“I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling.
Tatiana began to pull on her magic to help calm the girl, but found nothing. She hid her gasp behind a cough and worked to keep the mask of calm and control on her face. “It’s all right. You are naturally distressed. Take your time,” Tatiana carefully kept her voice steady and smooth.
The girl nodded and in a moment continued. “I’m sorry, my lady, one of them what's… who was injured,” she said, correcting herself, “is my sister.”
“I’m very sorry.” Tatiana paused. “You believe the man is using magic to harm these girls?”
“I knows it, my lady. M’sister, my sister, said that she had to go to him. She said something made her go. She didn’t want to, but she had no choice. Her body just moved.”
“I see.”
“He… he raped her once he had her in his house, and… and..” the girl faltered once again.
“Take your time.”
She nodded and pressed a hand to her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut. “He beat her and cut her. Her face... her face is… And then he left her in the woods.”
“She was found,” Tatiana prompted.
The girl nodded. “My neighbor found her and brought her home. She’s… she’s hurt so…”
“I understand. She’s very lucky to be found.”
The girl just nodded again. “You’ve got to stop him, my lady. You’ve got to! He’s using magic to lure girls in and then…” she blurted out.
“Yes, I understand. I will do all I can to stop this man, I assure you. I will stop him.” She didn’t know how, but she would.
Chapter Twenty
HOW ARE THE children doing?” Uncle Kit asked as soon as Kate joined him in the library.
“It’s just incredible,” she answered with true enthusiasm and happiness. “They’ve improved so much. Little Ewan is crying to get up out of bed!”
Uncle Kit laughed. “Well, it shouldn’t be too long before we allow him to do so.”
“I told him he could play quietly there until you or Aunt Vallentyn gave him permission to get up. Jamie is happy reading.”
“And Caroline?”
“Enjoying the company of her new doll.”
Uncle Kit shook his head. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“Absolutely!”
His expression, however, lost its joy quickly. “Unfortunately, the children’s health did come at a cost. That’s why I called you in here.”
“Oh? Aunt Vallentyn’s powers?” Kate asked. It was best to ignore or tiptoe around the problem altogether with her aunt, but Uncle Kit was more pragmatic than that.
He nodded. “She has a petitioner.”
“Oh dear!” This was very bad news! Kate was sure they’d all hoped not to receive one for a good long time—at least until Aunt Vallentyn had figured out what could be done about her lack of magic.
“Indeed. I told her, depending on what was needed, that either you or I might be able to handle the situation. She wasn’t happy with the idea, but truly she has no alternative.”
“You or I, sir?” Kate’s mind started spinning. She may be asked to solve a magical problem? To right a wrong or fix some magic that had gone awry? She didn’t think she had that sort of power. Granted, she was rather strong for a Vallen, but to correct someone else’s mistake? “I honestly don’t know that I have the ability,” she admitted.
“We’re going to have to pray that you do. Or, if it’s some magic that needs to be undone, I can step in and handle it.”
“So you don’t know what is needed?”
“No. She’s meeting with the woman…”
Even as he said it, Aunt Vallentyn came into the room looking haggard and worried. She looked as if she was holding back tears.
“What is it, my love,” Uncle Kit asked, immediately going to her. “What does this woman need?”
Aunt Vallentyn stopped for a moment to rest her head against her husband’s shoulder. He ran a soothing hand up and down her back while she gathered herself.
With an audible breath, she pulled herself upright. “There’s a rapist using his magic to lure girls into his home. He disfigures them and leaves them for dead in the wood nearby. Three have died; two are hanging on to life by a thread.”
Kate gasped at the horror so succinctly described by her aunt. “But that’s terrible! He cannot be allowed…”
“And are you going to stop him?” Tatiana cut her off.
Kate was silent for a moment as she took in her aunt’s harsh words. If she could do this, if she could stop this man, then her aunt would be reliant upon her until the Seventh was of age to become the next high priestess; until the babe within her aunt’s womb was twenty–one years old.
This was just what Sir Arthur had asked her to do—to stay and help her aunt in any and all ways she could.
Kate might never have the opportunity to have a life and husband of her own, but she could make herself even more indispensable to her aunt—if she could stop this man. At this point, she honestly had no other option.
Kate raised her chin up a notch. “Yes. I am.”
FOR ABOUT THE sixth time, Aunt Vallentyn turned toward Kate as their carriage sped toward Weymentyng. She didn’t say anything because of the young woman who shared the cramped space with them, but then she didn’t need to. She had said enough to Kate the night before.
If anyone should suspect that she didn’t have the ability to stop this man, her aunt had said, she would be finished as head priestess. The Vallen would be finished as a race. All those with even the smallest tendency to use their magic for ill would come out of the woodwork. She had even gone so far as to imply that their entire society would be at an end, but Uncle Kit, always the voice of reason had just laughed at her.
Kate, however, believed her. Or at least that Aunt Vallentyn believed her words were true. That was enough. If Aunt Vallentyn believed the world would end if anyone found out that she didn’t have the power to control the Vallen, then no one had better find out the truth.
Her aunt’s look this morning told her all this as well as any number of other threats. Kate didn’t even want to think about it. She just nodded her head and turned to look out the window.
No one would find out that Lady Vallentyn, the high priestess, hadn’t stopped this man. Ever.
Assuming Kate was capable of stopping him herself. It was true that she was a strong Vallen, but she most certainly wasn’t nearly as powerful as the high priestess. She just had to pray that the rapist wasn’t either.
DAGONET WAS SURPRISED to see Lord Vallentyn at the breakfast table before him. Usually his lordship joined him after seeing to any pressing business. The ladies, he supposed, broke their fast in their rooms.
“Good morning, my lord,” Dagonet greeted his host.
Lord Vallentyn didn’t seem to have heard him for he continued to stare off into the hearth as if it held all of the answers to his life’s problems. His fork was raised halfway to his mouth, but it too seemed to have been forgotten. The man just sat there like a statue.
Dagonet helped himself to a hearty steak and some kippers before sitting to the right of his host. A woman in a starched apron came in as the footman placed a sharp knife next to Dagonet’s plate so that he could cut his meat. A fierce frown cover the woman’s elderly face—the housekeeper if Dagonet wasn’t mistaken.
“My lord,” the woman said.
When he didn’t respond, she said it again, this time nearly shouting into this ear.
He jumped. “Oh! Mrs. Worth, I didn’t see you.”
“Didn’t hear me either,” she said, giving him a pointed look.
“Er, no. My apologies. May I help you with something?” he asked, finally putting down his fork, the food on it still uneaten.
“I’m just wanting to know if her ladyship and Miss Kate will be back in time for dinner.”
Lord Vallentyn frowned, but quickly cleared the expression from his worried face. “Yes, I’m certain that they will be.”
The woman nodded and left the room, her task complete.
But Dagonet was confused. “Have Lady Vallentyn and Miss Cherington gone some where?” He asked cutting into the steak on his plate.
“To deal with that rapist in Weymentyng,” Lord Vallentyn responded, the frown returning.
“What?” Dagonet stood, his own breakfast forgotten. “They went alone?”
“Yes.” His host pursed his lips together, clearly not happy with his own answer. “They were gone by the time I got up. Tatiana has always had to see to these things herself. It is a duty she takes very seriously.”
“But a rapist!” Dagonet nearly shouted. His could feel his blood beginning to race, as if it were he who was facing this threat and not Kate and Lady Vallentyn.
“Listen, Dagonet, I don’t like this any more than you do, but Tatiana…” he started, his tone and volume matching Dagonet’s. He paused to calm himself down. “Tatiana is the high priestess. She is extremely powerful and even more headstrong. She has trained for this position her entire life. It’s her duty. It’s… it is who she is. I knew that when I married her.” He got up and walked to the window. “Sometimes you just have to trust them. You have to allow them… If I stopped her, I would be telling her that I thought she was weak, incapable. I can assure you, she is anything but.
Dagonet shook his head and looked down at the knife still in his hand. “I wouldn’t have the strength to allow my wife to do that.”
Vallentyn turned around, an unhappy smile on his face. “You learn.”
Dagonet’s mind spun with Vallentyn’s words, but then fell like a child’s toy when he came back to the fact’s of this instance. “Lady Vallentyn may be the high priestess, but just now she is not the most powerful Vallen. Without her powers it is Kate alone who will be facing this!”
“I know,” his lordship said turning back toward the window.
“And you are going to do nothing?” Dagonet couldn’t believe the man could be so callous.
Lord Vallentyn spun around. “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got a wife who insists that she and my niece can handle this and three very sick children in the house who need an adult with them.”
Fury engulfed Dagonet. “And you’ve got a niece who you just handed over to a rapist! A man who…”
“I know what he does!”
“Then why the hell aren’t you doing something about it?” he said, driving home his words by stabbing the knife into the table.
Vallentyn just looked at the knife incredulously as it stood straight up from the table.
“If you will do nothing, I will see to the women,” Dagonet said, not waiting for an answer. He strode from the room calling for his horse. How he wished he had his sword with him! He needed a weapon. He had his magic, but he didn’t have faith that it was strong enough. No. He needed a sword. He doubled back to the dining room.
Lord Vallentyn was still staring at the knife.
“I need a sword,” Dagonet said without preamble.
Vallentyn looked up, confused for a moment. He then burst to life. “In the attic. I put away a number of them which had been hanging on the walls for years,” he said, as he led the way up the stairs.
The two men ran up the three flights of stairs and then up a much narrower one that led from the end of the third floor up to the abbey’s attics.
Tucked away in an old trunk were the three weapons. Dagonet chose the one that looked to be in the best shape and hefted it into his hand. The balance was good, the hilt not too ornate. He could use this.
Lord Vallentyn handed him a belt in which to carry it.
His horse was just being brought around to the front of the house as they reached the front door. With a tight cinch of the belt, he mounted his horse. “I’ll be back with ladies before night fall.”
“Good luck—and I don’t mean with the rapist, but with Tatiana,” Vallentyn said, from the steps.
Dagonet gave a nod and then dug his heels into his horse’s flanks.
THE JOURNEY ONLY took three hours, but it felt closer to ten between Aunt Vallentyn’s warning looks and the young woman vacillating between tears and wringing her hands together. They finally reached the village just after mid–morning.
“I know it is imperative that we get there quickly,” Kate said, directing her words to the woman, “but my aunt needs to eat before she can work. In her delicate condition, you understand, it is vital not only for her own health but that of the babe, our future Seventh.”
The woman clearly wasn’t happy with this, but she nodded and directed the carriage driver to the nearest inn.
“I don’t think I could possibly eat at a time like this,” her aunt said quietly for Kate’s ears alone. She didn’t even try to hide her worried expression.
“You must, Aunt Vallentyn. Uncle Kit would be more than upset were you to injure yourself or the babe in any way.”
Her aunt just pursed her lips and nodded.
As soon as Kate was satisfied that her aunt had at least made an attempt to eat something, they emerged from the inn in the center of the little village and walked a little further north, toward the edge of town.
“He lives down there,” the young woman whispered, pointing down to a small alley as if the man could hear her from the other end of the street.
“You…” Aunt Vallentyn began, but stopped when a horse came galloping up to them. The rider was off of its back before the animal had even stopped moving.
“Sir Arthur!”
Her aunt turned on him without a moment’s hesitation. “What are you doing here?”
He paused and looked at her as if she were mad. “I am here to…”
“If you dare say that you are here to take care of this for me I will turn you into something much worse than the adorable little dogs I’ve made of the footmen,” Lady Vallentyn warned the knight.
Sir Arthur turned to Kate. “You cannot agree to this,” he started.
“She has nothing to say to it,” her aunt said. She then turned to the young woman whose head had been following the conversation back and forth as if it were a tennis match. “You may go home to your sister. I’ll take care of this meddling knight and then deal with the man we came for.”
The woman’s eyes grew large and round. “Will you come tell me when he’s been taken care of?”
As Aunt Vallentyn soothed the woman’s fears and concerns, Sir Arthur pulled Kate aside.
“You cannot mean to take on this man yourself,” he said quietly enough so that no one would overhear him.
“I do,” she answered, attempting to appear much more confident than she was actually feeling. Just having Sir Arthur here—the fact that he had ridden at great haste to save her from having to confront this rapist made her heart beat a crazy rhythm.
The fact that was standing very close to her—so close that she needed only to rise onto her toes and her lips would be just next to his—was not helping things either.
He had come to her rescue, her knight. He cared. And she knew without a doubt that she cared for him as well. But now was not the time to explore these feelings. There was a rapist who she needed stop.
She did. Not Sir Arthur.
She had to do this to prove to herself, to her aunt and to her knight that she could fix this. She hadn’t been able to stop her mother from dying, her father from re–marrying or her cousins from being ill, but this, this she had a chance of being able to do something about.
“Kate, you cannot!” the knight protested.
“I can and I will. Was it not you who said only two days ago that I should stand by my aunt, support her and help her in any way I possibly can?”
He shook his head. “Yes, but…”
“That is what I’m doing!”
“I did not mean for you to take on the duties of the high priestess!” he argued.
“But that is who my aunt is.”
“You, however are not!” he looked like he was ready to throttle her, but her ow
n anger was becoming peaked as well.
“No, I’m not. But I am a powerful Vallen. I can do this, and you should not go back on your word, nor ask me to go back on mine. You said I should help her. I am helping her. I’m doing this for you,” Kate said, stepping firmly away from him, even though it tore at her heart. “Go back to Vallentyn, Sir Arthur. We will join you there when this has been taken care of.”
Aunt Vallentyn stepped next to Kate. “Listen to her, Sir Arthur. You are not wanted nor needed here.”
It terrified her to see Sir Arthur ride away, but she was doing the right thing. Kate shored up her flagging confidence and headed down the alley, her aunt following at a slower, steadier pace. If she didn’t do this now, and quickly, she knew she never would do it all.
Chapter Twenty–One
KATE’S SLIPPERS WERE silent on the cobblestone street as she made her way down toward the only house facing the road. The sound of her aunt’s shoes behind her was reassuring and helped move her forward.
About halfway there, she began to feel something. It was an invisible pull, the vague feeling that there was magic in the air. As she got closer, the feeling grew until her skin prickled with it.
It was when the small, ramshackle little house came into sight that Kate began to sense the sticky ropes of magic winding around her. She tried to brush them off, and then pull them off. The more she fought against them, though, the stronger the ropes became. Within moments, her feet moved of their own volition and propelled her ever more quickly toward the house.
She worked to fight the magic and slow her feet but she could do nothing. Her heart pounded as she fought the magic that wound around her. She didn’t want to expend too much energy, but she hated the feeling of being moved against her will.
“Kate! Where do you think you’re going? What are you doing?” Her aunt’s voice called out from behind her.
“I’m caught!” Kate tried to keep the panic from her voice. Her aunt tried to move toward her more quickly, but her bulk slowed her down. “Be careful, there’s a trap, or a web of magic. It’s wrapped itself around me.”
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