by Eve Silver
In the aftermath of the most stirring moments of her life, she knew not what to say, what to do.
Because she wanted to step back in time, step back to the moments past, when he had held her and drawn such passion and sensation from deep within her.
All her life, the most powerful emotion she had known was fear. In essence, her fear had controlled her.
But with Griffin she had discovered something more powerful.
Desire. Ardor. Delight. A fervor so strong, she shook with it still.
“Why did you do this?” she asked, and she was very aware of the sound of her voice, hearing the desperate cadence as though through a muffling fog.
His chest expanded on a slow, deep inhalation.
“Shall I tell you pretty words?” he asked. “Compare your hair to moonbeams and your eyes to the sky? Never trust a man who whispers such pretties as his hand rucks up your skirt and his cock stands to attention.”
The crudeness of his words made her gasp.
He stroked her cheek, such a gentle touch. “Do not look at me so, sweet Beth. I warned you that I am a villain.”
She blinked, unsure of how to reply. He had warned her.
Yet, even his coarse words seemed somehow laced with caring.
He made a low sound. Frustration. With her? She glanced at him, caught his frown.
No, with himself.
“I had no right.” His tone was tight, clipped. “And yet, I could not resist.”
So he had offered such crude advice as a means to hold her at bay. Confounding man.
He turned to the door and had it open in a trice.
“What do you fear, Griffin?” she asked, certain that he did, that he feared something terrible and grave. He had recognized her fear too easily not to have first-hand knowledge of his own. “What shadows and torments gnaw at you in the night? What drives you to despise yourself so?”
He froze in the doorway, the light from the hallway haloing him, a nimbus. The muscles of his back tensed under the impeccably cut cloth of his coat. She thought he would not speak, that he would walk away, leaving her with her kiss-swollen lips and her pounding heart and her dreadful curiosity.
Miss Percy’s mantel clock ticked loudly in the quiet.
Finally, he spoke, the words torn from him, his voice as rough as a metal file.
“I feared that I would become exactly the man I am.” His admission was so soft she could barely hear it.
From his place in the doorway, he looked back at her then. A glance over his shoulder, no more. Enough to let her see the darkness in his soul.
“The truth of it is, Elizabeth... Beth... I have become exactly the monster I feared I could be.”
Chapter Sixteen
Night rolled in like a fog, coming early at this time of year. He stood in the corner of the garden, hidden in the growing shadows of dusk. It had been an easy thing to climb the tree and lower himself to the ground inside the wall. He had done it myriad times before, stood in this exact place, watched the bedroom window on the second floor.
There was a chill in the air this evening, and a scent that was fresh and clean. Fall was full upon them, and soon, winter.
He liked winter. Liked the snow when it fell. Cold and white.
A crimson splash on white snow.
He liked the look of that, fancied himself an artist.
He thought that maybe he would wait for the first snow. For Elizabeth. Beth. She deserved a perfect setting. Pale hair. Porcelain skin. Hot, dark blood spurting over white, white snow.
A surge of excitement raced through him, stimulating, arousing.
Yes, he would wait for the first snow. And in the meantime he would play with her, a cat with a mouse.
His gaze slid to the window on the upper floor. Not to her chamber, but to the larger one that held the little girls. He could see her through the window, overseeing the nightly ritual, a black-clad form with moon-bright hair, moving, gliding. Sometimes she stopped and leaned low. He thought she might be speaking to a child, but from this distance he could not say with certainty.
No matter.
He just liked to watch her. To think of the things they would enjoy together.
Soon. Very soon.
The twilight deepened and the light that shone through the window, a warm glow of candle flame, was rich against the darkening night. She came close and paused by the glass, a silhouette.
He wet his lips, the tip of his tongue sliding to the corner of his mouth. His body thrummed with heat and tension.
With her face close to the glass, she was looking out at the garden. He could see the pale oval of her face.
His breath caught, and a thrill of alarm shot through him.
She was looking at him.
Blood pounding, he froze, then inched back, blending with the shadows.
Of course she could not see him now. Not here in the dark garden. So far, she had seen him only when he let her. She thought him a far different man than he was.
Beth. Beth. His sweet, pretty Beth with her innocent face and her valiant heart, braving all manner of terrors. Oh, he knew all about that. Yes, he did. He had known who she was since the second he saw her and heard her name, though she had looked at him many times now without a spark of recognition.
The irony of finding her here, in Burndale, was poetic.
She was his. She had always been his.
He would not take her yet, though the wait was an agony.
But soon. Soon she would see him in the darkness, know him, know his smell and his touch, the rough stroke of his hand, the sharp kiss of his blade.
Her face turned from the window, and he saw a little girl come to her side. Then she drew the thick curtains, shutting him out. Gone from his sight.
Irritation bloomed. He was not done with her yet. He wanted to watch.
His gaze slid away, to another window, dark and empty.
Beth’s bedroom window.
She liked to leave her curtains open the night through. A smile twisted his lips. So generous of her to invite him to watch.
He had taken the invitation further still, creeping into her room, touching her comb, her pins, her hairbrush. That had been delicious ecstasy. With infinite care he had untangled several silky strands and wrapped them in a square of cloth. Perfect strands, flax pale and curled.
Beneath her pillow he had found her nightdress. Pressing the garment to his nose, he had inhaled her scent, stood there for a moment wrapped in the pleasure of it. With care, he had folded the nightdress one more and placed it exactly where he had found it.
Beth liked things neat and tidy. She liked order. It made him want to laugh. Did she think there was safety in her precious neatness and organization? That by ordering her life she could stave off chaos?
Well, she might delude herself a little longer. Perhaps until the first snow. He would let her live until the first snow.
In the meanwhile, he had taken a little something for himself. A token she would not miss. Not yet. And soon, he would leave her a gift. A small gift.
Slowly, he returned his gaze to the little girls’ window. The curtain remained drawn and after a moment, he turned away.
Setting the toe of his boot to a chink in the wall, he began to climb.
“Soon,” he whispered, a breath, a promise, caught and carried away by the wind. “Soon.”
o0o
Having heard the girls’ evening prayers and seen them to bed, Beth left the dormitory and proceeded along the hallway together with her companion, Miss Eugenia Doyle. She was glad that her evening had been consumed by her duties, glad that she had had little time to think.
But now that she did have time, the events of the day haunted her. She had lost her poise, her rigid control, succumbed to the worst of her terrors.
And she had succumbed to Griffin Fairfax, reveled in his touch, his kiss, kissed him in return with wanton and heated abandon. She was appalled by her behavior, her lack of control, her inability to rule
her emotions.
Melancholy touched her, a heavy weight.
She wanted to believe it was because Griffin had pushed her to acknowledge the fearful, anxious places in her heart. Or because the sensation of his lips on her own, his tongue twined with hers, his body flush against her, had drawn a tide of emotion from her soul that she had not imagined she possessed.
But she knew those evasions for the self-deceptions they were.
Her disheartened and glum mood came not because he had kissed her, but because he had stopped. What sort of woman did that make her?
Warily, she cast an oblique glance at Miss Doyle. Did she know? Could she tell?
No, of course not.
Beth dragged her thoughts away from such dangerous musings.
Moonlight cut through the windowpanes at the far end of the long, drafty corridor, splashing bright lines across the dark floor. The tallow candle Miss Doyle carried sent a pungent odor wafting in its wake and shadows plunging along the walls and hollowed doorways, lending the environs a menacing cast.
A strange, fraught silence hung between them.
In the time that Beth had been about her duties at Burndale Academy, she had made every effort at cordiality with her fellow teachers. Some, like Miss Percy and Mademoiselle Martine, had warmed to her overtures with readiness; others had held themselves aloof. Miss Doyle was such a one, and the past hour spent in her company had effected little change in that circumstance.
Beth found it interesting that Miss Doyle was quite effervescent when in the company of Miss Maclean and Miss Hughes. Three peas in a pod, they were, laughing and gossiping behind their hands. But when Beth drew near, they grew quiet, and she sensed a tense undercurrent she could not explain, one that left her wary and watchful.
The candle flame danced and flickered and Miss Doyle made a nervous little catching noise in her throat. The wind howled, rattling the panes and seeping through unseen cracks on a low, eerie moan. A shiver crawled along Beth’s spine and, irritated, she squelched her wariness.
She must not let fear chase away her common sense. Surely nothing threatening dwelled here at Burndale Academy. True, she had heard things since her arrival, whispered snippets that only stoked any wild imaginings she might conceive, but she had seen no real evidence of evil lingering in these corridors. She had seen shadows move. She had sensed someone watching her. Her nightdress and hairpins had been moved. Taken alone, or even together, none of those things was truly frightening. There was no tangible threat.
Likely, the maid had come and tidied, and in the process moved her hairbrush a little. There was no cause for alarm in that.
Which left only the rumors to fuel her anxious suppositions. Were rumors enough to justify her unease?
Alice’s ramblings of curses and doom, her aspersions against Griffin Fairfax, his own admission of the rumors that dogged him... these were not the only troubling things Beth had heard. She had overheard the other teachers whispering amongst themselves about a maid who had run off from a house in Northallerton. They seemed to place some significance on that, make some connection between the missing girl and Burndale Academy.
She glanced again at the woman who walked at her side.
Catching her gaze, Miss Doyle pursed her lips and said in her high, girlish voice, “Do you have”—she paused, frowned, then brightened and continued—”some hairpins I might borrow until I can go to town on my next half day?”
Beth blinked at the odd request. Pausing at her chamber door, she turned fully toward her companion, noting that every strand of Miss Doyle’s straight nut-brown hair was scraped back from her pale moon face and pinned with neat precision.
How many hairpins did a woman require?
Raising the candle high, Miss Doyle peered back at her. The flame leaped and sputtered. Miss Doyle gestured at the nearly guttered stub.
“I do not like the dark,” she said, and Beth stiffened as she wondered if Miss Doyle had sniffed out her own secrets. But the woman only gave a high, short giggle. “I am forever burning a candle until it is nothing more than a puddle. At night, I do not set pins to extinguish the rush light, but let it burn and burn. Especially now, with...”
She widened her eyes and clicked her tongue against her teeth and let her words trail off, a dire implication that hung unspoken.
Beth was certain then that Miss Doyle knew nothing of her private fears. The woman’s words were a transparent ploy, the trailing insinuation a thinly masked invitation. This interlude in the dark and drafty hallway had little to do with hairpins or candles and everything to do with secrets.
Forcing a polite smile, Beth studied her companion. She was heartily tired of veiled suggestions and overheard snippets.
All the years she had spent trailing behind her father learning the joys of a riddle solved had taught her that a direct inquiry was, at times, the best course. Here Miss Doyle offered a clear opportunity for answers.
“The dark can be unsettling,” Beth agreed. “Or welcoming. I suppose it is a matter of perspective.” She closed her fingers about the door handle, then continued in a voice made soft with an invitation to familiarity. “But tell me, my dear Miss Doyle... is there aught amiss? I cannot help but sense your distress, though you are most brave and stoic in your mien. I have wondered these past days...”
Miss Doyle preened at Beth’s praise, then made a great show of peering along the dim hallway in one direction and then the other, before venturing to whisper, “Do you know of Miss Stillwell?”
The name seemed vaguely familiar.
“Or Miss Bodie-Stuart?”
Beth frowned as the names teased her, tweaking a distinct unease. She drew a short breath as recollection came upon her.
Katherine Anne Stillwell. Helen Bodie-Stuart. The names she had read in the graveyard. The two dead women.
“Ah, I see you have some knowledge. A terrible death they died. Terrible.” Miss Doyle’s small eyes glittered with barely suppressed glee as she pressed her fingertips to her lips in a false show of dismay.
“You horrify me!” Beth exclaimed. “How brave you are to speak of it, Miss Doyle. But, please, do not distress yourself to bring forth the entire tale.”
Miss Doyle was trembling with eagerness, clearly oblivious of Beth’s ironic tone.
“I do feel a most grievous distress,” Miss Doyle agreed, her voice breathy with excitement, her smirk unctuous. “But the telling must be done, for your own protection.”
“I thank you for your kindness.”
Miss Doyle inclined her head like a queen to her subject, and whispered, “‘Twas a murderous assault upon their persons—”
She broke off and reared back to ascertain the effect of her disclosure.
The mention of murder made Beth’s heart clutch.
“—a murderous attack by creatures unknown... creatures never found, though they were hunted near a sennight each time,” Miss Doyle continued with macabre relish. “Both ladies, poor souls, were sorely wounded, their flesh torn, their clothing in tatters. Two bloodied bodies, separated by years, but not by deed. Their deaths were so very similar, runnels gouged in their skin and their hair slashed from their very heads... along with their”—Miss Doyle’s small, pale eyes glittered, and her voice lowered still more—”scalps.”
Beth gasped, but Miss Doyle was not done with her chilling tale, her body fairly vibrating with excitement as she relished the telling.
“And each had their fingers hacked from their hands,” she finished on a whisper.
Beth had expected to be apprised of death by tragic disease, consumption or scarlatina or the ague. She could never have expected such brutal tidings. The hair at her nape prickled and rose, and a sick horror overtook her, doubly so because she could not mistake Miss Doyle’s pleasure at sharing the horrific account.
“Oh, my dear, you have paled to chalk!” Miss Doyle observed, her tone rife with barely suppressed delight, dripping with false concern. She squinted at Beth in the flickering light,
her gaze razor sharp.
“I am well, truly,” Beth demurred. “Please, do go on.”
“Little more to add, save that they both were chambered here”—Miss Doyle leaned very close and made a vague gesture at Beth’s unopened door—”and none has since occupied this room. Until now.” She paused. “Both ladies were fair of hair and skin, as you are. Strange, is it not, that nearly two years apart, the beast took two women so similar in appearance and coloring, and now, here you are? Why, you even sleep in their bed...”
Certainty slapped Beth like a cold, wet rag as her suspicions proved true. Behind the guise of friendliness and genuine camaraderie, Miss Doyle’s true intention was to rouse alarm and dismay.
Beth had quite exhausted her store of fits and frenzies for the day. She would not allow herself to descend into such madness a second time. If her companion was hoping to see a fit of hysteria or a terrified swoon, she had chosen to impart her secrets to a disappointing listener.
She had great practice at battling her panic and tamping down her hysteria, and she meant to employ every trick at her disposal to ensure that her manner remained calm.
Whatever she might feel in her heart, she would offer no glimpse of it for Miss Doyle’s entertainment.
“Yes, here I am,” Beth observed dryly in response. “Sleeping in the same bed that once held Miss Stillwell and Miss Bodie-Stuart.” Then throwing caution to the wind, she sacrificed any pretext at politesse. “What pleasure you take in the grisly sonata you sing, Miss Doyle, each note designed to elicit both fear and dread. In truth, you have brought such dissertation to the level of art.”
A moment of silence passed as Miss Doyle digested Beth’s words and finally drew the conclusion that she had been maligned.
“Well,” she huffed, drawing herself to the fullness of her meager stature, watching Beth with cunning eyes. “You are clearly overset by anxiety, Miss Canham. I had best take my leave of you now, and you had best lock your door. Did you not notice that we have no other fair haired teachers at Burndale? With good reason.” She paused for effect, a nasty little smirk turning her lips. “They are all dead.”
