by Nancy Holder
“They are tied to this land. To this house. Just like I am,” he said. “I will tell you everything, in time. Now eat. Get well. You must leave this godforsaken place as soon as you can.”
She did not know why he had decided to save her. She didn’t know what it meant, or how they would manage it. But she would do exactly as he bade her: She would eat, she would get well, and she would leave. Though it cost her dearly, because she was so ill, she made herself eat the sickly sweet porridge.
And she forced herself not to break down in tears as her stomach clenched and her abdomen burned.
* * *
Thomas’s hand shook as he fed Edith, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was in terrible shape. She had nearly frozen to death outside in the snow, and her mouth had been smeared with blood. The poison was taking its course. He prayed it was not too late to reverse the effects. The end was always agonizing. After Pamela, he had made it a practice never to be home when it was happening. He’d gone riding during Margaret, and into town for Enola. Lucille had stayed with them. Lucille had made sure.
After Edith had eaten all her porridge, Thomas carried the tray into the kitchen. Lucille was there, pacing, and he wondered how on earth he would spirit Edith out of here without her knowledge. She would stop him if she could. They would have to plot and plan.
How can I do that to Lucille? he thought. Edith will tell the world.
“She knows everything.” Lucille’s dark eyes flashed as she violently washed out the teacup. She was in turmoil. Thomas knew the signs very well.
“She’s sick,” Thomas said urgently. “She may be dying.”
Lucille stared at him as if he had completely lost his mind. She was so stunned that for a moment her lips moved, but no words came out.
“Absolutely, she is dying. I’ve made sure of that,” she announced, peering at him as if she was making sure he could hear her. Then she moved on quickly. “She stole the trunk key.” She showed her ring of keys. “You see? She returned it, but it’s facing the wrong way. She went down into the clay mines, too. And I believe she might have stopped drinking the tea.”
Lucille enumerated the sins she was laying at Edith’s feet, although Thomas had been the one to stop Edith from drinking the tea. He had seen Lucille do all this before, under different circumstances. Back when they had still had servants, Lucille had dismissed her maid for chipping a teacup that she herself had dropped. The girl had defended herself, insisting that the mistress knew she had done it herself, and Lucille had taken the cost of the cup and a few pennies to cover the wasted tea out of the girl’s wages as punishment for her insolence. She had even accused Finlay of failing to repair the hinges on her bedroom door, claiming that it opened during all hours of the night. She had “fined” him for this breach and warned that if it happened again, Thomas would dismiss him.
But Thomas had observed Finlay working on the door while the two had talked about the harvester. He had returned Finlay’s wages to him with his apologies.
Thomas didn’t ever directly defy Lucille. He just went around her. That was what he was doing now, with Edith. But he had never taken his duplicity to such extremes.
Lucille paced again, faster, balling her fists. “It doesn’t matter at all. I put the poison in the porridge.” Then she began washing the tea things.
His heart dropped to the floor. Why had he not even considered that? The time had come, then. He must speak up. He must defy her.
“Lucille… stop,” he said. His nerve almost failed, but he pressed on. For years she had been his defender, his champion. She had borne the brunt of their father’s fury, the abuse and debasement from their mother, in order to spare him. She had kept them from starving. It was she who encouraged him to modernize the mining process, and had also come up with the scheme to marry the heiresses. Why not? It was what their father had done. And they had paid him back for that.
They had struck a bargain, vowing never to be separated. And in so many words, to kill anyone who tried to force them apart. Though he had been but eight years old when that pledge had been made, the memory of that day had never left him. It had haunted him all his life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ALLERDALE HALL, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
“RAVING LUNATICS!” SIR Michael Sharpe bellowed at the three bleeding men who cowered before him. Thomas and Lucille were hiding behind the draperies in the library and Thomas peered between the gaps at his huge, strapping father, who was as terrifying as an ogre. Sir Michael had a wild mane of thick black hair and eyebrows to match, and he was dressed in his hunting attire—red coat, trousers, and thick black boots. The men were not bleeding. They were covered in red clay.
Lucille had been showing Thomas that when you bent the pages of various books in the library like a fan, you could see the most indecent pictures imaginable. Thomas had been agog. Then their father had stomped in, and the miners with him, and Lucille had dragged Thomas out of sight.
“Try heating your stoves with clay!” their father went on. He was tapping his riding crop against his boot. Tap, tap, tap. “Firedamp is a gas that occurs in coal mines. And there are no coal mines on my land.”
“But, sir, summat ’appened,” the oldest of the three men said. He was stooped and bowed. “Summat blowed up. There’s children burned.”
“For the love of God, man, speak like a human being.” The taps became thwaps as he snapped the crop harder against the leather boot top.
“With respect, Your Lordship,” the man said. “It’s our children wot’s been burned and we was ’oping Lady Sharpe, she’d come, or if we could ’ave a doctor.”
“Like a human being!” the great man thundered. His eyes blazed. “And Lady Sharpe will not be coming to salve up your brats! Lady Sharpe is a cretin, and she’s upstairs loaded to the gills with laudanum, and is of no use to anyone, most especially not to me.”
“Then the doctor, sir,” the old man wheedled. “Them’s ’urt summat awful.”
“Dear Lord!” Sir Michael shouted. “Get out of my house! You have damaged your brats through your own ignorance and now seek to steal my money to right your wrongs. Get out before I put you in need of a physician!”
Then he began to whip the old man, who put up his arms to protect his head as the other two hurried him out of the room. Thomas was both horrified and excited; in his exhilaration he yanked on the curtain—and the entire thing came crashing down.
“What the devil?” their father shouted.
“Under there,” Lucille whispered to Thomas beneath the drapery, pushing him toward an overstuffed love seat that sat on very long legs. “Now!”
Thomas darted away just as the heavy pounding of their father’s boots stomped close. He slid beneath the love seat and peered out. Sir Michael had been gathering up the damask fabric and threw it back down when he found Lucille beneath it. She gazed up at him in terror; he grabbed her wrist and yanked her to her feet. Her eyes were enormous. Her face was dead white.
“What are you doing? By the devil, what did you…”
And then he trailed off. He was bending over, staring. The books. He saw them. He picked one up and held it for a moment. Then he turned to stare at Lucille as if he had never seen her before in his life.
“You little bitch,” he said in a tight, furious voice. “Whatever possessed you?”
Her breathing was shallow. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said. “I—I…” She began to cry. “Please don’t hurt me. I’m so very sorry.”
“Where is your brother?”
“In the nursery,” she said quickly, not looking over at Thomas.
“Did he see these?”
“No, no,” she said. “He’s a good boy.”
“And you are wicked beyond the telling.” He raised his crop over his head. “Say it.”
She cringed. “I am wicked,” she whimpered. “Please, Papa.”
“Again.”
“I am wicked.” Tears streamed down her face.
The
crop came down hard on her shoulder, and she buckled. Thomas caught his breath.
Down again, and she fell to one knee. He began to scrabble back out and she flashed a warning look at him and said, “No!”
“‘No?’ You dare say that to your father?”
“No, Papa, I mean, I do not dare!” He brought the crop down on her hands as she put them on her head. She screamed. “Please, Papa!”
“You’re as bad as your mother. She is a wanton slut. Say it!”
“She is a wanton slut!” Lucille cried.
“Come with me then and say it to her face!”
He reached down, grabbed up a book, and gripped her by the forearm. Lucille glanced in Thomas’s direction and gave her head a firm shake, ordering him to stay hidden.
She was sobbing as they left the library. As soon as he thought it was safe, Thomas scooted from beneath the sofa and tiptoed out. Panting with fear, he crept up the stairs and snuck into the attic, where he sat unmoving until the shadows came out and the moths emerged from their hidey holes.
He kept waiting for Lucille, and he was so very sorry she had been punished for something they had both done. But the fact was that he was also so very glad that he had not been caught. His shame warred with his relief.
He decided to make her a present. He looked at the moths as they swirled around, and then he cut out two pieces of black paper from his collection of art supplies. He made her a moth with wings that opened and closed when you pulled on a string that connected the wings to a thread down the moth’s back.
He had just finished it when Lucille staggered in. She looked awful; her black hair was sticking out every which way and her eyes and nose were swollen from weeping.
“Oh, Lucille!” he cried, throwing his arms around her. She winced.
“Thomas, you must never confess that you were in the library,” she said, “or it will go doubly hard for me. Papa thinks you are the good one, and if he discovers that you are not, then I shall be punished for it.”
His lower lip quivered. “Am I not the good one?”
“No,” she said sadly. “I wouldn’t have got in trouble if you hadn’t asked to see the books.”
“See…?” He frowned. “But I did not ask to see the books.”
“Yes, you did,” she replied firmly. “Don’t you remember? You said that Polly told you about them. And so we got them out and I showed you how to look.”
“I did?” He was baffled. Polly was one of the maids, and she was very pretty, but he couldn’t recall anything of the sort.
“And Papa likes Polly better than you. Or me,” she added bitterly. “He will blame you instead of her for being so bad.”
“But I didn’t…” he began, but then he wasn’t sure. He was confused. His cheeks were hot and his palms were wet.
“This moth is wonderful,” Lucille murmured, picking up the toy he had made for her. “How did you manage it?”
“See, I attached the string this way, and so when you pull down, the wings flap open.” He smiled hopefully. “I made it for you. I did it because I was so sorry that you were hurt. So that must mean that I’m good. Is that right, Lucille? That I’m good because I’m sorry?”
Lucille shook her head. She made the moth flap. “Papa told Mama that he wants to send us away. You will go to boarding school and I will go to an academy for young ladies in Switzerland.”
“No!” He was aghast.
“We can never let that happen,” she told him. “We must make a promise that we will not let them separate us, ever.”
“I promise!” Thomas cried. He held up his hand. “I promise with all my heart.”
Silver tears ran down Lucille’s cheeks. “It’s just… your heart is very little. You are my sweet boy, but what can you do to stop him?”
“Cut him to bits!” he cried. “Push him into the mine and make it blow up!”
“Oh, Thomas.” She smiled wanly through her tears. “If only you could.”
* * *
Two years later, while Thomas had stood watch, in the small hours before the dawn of a great fox hunt, Lucille had cut the girthstrap of their father’s hunting saddle nearly in two; she had pulled two nails out of his horse’s shoe. He had been thrown, and his neck broken. It had dawned on Thomas that Lucille had also drugged the man so that his fall would be all but assured.
“Mama showed me how,” she had told Thomas sweetly.
And two years after that, Mama was dead.
* * *
Thomas roused himself from his reverie. She had wound him up so many times and he had done as she had directed, always, like one of his automata. And it had worked well for them. For him.
But now… cracks were appearing in their foundation. He was not of one mind with her. Gazing at his sister, sensing her energy radiating like the steam that propelled his machine, he felt strangely dizzy, and very frightened.
“Must this be? Edith? Must we…?”
She turned to face him, incredulous, as she dried her hands. He saw in her brown eyes the supreme will he had assured Carter Cushing that he himself possessed. But Lucille had always been the puppeteer behind their elaborate performance.
“Yes, Thomas. We must. And I will.”
But he couldn’t bear it. Edith was not like the others. Those doting women had been like Eunice McMichael—charmed by his social graces, in love with his title. When they gazed starry-eyed at him, they saw Prince Charming—as they were meant to. Eunice had been the most mesmerized of all, asking him the most naïve questions, such as what he wore when he called upon the royal family, none of whom he had ever met, and if he owned a crown.
But Edith had seen a man, and a clever one at that. He was intelligent. He was inventive. Like her father, whom Thomas had admired deeply. Like an American, that nation of builders, where a person was defined by their achievements rather than their surname. Edith had her own dreams. And she had wished to help him achieve his. He was the one who had become hypnotized. He had fallen in love with her, and that love was changing him. But could he be different? Push a button, and he performed—could that magician upstairs perform any new tricks?
No.
But I can. I have free will.
It was a terrifying notion.
Lucille read his refusal on his face, and he saw her terror.
“You have no idea what they would do,” Lucille said shrilly. “We would be taken away from here. Locked away. We would lose our home… each other. They would hang you.”
She was right. They would not hang her. They rarely executed women, and anyway, he would accept full blame. But only if they were discovered. Only if their story was told. And where would Lucille be then?
She had always been right. She did know what was best for them. And he owed her everything.
But could he give her Edith’s life?
He blazed inside, ice and fire, pure temptations, polluted intentions. He envisioned the brilliant scarlet of his lineage rushing through his veins; the aristocracy put such store in their blood but his was brimming with rot. It was all he knew; all he was.
His eyes welled; he was utterly perplexed. Rudderless. Oh, Edith! If only she knew what they had been through. She would understand, would she not?
“We stay together, never apart,” Lucille intoned. It had been their vow through the long nights of torment; helped them weather the insanity of both their parents. No one in their lives had ever tried to help them. School mistresses and masters, churchmen and physicians had seen the misery on their faces, the hollowness in their eyes, but no one dared to speak up. Their father was too powerful, their mother too terrifying.
No one but Thomas had seen the whip marks and bruises on poor Lucille’s body. Their mother had reveled in punishing her, not even bothering to determine whose fault it really was before she attacked Lucille. Once his sister confessed to whatever infraction had occurred, it was like opening the floodgates of their mother’s wrath.
Lucille always taking the blame: It was I.
And little Thomas, too afraid to speak up.
Now, in the kitchen, he was crying, too. “I know. I know.”
Lucille looked as small and frightened as he had been back then, when he had let her take his punishments. When he had not spoken up. When he had not been a man.
He had to be, for Edith. She had finally brought light into this house, his world. His soul. He could save her, when he had not saved Lucille.
But he loved his sister, he did; she had been his world for his entire life.
“You couldn’t leave me, could you?” she asked.
“I couldn’t, I couldn’t,” he sobbed.
She kissed his tears away. They clung to each other, orphans who could have been freed by the deaths of their nearly demonic parents, but were too haunted instead. Stripped of everything but darkness. Too late, too late for light?
* * *
It watched, it exulted. It had them where it wanted them.
And the sad little specters that cried out for justice?
Inconsequential.
And delicious.
Outside, the scarlet ring of snow grew, a sucking bog of bloody clay, the sins of the Sharpes made visible for all to see.
Behold, I show you a miracle.
I show you the seventh circle of hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT HAD BEEN snowing back in Buffalo when Alan began his crossing nearly two weeks before.
In London, he had been told that the snowfall was at record levels. But here in Cumberland, it was the worst—another in a series of violent snowstorms that had shut down most of the roads. He had not seen another soul in days.
By the time he reached the village’s postal depot and climbed down from his covered carriage, he was more than half-frozen. Despite growing up in Buffalo, he had never been so cold. He wished he could linger for a hot meal and a hotter bath, but nothing could stop him from getting to Edith now that he was so close. Ever since Holly’s revelation that Sir Thomas Sharpe already had a wife, Alan had existed in a perpetual state of fear for her. Cushing had known that Sharpe was a fortune hunter, but had he realized the Englishman was a bigamist? His supposed sister, Lady Sharpe… was she his real wife?
