Father Drummond had forced her to hear that unbearable truth, and it had changed the way she viewed everything. True, she was the wife of the whisky-voiced laird, a man known for his kindnesses. Yet she had seen his anger unleashed. When goaded, Curran Ramsay was far from perfect, and she would be wise to never forget it.
“We are kept out of universities,” Mrs. Crewler added. “We cannot earn a living in any professional way. This compels us to rely on men for everything, a fact that is not happenstance, I assure you.”
“Several medical professionals have spoken up, rejecting the Commission’s theory that there would be no syphilis if not for the female sex, but so far, it hasn’t helped,” the physician’s wife said. “And it won’t, not as long as the military keeps telling them that detaining prostitutes will stamp out these diseases, and that forcing examinations upon the soldiers will demoralize them. There is the added invisible benefit of making all women, fallen or not, realize how little sovereignty they possess. We are dismissed, and in fact condemned for publicly speaking of these matters.” A deep furrow appeared between her brows. “I wonder what would happen if there were no prostitutes? My husband believes that many men would find more degrading or violent methods of satisfying those needs they attempt to keep hidden from us.”
“Needs?” Lily said. “Perversions, you mean. I still see the faces of children I knew. No one would do a thing to protect them. No one cares about orphans anyway. This, from the most advanced, civilized country on earth.”
Sweat formed on Morrigan’s forehead. She blotted it with a handkerchief, inwardly recoiling as the old, terrifying flash of light blinded her for an instant, followed by nausea, stabbing pain through the temples, and the hum that filled her ears like a swarm of wasps.
Lily’s voice sounded as though it was muffled in cotton. “There’s a lucrative business in torturing children here,” she said. “They’re locked inside brothels with soundproofed rooms, and windows so the customers can watch.”
Morrigan fought the urge to get up and run. Her body filled with an awful sensation, like a clot of spiders had erupted from the pit of her stomach and were scattering through her body, suffocating her, filling her lungs with their horrible hairy legs.
Her ribs curved, sharp as knives, making each breath excruciating. She tugged at her collar. If she couldn’t breathe, she would die, but better that than weak-willed disgrace before these brave women who were willing to risk mockery and censure in order to assist the humblest, most helpless human beings.
Children tortured for sexual pleasure? Such a thing was madness. A crime so evil would surely bring a death-curse upon the entire world.
Hell is what Earth becomes without her Mother. Morrigan felt Diorbhail’s presence, saw her eyes, blazing with unbridled rage.
“You saw this, Diorbhail.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “You knew this would happen.”
“Morrigan,” Lily cried. “Morrigan?”
She dimly realized she was gasping. The room was so hot. She wanted to die of embarrassment. The black cloud swirled closer.
“What can we do?” she heard below the roar in her ears. She sensed the women crowding around.
Lily’s face was pale. “Get her husband. He’s here somewhere. Try the smoking room.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LILY DIPPED A handkerchief in her teacup and pressed it to Morrigan’s cheeks. “Forgive me, mon amie,” she said.
Honoria Collins brought Curran and Richard. Curran fell to his knees.
Morrigan’s eyelids fluttered and she seized the edge of his coat. “The paddle wheel is chopping me to bits,” she whispered. “I’m flying everywhere.”
“Has she had too much to drink?” Richard asked.
“Only tea,” Lily said defensively.
“I’ll take her upstairs. Get a doctor.” Curran picked her up and carried her out of the room.
“He’s wed a damnably vaporish female,” Richard said.
“It’s not her.” Lily stared at the empty doorway. “It’s us. We’ve become walking, talking corpses, filling the silence with Wagner, and hothouse flowers, and balls, while two streets away….” She clasped Mrs. Crewler’s hand. “But for a few, like Josephine, and you, and in her way, Morrigan. They shine a light on how dead we are.”
She and Richard left the drawing room. Lily instructed one of the maids to send for a doctor, and after she’d gone, said, “I’m so accustomed to London’s atrocities I’ve grown the shell of a turtle. You’re right in a way, Donaghue. She is high-strung. But this is no simple honeymoon. There’s something we don’t know.”
Richard nodded. “I confess at first I thought he’d fallen in love with her simply because she’s beautiful, young, and malleable. But there is something….” He trailed off, frowning. “Her eyes are ancient.”
“And weary,” Lily said.
The doctor’s wife came out and joined them, wringing her handkerchief. “Did I do this with what I said? I do forget myself. Dear Lord, I wish the men we appeal to had half as much feeling.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Lily said. “Send the physician up when he arrives, would you please, Donaghue? I’ll go and check on her.”
She hurried upstairs, knocked, and entered the bedroom.
Morrigan lay on the bed. Curran had removed her dress and corset, and sat slumped in a chair, staring at her.
“How is she?” Lily kept her voice low.
“Sleeping, or fainted.” He motioned and they went out into the sitting room. “What happened?”
“I was telling her about London’s orphans. It obviously shocked her. I forgot how unsophisticated she is.”
“I forget too, sometimes. It’s easy to forget.”
“Do you know why it affected her so badly?”
He drew in a deep breath. “She’s as deep as the ocean, and I’ve only been introduced to the surface ripples.”
“Oh, Ramsay.”
“She was a virgin. I ruined her.” With a mirthless laugh, he said, “She asked me if she would have a baby after, but she had things… wrong.” He laughed again, quietly. “I’d forgotten that till now. I thought, growing up on a farm of sorts, she’d have seen the cows and horses— that she’d know, but she didn’t. Not really.”
Lily guided him to the love seat and settled beside him. “Did you want to marry her?”
“I couldn’t wait. She’s unique in ways I can’t even describe, innocent as a child one minute, speaking the deepest philosophy I’ve ever heard the next. I’d be the happiest man alive if she loved me. I don’t know if she does, she’s never said. If I could hear her say it, just once.”
“She’d be a fool not to.”
“I think she might be… having an affair.”
“Indeed.” Lily was shocked to her core. She would never have thought such a thing of that shy, easily embarrassed girl.
“From the moment she met him our lives changed. I’d swear she was happy with me, until him. If I’d let her take Olivia, I suspect she’d leave me for him. Maybe I should, but I can’t. Even if Olivia’s the only thing keeping her with me, I’ll use her. I’ll use my own child like a cage.”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears. “You can’t blame yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“I almost hit her.” Curran’s cheeks reddened. “I wanted to. I was so daft with jealousy. See what I’ve become?” He covered his eyes with his hands.
Curran Ramsay? No, never. Yet his misery revealed the truth. “Don’t you remember how many of the fair sex you had swooning at your feet before you married?” she asked.
No reaction.
“Ramsay.” Grasping his arm, she said, “You had your pick of London’s finest, decent and otherwise. Don’t you know?”
His hands fell to his lap and he regarded her blankly.
“Even me, Curran,” she said, “and God knows I love my husband.”
Such beautiful blue eyes. She had never seen anything quite like them. If one looked closely eno
ugh, purple and minute flecks of green could be detected within the blue. Sometimes she thought she saw infinitesimal motes of silver.
Surprise widened them. He’d never suspected then, how that smile he threw around so carelessly left her breathless, ridden with guilt and fantasies.
“You’ve changed,” she said. “You were happy. Now your eyes follow her, and they are always sad.” She stroked the side of his face. Touched his lips with her fingers.
He kissed them. His hand caught at hers, holding on desperately, like she was the only thing keeping him sane and human.
* * * *
Morrigan woke to flickering candlelight.
Why was she in bed? There was a blurry memory of Lily, her expression growing hard as she described barrenness caused from years of prostitution.
Distant murmuring roused her further. The deeper resonance sounded like Curran. She needed him. When everything grew hopeless and awful, Curran could always soothe her. Sweet, braw Curran. He would take away this sensation of falling into a fathomless hole. “Curran,” she whispered. But there was no reply. He wasn’t there.
When she stood, the room spun like a dervish, but she gritted her teeth and crossed to the doorway, where shock congealed into frozen, disbelieving horror.
They were pressed together. Touching. Lily was stroking her husband’s face. He held her fingers against his lips and kissed them. Kissed them.
Morrigan gripped the doorjamb. He’d done this, got her with child. Trapped her. Now he thought he could do as he pleased while exploding with jealousy if she even smiled at a man. No, by God. He’d see.
Lily had seduced her with fraudulent kindness. How she and Curran must have laughed at her!
Her body liquefied into a rogue tide, a crushing wave that would annihilate these two liars. Her mouth opened, ready to spew poison and hatred.
You’ve changed. You were happy. Now your eyes follow her, and they are always sad.
Morrigan’s wrath froze. It hung, rigid and immobilized, then splintered around her in a storm of echoing silence. Stumbling backward, she reached for something to keep her from falling and giving herself away. She grabbed the brass bedpost and slid to the floor.
* * * *
Lily gave a hushed laugh. “What’s the word she used about Tristram and Iseult? Braw. Yes. You’re braw as toast and jam.”
Curran’s mouth curved into a slight smile. Maybe there was hope yet.
“Could she be pregnant?”
He stared. “Why d’you ask that?”
“This fainting, for one thing. And she lost her breakfast the other day. Think about it. Has she had her monthly courses?”
He frowned. “I… don’t remember.”
Lily gave him a moment then wrapped both her hands around his. “If, as you say, she is having an affair—”
“No.”
“Oh, darling, you have to face this. Has she ever told you you’re braw? Let her go, if she wants, with this man. Perhaps it isn’t worth the pain and trouble.”
“We’ve been together nearly every night. She and I… we….” His eyes closed. Tearing free of her grasp, he bent his head and buried his face in his palms, digging his fingertips into his scalp. “Olivia….”
* * * *
Could she be pregnant?
Curran made some shocked reply, but Lily’s voice wouldn’t relent. If she is having an affair….
Let her go with this man.
She was saying everything that couldn’t be said, all that would destroy their lives, annihilate any trust that might remain.
This wasn’t Lily’s fault. Morrigan had done it herself with the way she’d allowed Aodhàn Mackinnon to infest her imagination.
She heard Curran’s desperate No. But Lily would convince him. In a matter of moments, Curran would believe. At that point there would be no use telling him she hadn’t been unfaithful, even if she could say it without blushing.
All at once, in a rush that felt like a swooping gust of wind, Morrigan knew. She cupped her hands over her breasts. They were tender, so tender she could hardly bear the pressure of her own touch.
Curran would take Olivia and this new babe away from her. He would install Lily at Kilgarry. Somehow they would rid themselves of Richard. Morrigan would never be allowed to see her babies. She would never again disperse into pliant delirium under Curran’s touch.
She’d held his heart in her hand. He’d freely given it. In nurturing that gift, maybe she could have healed herself. But look what she’d done instead. She’d been more Mackinnon’s than Curran’s before they’d left, even if she hadn’t succumbed to the final indignity of physical betrayal. When they returned to Glenelg, how long would it be before that changed? Could she and Mackinnon live together in the same wee village and never surrender to this thing that was so palpable between them? Some part of her knew he would never stop until he got what he wanted.
My children will never know me. They’ll think Lily is their mother… Lily, who cannot have children, so she’ll take mine!
Just tonight she had congratulated herself for having a friend who would never betray her.
Stupid… stupid.
Behind tightly squeezed eyelids a picture materialized. The pool near the Wren’s Egg. Louis Stevenson, chewing a stem of wild grass.
What of the father? he’d asked. Do you love him?
She had done the honorable thing by marrying her child’s father. That path had taken her to safety and redemption. Her thoughts had carried her no farther.
Needing to escape Curran and Lily and all the terrifying things they were plotting, Morrigan crawled across to the open window. She grasped the sill and pulled herself to her knees.
I’ve a notion your heart will steer you rightly, Louis had ventured. How wrong he’d been.
The luminescent moon hovered in a starry midnight heaven.
Night and day. Shadow and sun. No, Curran wasn’t the sun, so intense one couldn’t bear to look at it. He was the softly mesmerizing face of the moon. A quiet steadfast presence, showering her with, with….
Freedom, sang the Judas-wench inside her.
She had thrown joy aside in order to embrace enigmatic sorrow. Now she’d had enough sorrow and wished joy back, like a spoiled child whose long-neglected doll had been thrown into the rubbish, who sobbed, broken-hearted, at the loss and demanded Time be rewound.
She wanted both joy and sorrow to be hers forever in a world that never allowed such things.
Another stark image materialized. She saw herself seizing the horns of an angry bull.
Her laughter flew high as she used the jerk of the bull’s head to propel herself into the wind.
Wind was invulnerable. Neither bullets nor despair could affect it.
A breeze stirred the lace curtains. They brushed her face as though in encouragement.
Roaming the earth with no need to rest, eat, or sleep, unhampered by mountains, oceans, cities, or love, wind bolted from zephyr to hurricane on its own momentary impulse. It was utterly invulnerable to attack or entrapment.
The wind spoke in her throat with Nicky’s voice. Feel me. I am with you.
She wanted to leap from this window and become wind, join Nicky, spread out invisibly across the earth, scratch her spine in pine trees and send ripples over lochs with her breath.
There was another image from Torridon, of the living boat with the goddess sculpted into the prow. It swayed as the wind played with its sails, coaxing Morrigan to climb aboard. I will take you away to a warm island, to endless peace, the goddess said. You are tired, my daughter, and you have suffered for me.
A movement off to one side brought her swinging around with a gasp, but it was only her reflection in the looking-glass, cast in moonlight and shadows.
Something flitted across the face in the mirror, an overlay of another woman’s features. She was older. Her hair was dark, her eyes, haunted. She was both familiar and unknown.
No more children. No more love. Not until they al
l lie dead. Then we will begin again.
“Begin again.” Morrigan pitied the woman in the mirror, who had seen too much, endured too much.
She unbuttoned the pocket in her petticoat and pulled out the knife Diorbhail had given her. It felt hot.
The woman in the looking-glass seemed to stare at it too, then she lifted her gaze to Morrigan’s. See.
Morrigan blinked and the face in the mirror was her own again.
Her thoughts cleared into distinct separate drops, falling one by one into blank silence.
She would go to Barra. To Mingulay. Oh aye, she’d seen how much Curran hated the idea, though he’d said nothing. But she would go. She would discover why those places called to her. She would search until she found the reason those islands and Mackinnon were connected.
It seemed too much a coincidence, something akin to fate, that Richard would have a cottage on Mingulay. Everything was pulling her there, and she was done fighting her instincts. It was not only fate, but fatality.
Anger again boiled, scalding away her shame. She had done nothing. Nothing! Yet at this moment, her husband sat in the next room making love to another woman— a prostitute, by her own admission.
Damn him. Was this what she had to look forward to? She had put Mackinnon away from her. She’d vowed to be faithful and honorable. And this was what she received for her efforts.
She would confront Mackinnon. This time, there would be no humiliating her into silence. He must tell her why she was so important that he was willing to destroy his long friendship with the laird of Kilgarry in order to have her. And Curran? Never again would he deceive her. She would turn herself into a wind-being. Transparent. Distilled. Untouchable. Nothing different to the outside eye, but inside, pure and blank. A thing without form or substance. A mirage none of them could harness or control.
* * * *
Lily knew what she had to say, but the words stuck like tar in her throat. “Yes, my darling. Olivia. You could keep her.”
The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) Page 68
