by BJ Hoff
Still holding her hands trapped behind her, he raked the calloused fingers of his free hand over Finola’s throat.
“A beauty, and that’s the truth.” His eyes held a feverish glint of obscene fascination. “But not so innocent after all, I’ll warrant. No doubt your rich gentleman has taken care of that long before now.”
He gave an ugly laugh. “Or has he? Like as not, you’ve no inkling of what a real man is like!” He licked his lips. “Aye, I’ll bet that’s the truth, now, isn’t it, lassie?”
At the mention of the Seanchai, Finola’s fear gave way to total repugnance, and she turned her face away. He jerked her closer, peering at her with narrowed eyes.
“So that’s it, is it?” he spat. “Such a fine lady you are, you can’t even look at the likes of me?” His fingers dug into her tender wrists, and she gasped in pain. “I’ve seen that look before, I have. Think you’re too good for me—well, I’ll teach you a thing or two about who’s good enough—”
Her heart slamming like a fury against her chest, Finola lowered her head and pitched forward, trying to wrench free. He yanked her head up with such force her neck snapped. He struck her across the face with the back of his hand, and Finola gagged as a blast of pain exploded in her head.
“Don’t you fight me, girl!” he hissed. “You’ll give me what I want, or I’ll beat it out of you!”
A terrible darkness rose up in Finola. A part of her was dimly aware of Small One’s cries from beneath the bed. The floor swayed under her, and the room went spinning.
The man pressed his face close to hers. Revulsion washed over her like a wave as she felt the heat of his body, smelled the scent of the sea and unwashed flesh.
And whiskey…the sweet, cloying smell of whiskey….
Suddenly, her assailant’s face gave way to a different one. As if a mask had dropped over the face of the man holding her captive, Finola now stared into the eyes of another.
Feverish eyes that seared her skin, burned her soul…This was a face she knew, a face that was sickeningly, wrenchingly familiar….
Finola squeezed her eyes shut, as if by refusing to look, she could banish from her mind this new face, once so gentle and aglow with affection, suddenly turned vicious and cruel with lust….
Without warning, he had turned on her, shattering her trust, crushing her devotion like filthy rags. He had hurt her, done terrible things to her….
Savage hands tore at her clothing, mauled and bruised her without mercy. Words pummeled her, knifed through her, slashed at her. Words steeped in filth and degradation, they flew through the darkness like vindictive ravens bent on tearing her to pieces.
She was being attacked by two men, one a stranger, one—
Her mind swirled, threatened to shatter. She tried to cry out for the angels.
No angels here…nothing but darkness…evil darkness….
The brutal hands of her betrayer went on tearing at her flesh, pounding her body. Far away, like the pitiful echo of a grieving child, Small One wailed on.
Finola knew one last moment of raw, annihilating terror. Then the soft shroud of darkness slipped over her, and she fell, tumbling slowly into an empty silence.
Her ears laid back and her body flattened against the floor, Finola’s cat watched from beneath the bed as the man rose, straightened his clothing, and made for the door. She growled—the low, deep, threatening sound of her ancestors—and with a mighty leap, attached herself to the departing leg, sinking teeth and claws into fabric and flesh.
With a roar and a curse, the man shook her off and made his getaway, slamming the door behind him.
The cat turned from the attack and moved cautiously toward the still form on the floor. She nudged and pawed at the unconscious body; then, getting no response, she sat down forlornly and set up a howling, keening lament for her fallen mistress…
10
Weep for the Innocent
Begging for my living, yet wishing I were dead—
Lonely and bitter are the tears I shed.
LADY WILDE (“SPERANZA”) (1824–1896)
When Lucy first heard the plaintive wailing, she thought it was one of the stray toms in the alley below. She considered getting up and shouting out the window to silence him, but after a moment the cries subsided.
Yawning, she dug at her pillow with a fist, knowing from experience she would not quickly fall back to sleep. Yet she was exhausted. Too many late nights. Too many rough men. She was tired, depleted, and sick at heart.
Sick of herself.
Sometimes, as now, in the hushed hours before daybreak, she would lie awake in the cold darkness of her room, weary to the point of exhaustion, yet sleepless. Sleepless and frightened. Frightened of the future, of what might lie ahead.
Even more frightening was the possibility that nothing awaited her, at least nothing she could bear to think about.
Lucy Hoy was close on thirty-five. For a prostitute in Dublin City, thirty-five was old. Old, and worn out. Used up.
Used. More and more, Lucy cringed at the word. For years, she had allowed herself to be used. Like an object. A thing. Something worthless and easily discarded. At best, she was an obscene joke, a leer, an object of the sailors’ coarse laughter on the docks. At worst, she was a shame. A disgrace.
She had been little more than a child when she came to her present life. A thousand nights she had wondered what she might have been, what she might have done, had she been born to a decent, God-fearing family who knew how to treat a daughter properlike. Instead, she’d grown up under the bruising hand of a shiftless, whining father and a drunken mother, neither of whom had possessed the slightest bit of affection for their children.
The parents had begun hiring Lucy and her sisters out to the lechers in Cross-stick Alley before any one of them was twelve. When Lucy was thirteen, they sold her, as if she were naught but a cabbage, to a sulfur-breathed old coffin-maker no decent woman with good eyes would have had.
The old devil had quickly reached his wits’ end with Lucy’s resentment and resistance. When his every attempt to beat her into submission failed, he tossed her out into the streets. It was mid-winter, and she hadn’t a farthing to her name, nor a shawl for her back.
Gemma Malone had taken her in, given her a room and a fancy dress, and made her one of her “girls.”
“Things’ll be better for you here, lass,” Gemma had promised. “Oh, you might have to fend off a frisky sailor in his cups now and then, but Healy and myself will always be near to give you a hand, should one of the lads get too rough. You’re a fine, buxom lass—just the sort the sailors are looking for when they make port. Give ’em a smile and don’t let on they need a wash, and you’ll turn a fair profit for us both, just see if you don’t.”
Sighing restlessly, Lucy rolled onto her back, deliberately not counting up all the years that had passed since that day. There was no avoiding the truth: Gemma’s clients asked for her less and less these days, and Healy was beginning to make noises about her working in the kitchen, where she might at least pay her way.
She wouldn’t make spit in wages, of course. But at times, Lucy thought she would welcome the kitchen. Perhaps in time, with enough soap and hot water, she’d be able to wash away at least a bit of her corruption.
She would have drifted off to sleep again had the cat not begun its screeching anew, this time in earnest. Lucy pushed herself up on one arm, listening. The wailing sounded louder now, more insistent, even demanding.
Then it dawned on her with chilling certainty that it wasn’t a stray she was hearing at all. It was Small One, Finola’s cat.
Odd. The cat never cried, at least not in the middle of the night. The only time it cried was when Finola was gone.
Finola….
For a moment, Lucy lay rigid, unmoving. “Finola?”
Fear made her voice sound tight and strangled in the hush of the bedroom.
There was no answer except for the pleading cry of the cat.
“Finola!” Even as the name exploded from her, Lucy swung herself out of bed and flew from the room.
Her shouts and furious pounding on Finola’s door quickly roused Poppy and Sile in the neighboring rooms. Soon they, and others, were milling about in the hallway, crowding around Lucy as, one by one, they also began to call Finola’s name.
Silence was the only reply. Struggling not to give in to the tide of terror rising within her, Lucy pushed the door open slowly, cautiously, just wide enough to enter.
The only sound in the room was the shallow, ragged breathing of the women who followed her inside…and the pathetic cries of the small cat pacing up and down next to Finola’s lifeless body.
Poppy reached down and scooped the cat out of the way as Lucy dropped down beside Finola.
She was vaguely aware of small, whimpering sounds close-by, then realized they were coming from her. Pain knifed through her—savage, hacking pain—as she took Finola’s limp hand. Only sheer force of will kept her from being sick as her stomach went into spasms.
Her first thought was that Finola was dead. The dear blue eyes were closed, and she was as still as a stone. The glorious fair hair was a limp, tangled mass. And her face…oh, the dear Lord, her face…that lovely, lovely face was a grotesque, swollen mask of angry cuts and bruises. A dried ribbon of blood trailed from one corner of her mouth down the side of her neck. Just below her left cheekbone, an ugly gash trickled fresh blood.
With hands that shook like a palsied old woman’s, Lucy pulled Finola’s skirts down about her ankles, then reached to straighten the torn bodice of her dress. She steeled herself not to scream when she saw the ugly bruises on the girl’s white shoulders and bosom.
Somebody seemed to have remembered from long ago a prayer for the dying and was chanting it in a soft, tear-choked voice. Lucy’s throat threatened to burst from a knot of grief, and she wept like a child as she gently put her head to Finola’s heart…and heard it beating!
“She’s alive! Finola’s alive!” The words ripped from Lucy’s throat, rousing the other women from grief to action. They moved, circling and murmuring in futile attempts to help.
“Finola…” Lucy whispered. “Finola, wake up, love…can you hear me? Oh, Finola, what happened? Who did this to you?”
But Finola lay unmoving—so still she seemed not to breathe at all.
Lucy couldn’t think. Her mind froze on the tragedy before her.
The innocent, golden-haired beauty had been the one pure, untarnished facet of Lucy’s life. Like a shining gift, Finola was the one person Lucy had ever dared to love, unreservedly—and the one person who had loved Lucy back, unconditionally.
To see her lying so, beaten and bloodied, as still as death, filled Lucy with a horror, a savage rage that shook her to the very depths of her soul.
Somehow she forced herself not to focus on Finola’s pain, not to speculate on what had been done to her. Besides, didn’t she know all too well what had been done to their golden girl? Oh, she knew, she did. And God—if He existed—He knew. And He knew what filthy animal had done it! It was God who would have to deal with the beast that had hurt Finola!
What mattered now—all that mattered now—was saving Finola. Saving her life.
“Lucy? Shall we go for Doctor Lammercy?”
“No!” The word snapped out with bitter force. Lammercy was half-cracked with one foot in the grave himself. She’d not let him touch their Finola!
“No,” she repeated, her gaze not leaving Finola. “Send for the black man. Send for the man from Nelson Hall.”
“Ye can’t be sure the girl was raped!” argued Healy. Visibly shaken as they stood outside Finola’s room, awaiting the carriage from Nelson Hall, the innkeeper vented his outrage and fury on Lucy. “Ye’ll not be tellin’ such a tale!”
Lucy turned on him. She felt an insane urge to ram her fist into his spluttering face; instead, she clenched her hands at her sides. “She was raped, I tell you! And beaten near to death as well! We might just as well tell them right off—the surgeon will know as soon as he has a look at her!”
Healy screwed up his mouth in a scowl. Lucy was furious with the man for taking on so. Only the knowledge that he, too, prized Finola enabled her to hold her tongue.
“There’s no hiding it, don’t you see? We have to tell them. It will only go worse for us if we don’t.”
Healy’s expression went from anger to fear. “They say the Fitzgerald treats her like a treasure—like a daughter, even. He’ll send the black to kill us all when he finds out what’s been done to her! He’ll blame us, just wait and see!”
Disgusted that the man could fear for his own hide at such a time, Lucy fought to keep from screaming. Yet, the truth was Healy might be right. From all indications, the copper-haired giant in the wheelchair did dote on Finola. And the black man—well, Finola might call him gentle-hearted, but from the looks of him, he’d be fierce if provoked.
Still, it was Finola who mattered now, and nothing else.
“I won’t lie for you, Healy!” Lucy grated out. “They should know the truth right off, to help Finola! Besides,” she added dully, “you know as well as I that we should have made her leave here long ago. We could have found her a proper home—a decent place, where this horror would never have happened.”
Healy looked at her, then lowered his gaze to the floor. “We did our best for the girl, now didn’t we?” he muttered. “We took her in when she had nowhere else to go. We looked after her. We did our best.”
Lucy nodded slowly, admitting the sad truth of his words. Aye, we did that. We took her in. We looked after her. Some of us even loved her. And because we loved her, we kept her here, with us, instead of doing more—instead of doing what might have been best for Finola.
And for that, perhaps we all deserve to burn….
When the black man came downstairs, Lucy was standing at the door holding Small One against her shoulder. He carried Finola in his sturdy arms as easily as if she were a child. Wrapped in a heavy brown blanket, she looked even more ashen and helpless than before.
He stopped when Lucy spoke. “We sent for you,” she said tremulously, “because we thought you’d know what to do. We thought it’s what Finola would want.”
After an instant, he nodded, his eyes searching hers. Where Lucy would have expected condemnation, she encountered only a terrible depth of sadness, a raw grief, obviously controlled at great effort.
Lucy shrank within herself. Somehow she thought it might have been easier had he exploded in rage and damned them all.
“You did well to send word,” he said, his voice low. He paused, his eyes going to the limp Finola in his arms. “You are certain no one saw…who did this thing?”
Again Lucy sensed his rigid control. Swallowing hard, she forced herself to look him in the eye. “Believe me, man,” she choked out, “if I knew, I would kill him myself!” Her voice shook, and her eyes burned with tears.
The black man regarded her with a measuring look. His gaze went to the cat in her arms. “That is Small One?” he asked softly. “The little cat she is so fond of?”
Lucy glanced at the cat, then nodded.
The black man’s expression gentled still more. For a moment he stood, studying Lucy as if trying to make a decision. His voice was low, even kind, when he spoke again. “Perhaps you would like to come with us?”
Lucy stared at him. “You’d let me?”
He nodded. “When she wakes, it might be well if you were nearby.” He paused. “And the cat…bring the cat as well.”
Lucy nearly strangled on a sob of gratitude. Unable to answer him, she cuddled Small One close to her heart and ducked her head. The tears spilled over from her eyes as she silently followed them outside to the waiting carriage.
In the library of Nelson Hall, Morgan waited. He sat, rigid and unmoving in the wheelchair, engulfed in agony and a deadly rage. Staring out the window, he was only dimly aware as the dull light of a rainy dawn struggled to rise past t
he horizon. And for the first time in months, he wished—almost desperately—for a drink. He allowed none of the whiskey at Nelson Hall, and now he knew why. If a bottle had been within his reach, he surely would have used it to dull the searing knife-edge of his pain.
When the word came that Finola had been injured, he had almost lost his grip from shock and fear. Now, waiting for Sandemon to return with her—at the same time waiting for the surgeon to arrive—he grappled with an entire storm of emotions, ranging from an almost debilitating fury to a numbing despair.
And helplessness.
Now, more than ever, he cursed his dead legs. He could not even go with Sandemon to get her, lest his slowness in getting dressed, the time-consuming procedure of getting himself in and out of the carriage, prove too much a delay for Finola.
Instead, he could only sit here, in the infernal chair, a great, useless lump, waiting. Waiting and worrying.
He tried to pray, but bis heart was numb, his mind frozen. All he could manage was a whispering chant, a drone for mercy.
God help her…God keep her…God save her….
He had never—never, in all the agonizing months since the shooting that had paralyzed his legs—felt more useless…or less a man…than he did at this moment.
He did not know yet what had happened—not exactly. Only that Finola had been hurt, and that it was bad. Why else would they have sent to Nelson Hall for help?
He felt as if he were trapped in a nightmare. He blamed himself, cursed himself, for not acting sooner to get her away from that place. If only he had acted last week…yesterday.
Why did I wait? Oh, God…why did I wait?
Blind rage and guilt roared through him. A violent trembling seized his entire body. He gripped the arms of the chair until pain shot through his hands and the thunder in his head subsided somewhat.
But his terror for Finola, his guilt and anguish for his own fault, went on raging in his heart like a storm at sea.
