Dark Before the Rising Sun

by Laurie McBain

  “Nonsense, boy. Miles was rotten the day he was born. Never did like him, even when he was a boy Francis’s age. Would’ve turned bad no matter what,” Sir Jacob expostulated. “Don’t be silly. Now continue.”

  “Well, apparently Esma Samples knew Miles’s identity. Her husband must have known, and that was why he was killed. He told his wife, and so she was killed.”

  “Ah, I am beginning to see,” Sir Jacob said, rubbing his chin. “I had heard about this murder and its similarity to the Lettie Shelby killing. No doubt Miles planned it to look as if you had done it. Since you had been suspected of the Shelby girl’s murder, what better way to discredit you all over again and stir up Shelby, as well.”

  “Yes, but Sir Miles did more than just plan this murder. He dirtied his hands this one time, and that was when he became careless. He was so desperate to silence the woman and protect his identity that he killed her himself, but he also couldn’t resist the opportunity to cast suspicion on me. He was greedy. He let his desire to destroy me blind him to good sense.”

  “How did it come about that Shelby and the authorities suddenly suspected Miles of Lettie Shelby’s murder?” Sir Jacob wanted to know.

  “Apparently there was a bruise on Esma Samples’s body which matched one seen on Lettie’s. It was the bruised impression of a dog’s head. Something that might have been made by a blow from the head of a cane.”

  “A wolf’s head, not a dog’s! Sir Miles and his vanity,” Sir Jacob said, smiling strangely. “He always carried that damned wolf’s head cane. He signed his own death warrant with it. Shelby, slow as he might have been, would have remembered seeing a wolf’s head.”

  “Actually, we have Bess to thank for that,” Dante surprised Bess’s grandfather by saying. There was a soft note in his voice.

  “Bess?”

  “Yes, she met Shelby on the road right after he set fire to the lodge,” Dante said, his hand touching Rhea’s, “and she told him that I had been with her the night of Lettie’s death and that Sir Morgan had been with me that other evening in question. As he already knew I had been at Bess’s the night of Esma Samples’s death, he knew I could not have done either killing. Then Bess told him about the bruise, and she said he looked as if he’d seen the devil.”

  “But what was Bess doing on the road near Merdraco at what must have been a rather late hour?” Sir Jacob demanded.

  “She was coming to tell me that nothing had happened between her and Dante.” Rhea spoke for the first time. “She wanted me to know the truth, that he and Sir Morgan guessed that Shelby would go to Seawyck Manor to accost her, and that’s where they found him before he could harm Bess. But because Dante and Sir Morgan were working together to trap the smugglers and this Lieutenant Handley who had betrayed Sir Morgan’s brother, they couldn’t let it be known that Sir Morgan had been there that evening, and since Shelby hadn’t seen him, they were still safe. Sir Morgan prevailed upon Bess not to say anything, and Bess, being grateful for their assistance and very willing to see the end of Shelby and his smugglers, was more than agreeable,” Rhea explained, glad, as Bess had been, to bring everything out into the open.

  “Sir Morgan told me that he would have explained to Rhea if Bess hadn’t,” Dante said, knowing what Rhea had gone through.

  “If I were not so pleased to find out that Sir Morgan had never really turned against you, then I should be very displeased with him for not taking me into his confidence,” Rhea said calmly. “I shall look forward to having a few words with him. Where is he?” Rhea asked.

  “He stayed at Wolfingwold to make arrangements, and no doubt to collect whatever evidence there is. He will be quite busy making certain that the lieutenant stands trial without delay.”

  Sir Jacob leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I can scarcely believe that Miles Sandbourne is actually gone. I have worried for so long about that man and the threat he presented,” Sir Jacob mumbled.

  “Ye’ve been worried?” Kirby said. “Think how I’ve felt all of these years, knowin’ the cap’n was determined to come back here and wreak his vengeance against that hell hound. I don’t s’pose I’ve had a night’s rest since I’ve returned,” the little steward sniffed.

  “You do look as if you’ve aged a lifetime, Kirby,” Sir Jacob commiserated with the little man, who raised a bushy eyebrow at that.

  “Aye, thought ’twas the end there for a while, and I don’t s’pose hell could be any worse than the sight of that lodge on fire,” he said with a shake of his head. He raised the brandy glass to his lips gratefully.

  Sir Jacob stared at Rhea and her son, sitting there so close by Dante, and then at Francis, who seemed truly to be enjoying a brandy for the first time, and at the two boys, who were sitting close together on the settee, their eyes still wide with the terrors they had seen.

  “How the devil did you get out of the lodge?” Sir Jacob suddenly demanded.

  Francis shuddered. He had come too close to death to think about it even now without feeling the heat of that fire singeing his eyebrows. He glanced over at the two boys, a loving look in his eyes, and said, “We have those two intrepid but secretive explorers to thank for our being alive.”

  Conny and Robin looked shamefaced even as they straightened their shoulders proudly. They knew that by keeping the underground passage from the beach to the lodge a secret, they had been partially responsible for Jack Shelby being able to escape Sir Morgan’s and Dante’s trap.

  “I thought we were done for,” Francis admitted. “The flames had cut us off, and we were huddled there in the hall, when Conny and Robin suddenly started hollering about some secret underground passage that led from the lodge to the beach below. They started to fumble against the panel in the corridor. Finally, clearing some of the smoke from my brain, I started to help them. We found the latch and got into the tunnel just in time. A minute later and…” Francis struggled for the words that did not need saying.

  Dante eyed the boys sternly. “I had forgotten about that underground passage. It was boarded up long ago. It served its purpose during the Civil War, when my ancestors needed to escape Cromwell’s men. I assumed the roof had fallen in by now. Apparently Shelby hadn’t forgotten about it. That must have been how he escaped us on the beach and reached the lodge to set the fire. He probably found the tunnel when he was bailiff at Merdraco and used it smuggling. Thankfully you found the secondary tunnel leading to an exit in the castle ruins and not to the cave on the cliff when you fled the fire. I shall have to explore this tunnel with you later,” Dante promised. He also promised himself to keep a closer eye on the two fearless young fellows.

  “I still wonder how all of this would have ended if Sir Miles hadn’t killed Esma Samples and if Bess hadn’t told Shelby about that bruise,” Alastair mused, thinking that their lives had depended rather too much on a few chances of fortune and the caprice of fate.

  Sir Jacob shifted to a more comfortable position, but Rhea could have sworn his eyes gleamed with anticipation. “I’ll have to visit Seawyck, thank Bess, see her children, been too long,” he grumbled. “But it would have ended the same even if Shelby hadn’t killed Sir Miles.”

  “How can you know that for certain?” Dante asked, thinking that Sir Jacob had a lot of faith.

  “I think it is time to reveal everything,” said the old man. He glanced at the little woman sitting so quietly by the fire, Jamaica curled in her lap. “Essie? Don’t you think so?” Sir Jacob inquired gently. Everyone was surprised to find that she had no trouble hearing Sir Jacob. And when the old woman got up, she moved quickly and easily.

  Dante and the others stared as the woman turned and faced them, allowing the bright light of day, streaming in from the broad row of windows, to hit her full in the face. After a moment she removed the deeply ruffled mobcap which had concealed so much of her face. Then her hands, no longer shaking with age, slid into her silver curls and, with a
quick movement that caught them all by surprise, she pulled the wig from her head, revealing her own golden hair, pinned tightly in a topknot.

  Using a lace-edged handkerchief, she carefully removed the caked powder which had made her seem old. At last, removing her spectacles, she held her face up to them. It was the woman of the portrait.

  “Mother!” Dante cried hoarsely, rising to face the woman whose death had haunted him. “Mother!”

  “Dante. My son. My beloved son,” she said softly, holding out her arms to the lost son who had finally come home to Merdraco.

  * * *

  Two weeks passed while they remained at Sevenoaks House, and in that time Dante and his mother came to know one another again. Rhea smiled joyfully watching Lady Elayne, looking almost as young as her portrait, sitting in the shade of the big oak tree, her grandson cradled in her lap. She sang softly to him, as she had once sung to her Dante.

  Rhea remembered every moment of that stunning discovery of two weeks before, when Dante learned that his mother was alive and had been living at Sevenoaks for the past ten years.

  Sir Jacob had been under oath to keep the secret, he told Dante apologetically. Elayne pleaded with him, and although he had not wished to, he had gone along. As the years had passed, he came to see the wisdom of Elayne’s decision. The others in the salon listened to her story and came to admire a frightened woman and the sacrifice she’d made to survive.

  The night she fled from Merdraco and the beating Miles had given her, she stumbled on the cliff edge. She had thought of ending it, for she knew she could no longer face Miles’s brutality, or the revelation that he had murdered Lettie Shelby. Miles had been involved with her and was the one she had boasted would set her up in a house in London. He admitted as much when beating Elayne, for she could not be a threat to him. It was her word against his, if she ever did say anything, and he warned her that her son would suffer the consequences of her betrayal. At that time Dante was still blind to Miles’s treachery.

  Stumbling on the cliff path gave her the idea. Elayne knew that if she were thought dead, then, when Dante eventually learned the truth about Miles, her son would be free to make a new life. If she were still tied to Miles, then Dante would feel responsible for her. He would never leave Merdraco.

  She made it down to the beach and left her shawl spread out on a rock, as if it had drifted there after she fell. Then she had made her way back up the path. She walked through the night, trying to get as far away from Merdraco and from Miles as she could. Now that she knew who had killed Lettie Shelby, it might be only a matter of time before Miles killed her too.

  And that was when Sir Jacob Weare found her. Returning home from a meeting, he saw her staggering along the road. Recognition had come hard because her features were so swollen. He lifted her into his coach and took her to the safety of Sevenoaks House. There she had poured out her whole story to Sir Jacob.

  He arranged her funeral, then helped her travel to France, where she stayed in a convent, forgotten by the world. But when Sir Jacob sent her news of Dante, she was unable to stay away any longer and had returned to Devonshire, content to live at Sevenoaks House as Sir Jacob Weare’s hard-of-hearing niece, Essie.

  When the loneliness became unbearable she went out during the dark of night and visited Merdraco, to walk the halls and remember the times she had been happy there. That was how the legend of the Pale Lady of the Ruins got started and how she had inadvertently scared off the smugglers from using Merdraco. She admitted, too, that she hadn’t been able to resist a look at her son. It was she whom Rhea had seen that night, wandering through the trees near the lodge, her cloaked figure looking like the ghost of legend—the Pale Lady of the Ruins.

  When Dante returned with a wife and child, she and Sir Jacob realized the terrible danger they were in. They spoke with Sir Jacob’s solicitors in London, and had been prepared to come forward with their story. Although there was no proof, their claims would at least have alerted the authorities to watch Sir Miles Sandbourne.

  Rhea stood at the window, a smile of contentment curving her lips as she stared at Lady Elayne holding Kit up high in her arms, then hugging him close. While she watched, Dante came up behind her and his arms slid around her waist. He pulled her back against his chest, resting his chin on her head. They stood there in companionable silence.

  “I have been thinking that perhaps ’tis time we paid a visit to Camareigh. I know the duke and duchess must be anxious about us, and they did not get to spend much time with their grandson. I know my mother would enjoy the visit. I also was thinking that we might travel on to London afterward. Then, with a new crew, we will sail the Sea Dragon home to Merdraco.”

  Rhea reached up a hand and touched his tanned cheek, remembering the first time she had seen him. That had been aboard the Sea Dragon, and it seemed right that they should sail again. Without her being aware of it, Rhea’s other hand touched the jeweled brooch pinned to her stomacher and she smiled. Luckily, she had been wearing it the night of the fire, and she truly believed that the jeweled replica of the Sea Dragon had kept fortune with her that night. She vowed always to wear it.

  “Shall we go out into the sunshine and join them?” he asked, his eyes meeting Rhea’s for a long moment before his lips touched hers. Together they left the room, which suddenly seemed full of shadows. Dante wanted nothing to remind him of the past. As he heard his mother’s laughter and his son’s squeal of delight, he knew that he wanted only to look ahead into the future, and there would be no backward glances into the past.

  The brightness of the sun was almost blinding as, hand in hand, Dante and Rhea stepped out of the shadows and strolled through the garden toward his mother and their son. A future of bright tomorrows awaited.

  Epilogue

  Long is the way

  And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

  —John Milton

  The seagull spread its wings, soaring then gliding as its shadow drifted across gentle slopes of green. It was early in the season of wild thyme and blackthorn. The small plum hung heavy on the bough, its pale clusters yet to feel the ripening sweetness of a midsummer sun.

  The gilded petals of the primrose bespoke of mildness that had not yet warmed the earth, for the winds roaming the wild north coast of Devon were spawned by angry, maelstrom-fed gales far out at sea. Raw with lingering winter bleakness, heedless of the first tender buds of spring, the northern winds drove the foaming waves against the storm-swept headlands and the jagged reefs.

  But the solitary stone tower stretching against the black horizon had withstood far greater onslaughts than the squall now threatening the dawn where eastern skies were rich with clouds edged in sungold. The isolated tower was all that remained of a castle in ruins. Merdraco.

  The massive stones, chiseled and fitted with such care by masons long gone, were strewn about like so much kindling. The lichen-covered walls, which had seemed insurmountable for centuries, were fallen, defeated in the end by the steady advance of ivy, the tenacious vine entwining itself year after year in the rotting mortar.

  Sky was visible through the crumbling arches, where once a vaulted ceiling had risen high above walls adorned in the splendor of heroic shields and shining swords, where noble flags of silk had proclaimed a never-to-be-forgotten glory.

  In the desolate courtyard dandelions pushed their way up between the cracked paving stones. No beat of horses’ hooves or rattling of wagon wheels had disturbed the peace for many moonless nights.

  A stone dragon, fallen from its lofty perch, still guarded the entrance, its sightless eyes gazing upon its domain in a never-ending search for trespassers. But there was no reason to fear intruders. No enemy waited for the fall of darkness. And even the subtle movement of shadows was merely the reflection of the sun’s course across the heavens.

  There were only memories left to stand watch on the deserted battlements an
d the abandoned tower, those enduring testimonials to an age long past.

  Bewitched by sun and moon, the ebbing tide crashed against the rocks far below the ruins of Merdraco. And the tower stood alone, perhaps forgotten…

  But the fates had not decreed so unworthy an end. Adrift on the wind came the sound of children’s voices raised in laughter, echoed by the frenetic barking of hounds. Had there been anyone atop the tower, he would have seen a small group approaching the ruins.

  A man dressed in the finest of silks, and a woman clad in blue velvet and whitest lace walked arm in arm toward the ruins from a stone house where sweet-scented wood smoke rose from a score of great chimneys. The sun, reflected in the mullioned windows, burned like a thousand candles.

  The man’s gray eyes were narrowed against the glare from the sea as he watched the thunderclouds darken the horizon. For a brief time he forgot that he was no longer captain of a brigantine and that he need never again worry about keeping his ship under press of canvas, the wind filling her sails as she ran free before storm and man. For only an instant his thoughts lingered with what had once been.

  His gaze was caught and held, as it had always been, by the pure gold of his wife’s hair as the wind tousled it about her flushed cheeks. He thought, not for the first time, that she grew more enchantingly beautiful with each day.

  She looked at him and knew intuitively, when his eyes turned away from the sea and the faraway look faded, that she had lost him to old memories for a spellbinding moment. But as her eyes met his and, together, they walked the land that was his heritage and would be their children’s, she knew that the past did not beckon him. The future was theirs.

  A smile of contentment curved his mouth as he watched his eldest son, a boy tall for ten years, scolding his younger brother and sister as they sat astride the fat, shaggy pony Kit was leading. Its bridle jingled with bells. A young man, not more than twenty, walked a little ahead of them, his long strides shortened to accommodate the wobbly steps of the child holding tightly to his hand. With an indulgent laugh, he hoisted the little girl onto his shoulders, her golden curls swinging while he bounced her.