Dark Hero; A Gothic Romance (Reluctant Heroes) (2 page)

“Kenny can go for the constable.” Sheila whispered. She
soothed the hair from Elizabeth’s wet face in that old, familiar way. Kenny was
a chore boy, an orphan who had nowhere to go, save the workhouse so he stayed,
ignoring the madness behind his attic door.

Old Sheila rose to go rouse the boy. Kenny left and returned
with the constable. Elizabeth reported exactly what her stepfather told her to
and that was it. They accepted the lie without question. Mama’s body had been
moved upstairs to be prepared for burial.

Elizabeth sat alone on the bottom stair. It was quiet,
deadly quiet. Pink streams illuminated the fan window above the front door. Papa
was home, in his study, snoring loudly. Sleep came easy for someone who lacked
a conscience. Elizabeth nibbled her lower lip and stared at the red stain on
the parquet flooring in front of her bare feet. She’d scrubbed and scrubbed
after Mama’s body was taken upstairs, to no avail. The wood remained stained.

She looked at her hands in the red light of dawn. A sob
broke the awful silence.

If only Kieran were here,
Elizabeth thought, clinging
childishly to the hope that had been extinguished years ago.
He’d know what
to do. He’d take care of everything.

Kieran was her elder brother. He disappeared mysteriously
before she was born. She grew up imagining him as her savior. Her hero. Elizabeth
often imagined how different her life would be if Kieran were here. He’d been
born in Ireland years before their father died and Mama had moved back to
London after marrying Captain Fletcher. Kieran was her elder by nine years.
He’d be a man now—able to march in and confront the captain, able to take her
away from the Captain and his cruel ways forever.

Ah, but it wouldn’t answer to cling to childish fantasies
any longer. Kieran was dead, just like her parents. She was an orphan now.
Kieran couldn’t save her. No one could.

*******

Two nights later, Sheila O’Flaherty crept silently down the
servant’s stairs to make a quick reckoning of the house before she went about
her work. It wouldn’t do to have Captain Fletcher catch her creeping about the
Mayfair townhouse in the night with a knife in her hand.

Alas, her investigation showed that the captain was out for
the evening, gambling and drinking, no doubt, on the eve before his wife’s
burial. Sheila glided out to the kitchen garden to collect rose petals and
rosemary under the waxing moon. The cool June earth felt good beneath her bare
feet. The warm breeze caressed her loosened white hair like a patient lover.

Stuffing the herbs into her apron pocket, she entered the
house and moved silently into the parlor. Elizabeth was asleep in the chair
next to the open coffin, keeping watch over the dead in the Irish way as Sheila
instructed. The blood of chieftains and Druids flowed through Elizabeth’s
veins, and one day she would take her rightful place as seer and priestess of
Clan O’Flaherty. Sheila took great care to raise her granddaughter to be strong
and brave like her Celtic ancestors, not weak like her English mother.

Sheila made the sign to ward off the evil eye. It wasn’t
right to think ill of the dead, but Elizabeth’s mother had the mettle of jelly.
The silly woman could have petitioned the courts after her first husband died
in order to keep the castle and land for their son, Kieran. Angela Wentworth
O’Flaherty was English, after all, and the daughter of an earl. It would have
been no trouble for her to swear fealty to the crown and promise to raise her
son as a loyal English subject. The English would have liked replacing the
rebel father with a son loyal to the crown.

Alas, the woman simply wilted and waited for another man to
rescue her.

And so, the beautiful widow had fallen prey to the devious
Captain Fletcher. She succumbed to his oily lies with no more sense than a
goose being fattened for Sunday dinner. Angela had enough loyalty after
remarrying, bless her, to insist Sheila have a place in the Fletcher household
as the nanny. Sheila didn’t resent being relegated to the role of servant in
her daughter-in-law’s new household. Nine year old Kieran and the babe Angela
carried were O’Flahertys. They would need someone to teach them the ways of
their Celtic ancestors during their exile in London. And who better to train
the wee ones then the household nanny?

A bitter ache rose in her chest. Poor little Kieran, lost
forever.

As the eldest grandson of Lord Greystowe, Kieran would have
inherited the title of earl and the Wentworth fortunes. T’was little wonder the
lad went missing after the newly married Captain and Mrs. Fletcher arrived in
London. Fletcher claimed he’d lost his stepson in the crowds on the wharf and
made a show of looking for the boy for weeks afterward.

Sheila knew better. The lad was dead. There could be no
other explanation. He’d been efficiently removed to make room for the captain’s
child to become the legal heir. Sheila couldn’t prove it, and Angela, the boy’s
mother, refused to believe it.

Careful not to awaken her grandchild, Sheila reached into
the casket and cut away a raven tendril from Angela’s corpse. She hid the pouch
she’d prepared beneath Angela’s skirts.

 Once back in her attic room, Sheila placed the dark lock of
Angela’s hair next to her son Shawn’s length of burnished copper she had set
out on the table. Reverently, she removed a curly red lock from its yellowed
tissue wrapping; a snippet of Kieran’s hair she’d saved from his first haircut.
With moisture glazing her eyes, she pressed the soft tendril to her lips,
saying a final goodbye to her eldest grandchild. She began plaiting the three
tendrils together; father, mother and son into a tight braid. She used
Elizabeth’s silk hair ribbon to secure the plait and to bind the living with
the dead in the quest for justice.

Placing a pinch of saltpeter in the bowl of burning herbs,
the old woman chanted her curse as the flames shot up; “Angela
Wentworth-O’Flaherty-Fletcher, may your soul never rest, may your grave lack
peace, until justice is accomplished, until the wrongs done to my family are
avenged. You kept silent as a grave, unwilling to speak for those without a
voice, your own children. You denied them justice through cowardice; let
justice be denied your murdered soul.”

Sheila picked up the knife and sliced her palm open. She
made a fist and let the blood drip over the twisted braid. “By the power of
three, bound by blood; my blood, Shawn’s blood, and Kieran’s blood—O’Flaherty
blood--you’ll wander this earth a restless spirit until those who know the
truth are willing to speak for you and set the wheel of justice turning to
avenge your murdered soul.” The blood soaked braid was placed in a leather
pouch. All that was needed to seal the spell was fresh dirt from Angela’s
grave. She would have that tomorrow, at the burial.

Next, Sheila considered her charges, Elizabeth and Michael.
Orphans, they were. They needed someone to claim them, take them away from
Fletcher, but who would come for them?

Not the Earl of Greystowe, their maternal grandfather. The
haughty ass hadn’t come to visit his grandchildren for over a year. As for the
O’Flahertys, none were left to come to their aid. Her own three sons died
together on the same day, the Fighting O’Flaherty’s as they came to be called
far and wide. Elizabeth and her younger brother, Michael needed a protector. Yet
lacking family to provide for them Sheila was going to have to conjure a
guardian. The old woman nibbled on her lower lip, considering the situation
from all angles before she worked her magic. Elizabeth would be fifteen in two
months time. That was still too young to wed.

Sheila drummed her fingertips on the small table. Girls were
married young in her day, often at fifteen; even fourteen wasn’t unheard of among
the cottagers. But that was in Ireland fifty years past. In England today a
lass typically didn’t marry until she was at least seventeen, with the
preference being eighteen in polite society after a girl had made her proper
come out. Ach, there was no hope for it. She’d just have to cast the spell and
leave it to the ancients to bring the bridegroom to them at the proper time.

The man would have to be noble in spirit. Heaven knew there
were plenty of jackasses out there claiming noble birth who hadn’t a thimble
full of integrity between them. He must possess a strong sense of honor like a
knight in one of Michael’s storybooks. He should be sensitive so as not to
crush to her grand-daughter’s tender spirit, and yet possess a will that
outmatched Elizabeth’s in order to master the headstrong girl and prevent her
from rushing headlong to her own ruin. More to the point, he would have to be
someone Elizabeth could fall in love with or the stubborn lass wouldn’t accept
her knight when he came forth as summoned.

The old woman stroked her chin. T’was no easy enchantment to
fashion together, it was as complex as an apothecary’s formula. What would
Elizabeth find appealing in a man?

Ach, the girl talked incessantly about the dark heroes from
those cryptic romances she devoured.  
A Dark Hero
? Yes, a dark and
mysterious man would be just the thing to capture her grand-daughter’s fancy; a
man tested by life’s trials, mature beyond his years, responsible, honest--and
yet cunning as the devil in order to surmount Fletcher’s trickery.

Sheila placed one of Elizabeth’s baby teeth and a lock of
her hair in a pouch, along with the fresh rosemary and rose petals from the
garden. Remembering Michael, an innocent lamb caught in his father’s web of
intrigue, same as them all, she added one of his tin knight figures to the bag.
She held the pouch in her hands and began chanting;

“Bring a Dark Hero, faithful and true,

With hair black as midnight, and eyes bonny blue.

Send a Dark Hero, one we can trust;

With a will forged in iron, yet, tempered and just.

Send Elizabeth a champion with the soul of a Celt,

With a heart full of love, a sword on his belt.

Bring a Dark Knight to fulfill all her desires.

With a soul that’s been purified;

Through blood and through fire.”

Chapter Two

The Island of St. Kitts, The West Indies 1795

The jolt moved through him as swift and sure as a lightning
strike.

Kieran O’Flaherty sat up in bed, panting, uncertain of his
perceptions. The boundaries he put in place should have kept the spirits away.
A body could go mad listening to all the spirits roaming these islands. The
cruel slave trade ground out a steady supply of confused, angry ghosts needing
help crossing to the otherworld.

It wasn’t a ghost, he decided after carefully evaluating the
atmosphere about him. It was an ancient Fetch sent out by someone with a keen
mastery of the occult arts. Powerful magic had been wrought this night. It knew
him by name and it called to him from beyond the moonlit harbor of Basseterre
on the island of St. Kitts. It had called to him from across the sea.

There came a familiar scratching noise at his door, and then
Nickolas Barnaby, the man who had purchased his indenture years ago, poked his
head inside Kieran’s small room. “Do we have a visitor, lad? I sensed something
odd creeping about the house.”

“Just a misguided element from an ancient spell, nothing to
worry about.”

“Have a care, boy. Old magic is the most powerful.” With
that dour warning, the ancient apothecary left Kieran alone in the darkened
chamber.

A faint ringing disturbed his thoughts. Kieran slipped into
his shoes and headed for the stairs. Once in Barnaby’s service, he learned
quickly to sleep with his clothes on, as a goodly portion of their business was
conducted after midnight. The face at the back door was pale with fear. “It’s
my first wife; she won’t stay away from the new one. I need you folks to do
something about it.”

Kieran let the man into the back of the shop. “How long has
she been deceased?”

“Six months.” The man looked about him nervously as he
spoke. “You got to do something to make her go away. Money isn’t a problem.”

 Jeremiah Townsend was frightened. His first wife died
suddenly and the second one was in her bed before she was cold in the ground.
Kieran’s gift didn’t tell him that, local gossip was the culprit. What Kieran
did pick up was a strong feeling of guilt. “Before your first wife died, was
there any reason to suspect that you were having an affair?”

How dare you! The words were in his eyes, but Townsend
didn’t give them voice. “I’ve plenty of money, I need you to make her stop
scaring Mary; it ain’t her fault Prudence died.”

“Are you certain?” Kieran asked.

Townsend opened his mouth to speak, and then smashed his
lips together as he gazed anxiously about the room. “Mary was my mistress,
true. Begged me to leave Pru. I couldn’t do it. I told Mary that. I said the
only way we could be together as man and wife was if--”

Kieran remained silent, allowing Townsend to turn the idea
over in his mind.

“If Prudence died--but I didn’t mean it like you think. I
didn’t tell her to do nothing’, I was just stating facts, nothing more.”

“We understand.” Barnaby oozed with sympathy behind Kieran.
“It’s a job, banishing an angry spirit, it’s difficult, but it can be done.”

“Name your price.” Townsend responded, falling easily into
to the old man’s snare.

After Townsend left, Barnaby rushed about the downstairs
shop, collecting the ingredients for a banishing spell they would need to
assist their newest client.

“Why do you do this?” Kieran asked. “That woman was
murdered. Her spirit seeks justice. Binding her with a banishing spell won’t
serve justice.”

“Justice?” Barnaby paused in his gathering. He turned to
Kieran, his bony fingers twining his snowy goatee. “Justice is not our
business, lad.” Realizing he still wore his red silk nightcap, the old man
removed it and brushed a stray wisp of white from his eyes. “We’re here to help
those troubled by restless spirits. Lawyers don’t quibble over whether a client
is guilty; they just worry about him paying the bill. Justice, my boy? Leave
that sorry business to God.”