Midnight Secrets

by Jennifer St Giles

  I barely managed to close my mouth. “How…how…did you learn all of that?”

  “I’ve an excellent factotum whom I trust implicitly to take care of my affairs. A man who lives as I must couldn’t function without such an employee. When I fell over the cliff eight years ago, my injury made exposure to light excruciatingly painful. Only recently have I been able to tolerate the sunlight with a minimal amount of pain. After our first encounter, I sent him to investigate. I also wanted to know that whoever had harmed you had paid for doing so. You led me to believe you’d been forced.”

  “Good Lord. You knew all that and still…still…”

  “Wanted you? You have no idea how badly I wanted you, Cassie. I think I would give and forgive almost anything. I want the truth now.”

  “It’s Mary.” Tears filled my eyes. “She was my cousin. I dreamed of her. She called to me and I could never reach her. I woke with that horrid dread curling inside of me and I knew she was dead. The telegram about Mary’s drowning arrived from Aunt Lavinia that morning. My sisters and I came immediately. We all believed that something was wrong. Mary feared the sea. She never would have gone swimming. And your refusing to see my aunt made us even more—”

  “What? I’ve never received a request.”

  “But she came here repeatedly.”

  “I’ll look into it. Go on.”

  I winced. “I…started conducting my own investigation into Mary’s drowning when I couldn’t get Constable Poole to reopen his investigation into Mary’s death. The rest you know. I came here to work as maid so that I could find out what happened to her.” I hesitated. “You have all of her paintings.”

  “She gave them to me. She wanted me to have light in the darkness. So that’s it?” He turned from me, hands fisted, voice haunted. “Everything you’ve done here has just been to learn about Mary? You’ve been looking for a murderer?”

  I ran to him, grabbed his arms and pressed my cheek to his back. “No. A thousand times no. In coming here, I’ve lost my life within the lives of those here. Rebecca. Bridget. You. I can’t live without all of you, yet I can’t live with you all as I am now. And I am afraid now that I’ll have lost everything. Sean, please believe me. I love you.” Pain as great as the pleasure we shared ripped through me. “Please,” I whispered. “Please don’t turn away from me.”

  He bowed his head, pulling away from me, wrenching my heart apart. “You’re damned, Cassie. Because there is no life here. Leave me now. I need to think. I’m sorry, but I didn’t ask you to come here. Not tonight. And now what is done cannot be undone. I can’t give you back your virginity, but I can send you on to a better life. There is no future for us, Cassie.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way. You only think it does because you won’t let yourself see anything any different. You’re choosing darkness over light.”

  “I am cursed, and doomed to live in darkness. There is nothing else. Now leave.”

  “Do you not love me?”

  My heart waited in the following silence and broke on his harsh answer. “No.”

  Oh God. I couldn’t take the pain. I couldn’t stay and fight, not when my heart hurt so badly that he didn’t love me enough to leave the darkness. I turned and left him in the dark, realizing how naïve I’d been. He may have needed me. Wanted me. But he didn’t love me.

  I rose the next morning, having not slept. My eyes were swollen, my throat was scratchy, and my heart so wounded that I could barely breathe. I told Bridget and Prudence that I was ill and asked to rest alone for a while.

  Sean was everywhere in my mind. I couldn’t escape him. He’d cast a spell over me that left me wanting and aching for him. I had to pull myself together, to put him from my mind and focus my efforts on discovering who murdered Mary. But I made little progress in the dark.

  Bridget and Prudence left me inside until noon, then insisted I go to the gardens with them.

  The sun hurt my eyes and I tried to stay in the shadows as Bridget and Prudence walked ahead, talking about the spring flowers. I followed, holding Rebecca’s hand while she carried her rag doll with the other. She seemed to know of my hurt, even though she couldn’t see me, because she kept squeezing my hand. As we strolled we neared Zeus; tears flooded my eyes, even though I chided myself for letting a reminder of Sean so move me. My love hadn’t ceased because he didn’t love me, but it had turned from pleasure to pain. I slowed my pace with Rebecca, letting Bridget and Prudence move farther ahead so they wouldn’t see my tears. I could hardly see where we were going and didn’t care. I blindly followed their blurry shapes.

  A little while on, Rebecca tugged on my hand and I blinked down at her. She didn’t say anything, and since I hadn’t spoken, she didn’t even have her face turned toward me. But she held her rag doll up to me. “H-h-hold dollie. Sh-h-he helps.”

  I came undone. “I love you, poppet.” I sat down on the ground, pulled Rebecca and dollie into my arms and cried.

  Suddenly someone grabbed me from behind, jerking me by the waist, tearing me away from Rebecca. I tried to cry out, but a large smelly hand covered my mouth.

  “M-mary hurt you.” Jamie pulled me backward. I tried to beat at him, to kick him, to free myself, but I couldn’t. Terror cleared my tear-blurred vision and I saw the garden before me suddenly disappear behind a dark hedge. The maze! My mind screamed. The maze! He held me so tight I couldn’t breathe.

  As if from a faraway tunnel, I heard Rebecca scream. “C-c-c-caasss.”

  Jamie ran with me, faster than I would have ever thought he could move. Dark shadows and even blacker hedges whirled by. Fear, so paralyzing, so deafening that I could hardly think, gripped me by the throat. I’d made a fatal mistake. I had no weapon. In my sorrow, I’d blindly left my room without the knife, and I’d failed to get my father’s pistol from Sean last night. I’d given no thought to what dangers might lurk during a walk in the gardens with Bridget and Prudence, and now I would pay the price.

  I tried to fight harder.

  “No, Mary,” Jamie cried. “Hurt you.”

  Wrenching my head to the side, I finally could draw enough air to keep from fainting. I saw the broken remains of a gazebo looming ahead, so easily discernable by its half-rotted shape. Jamie went directly toward it, dragging me.

  I drew enough air and screamed.

  Jamie stopped and hit me across the cheek, knocking me to the ground. “Shh. Hurt you. Hurt you.”

  Stunning pain lashed through me. He grabbed my arm, wrenching it as he pulled me to the gazebo. Once upon its splintered floor, he dragged me to an open trap door and threw me into the yawning black pit. I screamed, reaching out for anything to save myself, and caught hold of the rung of a ladder. I managed to hold on long enough to break my fall to the bottom of the earthen room. Jamie jumped the distance effortlessly and pulled on a rope hanging down. The trap door shut, drenching us in the dark. I screamed again.

  “Shh. Hurt you, Mary. Hide.” He must have had the eyes of a bat, because I couldn’t see, yet he grabbed my arm and started dragging me with him.

  “Please, stop. Tell me about Mary.” I tried to reason with him.

  “Hide.” He kept dragging me further. In the darkness, I started to see shadows and knew I was no longer in a room but a tunnel that went on for what felt like forever. Then the dank smell of wet earth changed to a putrid scent as he drew closer to a gray area ahead. That meant light. I focused on it, praying.

  We reached a dimly lit room, and he pushed me down on a filthy cot. “Hide,” he said again. “Hurt you.”

  I drew a deep breath, trying to think past my pain and fear. Was he trying to tell me to hide?

  He walked across the room and lit a candle. I quickly recognize that we weren’t in an earthen chamber now, but one of stone with primitive designs etched on the walls. Circling the room were carved stone statues as large as the one of Daghdha in the center of the Stone Virgins. They were placed closely against the stone walls, leaving small crevices draped with spi
der webs. The statues dwarfed Jamie. I suddenly recalled Stuart saying that Jamie felt comfortable in the circle of the Stone Virgins and I wondered if it was because they made him little again.

  “Jamie,” I said, hoping that I could reason with him if I calmed myself. “Help me. Take me to the castle. Help me.”

  He shook his head. “Hurt you.” He pointed across the room, moving aside so that I could see.

  The decomposing remains of a woman with blond hair lay on a cold stone slab. Mary.

  I fought the retching and the dizziness that tried to rip my sanity from me. Hot and cold sweats gripped my body. I’d been searching for a loved one, but the reality and the horror of finding her dead devastated me. I crawled back on the cot until I hit the stone wall behind me. I could barely breathe, for I knew I, too, would die. I couldn’t give up.

  “What happened to Mary, Jamie?” I asked, hoping again to find reason in the giant.

  He shook his head and yelled. “Hurt. Hurt you too.” He paced about the room agitated. “Don’t talk,” he said.

  I bit back my questions, deciding to be as invisible as I could, hoping that if I waited long enough, I would find an opportunity to escape. I knew running while he was awake was out of the question. He would have overpowered me in minutes. No loose stones or sticks or any other weapon lay close to me, but I didn’t give up my search for an escape.

  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been there, a ball of numbness and terror, but I saw the shadows in the room grow, even though the candle remained lit. Only then did I realize that there had to be light coming from outside into this room. Light meant escape. I started studying the upper regions of the room, my heart shrinking in horror as I discerned the exit. It lay directly above the stone slab Mary lay on. I’d have to climb onto that, and even then I didn’t think I was tall enough to reach the stone opening.

  That meant the only way out was the way I had come in.

  Jamie moved and I darted my gaze toward him and to where it appeared he was headed. A wooden table sat in the corner with only one thing on it, rather in it. A large knife stabbed into the wood. He reached for it, and I bit back a scream, wrenching myself from the wall and off the cot. I ran for the dark opening he’d brought me through.

  “Nooo, Mary.” Knife in hand, Jamie lunged in front of me. Screaming, I turned to the side, backing away from him until I hit the protruding arms of a Stone Virgin.

  He stepped toward me. I desperately searched the room, edging around the Stone Virgin, hitting spider webs that I was too terrified to push away. Then I saw the dark crevice between the wall and the statue, so slight a place that a man like Jamie couldn’t reach. Sucking in my stomach, I wedged into the space, turning my head sideways to fit. Cold stone scraped my cheek and jaw, and painfully pressed against my breasts, but I burrowed deeper into the crevice as Jamie screamed for me but couldn’t reach me. I cried out in horror as a spider crawled along my neck. My arms were pinned to my sides. I could do nothing but stand wedged between the stone and suffer its roving, and I wondered if the quick blade of a knife might not be a better way to die.

  “Cassie. Where are you?”

  I thought I was dreaming, hearing the deep ferocity of Sean’s voice because I so badly wanted to hear him, see him, touch him one last time.

  “Cassie!”

  Thundering steps and the flickering light of torches filled the chamber, telling me I wasn’t dreaming.

  “Sean!” I screamed as loud as I could.

  “Nooo! Hurt you,” Jamie yelled.

  “He has a knife!”

  “Drop the knife, Jamie, now!” Stuart yelled.

  There was a loud scuffle and Jamie’s deep sobbing filled the chamber.

  “God, it’s Mary.” Sean voice rang with horror. “Bloody hell, Cassie. Where in God’s name are you?”

  “Here,” I gasped. “Behind a Stone Virgin.” I tried to move and couldn’t, suddenly I couldn’t breathe and my heart raced. “Oh God, I think I am stuck.”

  Scraping and heavy breathing sounded near the opening. I couldn’t see Sean, but I knew he was there. The heat of him reached me before his voice. “Cassie? More scraping. “I can’t reach you.”

  “Nor could Jamie,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “Stuart has tied him. He can’t hurt you.”

  “He killed Mary,” I said, nearly sobbing. “And kept her body in this room.”

  “Cassie. Come out, please. I need to see that you’re all right.”

  I tried to move again and couldn’t. “I can’t,” I cried, tears stinging my eyes. It was irrational to feel that I was going to die there, but I did. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Just remember exactly how you held your body to get in there. Don’t cry. Let your body relax. Close your eyes. Think. Be calm. Think of yourself as small and soft. Reach for me and I will be there.”

  Closing my eyes, I focused on his voice and listened to him as he repeated his words over and over again. Slowly, moving closer to him an inch at a time, I freed myself. The moment I reached the edge of the crevice, he pulled me out, into his arms. Warm and solid, I wanted to sink into him and never move again, but I pulled back instead. “Spiders. Please. Get them off me. Please.”

  Sean quickly brushed me off, using his coat to combat the webs as I scrubbed my fingers through my hair. I took his coat when he finished. My heart wept at the sight of Mary on the cold stone and I laid the coat over her.

  I looked and saw Jamie, lying on the ground crying, his hands tied behind his back, his feet tied together. Stuart sat on the ground next to Jamie, his arm on Jamie’s shoulder as tears ran unchecked.

  “He must have killed her for some reason.” Tears filled my eyes. “He loved her, but he must have killed her. Where are we?”

  “A burial chamber beneath the Stone Virgins,” Sean said gravely. “Do you think he became confused about the legend, Stuart? Wanted to keep the woman he loved forever?”

  “Send for Constable Poole.” Stuart’s face was ravaged with pain.

  “You’re sure?” Sean whispered.

  “Yes,” Stuart rasped. “Jamie won’t understand…being hanged, perhaps there’ll be another way to end this for him…” His voice choked into a sob.

  And more tears filled my eyes. Sean swung me into his arms. “Shh. You’re safe now, lass.”

  I shook my head and buried my face against him. I couldn’t stem the flow of tears as he, limping without his cane, carried me from the room.

  “Sean, you’ll hurt yourself. I can walk.”

  “I’m fine.” He pulled me tighter. Even in my distraught state, I could tell he was far from fine. Without his cane, his stride hitched too sharply to be balanced in carrying my weight. He stumbled a little and cursed.

  I buried my face against his neck. “Please, Sean. Just having you with me helps more than anything. Let me walk beside you.”

  He sighed, letting my legs slide down to the dirt floor. Holding me a moment, he dropped his forehead to mine. “Cassie.” Cupping my cheeks in his hands, he pressed his lips reverently to mine. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  A cry from Jamie echoed into the tunnel before I could speak. Sean stepped back and put his arm about my shoulder. “Come. We must hurry.”

  Drawing a breath, I nodded. And we hurried forward, helping each other. The tunnel now flickered with torchlight and the acrid scent of smoke filled the air. Several sharp turns ahead, we met the earl and Sir Warwick coming our way. They were armed with pistols and sported far from their usual bored countenances.

  “You have the lass, thank God,” the earl said.

  “I thought these bloody tunnels were boarded up,” Sean answered harshly.

  “I thought they were too,” said the earl. “Alex appears to be using the caves to sea for some bloody reason. We’ve just come from that way, having met Constable Poole on the beach investigating a report of smuggling.”

  Sir Warwick peered at me. “So you found the wench alive.”

  �
�Her name is Cassie,” Sean said coldly. “Mary’s cousin. Her suspicion that Mary’s death wasn’t an accident has proved true, so you might as well go back and get the constable. We need him.” He turned an angry and disgusted look toward his father. “I wouldn’t go into the Stone Virgins’ burial chamber, Father. Only more consequences to your sins lie there. You never should have passed your used goods onto a groomsman. Jamie would have never ended up as he is.” Sean started walking away, pulling me with him.

  “You don’t know what in the bloody hell you’re talking about,” the earl yelled. I winced at the pain in his voice, and wanted to reach out to him, but Sean had pulled us too far away. “Until you’ve loved and lost, don’t condemn another.”

  Sean stopped in his tracks, but he didn’t turn around to face his father. He looked at me in the flickering light a moment then moved on. Silently, more determined than before, as if he were running from a greater tragedy than what we’d left in the burial chamber.

  He didn’t say anything as we reached the ladder leading from the caves, only urged me up ahead of him into the broken gazebo, then guided me through the shadowed maze. It wasn’t even dark yet. I’d only been with Jamie a short time, but it seemed so much longer. Still, the hedges of the maze loomed so darkly that it felt as if night had descended, a starless, moonless night.

  I shuddered as we emerged to see the sun, a bare sliver of fading hope on the horizon. Squinting, Sean flinched, holding his arm up to block the light as he turned his face from it.

  “You’re in pain.” I pressed my hand to the rough warmth of his shadowed cheek and then to the bandage on his temple. He flinched away from my touch.

  “No more than usual.” His voice sounded strained.