The stranger stands straighter and mutters, “I apologize for the late hour. It couldn’t be helped.”
Roan cannot see the face beneath his hood.
Maudley tosses his cane up and catches it in the middle. “Who are you? Why do you disturb the sleep of my guests?”
The man bows his head. “I have a letter here.” And he produces the scraps of one from a coat pocket, while pushing back his hood. Roan cannot help but stare. He is a giant, with a rough, no-nonsense face; a coarse, uneven scar runs the length of it, from his forehead, down across his nose, over to the right tip of his mouth, dissecting both lips and his jawline. If ever Roan were to guess at what a sword scar looks like, his would be it.
The man catches her staring and she averts her gaze. She does not like the look of this man. He has seen violence.
Maudley reads the letter twice, looks over the man and his attire, and then checks it again. At last, he sighs.
“Well, your timing could have been better. But you look well up to the job, Mr. Cage. Welcome to Mill House.”
The giant—Mr. Cage—nods his head. “Just Cage. I insist.”
“Well… Cage. Andrew will see you to your sleeping quarters. We shall have proper introductions in the—”
“What the blazes is going on?” Emma’s voice rings through the gatehouse hall, shrill yet sleepy. “Why is everyone up? And without me? Are we having an adventure?”
She stops in her tracks when she sees Cage.
“Lord almighty. Are we housing trolls now?”
Cage’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t know this was a whorehouse,” he snaps, eyeing Emma and Roan, both of them in their gowns.
“Now, really—” Maudley begins, and Rapley steps forward, fist raised.
“Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?” Emma snaps. “Great big oaf like you’d be lucky to have a girl as fine as the likes of us! Stranger in the house too, appearing at night, dressed all in black like a nightcrawler!” Roan blanches. “Men like you think you can walk all over the girls, but girls have strong teeth and loud voices! Men should show respect, for are we not your mothers? Shame on you!”
Cage has the decency to look rebuked, as much as a giant like him can look rebuked. He closes his mouth and looks to Maudley. “I apologize. But I am a man of learning, and women are a distraction. I’m here for one purpose and one purpose only.”
Emma folds her arms. “And what might that be?”
“To teach a cripple so he may be of some use to the world.”
Roan stops Emma in time, else Cage’s already-scarred face might have felt the cut of her nails. She yells unintelligible curses, her arms flailing.
“Calmly,” Roan murmurs. “Let us leave these—men—to it.”
“Men and their bleeding tongues,” Emma mutters, turning away with one last scathing look at the new arrival. She hurries up the stairs, but Roan hangs back in the shadows.
“Come,” Maudley says at last. “Andrew, show Mr.—show Cage to his quarters. There is work to do in earnest tomorrow.”
Andrew nods and then looks at Roan where she hides and offers her a conciliatory smile. “This way, sir,” he tells the giant. When the giant complies, Rapley leaves through the gatehouse, seemingly determined to return to the storm on the ragged mountain. Roan turns to leave, but catches the sound of Rapley’s voice and glances back. Rapley is in the dark, and Maudley is close by. Neither sees Roan.
“It’s a mistake,” Rapley says in a low, dangerous voice. “Allowing one such as he into a house with two ladies present.”
Maudley waves a hand. “I must educate the boy, Rapley. He needs a purpose. What else would you have me do?”
Roan turns away, feeling out of place to hear such a conversation between father and adopted son. Still, curiosity compels her to linger.
“He is dangerous,” Rapley says. “It is a mistake.”
“To bed with you.” Maudley waves an arm. “Or to your night. What can I do to stop you?”
Rapley catches sight of Roan where she stands in the shadows of the staircase, his slate eyes drawing her in. She feels herself open, the barriers inside dissolving. He looks sharply away.
“Good night, then,” he says, and leaves as if he never were there, closing the gatehouse door behind him.
Maudley sighs, and when he turns, he too catches sight of her. “He has been my adopted son for many years. And I do not understand him one bit.”
Chapter 10
NAKED
Roan wipes her pen and puts it down. She is heart-sore and overtired of empty words. Nothing she can write will ever mean anything. Her father is gone, simple as that. She will never know why he couldn’t love her. She will never understand why he barred her from her inheritance and sent her to this desolate place without a friend or distraction in sight.
Had he wanted her to suffer? Useless questions.
A flash of anger bursts within and she throws her near-empty ink pot across the room. It hits the wall with a crack and then rolls under the bed.
The room stifles and she paces back and forth. Her bodice sits tightly, pressing down on her hips and bruising her ribs. With a curse, she storms to her desk, removes the small knife she always carries, and begins hacking blindly at the laces behind her. One by one, they come apart, including much of her dress; she does not care.
Laces cut, she pulls and rips until she is free of the cage, and much of her morning top. Her skirt still intact, she shoves it off, crinoline too, until she stands naked in the confines of the room.
She inhales, and though her ribs complain, they finally expand enough to allow her a lungful of oxygen. Freedom.
She laughs, startles herself into silence, and laughs again.
With abandon, she removes the pins and braids from her hair until it falls free and wild down her back. She slides her fingers along her scalp, relishing the sensation—relishing her skin—and then slips back onto the chair. She picks up her quill, realizes she has no ink, and—with a derisive chuckle—scratches Good-bye into the paper. She grins at the letter for less than a second before reaching forward, opening the window, and throwing it into the night.
And she sees him.
He sits alone, still as stone, white shirt glowing in the moonlight and mist. Tonight, for the first time, there is no storm. He is below her, sitting on a mossy rock. She frowns down at him, keeping an eye on the sheet of paper, which floats like a whisper, landing several feet away from him, hidden in the heather. Like his shirt, it glows.
He is magnetic, there in the moonlight. He confuses her. He is most likely the heir to this property, to all Dr. Maudley owns. He is, by all accounts, wealthier than anyone she has ever known or heard of. And yet he dresses without finery, he wears boots caked in mud. He spends nights out in the wilderness, come storm or frost, and not a jacket or covering in sight. His manners leave much to be desired, and he has insulted her more than once—she might be a scullery maid for all his rough treatment of her.
Yet here he sits beneath her window, almost as though guarding her.
Or perhaps not guarding her at all. Perhaps guarding the mountain from her. She recalls how he warned her off it with such ferocity. As if the mountain were his own personal playground.
Well.
He does not get to claim the mountain as his territory. She is a wolf and will claim a stake for her own.
She leans farther out, hair falling forward, trying to see if he is writing or perhaps whittling wood. Trying to see what could possibly induce him to sit so steadfastly. But he is doing nothing. No—she sees now.
His hands are clasped as if in prayer.
Roan recoils like the instinct of withdrawing her hand from a flame.
An image—a memory—rips free. She clenches her fist, but the sudden recollection of her father cannot be stopped. It is as though he stands before her at this very moment. She can smell the parsnip soup on his breath.
i am little
he is angry
&
nbsp; standing over me
praying
shouting
“S I N F U L—”
“No!”
“—S H A M E F U L—”
“Please!”
“—C H I L D !”
She grabs her hair.
his face stark in the dim light
his ocean eyes
now pitch-dark as coal
“R E P E N T !”
i scream
he is all sharp edges
“Go away, Father!”
a blow.
“S I N N E R !
R E P E N T !”
a cry.
“REPENT, FILIA DIABOLI!”
“Please,” Roan screams. “No! Father, no!”
She shakes her head and the images vanish. She peers around, confused—and sees that Rapley is on his feet, looking at her. Staring. Frowning. Teeth bared.
She cannot move.
He doesn’t move.
After a long time, or maybe a mere second, Roan flinches and backs away, grabbing at the tatters of her dress and holding them against her.
He saw… He saw.
Not just her nakedness, but her fear.
And that is infinitely worse.
“More like theology,” Seamus says.
It is the next day, and they are sitting in Roan’s bedroom, Emma beside her, and Seamus and Andrew on the opposite bed.
Emma frowns. “Theology?”
“The study of faith,” Roan mutters.
“How useless,” Andrew says, grinning. She grins back.
“I know,” Emma snaps. “But why? You don’t want to be a priest?”
Seamus shrugs. “It’s not like I can really do anything with what I learn, but it’s fascinating! Besides. We talk about things not strictly related to theology, like apparitions, the secret powers of the human mind, and the like.”
Emma crosses herself and mutters a blessing. “I don’t like the look of him. You should have seen how he arrived, Seamus! Banging on the door at God’s own hour. No holy man would do that.”
Andrew laughs. “Is it a sin to disturb your sleep, Miss O’Brien?”
“Too right, it is!”
“I should like to sit in on one of these classes,” Roan says, her attention piqued, but not for the same reasons that Seamus might suspect. No. Since the moment the man with the scarred face arrived, something about him has bothered her.
Seamus is all aglee. “I shall ask him!”
“Thank you.”
Let her hear the man—Cage—talk. Let her study him and see what face that leer is hiding.
Roan is glad of Emma’s wagging tongue.
Peculiarly, she feels as if she might be a puppet master, so well does Emma rant and rage with words close to those Roan herself might have chosen. Her Irish temper and wild hair, which has not been confined for some time, have the effect of theatrics, and Roan is well entertained. Cage stands before her somewhat subdued, which Roan likes best of all.
“Because she is a woman? That is the answer you give, you stiff-faced carbuncle!”
Cage’s lips thin, much the same as Rapley’s do when restraining anger.
“Miss… Miss. The studies I teach are for your brother, young Master O’Brien and he alone.”
Emma snorts. “Master O’Brien, is it? Why should your snobbery be for him alone and not I? Do I not possess the same blood as he? Yet for my breasts you halt?”
Cage turns his head away, his neck straining with a blush furious as furies. “I tell you again, it is for him alone.”
Roan grows hot. Capricious idiot.
“Capricious idiot!” Emma barks, and Roan jerks so violently that both glance at her.
“I am well,” she says. “But I insist I learn. What lies and falsehoods might you otherwise be telling our… young Master O’Brien?”
Cage’s nostrils flare and Roan smiles, though she still quakes with the rush of her forced manipulation upon Emma. Stop now. Do not be weakened.
“I am a man of God,” Cage says severely, and this is no pretense of offense.
Soft there, are we?
“Are you, now? And which God do you grovel before?”
“Slattern!” Cage bursts, then snorts through those flared nostrils like an animal.
Roan laughs, though Emma’s mouth falls open.
“Brute of a man!” Emma yells. “To claim the working of God and then to rebuke thus with such low words! Fie! Cumberwold!”
Cage steps close to Roan, his voice low. “I will not teach the likes of you. You have a devil’s touch, and the subtlety with it of a stampeding herd.”
Emma spits at the ground and turns on her heel. Though, peculiarly, as she leaves the room, she suddenly shies to the left as if something had surprised her. Roan follows, feeling Cage stare at her back as she walks away. She shudders.
Roan wakes with a scream on her lips, but catches it before it escapes. Her body heaves with sickness, but she does not vomit. Disoriented and dizzy, she staggers to her feet, but the earth tilts and she is
down
again in seconds.
She has been somewhere dark, somewhere alone and wrong. Things were upside down, sideways—nothing made sense. But no.
She hadn’t been alone. Something had been there with her.
Something beastly.
She can still smell traces of it around her.
It takes her a moment to realize that she isn’t breathing, that she can’t breathe, so she rolls over, hunching her back, her fingers digging into something black and soft. Earthy.
Breathe.
Her mind screams, and with a mighty effort, she d r a g s air into her lungs like hauling a mule backward by the tail.
Steps to her right startle her so much that she tries to move away, but succeeds only in kicking out with her feet.
“Roan?”
The voice is low and graveled, unused.
She stills, her vision hazy, her lips and tongue so heavy she can’t speak, can only, finally, breathe.
She can hear herself panting.
There is movement, and she is off the ground, away from the cold and moving through the air. Everything smells of bracken and rain.
This is not her bedroom.
Somewhere in her fogged-up brain, she knows someone is carrying her, but nothing matters beyond the fact that she is off the mountain. She is no longer touching it, and she can breathe easier for it.
Time passes, darkness rises, and then she is awake again. The sky is an inky blackness above. A warm blanket has been wrapped around her so that she is cocooned from the mountain and the air. Beside her, a warm fire crackles into the heath.
“Hnnn,” she moans. “Mmm…”
Someone touches her head, and she knows it is Rapley. She can feel his presence beside her as surely as she had the day he grabbed her by the arms and then flung her away. And then the day he had almost killed her and delivered his dire warnings as well.
“R…” She licks her lips. “Rapley?”
He comes into focus, his eyes sharp beneath his heavy brows. He stares at her intently, his lips curved down so that he looks older than he is.
She tries to sit up, but her arms are bound in the cocoon. Instead, she lies back and rolls onto her side. She does not yet want to be released from the warmth.
After a moment, she looks up at him. He is no longer looking at her. He stokes the fire with an expressionless face, but Roan can see the tightness in his neck and shoulders.
“I found you on the mountain, not twenty paces from the house. You were in your nightdress. No shoes, no jacket.” He looks at her then. “What were you thinking of?”
Her thoughts fog. “I…”
“Did I not warn you? Did you not understand when I said that the mountain is dangerous?” His voice rises as he continues. “Did I not say that the mountain was not kind in darkness?”
She scrunches up her eyes. “Stop yelling.”
“I’m not—” He breaks
off, lowering his voice. “I am not yelling. I simply wish you to understand and stop being petulant.”
Roan does sit up then, fighting with the blanket to free her arms. “First of all, I woke up there. I don’t know how it happened. And secondly, you go out into the mountain every night! I’ve seen you!”
Suddenly she recalls he has seen her naked and afraid…
“What I do is none of your concern—”
“Right you are,” she snaps. “And what I do is none of yours.”
He throws a stick into the fire. “It is not the same!”
“Why? Because I am a woman? I have two legs same as you!”
“Because you don’t have to!” His words carry for miles.
They stare at each other for long moments, each breathing heavily.
Roan swallows, trying to keep her rage away. “What do you mean?”
“It is none of your concern,” he repeats. “But you should heed a warning freely given. Avoid the mountain. By God, I would if I could.”
He looks at her but does not seem to see her. His eyes blaze, but she senses he is looking within now, to somewhere far away or long gone. His gaze drifts, then suddenly snaps to hers again.
He mutters a curse and turns to stalk away from her. She senses his proximity, but the mists swallow him up so thoroughly he might as well have vanished.
When she has the strength, Roan quenches the fire, leaves the blanket folded neatly beside it, and heads back toward Mill House.
She turns, sensing a presence she assumes to be Rapley’s, and finds the dark silhouette of the ram looking down at her.
got you
This is not a life.
This is a life sentence.
Such wild land! The ground is thick with mud the color of a pigeon’s wing, and the mountains are so vast and grim that I feel as if I had stepped into a tale of fairies and wild little men! How mother would laugh could she see me now, like a vagabond!
Teeth in the Mist Page 8
