannot begin to imagine them. Do you think it will not be marked by such things? You have yet to discover your greatest weakness… but I know what it is. I’m giving it life, after all.”
He rose then. “Love isn’t a weakness, Frances. If you’d realized that sooner, you might have been spared all of this. I’ll be back in two days. Try not to kill anyone in the interim.”
Hours later, in the mine office, her words and her veiled threats had stayed with him and continued to ring loudly in his mind. Was it a mistake to bring the child into the world? Had halting her from ending its life before it even began been a terrible mistake? He couldn’t think that. He had to believe in redemption, for the child and for himself. It was an innocent, after all, whatever Frances might be.
Cursing Frances, he focused on the business at hand, reviewing contracts and production logs. Once the work was done, there were other tasks to see to. He needed a home, one that would be fit to raise a child in. Then he would need to hire a staff, and a wet nurse, and heaven knew what else. He was out of his depth.
A secretary, first then. Someone who would know how to organize and manage his life and his household. That was the key. Then he could study and learn. He could arm himself against whatever darkness Frances might have drawn to the child. Someone had to protect it, after all.
EPILOGUE
Two Months Later
Adelaide walked along the corridors of the town house that she and Eldren would now be calling home. The servants were settled in for the night and she hadn’t wanted to disturb anyone. She’d made her own way down to the kitchen and carried a plate of small sandwiches and a bottle of champagne. Both were left over from the celebration that very morning of the wedding of Lord and Lady Mortimer. It had been a beautiful service and a lovely wedding breakfast had followed.
Eldren glanced up from shaving as she entered. “I’d wondered where you’d gotten off to.”
“Why are you shaving? You’re not going out are you?” She asked, placing her plate laden with treats on the table.
He grinned at her. “No. I mean to stay in. But given the marks I left on your delectabl
e skin last night from not shaving, I thought I’d attempt to be less of a brute this time.”
Adelaide felt herself blushing. “I really didn’t mind so much. I rather like feeling your whiskers on my skin.”
He stepped forward, rubbing his freshly shaven cheek against hers. “But when you show up at a social event with beard burn all over your neck, people do tend to talk. We’re in society now, for better or worse, and need to not behave like the hedonistic creatures we so long to be.”
It was the perfect opportunity, but it was difficult to think much less to speak when his lips were trailing hot, open mouthed kisses along her neck. Breathlessly, she managed, “I suppose you’re right. We need to at least be able to feign respectability… especially now that we’re about to be parents.”
He stopped. She’d never seen a person grow so perfectly still. He didn’t even breathe, it seemed. At last, after a moment that seemed to stretch on forever, he drew back from her. “What did you say?”
Adelaide smiled. “I said that if we’re going to be parents, we should at least be able to feign respectability.”
“Not if. You didn’t say if,” he corrected. “You said we are about to be—Adelaide, for god’s sake, just tell me? I can’t think right now to decipher it all!”
“I’m going to have your child,” she said. “We’re going to be a family, Eldren. Children of our own.”
He pulled her to him then, holding her so gently, as if she were the most precious thing in the world. It brought tears to her eyes.
“I didn’t think I could be happier,” he said. “And in truth, I felt like an ungrateful sot for praying to have more than I’ve already been blessed with. This, Adelaide, is more than I ever dared ask for, more than I ever dared dream of. You, my love, have given me everything.”
She stepped back out of his arms and walked slowly backwards to the bed. As she reached it, she parted her dressing gown and let it slip from her shoulders to form a silken puddle at her feet. “Not everything. Not yet. Come to bed and I’ll show you what else I have to give.”
He did as she bade, approaching her with sensual intent. They fell together onto the bed, greedy for one another’s touch. She’d gotten her happy ending, Adelaide thought. In all the romantic stories she’d read, in all the stories she’d begged her mother to tell her as a child, it was that perfect moment of happiness and hopefulness at the end which she had always craved. And it was hers.
“What are you smiling about?” He asked, looking down at her.
“Everything. I’m too happy to be able do anything but smile,” she said. “I love you. So very, very much.”
“And I love you, Adelaide. More than anything. I hope one day to show you how much.”
“It’ll take you more than one day,” she teased. “But you can start now.”
And he did.
THE END
Thank you…
To everyone who read this book, thank you. I hope you will continue on this journey with me into long form Gothic romance. I could have compiled all of this into one book instead of three, but it would have been a very, very long book. It was written piecemeal and is now published in whole as a collection, which many of you have asked for. There could be future novellas and novels from this series. I’ve got ideas percolating for Warren and I can definitely see a series of short stories centered around Madame Leola and Lord Mortimer and their adventures together.
While the Victorian Gothic Collection certainly bears similarities to my Dark Regency Series, I hope you will take a chance on some of my non-paranormal work such as the Lost Lords Series and the just launched Hellion Club Series.
Thank you,
Chasity Bowlin
Contact the author
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Also by Chasity Bowlin
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Veil of Shadows
Passage of Shadows
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The Haunting of a Duke
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A Passion So Strong
A Heart So Wicked
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