The Reckless One

by Connie Brockway

  The cheap necklaces about her thin throat rattled as she cautiously shook her head.

  “It is precisely because your messages from the spirit world reek more often of gin than brimstone. An infallible witch? An honest one?” He laughed. “Those qualities don’t exist among noblemen so how could they exist in the likes of you?

  “No, Pala, it is precisely because you fail and cheat and whine that I listen. You are treacherous and cowardly. Only the dead could prompt someone like you into risking her neck by claiming she hears them.” He settled back once more. “It isn’t so long ago that witches were burned. But you know that, don’t you?”

  Pala hunkered in the center of the room, like a rabbit baited for a fox.

  “Now then, I know you heard something, saw something, or even smelled something among those bones of yours. Something to do with Janet. What was it? And no more drivel about her undying love.” A little prick of something like regret rose within him. He ignored it. The dead returned for one reason only: to annoy the living. “In point of fact she did die. Now what … did … you … see?”

  A sudden blast of wind rattled the glass in the windows as a low moan issued from the chimney.

  “I cannot help what I hear,” Pala finally whispered. “You ask and ask, you know when I lie. I not lie. She loves you. Even now, even after what you did. She forgives.”

  “Oh.” He stood up and was about to walk away when he heard her speak, her voice flat and soft, marked by the lack of inflection in which she issued all her most accurate portents.

  “She desires …”

  “Yes?”

  “To be reunited with you.”

  Carr snorted, disappointed. More maudlin sentiment. He’d over seventy guests in residence this day. Since Pala did not appear to have any suggestion on how to rid the castle of the haunts, he’d best go attend the living.

  “She wants to be with you.”

  “Well, I’m afraid the dear girl will have to wait a bit, won’t she?”

  His smile faded as he saw the intensity with which Pala stared at him. He was not mistaken. He’d engendered it in enough men to be wholly familiar with its every aspect. Pala was afraid.

  “There is more,” he prompted. “What do you know!”

  “She is not waiting. She comes back. To forgive. To protect from them. As she always did.”

  Them. The McClairens. Alive, Janet had shielded him from their unproven certainty that he’d betrayed them, refusing to believe he would do such a thing. At least, at first. By the time she’d died, so too had most of her clan. Later, thanks to the fortuitous whoring of his son Raine, he’d had the excuse he needed to kill off any remnant of that cursed clan.

  In truth it had been no great surprise when the McClairens had begun creeping from their graves, seeking in death the retribution they’d been denied in life—though they’d certainly bided their time in coming back.

  Janet … now Janet was a different story. Yet here was Pala claiming Janet was only now returning. It made no sense; Janet had been haunting him for years.

  “In what form will she haunt me? When will she come back?”

  “Now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She is no spirit no more. She has found a vessel. Here. At Wanton’s Blush.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is reborn in another. One who is not aware she shares her body with another soul. But you will know. You will recognize her.”

  His heart hammered painfully in his chest as he moved forward, grabbing the old woman’s arm and hauling her to her feet. “If you are lying I will tear your heart from your chest myself and force it down your throat.”

  “I not lie!” Pala cried. “She loves you. She wants to be once more with you!”

  Carr flung the old woman away, running a trembling hand through his peruke, shoving the wig back on his head.

  Janet returned, he thought numbly.

  He had to find her.

  The door to the tower room slammed open. Pala, her skirts bunched high, scuttled out and disappeared down the steep tower staircase. Carr followed a moment later, his expression distracted. Blindly he followed the winding stairs downward and through a low arched door. He turned sharply and collided with a stooped female figure.

  A thick black veil concealed the left side of her face leaving the right side uncovered, exposing a twisted mouth, deformed jaw, and one sunken eye obscured by a drooping, nerveless lid. Carr recoiled. It was hideous.

  The creature shrank against the wall, her twisted body trembling.

  “Who in God’s name are you?” Carr demanded.

  “Gunna, Yer Grace,” the old woman mumbled in thick Highland accents, lifting the corner of her veil across her mouth.

  “Damn, another witch! Whatever are you doing in my house?”

  “I do fer yer daughter, sir. Miss Fia. Have done fer years.” The woman shuffled sideways like a land crab. It was repulsive.

  “’Swounds!” Carr swore softly under his breath, looking away. He remembered now. Fia had an inordinate and inexplicable fondness for this creature—Gunna, was it?—and she, in turn, seemed to be the one person who had some influence on his increasingly intractable daughter.

  “What the hell are you doing here, hag?” he demanded.

  “Followin’ yer bidding, Yer Grace,” the old woman mumbled.

  “How so? By spying on me?” he demanded.

  “No! No, Yer Grace! Ye said as how whenever I’m not tending Miss Fia I should keep meself to the east and upper rooms where the sight of me wouldna offend ye or yer guests. So here I be, Yer Grace.”

  Carr looked about and blanched. Surely enough, the window behind Gunna framed a view of the churning North Sea. Somehow, what with his distraction, he’d taken a wrong turn and ended here, overlooking the very cliffs from which Janet had fallen to her death.

  A little thread of apprehension tightened his back muscles and set his scalp tingling. It was as if Janet herself had led him here.

  “Yer Grace?” he heard Gunna ask.

  He quelled the shudder taking hold of his limbs and fixed his attention on her cowering figure. His pride would never allow him to reveal anything even remotely akin to dread to so wretched a creature.

  He brushed past her, sneering as he went, “For a man who loves beauty why do I suddenly find myself surrounded by hags?”

  Chapter 8

  There were close to a hundred guests overflowing the front salon. Carr fixed a well-practiced smile to his face, practicality having reestablished itself. The damned haunts he could deal with. It had been the notion that Janet could actually return…. Nonsense! An ignorant woman’s ravings.

  He waded into the crowd, greeting people as he went. No matter that he did not know a good half of them by either name or face, nor that they appeared at his door as the hangers-on of those who’d received bona fide invitations. The more wastrels, the better.

  He poured himself a glass of port, downed the contents in one draw and poured another, eschewing the pale tea he drank most evenings. He eyed the crowd with a connoisseur’s appreciation. No huge-stakes men here tonight. Mostly middling wagerers. A number of gulls, a cheat or two.

  “Your Grace!”

  Carr lifted a brow in acknowledgment of the tall, extremely thin man threading his way toward him. It was James Wells, Lord Tunbridge, distant cousin to the future king, George III. Tunbridge was said to be educating the crown prince in royal—and royally carnal—sports. An agreeable situation, seeing how Tunbridge was in his power.

  “I would have a word with you, sir,” Tunbridge said breathlessly. “I … It’s important. Very important.”

  “Really?” Carr asked. “To whom?”

  “Why, to me.” A light sheen sprouted on Tunbridge’s high forehead.

  Deuce take it, the man wanted something. Carr was not in the mood. “Later, Tunbridge. My guests—”

  “Your guests will wait, Lord Carr,” Tunbridge said, his voice har
dening. “Please. I have been of great service to you these past few years, as well you know, and now I would ask but a few minutes of your time.”

  “You’re making demands, Tunbridge?” Carr asked mildly. “How very annoying for me and how very dangerous for you.”

  Tunbridge flushed but raised his chin. He was going to be plaguesomely persistent.

  “Very well,” Carr capitulated, taking Tunbridge’s arm and drawing him through the open doors that led out into the courtyard.

  Outside, the sun had relinquished the sky and the wind had died down. A thin fog drifted up the low, flinty apron that sloped away from the castle. The noise from the party within melded with the elemental rumble of the sea.

  “Now, what is it, Tunbridge?” Carr faced the tall man.

  “Your daughter, sir.”

  “What of Fia?” Carr asked with awakening interest. Of late his gorgeous young daughter was an unpredictable creature, one minute an unruly jade and hoydenish flirt, the next, a Sphinx, inscrutable and cold.

  Her attitude toward him had certainly changed in the last year. Once she’d been his familiar, seeking his company and amusing him with her sardonic wit. But now she’d turned her gifts against him, and honed them, too.

  What had Fia done now? Publicly denigrated the fool’s manhood?

  “Before you choke on whatever it is you have to say, Tunbridge, I feel obliged to tell you that I have no intention of fighting any duels over anything Fia may have said or done,” Carr said. He held up his hand, silencing Tunbridge when he would have interrupted.

  “No. Listen. If you have a quarrel with the girl that only blood-letting can satisfy, I suggest you find one of her swains to champion her. I shan’t.”

  “No! Of course … why … I mean … no! No!” Tunbridge grew bright red.

  For reportedly being one of London’s most celebrated duelists, Carr thought impatiently, Tunbridge certainly lacked dash. “Out with it, man! What the devil are you trying to say?”

  “I … I don’t want to kill Miss Fia. I wish to marry her!”

  Carr stared at him a full minute before throwing back his head and laughing. He laughed until his side hurt and tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. He laughed until he could laugh no more and when he’d finally finished, he sniffed and withdrew a lace kerchief from his wrist and dabbed at his eyes and nose, occasionally hiccuping up another little chortle.

  “Oh, thank you! I had need of a divertissement. I vow, Tunbridge, I would never have taken you for a wit.”

  Only then did he see that Tunbridge was not laughing. The color had leached from his face, leaving bloodless lips forming a thin line. Tunbridge had been serious.

  When Carr realized this, he also remembered anew that Tunbridge—whose dueling career had been severely curtailed when Carr’s son Ash impaled Tunbridge’s hand on a stiletto—was still accredited to be more than passing proficient with a rapier. Still, Carr really wasn’t in the mood.

  “I will give you the benefit of the doubt, sir,” Tunbridge ground out, “and assume that you misunderstood my intent, that being to take Miss Fia to wife.”

  “No, I didn’t misunderstand you,” Carr said, tucking his kerchief back in his sleeve. “And the answer is no.”

  “Why not?” Tunbridge demanded. “My lineage is impeccable, I am a baron, but most tellingly I am in the royal family’s confidence.

  “You, sir, ought to appreciate the extent of my influence on His Majesty as I have used that influence this past year and more in persuading him to revoke his decree that exiled you to Scotland. I have almost convinced His Majesty that your habit of losing rich young wives is, indeed, an unfortunate tragedy and nothing more sinister. I can just as easily convince him otherwise.”

  For a full minute the two men studied each other in silence, Carr with bored indifference, Tunbridge quivering with outrage. Finally, Carr sighed. “Are you quite through, Tunbridge? Fine. A moment of instruction ’ere we proceed to your suit.”

  Tunbridge blinked, startled.

  “The trick to blackmailing, Tunbridge,” Carr lectured calmly, “is that one must be willing—and able—to carry out whatever threats one uses to pressure one’s victim into complying with one’s purposes.

  “Take, for instance, yourself. I know you’ll do your best for me because should I fail to return to London—and that very, very soon—you realize that I will have no choice but to console myself with my latest acquisition, that being Campion Castle. How long has it been in your family, Tunbridge? Two? Three hundred years?”

  Tunbridge’s quivering ceased. His face had fallen into the slack proportions that Carr was beginning to recognize as being as habitual as they were unfortunate.

  “Not only that,” Carr continued mildly, “but I ashamedly admit that I will then likely enjoy imagining your own situation in a deportation vessel, having finally been brought to justice for the business with that Cheapside whore so many years ago.”

  “But I was drunk!”

  “Ah!” Carr wagged his index finger playfully. “But I was not.”

  Tunbridge blanched further.

  “Now, I have been reasonable this time because finding another toadie with your particular connections so late in the game would prove tiresome. It can be done, of course, and should it prove necessary, will be. Bear that in mind, Tunbridge, the next time you feel the urge to try your hand at extortion.” Carr cocked his head. “Do we understand each other?”

  Mutely, Tunbridge nodded.

  “Good. Now, pray tell me, what is all this about Fia?”

  Like a puppet whose strings had been severed, Tunbridge’s shoulders slumped. His face betrayed his potent unhappiness. “She is a siren! I swear it. She drives me to distraction.”

  “Yes.” Carr nodded. “I hear she’s good at that sort of thing.”

  “She’s bewitched me, I tell you. She’s a succubus!” Tunbridge continued, his voice desperate. “’Tis the only way to account for this obsession she has roused in me.”

  “Now, wouldn’t that be a lovely rumor to start on the eve of her presentation?” Carr muttered irritably. He might have to deal with Tunbridge after all if he continued this sort of gibberish. A “siren” was fascinating; a “succubus” was disturbing.

  Tunbridge held out one hand in supplication. “I must have her. I must.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “But why not?” Tunbridge asked pitiably. He looked utterly bewildered and in pain. Carr silently applauded Fia’s skill. “I am rich. I am well connected. Whyever not?”

  “Because I already control you,” Carr explained. “Marrying Fia to you would be redundant. No. Fia will marry someone who does not bow beneath any of the other influences I can bring to bear.” His smile relayed a certain pride. “Because Fia is the ultimate inducement”

  “But … but I want her!” Tunbridge complained, having abandoned all attempts at manly forbearance.

  Carr clapped him companionably on the shoulder. “Come, man. Grow a spine. Besides, Fia would use you up and spit you out within a fortnight. Begads! The chit is but sixteen! Why, she’s just using her milk teeth on you. Imagine what she will be at twenty. Thir—”

  The faint sound of a Highland pipe drifted out of the fog, cutting Carr’s words short He lifted his head sharply. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Tunbridge asked indifferently. “What would you say should Fia declare she wished to marry me?”

  “She doesn’t” Carr squinted into the soft shimmer of the twilight-kissed fog. A dark figure moved therein. He was certain of it. A dark masculine figure clad in a belted plaid. “Do you see anything out there?”

  “Why won’t she?”

  Carr spared Tunbridge one dismissive glance before once again scanning the mist. “Why would she?”

  Apparently, the answer to this pointed query finally convinced Tunbridge of the futility of his petition. With a deep sigh he slunk away. Carr barely noticed. His eyes were turned toward the drifting f
og. His ears strained to hear the McClairens’ sepulchral pipes. Nothing.

  Damned haunts. Had the dead nothing better to occupy their time than with children’s games of hide-and-seek? With a curse, Carr quit the terrace and followed the dew-glistened granite steps down into the garden. He strode purposefully along the footpath between the topiaries, bizarre and fantastical shapes clipped from living yew and boxwood. The fog swirled about his legs, the damp seeping through his white silk stockings and staining the pale blue satin covering the heels of his shoes.

  At the end of the garden, where yet another set of pink granite steps led to a still lower terrace, Carr paused and peered out. Below him bracken and gorse had infiltrated the once regimented beds of roses and rare botanicals. The shadows had thickened down there. Night had found purchase. The fog was denser, the air colder.

  “Come out, you cursed McClairen spirits! I am here! Haunt me!”

  No reply met his shouted challenge. No ghostly form materialized. No pipe trilled from the darkness. Nothing.

  Every time he’d had an … experience it was the same; a furtive movement from the corner of his eye; a gust of chill wind where no wind could be; a drumbeat in the middle of the night that could have been his heartbeat but wasn’t.

  It was driving him—No! It was not driving him anything. It was distracting. An annoyance. That was all.

  “What’s this?” he shouted to the gloom beneath. “Do the dead still fear the living? Do Scots flee the British even in death? Cowardly phantoms!”

  The very silence seemed to mock him. With a hiss of rage he swung around and retraced his route, keenly aware of eyes upon him, of ghostly smiles jeering. He’d begun stalking up the stairs to the terrace when his eye caught a splotch of muted color tangled amid the mist and rose vines beside him. A scarf? Odd he hadn’t noted it before, but then, his attention had been on other things.

  One of his female guests must have been using the gardens for an assignation. Damned cold weather for an assignation. He leaned over and picked it up. He’d started forth once more when he chanced to glance down. Abruptly he stopped, riveted by the sight.