She said nothing for a moment. But her hand laid atop the cover of that book, the foul history of all his ancestors, as if it were something feral that might turn and bite her. Her face had paled dramatically and he could see the fear in her eyes. Finally, she asked, “Did he? Did he take his own life?”
“Yes. He did. Eventually, we all do. And that is why we can never have a real marriage, Adelaide, or children. This curse will end with me.”
“But it won’t,” she said. “There are other descendants, there are those who have survived.”
It was true enough. The previous generations of the Llewellyn men had been rather fond of spreading their seed far and wide, as it were. “I imagine that Ioan and his son had many illegitimate children. He had warred and raped his way across the entirety of the British Isles and Alwen, the son Igrida bore him, did much the same. That didn’t stop with Igrida’s death. When the connection is distant, as it must be in you, it typically only becomes triggered, as it were, by contact with this land. By bringing you here, I have sealed your fate. As to the other matter, the curse cannot be broken simply because I do not have children… but I cannot—I will not—be the man who places that burden on an innocent child.”
“I see. And because I hear it, because I hear them, there must be some distant family connection? That’s the only way?”
“Perhaps. I cannot say that definitively. With my twin, with Alden, before his passing—“.
“Passing?”
He would not spare her any of the gory details. “Before he walked to the center of that moor and put a pistol in his mouth—.”
“You said you killed your brother,” she interrupted.
“And I did. Because I stood there, perfectly capable of stopping him, or preventing him from squeezing that trigger and I did nothing, Adelaide. After beating him to a pulp, I stood idle and watched him commit suicide.”
She was silent then. Entirely so, not even the sound of breathing escaping her. Eldren continued, “He had a woman come here who claimed to be sensitive to spirits and other such things. She heard them. Have you ever had any experience with such things? Do you see ghosts and spirits, Adelaide?”
“No. I do not. At least I never have before. Is that really all it is? The whispering? It’s a nuisance at best. How does that drive you mad enough to take your own life?”
“The whispers are the beginning. The more you hear them, the stronger they become. Eventually, it progresses to the point that it effects your other senses, as well. Alden began to see them, shadows flitting across the moor… and then here in the house.”
She swallowed convulsively. “It was a progression then? One thing and then the other? Whispers to voices to shadows?”
“Yes,” Eldren agreed. There was something off in her tone. She had grown terribly pale and he could see her hands folded over that book, clutched so tightly together her knuckles were white. “What is it that you’ve seen or heard here, Adelaide?”
“I’ve seen things, Eldren. Seen and heard them since coming here, and it’s only been a matter of days. I thought I was going mad!”
“What is that you saw?” he demanded, his tone sharp with concern.
“Last night… I saw a dark figure in the corner of your room. But at first I convinced myself it was only a shadow, except it moved… it shifted and undulated and I could no longer lie to myself. I tried to flee, and when I looked back it was gone. Or so I thought. As I stood there, it had somehow reappeared outside your room and was seeping beneath the door and twining itself about my ankles like a snake. I ran back to the bed and stayed awake almost till dawn. I was terrified to try and sleep afterward.”
“I’ve never experienced it to that degree,” he said. “I’ve seen fleeting shadows, but I’ve learned to simply ignore them.”
“Is it real? Or does this house just manage to create some sort of hysteria in all of its inhabitants?” she demanded.
“I don’t know if they are real or if they are a product of his madness. What I do know, is that we will be leaving for London immediately after we have wed. And we will be placing my mother in an asylum there… I cannot keep her in this house any longer. If she were to get out of her rooms, Adelaide, I very much fear that she would do you harm.”
“I haven’t yet said that I will marry you,” she replied.
“There is something you need to know about this place, Adelaide… once you’ve encountered it, or perhaps it would be better to say once it has encountered you, it will not leave you be. It will haunt you forever,” he said. “It is cruel and unforgiving.”
“Then perhaps it is a good thing that I had already reached a decision… I will marry you, Eldren. And for now, I will abide by your terms.”
His head came up and he met her challenging gaze. “For now?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve decided something very important today. I will not live in fear—not of the sea, not of that moor, and not of whatever fate you feel is in store for you. I plan to face all of those fears and I mean to conquer them.”
He stared at her, at the implacable resolve he could see blazing in her eyes and the fierce determination that was so apparent in the stubborn tilt of her chin. In that moment, he found her remarkable, he found her entrancing, and above all, he found her impossibly tempting. He wanted to believe that they could somehow conquer the ancient curse that plagued his family, to believe that they might have a future together as man and wife in the conventional sense. But hope was a scarce commodity at Cysgod Lys.
“I am afraid you will be disappointed,” he replied.
“Would I be less disappointed if I didn’t even attempt to alter my fate? I could have stayed below decks on the Mohegan and drowned. I could have pried my cold, half frozen fingers from the rigging during that long night in the dark and frigid water and simply let it take me,” she insisted in an impassioned tone, “But I didn’t. Because I wanted to live. And I still want that! Not some half life where I constantly look over my shoulder or where I wait for the other shoe to drop. Isn’t that what you want?”
He couldn’t answer that. In the entirety of his life, he’d never thought about what he wanted in regard to marriage or family or even love. He’d only thought of all the ways it inevitably went wrong for someone of his accursed blood. “I am afraid to want, Adelaide. You must be cautious. There is evil in this house, in it and surrounding it… It has taken firm hold of my mother. I’ve accepted that, as horrible as it is. I could not bear it if it took you as well.”
“Then help me,” she implored. “Help me find a way to change this?”
A sigh escaped him, of resignation and reluctant hope. “I will do what I can.”
“We go to London after the ceremony on Saturday?” She asked.
“Yes. We will be there for some time I think, getting mother settled in whatever new facility I can arrange for her and I have some business to attend to. Why?”
“Because there is an old friend of my father’s there… Lord Mortimer. He’s a kindly man, but a bit otherworldly. He believes in all manner of mysticism and magic. But I cannot imagine that if we wished to discover more about this curse that casts such a long pall over the Llewellyn family that there would be any better place to start.”
He’d heard of Lord Mortimer. The man routinely entertained and held wild seances with the leading mystics of the day. “Then I suggest you catch up on your reading,” he said, tapping his fingers on the book. “There are details that I haven’t shared, simply because they are too gruesome to be spoken aloud. But they are all recorded there.”
Adelaide shuddered slightly and he wished to comfort her, but a part of him was grateful for her fear. Fear would create caution and it might well be caution that would save her from all of this, and perhaps, ultimately, one day from him.
“Very well,” she said. “Should we go in to dinner? It’s no doubt growing cold and sending your cook into quite a furor.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And for now, let us agr
ee not to discuss any of this where we might be overheard. The servants are already superstitious and it has taken ages to amass a staff of stern enough constitutions not to be put off by this house and its strange inhabitants.”
She nodded her agreement. Eldren walked toward her and offered her his arm. When she placed her hand on his forearm, that touch, tentative as it was, reminded him of how much was at stake. The last thing he wanted to do was to harm her, to be overtaken by the violent urges that seemed to plague all the men of his family. But there was a spark of possessiveness inside him when she touched him, an insidious whisper in the farthest corners of his mind. Mine, it said. Mine.
CHAPTER TEN
Dinner had been an uneventful meal. They’d eaten and talked of mundane things. In earshot of a handful of servants, it had seemed wise. With the meal done, he was seeing Adelaide to her chamber for the night. At the door, she stopped and looked back at him expectantly.
“I realize it’s unorthodox,” she said, “And in light of the nature of our coming relationship, perhaps it is unwise, but—.”
She’d broken off abruptly. But Eldren knew there was a question buried in Adelaide’s rambling. “What is it?”
“Will you stay in the room with me tonight? I spoke courageously earlier, with far more bravado then. Certainly more than I feel now at the prospect of facing this alone. It was easy to be brave then… If that dark shadowy thing returns tonight, I am not certain what I will do.”
He should say no. He knew it instantly. Their best hope of maintaining the kind of chaste relationship that was required would be to keep his distance. But in that moment, with fear lurking in her dark gaze and her lower lip trembling like a child’s, how could he say no?
“Of course, I will. Go in and change. Once you’ve done so, I’ll return,” he said.
“You promise? You won’t just say that and not come back?”
Had so few people in her life kept their word to her? “I promise, Adelaide. I won’t leave you alone to face the darkness… Change into your nightclothes and I will be back shortly,” Eldren promised.
When she’d turned to go, disappearing into the recesses of his bed chamber, Eldren made his way to the other end of the corridor. In his own borrowed chamber, he stripped off his dinner jacket and tie. But he kept his trousers and his shirt on. There was no need to tempt fate anymore than necessary.
He was thinking of her in her chamber, removing the pins from her hair, unlacing all the many layers of clothing that women wore. It was dangerous and foolhardy. And yet he was helpless to stop those images from flitting through his mind. He wanted her. Whether it was because she was to be his bride and he was having some sort of typically male response because he suddenly possessed the right to do so or if it was just something in her own innocent allure, he could not say. Regardless, he would keep his urges in check. Anything less would dishonor them both.
After a suitable amount of time, he left his temporary bed chamber and paused, knocking at the door to his own suite of rooms. It opened with a soft click. She stood there in the dim light, her hair in a long thick plait that draped over her shoulder and hung nearly to her waist. She wore a nightgown with a high neck, the ruffle heavily embroidered with a design he couldn’t quite make out. The brocade dressing gown donned atop it was belted at her waist, highlighting her natural figure rather than the corseted one that utterly befuddled him. Why any woman would wish to alter what was already a perfect form to such degree left him puzzled.
“Come in,” she said softly.
Eldren entered the room as she stepped back, then followed her through the small seating area and into the bedchamber proper. He seated himself in the chair before the fireplace, propped his feet on the chair opposite and savored the warmth of the blaze as Adelaide slipped into the bed. His bed.
“Where did you see it?” he asked
She pointed to the corner closest to him, the juncture of the wall that held the large windows and the one with the fireplace. Enough light seeped into from either of those sources that if any unnatural darkness were to appear there, it would be immediately noticeable.
“Sleep, Adelaide. I’ll watch over you.”
“Who will watch over you?” she asked.
“It won’t hurt me. It never has,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“Because it is biding its time… It will only come for me when every person or thing that I hold dear in the world is gone from it. That’s what it always does to the men who bear the title of Earl of Montkeith.”
“But I am not dear to you.”
“We are strangers still… but I have made a promise to you and you to me. That is near enough,” Eldren said. “Go to sleep.”
She said nothing further, but turned on her side, facing away from him. It gave him the opportunity to stare at her at length, to imagine what it might have been like had he been the sort of man who could love her, who was free to love her. But that was a kind of happiness neither of them would ever know.
Eldren turned his face away abruptly, staring into the corner where the shadows had appeared to her the night before. He kept his gaze trained upon it, almost daring them to return.
* * *
In the darkened tower of Cysgod Lys, Sylvia Llewellyn rocked. Squatting in the corner of her room with her arms locked around her knees, she rocked to and fro. Her still dark hair was wild about her, tangled and tousled. At one point, those lustrous brown locks had been her greatest vanity. Unkempt and disheveled, vanity had been stripped from her entirely.
Mrs. Alberson, the nurse, was in the outer chamber of the room and based on her snores, sound asleep. Sylvia rocked more vigorously. It was always worse when the nurse slept.
Even as that fairly rational thought entered her mind, the dark shadows on the wall began to sway. They peeled themselves away from the faded damask covering the wall and twisted together into a large hulking form. It loomed over her, surrounded her.
Clasping her hands over her ears, Sylvia began to scream. She screamed long and loud, the sounds bizarre and animalistic. It was the only way to drown out the insidious whispering.
Kill them. Kill them all. Kill them and you’ll be free.
“No! No! No! No!”
She shouted the word over and over, the litany of it deafening in the confines of that room.
Kill her. Kill the girl. Watch him suffer for all that he’s done.
“Leave me be!” Sylvia begged.
You know what you must do. He is the eldest son. The first born. He cannot be suffered to live.
“He isn’t! He isn’t! Alden is gone. My precious Alden is gone!” Sylvia wailed.
Alden was never the first born. He was never the true heir. Lies. Lies. Lies. You suffer now because you sought to deny me!
“I never denied you. I never denied you,” Sylvia chanted. Over and over, she repeated that phrase.
Eldren was the first born, even if not born to you! And yet you passed your whelp off as the heir. But you’ve paid. Haven’t you, Sylvia? Now they are all gone but one… one and your husband’s bastard. Deny him all you wish, pretend he isn’t even here, but you know what you did. To his mother. To him. You know what you did! What your husband did!
The whispers had grown louder, swelling into an angry hiss. Outside, the wind whipped at the trees nearest the house. But the waves didn’t roar. That wind was restricted to the unholy grounds of Cysgod Lys.
The ancient latch on the windows gave and they blew inward, the glass shattering.
Syliva’s gaze latched onto those silvery shards on the floor. Rising to her feet, she scurried across the room and grabbed one of the larger pieces. When she heard the key turning in the lock, she used the glass to cut the backing of the curtains and hid it inside. Her hands were bloody, but she didn’t care.
Mrs. Alberson entered, staring in horror at the disarray.
“Back away from that nasty business now, your ladyship,” the nurse instructed, “Or you’ll hurt y
ourself. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?” The woman’s distress was obvious, but so was her fear.
Sylvia slowly stepped away from the damaged windows, retreating into the far corner. She ignored the slivers of glass that penetrated the soles of her feet, ignored the painful cuts on her hands. Oblivious to the blood that seeped from them, she covered her face and shrieked in anger and rage. The girl would die, and Eldren with her. Her husband’s bastard son passed off as her own would die. It wasn’t what the shadows had asked of her. That was entirely for herself, for vengeance and for justice. It was a reckoning for the role he had played in the death of her beloved son, his ‘twin’, Alden.
“I’ll do it. I’ll do it!” Sylvia screamed.
The wind stopped howling. The night grew calm and still. Mrs. Alberson glanced over at her, a shudder coursing through the older woman.
“You’ll do what, my lady?” Mrs. Alberson asked, her terror obvious in her shrill tone and her cautious movements.
They all feared her. They feared her madness, the rage that was fueled by the dark entities that ruled within the walls of her home, of her prison. They tormented her, but for all the pain they visited upon her, they gave her strength in return. Strength to snap a girl’s arm, strength to wrest herself from the firm grip of several strong footmen. They thought she was weakening, that the drugs they injected into her body time and again were causing her to grow more and more frail. She’d heard Mrs. Alberson warning Eldren, her husband’s bastard, a whelp she’d been forced to call her own son, that the drugs were taking a toll on her. But that was precisely what she wanted them to believe. It would make them careless over time. And all she needed was one chance. She’d take the weapon that had been provided and she would slit the girl’s throat right there in her bed for Eldren to find.
The Victorian Gothic Collection: Volumes 1-3 Page 9
