Lord of Sin (16 page)

She could not. She stepped through the door, nearly ran down the stairs and fled through the entrance hall with no thought as to how she might return to Belgravia. She had asked Bremner to return at half three, estimating that three hours would be sufficient time to…

The thought of what she and Sinjin had almost done was suddenly unbearable. Unbearable because of what she had seen and heard. Unbearable because of what she had lost.

She continued to walk at a fast pace, striding for the gate to the cottage grounds. Circus Road was empty save for a single carriage in the distance, the light of its lamps nearly lost in the mist. Half a mile on, she recognized the lanky figure hunched over the reins of the brougham. She stopped to catch her breath as Bremner pulled up to meet her.

“Your ladyship?” he said, his ordinarily sleepy eyes widening in surprise. “Have I come late?”

“No, Bremner. Let us go home.” She said nothing more as he leaped down from his perch and handed her into the carriage, offering her a blanket to cover her knees. She settled back in the seat as the strength drained out of her legs.

Her thoughts racing, she barely noticed the ride home. In what seemed like mere moments Bremner was at the carriage door again, ready to help her down.

She rushed into the house, grateful that she had made clear that none of the servants were to wait up for her return. Deborah must be safely in her bed; only the ticking of the long case clock in the drawing room gave a sense that the house was inhabited at all.

The climb to her bedroom seemed to require every last ounce of effort Nuala could muster. She undressed and lay down, though the cotton sheets seemed to rub her skin raw.

He wasn’t himself
. Could there be any doubt of that? His voice, the way he had spoken…

Just as he had spoken at Donbridge.
Witch
. Such hatred. Such gloating satisfaction.

He was ill. Some trouble was weighing on him too heavily, driving him to speak and behave as he never would if he were in his right mind.

I should have stayed. I might have helped him.

At the cost of accepting him into her body without pleasure, without tenderness, without…

She captured the half-formed word in her fist before it could escape her mouth. Attempting to analyze what had happened would be a useless exercise now, when she was so weary and discouraged and afraid. Best to sleep on it. The morning always brought clarity. The world would look very different then, and she could sort out her tangled memories.

Nuala closed her eyes.

The fire
.

It seemed to be everywhere, consuming the trees, the people, the world.

Hands bound behind him and collared with a coil
of rope, Christian gazed down from the gallows at those who had sentenced him. Not many men were among those condemned for heresy and witchcraft, but he had been denounced by a woman whose deathly ill infant he had failed to cure with his healing powers.

The child had been too far advanced in its disease. The woman had waited too long. But she must have someone to blame…and who better than a witch?

Nuala watched from the alley, her empty stomach clenched with horror. No matter her own modest powers, she could not escape Uncle Turner’s iron grip. He would not let her go to Christian, share his fate.

If she had only returned sooner, she would be beside her husband. Where she ought to be.

Let me go,
she begged silently. The words went unspoken. Uncle had cast a spell to silence her lest she cry out and call attention to herself and the three witches with her.

For she, like all her family, had been denounced and would have been slain after a perfunctory “trial” by the town magistrates and the soberly dressed, self-righteous jurors who looked with satisfaction upon the bodies dangling from the gibbet. So many had died before this terrible day. So many who had worked only for the good, healing and helping the crops to grow and the cattle to thrive.

But we are different
. And that was enough.

The witch-finder faced Christian, a Bible in his hand, and began to deliver his final sermon of condemnation. His voice was deep, commanding, without a thimble’s worth of compassion or regret.

Hatred was an emotion Nuala had never felt before these past few weeks of terror. But she had learned to hate very well indeed. She stared at the witch-finder’s back, wishing upon him the same fate he had decreed for his victims.

“Quiet, child,” her uncle whispered. But he could not silence her heart.

One of the men waiting for the hanging looked toward the alley. Uncle Turner shrank back, but the young man did not see them. He glanced about the square, his brows drawn and his mouth pressed in a thin line. Had Nuala not known what he was, she might have believed him to be no more than a youth longing to be anywhere but in this place of evil.

But he had stood by his father throughout the trial, approved of the witch-finder’s heinous acts, made no protest when Christian and the others were condemned to death.

Nuala had gone to him. She had pleaded, promised, begged on her knees. She had offered him everything he had demanded of her. Her body, her obedience, her respect. All but the one thing she could never give…her love.

He hadn’t listened. He had hardened his heart against her, knowing she could not love him. He would do nothing to stop this travesty of justice.

Martin Makepeace
. There was only one man she despised more than him…the man who now stood upon the scaffold and placed the noose around Christian’s neck.

She screamed, though the cry went no further than
her chest. Uncle’s grip tightened. He stroked her hair, murmuring calming chants that had no effect. Aunt Turner and Sally began to sob.

Nuala’s eyes remained dry. All the fluids in her body had turned to ice. The witch-finder finished his speech on a triumphant note. The mayor, who had presided over the trials, gave the signal, and Christian was set in place. He raised his eyes to the heavens. If he prayed, he did so without words, without cries for deliverance.

The judges and their sycophants watched, unmoving. The crowd of villagers bunched behind them were equally still. They had done their work well. Did they regret their denunciations of those who had helped them?

Nuala turned her gaze to Christian’s face. His skin was flushed, sweating, but there was still no sign of fear. Perhaps the spells had succeeded. Perhaps his body would release his spirit without suffering.

Save him, Uncle. Oh, please, save him.

Uncle Turner did nothing. Sally wept.

And Martin Makepeace watched.

Nuala reached into herself, into the deepest reaches of her abilities. She had never used them in the way she meant to now. Never worked to influence a man’s body or mind. Or to kill. But hatred gave her a new strength. She spoke the words in her heart, willing to give her life to lend them power.

At first she thought it was only the smoke, or the shock of the torments to which Christian had been subject during the interrogation. But he closed his
eyes and sagged beneath the rope, head lolling, as the life leaked gently out of his body.

Sally’s muffled sobs grew louder. Aunt hushed her. They knew.

Christian was dead. Beyond suffering. Beyond the reach of Comfort Makepeace and his despicable accomplices.

Nuala collapsed in Uncle Turner’s arms. But the strength had gone out of him, as well. She slumped to the ground, her mind a blank, her body fruitlessly attempting to empty her hollow stomach.

Christian is dead.

Her head was a blacksmith’s anvil, but she lifted it. She looked once more at Christian’s face and sent her love after his fleeing spirit.

And then she looked at Comfort Makepeace. He was speaking with the hangman now, disappointment and anger in the set of his narrow shoulders. The punishment had been circumvented, as if by an act of God. Christian Starling had not adequately paid for his sins on this Earth.

“He will suffer in Hell,” one of the sober, righteous magistrates said. There was a low chuckle. Someone in the village crowd seconded his comment.

Nuala was hardly aware that she rose to her feet. Uncle Turner tried to take her arm. She had no difficulty in shaking him off. Her skirts dragged around her ankles, but it was as if they anchored her to Mother Earth, drawing the very powers of soil and stone and life to fill the emptiness in her body.

She darted forward before Uncle could even think
to stop her, dashed out of the shelter of the alley and into the square. A score of startled faces turned toward her.

Martin Makepeace gaped, his face going pale. His father’s expression held surprise no more than an instant, then hardened with hate that almost matched Nuala’s own.

“Witch!” he snarled, pointing. “God has brought you to us at last!” He gestured to his men. “Seize her!”

They hesitated, almost as if they sensed what was about to happen. Nuala lifted her hands. She called upon the Dark Powers, those her people shunned as they shunned all violence. Lightning prickled in her fingertips with a heat so intense that she would have felt agony had she been able to feel anything at all.

Uncle’s voice spoke in her mind, as was sometimes possible in times of great trouble. She ignored his pleas. A black cloud surrounded her. She completed her incantation. For a moment there was no response. And then, with an almost comical look of surprise on his face, Comfort Makepeace clutched his chest.

Even had she wished to halt her revenge, Nuala could not have done so. The flames burst from the center of Makepeace’s body, engendered from within, fed by his flesh and bones and internal parts.

He screamed, pawing uselessly at his chest as his doublet melted away. Martin Makepeace started toward his father, his horror limned in hellish light. He retreated again at the heat of the flames, helpless, his voice hoarse with wordless cries.

Comfort Makepeace fell to his knees, no longer capable of speech. The flames consumed his ribs and spine, his groin and his thighs. Yet still he lived. His dying body collapsed like a building neglected for a hundred years. The stench was so choking that the watching people hacked and coughed and stumbled, a herd of sheep without a shepherd.

Nuala lowered her hands. The black sorcery deserted her, and this time she had nothing left of will to keep her on her feet. She fell, her vision going dim as Martin Makepeace knelt beside his father, his hands clasped as if in prayer.

Then he looked up. He wore a mask instead of a face, a mask so distorted and hideous that no human hand could have carved it.

“Hear me, witch,” he snarled. “I will hunt you down. Wherever you go, no matter how many years it may require, I will find you. And you will suffer.”

“Hurry, child!” Uncle Turner had emerged from the alley, his eyes wide with shock and horror. He hooked his hands under Nuala’s arms and dragged her away. No one dared to interfere or follow.

Uncle and Aunt took Nuala up between them and began to run.

As her useless feet bumped over the unpaved lane, Nuala heard nothing of the scuffle of her kinfolk’s shoes or their rasping breath. It was Martin’s threat she heard. It was his face she saw, a monster’s face, pitiless and shaped by a monstrous kind of joy.

She would remember that face to the end of her days. No matter where she fled, no matter how many
good works she might to do atone for her terrible crime, she would always see his face.

Sinjin’s face.

N
UALA WOKE WITH A START
of terror as the bedsheets smoldered at her feet. She leaped from the bed and snatched up her dressing gown, beating at flames that had just begun to lick at the cotton.

But there was no fire. The sheets were damp and cool with perspiration, whole and clean.

Nuala was too ill to reach the lavatory at the end of the hall. She heaved into the dustbin in the corner of the room and remained there on her knees, trembling with distress.

For so many years she had buried the memories. Nearly everything but the sickening recollection of how she had unleashed black sorcery to kill, the most awful sin any witch could commit.

And she had been cast out for that sin. Oh, no one had cursed her. No one had punished her. Martin Makepeace had never found her. She had not lost her powers. But she had not aged. She had not died, even as her surviving family grew old and passed on. Instead, she had been compelled to make amends for her terrible mistake by helping others find love. And though she had come to see
her work as her true mission in life, a blessing born out of tragedy, she had hoped that one day the Light would find her worthy of forgiveness and release her.

But it was not to be. If she had been forgiven, she would not have relived every ugly detail of that day. She would not have been compelled to witness Christian’s death again, experience the savagery of Martin Makepeace’s hatred.

And her own.

Slowly she rose, felt her way to a chair and collapsed into it.
Sinjin’s face
. It had been the one wrong element, the one false note in an otherwise accurate memory of pain and suffering. Now that she was fully awake, she understood that seeing him had been only an invention of her crippled imagination.

But he had called her “witch.” He had spoken of stopping her, draining her of all the evil that lay within her.

She moaned behind her hands. Her own fears had spun those words, twisted whatever he had really said into something cruel and distorted.

Surely that, too, was part of her punishment. Just when she had permitted herself to recognize the strength of her attraction to Sinjin, she had been robbed of any chance at pleasure and reconciliation. Her very thoughts had betrayed her.

Dawn light was beginning to show through the small crack between the draperies. Nuala lifted her head. She would not permit fear to rule her. She must see Sinjin again. She would see that what she had
heard and felt in Sinjin’s bed had indeed been an illusion, a construction of her own guilt.

She sat very quietly until Booth arrived with a tray of tea and toast. Perhaps the young woman had sensed that Nuala was of no mind to speak to anyone, not even Deborah. Making her best effort to nibble at the toast, Nuala left most of it untouched and rang for Booth again.

It must be a formal call. She would take Booth, so that no one might assume she was visiting Sinjin for a private interview. She would look into his face, his dark eyes, and know…

She barely reached the dustbin in time to be sick again. When she had recovered, she recognized that her brave intentions were no match for the memories she could not escape.

There was only one place to go…a place she had avoided for most of her long life. The place where she had been born, where Christian had died. Only there could she face these newly powerful visions and rid herself of her mad delusions about Sinjin.

She asked Booth to begin packing comfortable, practical clothing for an impromptu visit to the countryside. She would be making no calls on friends there; she had none. As far as she knew, she had no living kin in Suffolk. The train would carry her to Ipswich; from there she would locate an inn and hire a carriage.

Nothing more remained to be done but to see Deborah.

The young woman was ensconced in her room.
Her suite was large and included a sitting room with a desk and comfortable chairs, and she seemed perfectly content to remain there rather than join Nuala for meals or engage in social calls.

It has only been five days since her visit to Whitechapel,
Nuala reminded herself as she paused before Deborah’s door. No matter how shaken the girl had been by the experience she still refused to discuss, she was young and resilient. Certainly Nuala could be of no help to her until she herself had firm control of her emotions again.

Perhaps it was best if she didn’t disturb Deborah now. A note would be sufficient. Nuala did not intend to be gone more than three days, four at the most.

Nuala went downstairs and wrote out a brief note, informing Deborah of her plans and her general location in case of emergency. She waited for Bremner to bring round the brougham, ticking off the interminable minutes.

When she returned from Suffolk, she would know how to separate her past from her relationship with Sinjin. If there was even a relationship with Sinjin at all.

T
HE MIRROR REFLECTED
the same familiar face: the dark eyes and hair, the same nose and lips and jawline.

Sinjin rubbed his hand across his mouth, feeling the stubble that had grown since yesterday morning. He knew he must shave, dress, go about his business. Spend safely masculine time with the Forties, find a pliant female…

Nuala had been pliant. Until something had happened…something he still couldn’t begin to comprehend. He couldn’t forget the terror in her eyes.

What did I do?

He slammed his fist on the washstand, nearly upsetting the basin. All he remembered was lust…black, seething lust tinged with anger as inappropriate as it had been unexpected.

Witch.
He remembered speaking the word in a tone filled with rage and contempt. It was as if he’d returned in time to the first moment he’d seen her in Hyde Park.

But he wasn’t the same as he’d been then. Nuala was far from innocent, but…

You are as much to blame for what happened at Donbridge as she ever was
. At some crucial moment during the past weeks, he had fully accepted that fact, acknowledging it instead of dodging the admission whenever it entered his mind.

He looked away from the glass and stared at his untouched bed. He had abandoned the love-nest as soon as he had regained his sense, choosing the Spartan comfort of his own bedchamber. But his head had been full of images of fire, pain, death. And it had been those images that had twisted him into someone who could come so very close to taking a woman against her will.

Good God
.

With a groan, he paced around the room looking for something to smash. But there was nothing worth destroying, even if he had been so childish as to wreck some inoffensive object merely to soothe his conscience.

If only he could remember the words. The exact words that had so frightened Nuala even before he had tried to do the unthinkable.

She would never forgive him. The thought of never seeing her again made the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Because you still want her. Want her more than anything you’ve ever wanted in your life
.

Numb and sluggish, he dressed without his valet’s assistance, declined breakfast and went directly to his club. Leo was comfortably settled in an oversize leather armchair, reading some scholarly work.

“Sin,” he said, looking up. “Up and about early, I see.” He frowned as Sin sat in the chair beside his. “What is it? You look like a man standing at the mouth of Hell.”

Sinjin laughed. “Very perceptive of you, Erskine.”

Leo closed the book and leaned his elbow on the armrest. “Anything you’d care to discuss?”

“No.”

“Ah. Lady Charles, I presume?”

Sinjin signaled a waiter. Much too early to drink. He didn’t give a damn.

“Bad indeed,” Leo remarked as the waiter returned with a glass of whiskey. “I should think a man of your experience would be able to ignore the rumors.”

Forgetting the glass in his hand, Sinjin stared at Leo. “What rumors?”

“That Lady Charles has set her cap at you, and you’re about ready to abandon your oath of bachelorhood.”

“Ha.” Sinjin snorted so loudly that the few other club members present glanced inquisitively in his direction. He beat back the panic that had taken him by the throat, remembered his liquor and gulped it down. “What can possibly have led to such rumors?”

“You don’t know?”

Of course he knew. Someone must have reported Nuala’s visit to Donbridge, or a servant had gossiped about her going to Sinjin’s cottage on Circus Road. He had become aware that rumors of some sort were already circulating, but he would never have guessed that they would tend in this direction.

Marriage
…

Sinjin set down his glass with the greatest possible care. “There was nothing said…about Lady Charles’s reputation?” he asked in a low voice.

Leo leaned back, his expression unreadable. “Are you so concerned for her reputation?”

The room was very quiet. People were listening while pretending not to, and Sinjin didn’t intend to give them any more fodder.

“Not at all,” he said. “Neither she nor I have anything to conceal.”

Leo rubbed his thumb over his book’s leather binding. “Nevertheless, it might be best for you to avoid any hint of partiality toward Lady Charles in the near future, for both your sakes.”

That, Sinjin reflected bitterly, should present no difficulty. He rose, deliberately foregoing the temptation of another drink. “Thank you for your company, Erskine. And your advice.”

“Gladly given, Donnington.”

Sinjin left, running the gauntlet of those too-knowing stares. He considered calling on Melbyrne. They had scarcely spoken since Sinjin’s return from Donbridge, and Sinjin had no idea what the boy had decided to do about Lady Orwell.

After last night, Sinjin hardly cared.

He wandered aimlessly about, visited his favorite haberdashery, purchased a new tie and went for an early ride in Hyde Park. But he could not silence his thoughts. Who could have put it about that Nuala was pursuing him with marriage in mind? Someone in the Forties? Ferrer, quite possibly…save that Ferrer would surely have preferred to suggest that Nuala was more interested in sexual liaisons than marriage.

Certainly Nuala might have wished to ruin his reputation as the founder of the Forties and the principal rake in London. But
marry
him?

He tried to brush the ridiculous notion aside, but by midafternoon he realized that he had to see her again. To set things right between them, even if he must humble himself as he had never done before in his life.

If all Leo had said about the rumors were true, Sinjin’s calling on Nuala would only encourage them. But it was far better to meet her openly than attempt to arrange another private rendezvous, which Nuala would surely refuse in any case. And she would have Lady Orwell’s company to lend respectability to the visit.

The time for social calls had nearly expired by the time Sinjin had made himself ready. He left his card
with a parlor maid and wondered what he might do if Nuala wouldn’t see him. Beating down the door would certainly attract attention and do nothing to regain Nuala’s trust.

To his surprise, the parlor maid returned and invited Sinjin to enter. He was kept cooling his heels in the entrance hall until Lady Orwell appeared.

The young woman paused at some distance from Sinjin, reserved in her half-mourning, punctiliously courteous.

“Lady Charles is not at home, Lord Donnington,” she said after the briefest of curtsies. “If you should care for tea…”

Sinjin felt as tongue-tied as a schoolboy. “Thank you, Lady Orwell. Can you tell me when Lady Charles is to return?”

“That I do not know.” She gestured toward the stairs and led him to a door to what Sinjin presumed was the drawing room. He hesitated, seeing no reason to remain, but as he met Lady Orwell’s grave gaze he began to wonder if he had had in some way misjudged her.
This
was not a woman expecting imminent engagement to a man she had been assiduously pursuing.

Had Melbyrne decided against courting her? Was this the face of a woman spurned, grieving for a lost love?

Guilt had already taken up residence in Sinjin’s gut; it took little enough to add to its weight. He followed Lady Orwell into the drawing room, set his hat on the table and waited while the young woman excused herself with a murmur of apology.

Left alone in the room, Sinjin noted that it was strangely absent of any trinkets or decorations that suggested a woman’s personal touch. It was clean and uncluttered, almost masculine…perhaps not so surprising when one remembered that Nuala had only been resident in London for a short while.

Unable to sit still, he rose and stalked around the room. By sheer chance he happened to glance behind one of the chairs near the mantelpiece. A painting leaned facedown against the wall.

Glancing toward the door, Sinjin lifted the painting away from the wall and turned it over. It was a portrait…a portrait of Nuala, recently painted but oddly anachronistic in style, as if it had been rendered centuries ago. Nuala’s hair was bound up under a prim cap, and her dark dress bore a similarly prim, wide collar.

The clothing of another time. But Nuala’s face was unchanged…solemn, her gaze looking out at the viewer with a deep and abiding sadness.

Sinjin closed his eyes, the image burning under his eyelids. There was something familiar about the gown Nuala had chosen to wear for the portrait. Something that drove him back to last night’s inexplicable occurrence.

Fire. Fire and agony, a woman’s triumphant face as she raised her arms and worked her black magic. Hatred beyond anything this world could contain…

Lady Orwell was just returning as Sinjin reached the door.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I must be going. I thank you for your hospitality.”

She gazed at him with eyes that seemed far older than her years. “I shall tell Lady Charles that you called.”