The Devil Wears Tartan

by Karen Ranney

  As the years passed, she’d no doubt grow adept at this communion with herself, but for right now she desperately wished she had a friend with whom to talk. The friend, whoever it might be, would refuse to believe the worst of her. Instead, this friend would insist that she not judge herself so harshly. He would call her curious and stubborn and obstinate and brave. He would be her dearest companion and her lover.

  But he would not be Marshall.

  She poured herself a cup of tea and slowly finished it before replacing the cup on the tray. She folded her hands on her lap and reminded herself that this was where she wanted to be, in Edinburgh, in her aunt’s home, in her room, alone, without her husband.

  Dear God, had she lost her mind?

  Was the day as chilly and damp as it felt? Was there snow on the ground despite the fact that it was summer? In the silence of the room, with only the rattle of the curtain rings and the wind as company, she felt like the hag of winter. Was Mrs. Murray acting as Spring?

  Davina abruptly stood. She’d not sit and mope about Marshall Ross. Instead, she had other things on her mind. More important things, such as how to live the rest of her life without him.

  God, give me the strength to live without him. Give me the strength not to think of him. Not even to pray for him.

  She clasped her hands together, pressing the tips of her fingers against her lips. God would not think such a prayer was evil, would He? If she prayed for Marshall, which necessitated that she think of him, she’d have to worry about him. Worry would keep her restless and awake. If she were awake, she’d long for him, and longing led to yearning, which led to loneliness, and she didn’t think she could bear any more loneliness because of Marshall.

  “Very well, God,” she said somewhat crossly. “If I must pray for him, let me do so like a woman of good works. Who sees a soul in need of assistance. Let me pray for him dispassionately, but kindly, knowing that he can never be more for me than a worn and troubled soul.”

  Let her not worry about whether his visions had come to him again. She had left him to face his demons alone. Worse than that, God, she had created her own demons. They sat upon her headboard and dresser, little imps of angels, shaking their heads at her.

  When she dreamed, it was of him. Marshall, smiling, the few times he’d laughed with such abandon that she’d been charmed. Marshall, riding his great black horse in the fog. Marshall, intent upon his hieroglyphs. Marshall, uncaring of his role in life, unaware that people thought him brilliant and troubled. Marshall, the Devil of Ambrose. How horrid that he’d grown into his soubriquet.

  Days passed, one after the other, inexorably. Each day she awoke at dawn, knowing instantly that she was back in Edinburgh, in her solitary bed. She didn’t bother stretching out her hand as she surfaced from her dreams, knowing that Marshall wasn’t there.

  Perhaps, however, he would come today. Perhaps today was the day he would venture to Edinburgh to rescue her from the folly of her own choosing.

  She’d not wanted the life his mother had endured, and yet what she’d gotten was so much worse.

  Salvation could not be found within a woman’s smile. Absolution could not be brought to him by Davina’s touch. Yet she’d been his talisman for a brief second of time. Somehow, almost miraculously, she’d kept him sane.

  Perhaps he’d been so fascinated with her mind and her wit and the ineffable charm that was hers alone that he’d not spared much thought to himself.

  Had he imagined it all? Not the visions. Not the visitations. But had he dreamed her? For a few blessed weeks, she’d been his wife. Yet he’d not spent a month with her, had he? His time had been equally divided between Egypt and his madness, with only pockets of time for her.

  What woman would tolerate such behavior? Not a woman with spirit, intelligence, and curiosity.

  She had the oddest habits—blinking at him when she didn’t understand something. A look came on her face at the same time, almost as if she were angry about her confusion. She pleated the fabric of her dresses between her fingers, and then patted her skirts.

  She’d left Ambrose without a backward glance.

  Marshall took another sip of the wine and told himself that time would ease her departure. Soon he would be unable to remember her face, or the surprising color of her eyes. There would come a time in the next few weeks when she was erased slowly, yet completely, from his memory. He would soon be hard-pressed to recall his bride.

  She would be relegated only to memory.

  What was his life going to be like then? Would it fall into the same predictable pattern as before his wedding? Or would there come a day when he simply couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore? When there was nothing left of him but regret, remorse, and the bitter dregs of his anger?

  She might be with child. She might not be, necessitating that he visit her. Either consequence added complication to his life.

  What if his madness was inherited and not the result of the massive amounts of opium he’d been forced to take? What if he’d doomed a child of his to the same fate?

  Sunlight spilled over his elbow, dancing up his sleeve. If he turned, he would see a perfect Scottish sky, blue skies, white fluffy clouds, and perhaps, far off in the distance, the approaching signs of a storm.

  Or perhaps the storm would dissipate before it reached him, and a clear moonlit sky would be the accompaniment to his troubled dreams. Whichever it was, fair and temperate, or stormy, he might not be aware of any of it. Perhaps he’d be too occupied with his memories of Davina, or too mired in his madness to even note the weather.

  If she were not with child, he’d have to make a choice, wouldn’t he? Never to see her again or summon her to Ambrose as he would a doxy, bed her, and send her away once more.

  Or he might venture to Edinburgh, and take his madness to her.

  He leaned his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. Could he bear that? To see her and to leave her again?

  “Marshall?”

  He opened his eyes to see her standing in front of him covered in blood, her hands outstretched, her expression one of confused horror.

  “No. Please, no.”

  The sound of his denial was absorbed into the walls, the carpet, and the ceiling itself. Some force he could not see reached out and tore the sound of her name from his throat, until there was nothing left but a whisper.

  “I didn’t hurt her.”

  Yet fate or nature or God laughed, the sound so loud that he clamped his hand over his ears.

  I did not harm her! he shouted in the silence of his mind. Mocking laughter was his only response.

  She’d not been in China. She was not one of the ones he’d had to choose.

  He heard her voice, soft and sweet, but with an edge to it that he’d come to expect.

  “Marshall,” she said softly. “Why?”

  The blood dripped from her hands onto the carpet as she advanced on him. Her bare feet trailed in it, gory footprints that led to his chair beside the window.

  She was not shy with her tears now. Until now she’d not cried freely in front of him, even though he suspected she’d wept on more than one occasion. Her pride would not allow her tears, but now pride was gone, and in its place a sorrow so vast, he felt as if he were drowning in it.

  “Go away,” he said gently. “You mustn’t be here.”

  “I believed in you,” she countered sweetly, her tears falling freely. “I did. I believed in you.”

  “That was your fallacy, Davina. I warned you.”

  Moans from his victims, multiple screams in the background mixed with the blue and white air to create his own magical world of hell. He might remain here for the rest of his life, his mind tortured, his spirit nullified until it was nothing more substantial than chilled air.

  But Davina was possessed of a stubborn nature. She was a champion of lost causes, and as she stretched out her bloody hands to him, he wanted to warn her that proximity to him would only taint her more. She’d
become the most grisly of his visions.

  “I believed in you,” she said yet again. Should he add her disillusionment to his litany of horrors?

  He knew, in some far-off part of his mind that still functioned like Marshall Ross, that what he was seeing was not truly real. His shadow visitors in all their gore and despair were simply his memories given motion and impermanent substance. Peter, Matthew, Richard, Paul, Rogers, Thomas, all of them had once looked exactly as he saw them now. He’d seen the blood and the pain, heard their screams, and witnessed their agony. He’d been privy to the moment of their deaths.

  Each time one of them died, he’d felt the loss, his soul turning blacker, his spirit sagging in defeat. He’d saluted their courage as he’d condemned his own cowardice. And still they came for him and tested him, and laughed when he begged, and when he cried, and when he pleaded for them to kill him instead.

  But he’d never seen Davina this way, never witnessed her bleeding, and never seen her cry.

  “Go away, Davina.”

  But the specter refused to budge. Instead she walked slowly closer to him, and he realized her skin was marred by a thousand tiny pinpricks, and she bled freely from each one.

  “Did I do that to you?” he asked helplessly, reaching out both hands to brush against hers. How delicate a hand it was, how fine. He could barely feel her on his fingertips, and yet the memory of her was there, soft and warm and alive. “I’m killing you.”

  She knelt beside him and placed one hand on his knee. He could feel the heat of her touch through his clothing, as if she attempted to warm him somehow with her spirit, with the essence of her.

  “Leave me,” he commanded, but despite the nature of the order, his words were gently said, his tone tender. Despite the harm he’d already done to her, he wanted no further pain to come to Davina.

  She shook her head from side to side, a soft smile lifting her lips.

  “If I could only cause you to smile for more than a moment,” he said.

  She began to laugh, and then her skin suddenly melted, simply slid from her body to pool on the floor. In seconds, Davina was gone, and in her place was a hideous creature that bore no resemblance to her. Pieces of flesh dripped from the bones, stretched and elongated until they filled his entire field of vision. Her smile turned feral, sharp-toothed, and cruel. This creature dressed in Davina’s clothing stood and waved its arms at him. He could hear the clank of the bones rubbing against each other.

  He could not survive this.

  Daniel was there. Daniel, with his smile and his habit of saluting smartly whenever Marshall looked in his direction. Daniel, who’d been his boyhood friend, and with whom he’d gotten inebriated on heather ale on more than one occasion. Jacobs had said good-bye to Daniel at the front steps of Ambrose, reluctant to let his only grandchild leave for the Queen’s duty.

  What had Marshall said to the valet then? Something reassuring, no doubt. He was good with parents and grandparents. He’d probably said something idiotic about Daniel looking back on this adventure as the beginning of a long and distinguished career.

  Daniel had died in agony, and Marshall had been powerless to do anything but listen to his screams. Now Daniel the ghost, the specter, and, in an odd way, Marshall’s protector, raised his scimitar and sliced off the ghoul’s head, leaving only a body. For long moments its blood continued to flow from the gaping wound in the neck until the monster fell to its knees and then to its back, dead.

  Marshall was going to be violently sick.

  But it was not done, as it was never done. It was never done until he was insensate, until he was unconscious.

  Let it be over soon. Let him simply not draw breath anymore. He was in the throes of it now. Feeling all the things he should not be feeling, experiencing every single infinitesimal moment of it. His feet were damp with blood. His cheeks marked with smears of it. There was a handprint on his knee where Davina had knelt. His stomach was sour, and he prevented himself from becoming sick only by will. There was a pain in the middle of his forehead as sharp as a spear, and he flattened his hand against the skin there to ensure that a weapon did not, in fact, protrude from his skull.

  He shouldn’t be able to hear the voices, but he heard all the tongues clacking together like finger bones, whispers like insects jostling together in a dark closet. He could see and feel and hear, until this was real and the other, that life at Ambrose, his marriage to Davina, and his besottedness, all of that was only a dream.

  Garrow Ross accepted the letter from the footman with some impatience. He opened it and stood smiling as he read the contents. His factor had received a very large sum of money from the man waiting to see him.

  “Show the captain in,” he commanded the young man.

  As Captain Mallory of the Nanking entered his office, Garrow strode across the room with his hand outstretched.

  “I am delighted to see you, Captain,” he said. “I trust you had no difficulties on your voyage?”

  The captain removed his hat and stood, feet braced apart as if the floor of Garrow’s library was the rolling deck of a ship. “No difficulty at all, sir.”

  “I see that it was a very profitable voyage,” Garrow said. His share alone had been equal to six months of opium production.

  “Very profitable, and so easy that none of our preparations was needed.”

  “It never hurts to be prepared, however,” Garrow said. “The cannon are necessary in case the British become even more intrusive.”

  He moved to the desk, extracted his journal, and retrieved his pen. Glancing up at the captain, he asked, “How many on this voyage?”

  “Four hundred thirty. Only lost fifty in the crossing. Mostly women. The men are always heartier.”

  “But the women command a greater price,” Garrow said. “At least the virgins.”

  Garrow carefully wrote the number in his journal and then placed it on the desk. Later he would tuck it back into its hiding place.

  “It’s time we moved to another port,” he said, handing the captain a sheet of instructions. “You’ll find a list of names there of men who are suitably interested in our venture.”

  Captain Mallory smiled. “Pretty soon coolies will be all over the world. Not a place you can go and not find one.”

  “Then perhaps I should consider what we’re doing to be a benefit of sorts,” Garrow said. “We’re spreading Chinese culture.”

  Captain Mallory began to laugh, a great, booming laugh that, no doubt, carried through his house. Garrow didn’t bother to quiet the man. Instead he rang for his majordomo, who would escort the captain from his house.

  Garrow had another, more pressing, appointment with Theresa, snug and content, for the moment, in his bed upstairs.

  Chapter 24

  Nora stood at the entrance to Davina’s chamber staring at her.

  After a moment, Davina frowned.

  “What is it, Nora?”

  For nearly three weeks, Nora had been careful to be obsequious. She rarely spoke unless addressed, and Davina no longer confided in the maid. Yet, for all their distance from each other, they still had a bond—that time at Ambrose.

  Now the girl didn’t answer, merely stepped aside, revealing Jim.

  Davina placed her book on the table, removed her spectacles, and stared at the young man as if he were one of Marshall’s visions.

  “Jim? What are you doing here?”

  For one bright and shining moment, she thought he might have accompanied Marshall. Or had come on Marshall’s behalf. But the young man looked so agitated that any hope was immediately dashed, only to be replaced by dread.

  “What is it, Jim?” she asked, more sharply than she intended.

  “Your Ladyship,” Jim began, and then hurriedly pulled off his soft woolen cap, clutching it between both of his hands. “Your Ladyship, there is trouble at Ambrose. The earl, he’s being taken away.”

  “Taken away?” A hand reached in and squeezed her heart. Davina stood, as if st
anding better prepared her for bad news.

  Jim squeezed his hat and then pulled at it with both hands. The young man stood with his head downcast, his shoulders slumped, almost as if he feared she’d take a whip to him for such bad news.

  “He hasn’t been the same since you left, Your Ladyship,” he said, his words so soft that she had to strain to hear him. “He stopped talking, and he never comes out of that room. Jacobs says the earl doesn’t even blink, just keeps staring at the wall.”

  Her heart was not beating now. The pain in her chest made it difficult to breathe. Or was that simply grief she felt, so sudden and torturous that she didn’t think she could speak?

  “Jacobs says that sometimes days go by before he eats anything. It’s just like China.”

  Marshall. There, a cogent thought. Dearest Marshall. Dear God, Marshall.

  Jim looked at her, finally, his eyes troubled.

  “He won’t see me, Your Ladyship. He won’t see anyone.”

  He shook his head, his gaze once more fixed on the floor.

  “What do you mean, taken away?” Words were possible, after all.

  “I overheard the housekeeper, Your Ladyship. She has orders to send him away. To where they put crazy people.”

  “Whose orders?” Her hands clutched at her skirts, and for once she didn’t care. Let the fabric become hopelessly wrinkled. Let her be slovenly and unkempt, unladylike and scandalous.

  Did it matter?

  “It was Mrs. Murray who sent word to the earl’s uncle. Said the earl wasn’t fit to be around normal people no more.”

  “Did she?” How odd that she was cold. The day was a temperate one, but she felt like ice invaded her veins, coated her eyelashes, and turned her lips blue. She was the hag of winter.

  “I heard what she planned to do, and I knew I couldn’t let them send him away.”

  He looked at her, his blue eyes troubled. “I know there’s something not quite right with the earl, Your Ladyship. But he’s a good man, all the same.”