The Reckless One

by Connie Brockway

  “But then old farmer George died and the ban on my matrimonial aspirations lifted. There are countless heiresses in London, m’dear. Countless rich, well-connected heiresses. You, I’m afraid, never stood a chance.”

  “Why did you propose to me, then?” she asked. “Why did you send for the priest?”

  “I didn’t. I simply told your aunt I did.” He tched softly. “I thought if I proposed, the old hag that guards you would finally allow us a moment alone. So I proposed. In fact, I believe dear Fia even overheard me. Then I told your aunt I’d sent for the priest. I even had a few servants look for a carriage.

  “It would have worked, too. I would have insisted we spend an hour or so alone. But then I took sick. I can’t begin to describe to you my frustration,” he said confidingly. “Happily all has come to rights, however, for here we are.”

  Her eyes darted about the room, looking for a likely weapon, finding nothing. “I’ll just come back,” she whispered desperately. “As many times as you kill me, I’ll come back.”

  “Ho-ho!” he chuckled, bussing her under the chin. “I knew I could draw you out. Threats now, Janet? I would have thought you’d learned the error of that particular behavior on those cliffs.” He opened his palm in the direction of the windows and she saw that in spite of his jocular tone, she had, indeed, enraged him.

  His pupils were pinpoints of black in his dazzling blue eyes. A tiny tic twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Do your damnedest, Janet. Come back as many times as you like, I’ll simply kill you again.”

  She’d made a grave error. She backed up until she banged into a wall of boxes and crates. She edged along the mass, hands behind her, groping for some weapon. Carr advanced.

  “But you know something, Janet? I’ve been reading about haunts and ghoulies and such. It’s fascinating. You ghosts seem a peculiarly hearth-loving mob. Unless you find a human vessel to house you, and that little endeavor took you how long this time? A dozen years?”

  He was only a few feet away and she’d worked her way into a corner with nothing to show for it. “The point I’m trying to make, Janet”—he spoke through his teeth now, the soft, urbane tones coming from the choleric face frightening her far more than his words—“is that I don’t think you—or your clan—can leave here. Let’s find out, shall we?”

  He seized her around the throat. She flailed frantically in his grip but her heavy skirts smothered her struggles. She clawed at his wrists, tearing violently but his fingers dug deep.

  “You would kill your own son’s wife?” she choked out.

  He laughed, entertained by what he clearly imagined was a paltry diversionary tactic, his grip loosening just enough for her to gulp another lungful of air.

  “I swear ’tis true!” she gasped, working at his implacable hold on her throat. “I am married to your son Raine.”

  “Raine?” He chuckled, his handsome face made even handsomer by his amusement. But his clasp on her throat did not tighten. Instead, it loosened slightly. He didn’t seem to care how deeply she scored his arms and hands with her nails. Like a cat with a mouse, he was playing with her, curious to see what she would say next.

  “Yes. He’s here. And he’ll kill you if you hurt me,” she said, and as she spoke she realized it was the truth. She did not for one minute doubt Raine would avenge her with all the formidable power he possessed. Because he loved her.

  Stunned at learning his identity, bewildered and uncomprehending, she’d ascribed to him fantastic and horrendous motives. Now she saw that everything he’d done he’d done to protect her. Including marrying her. If only she’d listened to her heart.

  Carr had tired of his play. His hands were tightening incrementally, torturously, slowly squeezing the life from her. Light-spattered darkness careened about the perimeter of her vision. Her limbs felt weightless. Her lungs burned.

  “So Raine will kill me if I hurt you?” he said, chuckling as he studied her face.

  “Yes, I will.”

  She had to be imagining Raine’s voice. But Carr’s body had gone as still as a hound on point, his head snapping up. His hands dropped from her throat and she crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath as he wheeled to face his son.

  Raine strode from the shadowed doorway. In his hand he held a primed pistol, pointed at Carr. His shirt was open, his long hair in disarray, his boots splattered with mud. Compared to Carr’s exquisite figure he looked coarse, rough, and incredibly beautiful. Gabriel come to challenge Lucifer.

  “Well, blast me if it isn’t my large middle child,” Carr murmured, his eyes hooded. “And tell me, is the rest true, also? Are you wed to her?” He flung his hand down toward Favor. She skittered back. He did not notice.

  “Yes,” Raine said. His gaze was watchful, his jaw tense with barely contained fury.

  “Rather incestuous, or did you not know she also carries your mother’s soul?”

  Raine snickered. “You’ve grown foolish, old man. We duped you, made you believe my mother had returned in order to keep you occupied while I searched the castle for McClairen’s Trust.”

  We? Dear God, he must have heard her talking and deduced Muira’s plan. Now he was drawing Carr’s attention away from her. Carr stared, fury born of shock simmering in his expression. His lips twitched, his eyes flickered. A palsy began in his right hand.

  “No,” Carr said. “I don’t believe it.” He jerked his head around, impaled Favor with a killing glare. “You’re Janet. You knew about the Part of No—” His voice trailed off, his gaze flew back, returned to Raine. “You told her what to say.”

  Raine grinned, a one-sided smile. Janet’s smile. The same smile Muira had made her practice so many hours. Why had she never seen it?

  The light of fanaticism faded from Carr’s eyes, replaced by cold, killing enmity. He would hate above all things being made a fool of and Raine knew it. He deliberately goaded him.

  “I should like to kill you,” Carr said.

  “Please, do try,” Raine returned seriously, uncocking the pistol and tossing it away. It skittered across the room and lodged against a chest twenty feet away from where Favor cowered.

  With a roar, Carr drew his sword and charged. Raine grabbed a crate lid, flinging it up in front of his face just as Carr’s sword slammed into it, biting deep into the wood. Raine wrenched back, hurling away the lid and the sword buried in it and, for that moment, exposed his torso.

  Favor saw the short, lethal blade flash from beneath the cuff of Carr’s coat and slip into his hand.

  “He’s got a dagger!” Her warning came too late. Raine twisted as Carr lunged forward, the knife plunging inches into Raine’s ribs. He gasped, staggering back, but Carr, well versed in the foulest forms of fighting, followed him. He released the blade, leaving it impaled in Raine’s body and battered at his son’s face.

  He was going to kill Raine.

  Favor scrambled along the wall to where the pistol lay. She lifted it as Raine jerked the dagger from his side. Slick with blood, it fell to the ground. Favor pulled back the hammer, pointed the pistol with shaking hands, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Sobbing, she banged the cursed instrument against the floor. An explosion ripped through the air, echoing in the chamber as the pistol fired, catching Carr by surprise. He turned his head toward the sound. It was all the advantage Raine needed.

  His fist met Carr’s jaw with a sickening crunching sound. His other fist drove deep into Carr’s gut, felling him to his knees. He clasped his hands together and raised them overhead, swinging them in a telling blow on the back of Carr’s neck. Carr fell flat on his face.

  “Get up!” Raine demanded, standing over his fallen sire. Blood soaked the right side of his shirt and oozed from a gash over his cheek.

  “I said, get up!” He reached down and grabbed the back of Carr’s coat with one hand. Beads and crystals popped, skittering about the floor. He hauled Carr half up with one hand, with the other striking him backhanded ac
ross the face. Again and again he beat Carr, his lips peeled back in a feral grimace, his breath a harsh rasp punctuated by the sound of his fists meeting Carr’s face.

  Dear God, thought Favor. Carr had killed the mother. Now the son would kill the father. Merrick blood running true. No! She knew Raine. No matter how evil Carr was, Raine could never endure committing the sin of patricide.

  “Raine!” she cried, struggling upright and stumbling across the room. “No!”

  He looked up, his face savage, and she flung her arms around his neck, pressing herself to him. “No, Raine! For my love, please, I beg you stop!”

  A heartbeat. Another. She felt Carr fall to her feet and then Raine seized her in a tight embrace, his arms trembling.

  “He’s nothing to us. Nothing,” she whispered fervently. “Let him go, Raine.”

  “He killed my mother! He’s killed and wounded and … Dear God, Favor, he’s a plague that needs to be wiped out!”

  “But not by you. Not by me. Look at him, Raine. He’ll not be going anywhere. Jamie’s outside now. We’ll give him to Jamie and let the McClairen decide his fate.”

  “No!” Raine shook his head violently. “You don’t know him! He’ll get away!”

  “No, he won’t,” Favor said, pleading. Her hand moved down Raine’s body, grew sticky with blood. He was wounded. Bleeding copiously. Carr wasn’t worth debating while Raine bled to death. “Let it go. As you asked me, so I beg you. I love you. Be mine.”

  “I’ve nothing to give you,” he said harshly. “Nothing but the assurance that this … creature will never be able to harm you again. Let me give you that, Favor,” he pleaded in a hoarse voice. “Let me do that, at least, for you.”

  Her hands crept up and cupped his wounded face in tender palms. “You’ve already given me more than I dreamed the world contained,” she returned, her voice aching with love. “All I want is within your ability to give. Your heart.”

  “’Tis already yours.”

  “Then don’t take it away from me. Let him live.”

  He did not hesitate this time; his capitulation came with his kiss, tender, yearning, and reverent. He lifted her in his arms and buried his face against her throat.

  “No,” she protested. “Your side.”

  “’Tis no great matter,” he murmured.

  Below, Carr stirred. Favor turned in Raine’s embrace as Carr fumbled to hands and knees, his handsome face battered beyond recognition, his clothes torn and stained with blood.

  “You haven’t any more guts now than you did as a child,” he muttered, his voice thick and muddled. “You haven’t inherited anything from me, not guts, not brains, not looks. Nothing of value. Nothing! You never found the Trust, did you?”

  “No. I found something infinitely more precious.”

  At that Carr’s face snapped up, a questioning greedy gleam lit his swelling eyes. “What?” he demanded on a choked cough. “What did you find?”

  “You’ll never know,” Raine answered, turning toward Favor. Gently he set her on her feet. Carr’s gaze followed Raine’s. “I’ll kill you if you say a word to her,” Raine promised. “If you so much—”

  A figure from a child’s night terror burst from the portal behind the nave, brandishing a pair of torches. Her face was livid, her mouth a gaping hole, her eyes pinpoints of madness.

  “Traitorous bitch!” Muira shrieked. “You’ve destroyed it all, all my work and planning but you’ll not reap the rewards of your treachery! If the McClairens cannot have Maiden’s Blush, no one can!”

  And she flung the torch into the tinderbox of rotting detritus that was all that was left of Janet McClairen.

  Chapter 31

  The flames leapt from rotting wood to paper boxes, traveling at breakneck haste. Cloth and books, papier-mâché and curtains, linens and leather fed its rapacious hunger. It danced in brilliant waves, bubbled and flowed, enveloping in an instant anything in its path.

  A sudden move caught Favor’s attention. As she watched, Carr rose and stumbled through the door into the outer hall. “No!” Muira screamed, seeing her quarry escape.

  Raine grabbed Favor’s arm, yanking her toward the door but her feet caught in her voluminous skirts. She would have fallen had not Raine caught her up in his arms and dashed toward the hall. But the delay cost them dearly.

  Muira was quicker.

  She darted across the room, waving her second torch in the air, shedding a cloud of living embers in her wake. She halted in the doorway beside the huge ancient armoire teetering under the weight of half-packed crates and boxes. Madly, she feinted at them with her torch, using it like an épée.

  Raine reached out to seize her and caught instead the burning end of the torch. With a hiss of pain, he jerked his hand back. Favor darted forward to deal with the madwoman but Raine caught her around the waist and yanked her back just as Muira swung the flaming brand, missing Favor’s face by inches. He pushed Favor behind him, scanning the narrowing tunnel of darkness behind the madwoman. Already, Favor could feel the heat from the growing inferno at her back.

  “Let her go!” Raine demanded hoarsely.

  “Nay! Nay!” Muira shrieked, dancing from side to side. “You’ll next have yer pleasure of her in hell, Raine Merrick!” Her expression grew sly; her gaze darted to the side. She touched her torch to the wardrobe’s rotting contents, setting it ablaze.

  “No!” Raine shouted. Before he could act she grabbed the door of the wobbling armoire and pulled. She jumped back into the open hallway just as it crashed to the floor, choking the entrance with its flaming contents.

  In the black corridor, they could see her dart down the hall, touching her torch to anything in her path. And then she stumbled. The torch fell against her skirts, catching fire to them. She shrieked not with pain but with horrific laughter. She spun her way down the hall, a burning effigy, and in seconds was lost to view.

  “God have mercy,” Favor whispered.

  “Hurry!” Raine shouted.

  Favor looked behind them. The exit by the altar was unreachable. A wall of liquid flames undulated over the wall behind them, searing the back of her neck and shoulders. They’d only one chance. She hurled herself at the mound of burning crates, grabbing hold of any unlit portion and jerking it away from the doorway. Raine was already working feverishly, hurling crates and trunks away heedless of burning his hands and arms.

  Frantically and silently they worked, side by side. Smoke, a churning black miasma, rose toward the high ceiling, already billowing as it sought another egress. In minutes it would envelop them. Already her lungs burned with the noxious fumes and her eyes streamed.

  Outside in the hall, the fire had taken hold. It skittered along the floorboards, tasted the walls with hungry licks. It bloomed in orange brilliance at rotted wooden door frames and raced toward the main part of the castle.

  Raine seized the edge of the toppled wardrobe and with one enormous grunt shoved it away from the door. Favor darted through the small opening he’d made, reaching back and grasping Raine’s wrist.

  “Go!” he shouted, trying to pull free. “’Tis too small. Go! I’ll be right behind you!”

  She let go, but she didn’t leave. She hurled her small body against the mammoth piece of furniture and pushed with all her strength.

  “GO!” he shouted.

  “Not”—she gritted her teeth—“without”—she closed her eyes and offered a prayer—“you!” She rammed her shoulder against the monolithic piece.

  “Damn you, Favor McClairen!” she heard Raine roar, and then the wardrobe slithered a few blessed inches. He swung himself up and over the armoire, through an opening just wide enough to allow him through, turned, seized her hand, and pulled her to him.

  Down the blazing hallway they ran, the snapping and crackling of the flames following them like manic laughter. They burst through the tower doorway into complete blackness, clattering and half-falling down the narrow spiraling steps to the main floor. Muira had done her job well;
Wanton’s Blush was an inferno.

  The castle was burning, set ablaze by a madwoman. Carr crept step by painful step along the hall, heading for his library.

  His eyes were swollen nearly shut. A red haze obscured vision that kept fading and then resolving itself. His nose was broken and his head echoed with dull noise. Pain lanced his side with each breath he took. He ignored the pain just as he ignored the deeper agony of being duped by his son—with the aid of that little Scottish heathen.

  He’d no time for that now. Already the air in the stairwell behind him shimmered with heat, the vanguard of the blaze that followed.

  The few guests left emerged wild-eyed from the rooms where they’d been carousing, befuddled and stupid as lemmings on a cliff. Wild-eyed and uncertain, they stood frozen, mouthing inanities and pleas for help. Carr ignored them. A few of his footmen screamed for water. Fools! No water could save Wanton’s Blush now.

  He made it to the door of his library, and with swollen hands fumbled for the key in his pocket and fit it in the lock. A roar like hell’s hound boomed above him. Suddenly the ceiling a few yards behind him collapsed. Fire rose like Adas unchained and surged from the burning timbers, pounced upward, gorging itself on rich tapestries and gilt-framed masterpieces.

  Carr ground his teeth in impotent fury and pushed the library door open. He’d little time. Less than little. He lumbered across the room toward the ornately carved mantel and, gritting his teeth in agony, fit his fingernails beneath a tile and pried it up. He shoved his hand down into the revealed compartment and fished until his hand closed on a packet. He removed it, stuffing the bundle beneath his shirt.

  He looked at the door leading to the hall. Tendrils of smoke crept beneath it in gentle exploration, insidiously delicate. He turned and hobbled quickly to his adjoining bedchamber, bent on retrieving at least the gold he kept in the trunk beneath Janet’s portrait. The thought of Janet brought a snarl to his lips, twisting the cut lips painfully. He reached for the handle and thrust the door open.