by Eve Silver
“We are not sitting, as yet,” Gabriel pointed out, handing him a glass of brandy.
“But we are shrouded in gloom.” Sebastian shrugged and settled with lazy insouciance in a high-backed leather and gold chair. “You are nothing if not consistent, cousin.”
“It is bright enough,” Gabriel said. The sconces were lit and he had dragged the heavy curtain open a hand span. “Besides, I thought you would have had enough of the sun after Egypt. England’s clouds must be a welcome change.”
“One would think.” Sebastian laughed, but there was a brittle edge to the sound. “We make a pair, don’t we? Skulking about in the shadows like two creatures of the night.”
Gabriel studied him a moment. There was something odd about Sebastian, something hard. A new edge that had not been there the last time Gabriel had seen him, before he left on his latest trip. “Is there a particular reason you are skulking, Sebastian?”
His cousin offered a tight smile, then tossed back half the brandy in his glass.
“I am only restless,” he said, and Gabriel knew it for the lie it was. Then Sebastian laughed and winked. “Perhaps your Miss Weston will entertain me.”
Anger raised its head and snarled, the emotion so raw and sudden that Gabriel almost let it slide free. He was stunned by the force and speed of his rage.
“Perhaps not,” he replied, his tone diamond hard. He turned away and stared into the hearth as the clock on the mantel ticked loud in the quiet. The flames made him think of her, of the light she brought to his world of dim passages and hidden caverns and the darkness of his soul.
He clenched his fist by his side, appalled at his thoughts. He was no romantic fool. Yes, she brought light, but if he let her come too close, she would singe him as surely as any flame.
“Well,” Sebastian observed dryly, “you are as charming a conversationalist as ever, cousin.” He pushed himself from the chair and half rose. “I believe I shall seek out the lovely Miss Weston once more.”
“Stay away from her.” Gabriel spun to face his cousin, his tone frigid, cold-blooded rage raising its saurian head. Sebastian sat back down, his expression contemplative, and raised his glass as though in a toast.
“Ah,” he mused. “So that is the way of it. I had not imagined that you would ever don the mantle of jealousy, cousin.”
“Do not imagine it now,” Gabriel replied, his tone even, his mask once more in place.
Jealousy.
The notion was absurd. Yet the sight of Sebastian and Catherine sitting in cozy camaraderie in the parlor had reached inside him and clenched like a fist, twisting him up tighter than a Gordian knot.
Jealousy.
The emotion was unfamiliar. Unpleasant in the extreme. He had never known the like.
Lifting the poker, he prodded the log and watched it spit and pop. He thought of Catherine’s night-dark eyes and thick straight lashes, imagined them hooded and lazy with passion. He thought of her lips, forming polite words in conversation. Then he thought of them pressed to his, open and eager. Hungry. As he was hungry.
He wanted her to kiss no other but him, and the fact that he had to leave the choice, the timing, to her was like a blade in his gut. He had wanted her from the start, and grew tired of that wanting. For a patient man, he was remarkably impatient when it came to her, edgy and overeager.
“Stay away from her,” he said again, and finally turned away from the fire to face his cousin once more.
Sebastian sipped his brandy and studied him with raised brows and overblown surprise.
“Do not tell me you are smitten, Gabriel?” His brows lowered and he continued in a musing tone. “Do you know who she is? What they say about her?”
Gabriel almost laughed. “Do you know who I am? What they say about me?” he answered, faintly mocking.
“Gabriel—”
“No,” he said, his tone carrying the rasp of a razor on a strop. “Speak to me of anything but her.” He paused, then offered far more than was his habit, only because he needed to set the thoughts free and Sebastian was as close to holding his trust as any living being. “She haunts my nights. My days. My every thought.” He met his cousin’s gaze and made things as plain as he possibly could. “Catherine Weston is mine.”
The words echoed in the cavernous room, and in that moment, he knew them for utter and complete truth. Catherine was his. She only had not recognized it yet.
“Then I shall find another to play with,” Sebastian said. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “Will you marry her?”
The conundrum of that had occurred to him. Would he? The question made Gabriel acutely aware of the differences between himself and a normal man. He knew what the answer ought to be. She was a baron’s daughter. Of course she would expect marriage.
Wouldn’t she?
And if he did marry her, how was he to keep his secrets then? And how was he to explain that he would never give her a child?
On that topic, he was implacable in his resolve. Never would he doom an innocent babe to the taint of the St. Aubyn line.
“Are you afraid I will sire a pup and any hope you have of a baronetcy will be lost?” Gabriel asked, avoiding a direct answer to his cousin’s question about matrimony because, in truth, he did not have one. “Fear not, cousin. I shall never have a child, and you know my reasons for that. Your right of succession is safe.”
“I care little for that,” Sebastian said with a wave of his hand.
It was the truth. Gabriel knew it. Sebastian was rich in his own right, and a title would likely only tie him down in a way he would despise. He preferred to move about, to travel. To flee the ghosts of his past rather than face them. Gabriel could understand his actions, even envy them to a degree.
There had been years, endless dark years, when he had dreamed of leaving England and roaming the world as his cousin did. Would he find joy if he left Cairncroft behind?
“What did you learn at Hanham House?” he asked, changing the subject to one far less palatable, but necessary.
“Very little. They were not forthcoming when I asked them to produce him in person. They claimed he was too overwrought for visitors. Suggested I should return another time, perhaps in a matter of weeks. They only brought me a letter that appears to be in his hand, but might have been written days, or even weeks past. There is nothing specific. I have it here if you wish to see for yourself.” He dragged the letter from his coat.
Gabriel stared at the thing in revulsion. He did not want to see it or read it or know anything it contained.
“Set it there,” he said, jutting his chin toward the desk, careful to keep his tone bland as oatmeal.
For though he trusted Sebastian more than most, if he measured that trust evenly against grains of sand, there would be pathetically few on the scale.
* * *
“Do you wonder about my cousin?” Madeline asked as they walked in the garden the following afternoon. Catherine had insisted, certain that a bit of fresh air and healthful exercise could only be beneficial. Their pace was sedate, the day fair. They walked the path that curved along the lake. Madeline had chosen it, though Catherine could not say why. The surface was a dark and putrid green, the breeze churning up small waves and carrying the pungent scent of the brackish water.
“Which cousin?” she asked, for there were now two in residence.
“Gabriel.” Madeline exhaled in a huff. There was a dark edge to her tone as she said his name. “Sebastian will tell you enough without my help. He finds himself to be a fascinating topic indeed. Besides, I think you are not so interested in him.”
Catherine slanted her a sidelong glance, feeling a warm rush of embarrassment at the blunt observation, as though Madeline had somehow peeked into her secret musings. She had been thinking about him. Gabriel. Images came at her, unwanted, unbidden. The touch of his hand on her nape as she sobbed; the small kindnesses he had offered— a cool cloth, a glass of water. Simple things she had not even known she nee
ded until he brought them to her.
The memory of his kiss, hungry, possessive, made her lips tingle even now, and she wondered exactly what Madeline knew that made her raise the topic of her cousin Gabriel.
Nothing. Of course, she knew nothing.
Madeline had been tucked in her bed, cradled in laudanum-induced slumber when Gabriel had come to Catherine’s chamber.
“I do wonder about your cousin,” she replied at last, linking her arm with Madeline’s. “Would you like to talk about him?”
“Not in the slightest.” Madeline pressed her lips together and toed at the dirt with the tip of her boot before walking on. “But I shall because there are things you must know, things I must tell you while my mind is my own and I can speak the words I wish to say rather than the ones that trip to the tip of my tongue and fly free whether I will it or nay.” She paused and drew a ragged breath. “We both know that I am not always lucid now.”
Pity twisted Catherine’s heart. The self-portrait painted by Madeline’s words was horrifying, all the more so because Madeline was brutally aware of her own decline.
“Tell me whatever you wish,” she murmured. “I shall listen.”
“Avidly, I am sure,” Madeline observed with a dull laugh, and Catherine could not deny it.
“Yes. Avidly.” She lowered her head as they walked and stared at the thin, brown grass on either side of the dirt path. A clump of pansies burst from the earth, the color of their petals somewhere between butterscotch and yellow, the centers darker. They made her think of Gabriel’s eyes, liquid topaz in the light, amber gold in the shadows.
“Do not romanticize him, Catherine. He is not a good man, or a kind one. Do not paint him in variegated hues of light.” Madeline stumbled to a stop, clutched her arm all the tighter, and finished with a harsh cry. “He is a monster.”
A handful of black birds that had been pecking at the dirt startled at her cry. Their wings slapped air, the sound like the snap of a rag to shake out the dust. The sight of them reminded Catherine of the night of her arrival and the dead bird on the drive.
She turned her head to find Madeline tracking their flight, her features scrunched tight, as though she battled tears.
A lump clogged her throat as Catherine realized how transparent she was. Even Madeline, with her tenuous grasp on reality, read the yearning that burgeoned in her heart for Gabriel St. Aubyn, a man whose own cousin believed him capable of murder. Her lungs felt tight, each breath a struggle, the weight of her regret heavy on her breast. Once before, she had been blinded by attraction, by gratitude, by the kindness a man showed her that she had believed came from his heart. False kindness. She had paid a horrific price for her folly.
Was she allowing herself to walk the same path once more? Had she learned nothing at all?
No. She was wiser now. Stronger.
Then why did Gabriel’s words haunt her in the dark of night and the light of day? Why could she not thrust aside the things he had whispered to her?
Because you are parched and I am water, because you are breathless and I am air, he had said, the images evoked by his words stroking her already sensitized nerves. He believed she would come to need him.
To ache for him.
He was wrong. She must guard herself and make certain that he was wrong.
It was only in a moment of weakness that she had allowed Gabriel to kiss her. There was her excuse. She would not allow it to happen again. She would never permit herself to need him that way. It was a definite path to heartbreak and ruin. She had learned that much, at least.
Beside her, Madeline swayed in place, her eyes closed, her lips pressed tight together. What paltry color had been in her cheeks leached away now until she was white as bone.
“My tale is long, and I tire so easily,” she said. “Perhaps it would be best if we return to my chamber”—she looked nervously to the left, the right, and lowered her voice— “though it is likely safer to speak out here. The walls have ears.”
Of that, Catherine had no doubt. Mrs. Bell’s ears, or the footman’s or the cook’s. Servants who made themselves invisible, but saw and heard much. But she knew that Madeline spoke of other ears, those belonging to creatures no one but she could see.
They made their way inside, Madeline leaning heavily on Catherine’s arm. The trip up the flights of stairs was laborious; Madeline begged for rest again and again. What would take Catherine a matter of minutes to ascend on her own took the two of them the better part of a half hour. At last, they reached Madeline’s chamber.
“Shall I summon the maid to help you change?” Catherine asked.
“Will you help me?” Madeline sighed. “I only like Susan. She has gentle hands. But she has gone away.”
As Catherine helped Madeline to remove her walking gown and don a fresh nightrail, she was heartened to note that her friend’s form was slender but not wasted despite her poor appetite and the minuscule amount of food she ingested in Catherine’s presence. Perhaps she nibbled a bit when no one was with her.
“Open the curtains so I might see the sky,” Madeline murmured as she settled in her bed.
Catherine did as she requested, wondering why some days Madeline seemed to prefer the dark and others the light. She lowered herself to the edge of the bed. A thick ribbon of silence wove about them, interrupted only by the quiet sounds of their breathing. Madeline’s eyes were closed, her features relaxed.
After a moment, the chirping of birds carried through the glass panes, and Catherine turned her face to the window, thinking that Madeline had drifted to sleep, that her opportunity to know more about Gabriel was lost for the moment.
“He killed them.”
Catherine started at the sound of Madeline’s voice, the fine hairs on her arms rising. She bit her tongue against the flood of questions that swelled to her lips like breakers on the shore, agonizingly aware that Madeline would tell her tale at her own pace or not at all. That much she had learned in her time at Cairncroft Abbey. With pounding heart, she waited.
“No, that is not right,” Madeline murmured, sounding perplexed, her eyes remaining closed as she spoke. “He killed only one, lifted it from the nest and twisted its head clear around before he was interrupted. I was there, in the woods, watching though he did not know it. He meant to kill another. I saw it in his face, but there was the snap of a twig. Someone else was there. I heard it, as did he.” Her words had taken on a whispery, breathless quality, as though she ran headlong down a hill and could not stop. “He took up a sharp stick and ran through the forest. I could not keep up. He was bigger and faster, and I was hampered by my skirt.” Her hand fluttered at her throat. “And then there was so much blood. Everywhere. On his hands. On mine.”
“Whose blood was it, Madeline?” Catherine felt the weight of Madeline’s story like a great stone on her breast. “Was it yours? Did he hurt you?”
“Me?” Madeline’s lids opened wide and she appeared startled by the question. “No.” She fell silent, and each second that ticked past made Catherine so anxious for the remainder of the tale that she thought she would jump right out of her skin. But she suspected that Madeline would not be rushed, and to try to press her might well result in no information at all.
Madeline shivered and shifted on the bed and pushed at the covers, writhing to be free of their weight.
“Whose blood was it, Madeline?” Catherine stroked her hand, hoping to ease her distress.
“Not Gabriel’s. The other.” Raising her head, Madeline grew still, her blue eyes wide, her gaze steady and bare. “There is a girl in the graveyard. Buried under the stone in the corner. No one ever knew her name. There was blood that day, as well. So much blood, and her bodice was split open. I saw it, though they tried to turn me away. I wanted to go closer. To know.”
“To know what?” Catherine tried to make sense of Madeline’s ramblings, her thoughts tumbling one against the next. Though the narration was far from clear, Catherine surmised that Madeline described
two different occasions, two different deaths.
And that, somehow, Madeline held Gabriel responsible for both.
Madeline clutched tightly at her wrist, her fingers cold as ice against Catherine’s skin.
“I should have told that day.” Madeline wet her lips.
Catherine glanced at the pitcher and glass on the washstand. She made to rise and fetch Madeline a drink, but Madeline clung to her like a hawk clinging to its prey, her nails biting tender flesh.
“I should have told them what I saw,” Madeline cried, her eyes grown wild now. “But I was afraid they would not believe me. I was only newly come from Browning, my parents so recently dead. I was the outsider. The unwanted burden. I was afraid to tell them what I saw. Do you understand? I was afraid. And then, later, he killed her. He killed her.”
“Shh, Madeline, shh,” Catherine whispered, and Madeline relaxed a little, enough to release her clawlike grasp of Catherine’s arm.
“How was I to know they would send him away for good?” she pleaded. “I thought they would send me away, and where was I to go? With my father’s death, Cairncroft passed to his brother, my uncle, and I became only a guest here in my own home.” She sighed. “They never came to love me.”
With that admission, Madeline faded, the light in her eyes dulled, the tone of her muscles relaxed. She appeared to sink into the bed, into herself. Even her cheeks grew hollow.
Catherine was at a loss, all the words of comfort she might offer dry and stale on her tongue. She had never before realized just how closely Madeline’s circumstance paralleled her own. Parents and home lost. Dependent on relatives for kindness and charity. But despite her empathy, she was having difficulty believing all Madeline’s assertions. Only parts of her friend’s story made any sense.
Frowning, she tried to follow the tangled threads to some sort of logical conclusion. From what she could patch together, Madeline spoke of two different occasions, perhaps months, or even years apart. One where she had watched someone—presumably Gabriel—kill a bird and then run through the woods with a stick, leading to ultimate, undefined tragic results.
