Seduced by a Stranger

by Eve Silver

  “They are very close.” He did not sound particularly concerned, though she knew he did not like confined places any better than she.

  “You have been this way often.” Her words echoed back at her. He said nothing, and she thought he must view this as one of those pointless conversations he abhorred. She supposed it was, but she preferred to hear something, even if it was only the sound of her own voice.

  Then he said, “It was my secret place when I was a child,” and she realized he had only delayed, likely weighing the decision of whether or not to share that information. She was more pleased that he had than the situation warranted, as though any bit of knowledge about him eased her hunger.

  Finally, they came to the top of the stairs and a large space with stone walls and a stone floor and a hearth to her left. Across the far wall were high, narrow windows set in the stone, and before them a desk and a tall, leather-backed chair. Before the hearth was a rug. And that was all. There was not another stick of furniture to be seen.

  Gabriel drew her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm. Then he left her and crossed to the large mahogany desk, rounding it so he stood with his back to the windows. With the position of the light, she could not clearly see his face or his expression.

  Reaching up, he drew a necklace from beneath his shirt. She stepped closer and saw that it was a leather thong bearing two keys. He had not worn it the other day when they had made love, or perhaps she had only not noticed it then. One key, he separated from the other and unlocked a drawer in the desk. He withdrew a metal box and set it down, then unlocked that as well, pushing back the lid so it hit the polished wooden desktop with a thud.

  Then he placed the keys beside it and crossed to the hearth, where he took up a flint box and set about making a fire. Catherine watched him warily, uncertain what his intention was.

  “Go ahead,” he said, glancing at her before turning his attention back to his task.

  Slowly, she made her way to the desk. She peered into the box and saw the cover of a leather-bound journal and some letters.

  “What are these?” she asked.

  “My secrets.” He was watching her very carefully now. “And the secrets of others.”

  Her heart gave a hard thud in her breast. He offered her these things? Nothing could be so easy. Why would he bring her here and show her this now? Why?

  He trusted her with this? So it appeared. Yet she had difficulty in trusting his trust.

  Such a tangled web.

  She reached out and rested her fingers on the string that tied the packet of letters. Then she looked up at him once more.

  “You mean for me to read them?”

  “Yes.” He held her gaze for a long, measured moment, then turned back to his efforts to start a fire. At length, it was done and he rose to stand facing her, but so far away. She had yet to summon the courage to take the packet from the box, let alone unfold the letters and discover their dark truths.

  She shivered, suddenly chilled.

  “Look your fill, Catherine. And when you are done, burn them. Burn everything. It is past time.” He crossed to her then and put his palms against her cheeks, tipping her face to his, her mouth to his. He kissed her. There was nothing tentative or gentle about it. His mouth was hard and hungry, his tongue a hot slide of velvet in her mouth, his teeth nipping at her. Sharp. Deliberate. His breath mingling with hers.

  His body was hard and warm and solid against her, and for an instant she lost her breath, lost her thoughts, lost all will to delve into his secrets. For an instant, she wanted to draw him to the thick rug before the hearth and make love with him there and simply burn everything without ever looking at the words written within. She was not certain now that she wanted to know.

  He pulled back, ran the pad of his thumb along her lower lip, his eyes reflecting the light of the fire.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Catherine.” He studied her for a long moment, and then offered a dry smile. “You have woken my dead heart, the heart I stabbed and believed I had sliced from my breast years ago at Hanham House. I love you,” he said, his tone smooth and even and cool as it always was, but the words, oh, the words, the gift of them, made her heart soar. “I have loved you since the first moment I heard your voice. Since I sensed your pain and recognized your strength. Since you gave of yourself and took my darkness, transforming it to light if even for a moment. You are the fantasy I never dared let myself dream. You are all I believed I would never find, for who could accept what I am, this twisted, damaged thing?” He pressed his lips to hers, swift and firm. “Only one who has suffered can understand depth of suffering in another.”

  And she knew not if he spoke of his suffering or hers. Or perhaps both. Two pieces of broken pottery, brought together at the jagged edge, made whole, though imperfect still.

  He loved her. He would not say it unless he meant it with every breath and every fiber of his being. He was not a man to say anything lightly.

  Her heart danced in a rough, jagged rhythm. Her breath whooshed from her lungs as though a blow had been struck. It had. His words were like a physical thrust, stabbing as deep as they could go, filling her, lifting her, offering her the impossible.

  He loved her and so he gifted her with his trust, opening his metal box, but more than that, opening his heart. She could only begin to imagine what that cost him.

  Wanting to offer her own vows, her own baring of heart and soul, she parted her lips, intending to speak, but no words came out, only the soft huff of her breath. Say it. Say it. But she did not. She only stared at him and wished she were so brave.

  As though he knew her thoughts, he said, “Tell me when you are ready, Catherine. I can wait. You have no idea how long I can wait.”

  But she did. She knew how long he had waited to be free, how long he had waited for his vengeance. He would wait that long for her. She knew it.

  “Read them. And then burn them,” he said. “I shall await you in my chamber.”

  Turning, he headed for the stairs, leaving her alone with only the hiss and the pop of the fire for company, leaving her with his secrets open and bare on the table. Trusting her with them.

  “Wait,” she cried, and tore after him, pausing at the top of the narrow staircase, seeing the shadowy shape of him below her. He paused, but did not turn, only stood on the stair with his back to her. She needed to tell him she loved him. She needed to set the words free.

  But when she made to speak, something entirely different came out instead.

  “I killed him,” she said, feeling both heavy and light. “Jasper Hunt. I was lying on the pallet where I had birthed my child. Two days had passed, perhaps three. I do not know. I was ill. Feverish. He came to that room. I heard the rasp of the key.” She shuddered, forced herself to go on, the words coming faster now, in a hushed frantic rush. “He pushed the door open. The baby, my baby began to wail. Jasper staggered in. I could smell the stale stink of liquor on him. ‘Make it quiet,’ he ordered, and I tried. I tried. But the baby would not quiet. Jasper came to stand beside me, and he reached down, tore my child from my grasp, and put his hand over the baby’s mouth. ‘Quiet,’ he cried. And again, ‘Quiet.’ I tried to take the child from him. I begged. I pleaded. I clawed at his wrist and his fingers, but he only kicked me away.” Her voice grew hoarse. “He held his hand there, and in the end, my son was quiet.”

  She swallowed the sob that choked her, forced herself to go on. Below her, on the stair, Gabriel was preternaturally still.

  “He fell upon me, tried to... to... take me, but he was so far into his cups that he only fell asleep, his weight crushing me so I could not breathe. I pushed at him and struggled, and finally, he rolled enough that I could wriggle free.

  But when he rolled, he knocked the candle and the flames began to dance. They licked at the rug, the curtains, the bedsheets…”

  “And you took your child and you left Jasper Hunt there, in your bed, to burn,” Gabriel finished, his
tone flat.

  She put her palm across her mouth, and took a jagged, raspy breath.

  “I did.” She forced the admission through lips that felt frozen. “I watched from the lawn, holding my dead baby tucked inside my dress, still warm against my breast. The flames leaped and danced and burned my childhood home to the ground, and Jasper danced in the window. He screamed and screamed then, and for two days after. A part of me was sorry when he died. I wanted him to live forever, just like that.”

  Her body trembled, though she could not say if it was horror for her own story and the memories and the pain, or the relief of finally setting it free that made her shake. “So you see, I killed him. And I am glad of it.”

  “I know,” Gabriel said, and finally looked back at her, his face pale in the darkness, his eyes burning, fierce. He came up the stairs to her then and pulled her close and held her, just held her, for what seemed a very long time. “I have known all along, my brave love.”

  Then he stepped back and held her gaze long enough that she understood what he told her. She could have said anything, and it would not have mattered. He loved her. Her. For all she was, and all she was not.

  And now it was her turn to discover what was in that metal box, to know his secrets and accept or reject him.

  He loved her enough that he even gave her that.

  Offering a faint smile, he turned away once more and descended the stairs, disappearing round the bend.

  Absolution, just like that.

  If only she could truly forgive herself so easily. Not for Jasper’s death—he had made his own ugly choices—but for the death of her child.

  It was only after she stood there for some moments, wrestling her emotions under control, living and reliving the past few moments, that she understood Gabriel’s smile.

  He knew more than what she had admitted aloud. He knew she loved him. The very act of trusting him with her secrets had told him so. And he expected that she would love him still, no matter what the letters and journals revealed.

  Catherine lit a taper in the fire and touched it to the candle on the desk. The room was dim, but there was light enough to read by. She settled in the high-backed leather chair. Carefully she withdrew the packets of letters from the metal box, and saw that there were three leather-bound journals, as well.

  She started first with the letters addressed to Gabriel St. Aubyn, Cairncroft Abbey. Tipping them to the light, she read Sebastian’s descriptions of his travels. One letter stood out from the others, the words eerie and disconcerting. Tracing her finger over the page, she read them twice.

  I have heard talk that a mummy is to be sent home to England to be unwrapped before an audience of physicians. I should like to be there when they do, to see for myself the places they made the cuts in order to remove the lungs, liver, intestine, and stomach. These the ancient Egyptians stored in jars made of stone or ceramic or even wood. If only you could see them, carved and decorated. You would think them wondrous things of fascination, I am sure. I find them mysterious. I wonder at the purpose of such deliberate dissection. I wonder, too, that the heart, they did not take. Gabriel, it would be wonderful if you were here. Perhaps we could even try to make a mummy ourselves using a dead bird or other small creature.

  The description was evocative. She could not help but think of Martha Grimsby and the clipping she had read, so thoughtfully provided by Mrs. Northrop. Again, she recalled the suspicions she had felt after meeting Sebastian for the first time, her curiosity about whether he had been in London at the time of Martha’s death. From the dates on these letters and the things written therein, she knew he had been at Cairncroft Abbey at approximately the same time that the dead girl buried in the unmarked grave had been found. In fact, she thought she recalled someone— Madeline? Gabriel?—had mentioned that Sebastian had been the one to find her.

  Was there significance in that? She could not bear to think so, but the possibility nagged at her.

  Carefully, she set that letter aside, and then took up the packet addressed to Geoffrey St. Aubyn, Hanham House. She had no question of how Gabriel had come to have these letters in his possession. Gabriel had been incarcerated in a madhouse, and now, his brother was there in his stead. Or was his brother dead now?

  Gabriel had never said, she realized, and it had not occurred to her to ask.

  She read letter after letter, and at length, she set the whole pile aside and put her palm on the small of her back as she arched and stretched.

  Idly, she reached for the first of the three leather-bound journals and flipped it open to the first page. Childish drawings greeted her. Tipping her head, she studied the first one. It appeared to be a cat pouncing on a mouse. She flipped to the next page and the next and each one depicted a predator taking its prey.

  A memory touched her, of drawings in a similar style. She had seen them before, but could not think where. Flipping pages faster now, she gave only cursory scrutiny to each. By the end of the journal, the look of the sketches changed. Matured. And the drawings became increasingly more gruesome.

  Sliding the next journal along the desktop, she flipped it open. A drawing of a flower, and on the next page more flowers, and on the next, a tree. Again, she felt an odd sense of having seen these before. Turning another page, she froze, gasped, horror clogging her throat. The drawing was some sort of animal—a cat? A fox?—lying in a pool of blood. She wanted to think otherwise, wanted to imagine her vision betrayed her. But, no, though the drawing was crude, it could be mistaken for nothing else.

  She turned the pages faster, her breath coming quick and harsh, and a soft cry escaped her as she came to the very last sketch. Four jars. And below them on the page something that looked like the beef liver she had watched Cook prepare as a child.

  She was panting now. Closing her eyes, she willed her breathing to slow. To whom did these journals belong? Three boys had lived at Cairncroft Abbey—Gabriel, Geoffrey, and Sebastian—and one of them had grown to be a monster. These journals documented that. Or perhaps, one of them had been a monster all along.

  Or was it someone else? A servant? A villager?

  A shiver crawled up her spine.

  Not Gabriel. She trusted that truth.

  Slamming the cover shut, she laid her palm flat atop it.

  She did not want to know everything contained herein. She certainly did not want to look at the next book. Breathing in a jagged rhythm, she sat there and stared at the fire.

  Burn them. Burn everything.

  Scooping up the journals and the letters, she hurried to the hearth. There was a thick oval carpet there covering the stone floor. She knelt on it, feeding letter after letter to the flames, and finally, opening the journals and laying them face down on the fire, watching the orange and red tongues curl and dance.

  Beautiful, cleansing fire.

  18

  Catherine went first to Madeline’s chamber, though her heart bid her go to Gabriel’s. But Madeline had been alone too long and she would work herself into a frenzy. Better to soothe her first, then slip away. She wanted nothing weighing on her, no other thoughts in her mind when she went to Gabriel’s arms, to his bed.

  Her feet were heavy on the stairs, and her lids pricked, though she did not weep, did not even understand why she wanted to. She felt as though there was something clear as day before her eyes—something frightening and dangerous—and she was not seeing it.

  The passage that led to her chamber and Madeline’s was dark. The doors on all sides were closed tight. She paused a moment in her own room, taking only enough time to splash water on her face and hands, locking her door behind her and slipping the key in her pocket. The hallway seemed to stretch before her interminably, and she found herself reluctant to return to Madeline’s closed and quiet bedroom, to the dim light and the smell of liniment.

  But she must. Only a little longer and she could be with Gabriel, touch him, hold him, tell him all the things in her heart.

  The passage seemed ve
ry long and very quiet and she quickened her pace, feeling a strange, inexplicable urgency. Madeline’s door was partly open, and she pressed her palm flat against it and pushed on the wood until it swung inward. Her gaze slid to the bed, and she froze, for Madeline was not there.

  “Where did you go for so long?” came the petulant query, and she turned to find Madeline sitting in the chair before the fire surrounded by stacks and stacks of books. It seemed that every book she had stored in her bedroom for so long had been moved close to the fire to form a series of towers like the turrets of a castle.

  And in their midst sat Madeline.

  “I went walking. I had a need for some air,” Catherine replied, startled to realize that her friend had not only left her bed, but had dressed in a walking gown and combed and pinned her hair. “You look very well, Madeline,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Madeline thrust her lower lip out in a pout and closed the book that lay open on her lap. “I waited and waited and when you never came, I was forced to rise and ring for the maid. Peg was the one they sent. I do not like her. She is awkward and rough, her fingers tied up in splints.” She tipped her head to the side. “You should have been here to help me. You are my friend, as I have always been yours. You have no one but me.”

  The words were harsh. Unkind. And no longer true.

  She had Gabriel, but she thought it would not be wise to say so.

  “Well,” Madeline said in the face of her silence. “Things change.” Her words carried a hard edge of anger.

  Uncertain of Madeline’s mood, Catherine offered, “Would you like to go outdoors? Perhaps a walk by the lake?”

  Madeline glanced at her from beneath her lashes. “Not yet, but soon.” Her gaze slid to the open door. “Would you close it, please, Catherine? And lock it, as well?” She lowered her voice. “It is Mrs. Bell. She has come three times to bring me food and drink.” She nodded at the small table by the window, where a covered plate sat. “Smell it,” she said. “Go ahead.”