Lord of Sin (24 page)

Clara stared, realized that she had been asked to leave, and got to her feet.

“Something is wrong,” she said. “You are not yourself.
We
should be poor friends if we did not stand by you in your time of need.”

“When I am in need, I shall tell you.” Nuala broke for the drawing room door. “I shall send a letter from Northumberland when I reach my destination.”

Blowing out her breath, Clara followed Nuala into the hall. She paused at the door, clearly prepared to continue her arguments. Without thinking or considering her actions, Nuala whispered the simplest of spells, and the older woman’s face went blank. She murmured a goodbye and descended to her carriage.

Sickened by her sudden action against her friend, Nuala leaned against the wall, afraid she might not make it up the stairs to her room. It was so easy to work this shadow-magic to get her way. Second nature now, when for so many years even the whitest magic had been a careful practice, considered deliberately before the most rudimentary spell was spoken.

No longer. She was losing control of the very powers she had worked so hard to keep.

Working her way along the wall, Nuala reached the staircase. Within the hour she would be gone…north, just as she had told Clara. There was a man in Scotland, a witch who had been said to have relinquished his powers and become a monk. If he still lived, perhaps he could show Nuala the way to relinquish her own.

There was grave danger in such a purging, a chance that she might not survive the process. But she was prepared to pay that price.

It was her last hope.

Nuala climbed to the first-floor landing and braced herself on the banister. One way or another, this must end. She would end it.

But not without saying goodbye to Sinjin.

D
ONBRIDGE WAS AS QUIET
as the grave.

Only a handful of servants remained during the Season, and they maintained a strict state of efficient invisibility that suggested they were keenly aware of their master’s mood. The moment he arrived, Sinjin changed his clothes, raided the kitchen for a sandwich to stave off insistent hunger, and went directly to the library.

He found the hidden cupboard door after only a few minutes of searching. The cracks in the paneling were almost invisible; he was not surprised that he hadn’t noticed them before, having spent little time in the room since his accession to the title.

His hands shook as he found the catch and the door swung open. The dank smell of mildewed paper filled his nostrils. The book he found was small and
bound in red-dyed leather, its pages threatening to crumble before Sinjin had turned the first page.

He sat behind the desk and laid the book before him. The cover was blank, but the frontispiece displayed a primitive illustration of a woman, half-naked and leering, her hands raised as if she would attack the reader with weapons spun of air.

The woman looked like Nuala.

Sinjin turned the page with such haste that he nearly tore it in two. He ignored the damage and continued past the Scriptural verse on the next page to the first chapter.

Of Witches
, the title said. By Comfort Makepeace. Dense, crabbed writing crowded the paper, words shaped in antique script and an Old English dialect. Sinjin bent over the book, translating the language as best he could.

It was obvious that Comfort Makepeace had despised the women—and men—he named witches. Line after line described the evil they had worked among men since the days of Christ, how they were not bound by God’s law, or Man’s. They poisoned wells and struck down livestock merely to display their power; they killed those who dared attempt to expose them for the tools of Satan they were.

Sinjin closed the book, his eyes aching. Such extreme accusations could not be rational or true. They smacked of fanaticism. Just as had Martin Makepeace’s threats and warnings.

Rising quickly, Sinjin scanned the bookshelves. Few of the volumes had been touched in years; Giles
had not been a great reader, and Sinjin kept his own personal favorites in his rooms. But after a time he found a history of England wedged between Gibbon’s
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
and a well-worn copy of
Tom Jones
.

The section on the English witch-hunts was no more than a few paragraphs, but it was enough. Sinjin closed the cover and returned the book to its place.

He had been an utter fool. How had he not seen it from the first? Perhaps Comfort Makepeace had not been a witch-finder himself, but the man had clearly hated them enough to be such a monster.

Returning to the desk, Sinjin thumbed through the old tome’s fragile pages, pausing at each illustration. Most were crude wood-block prints of various witches performing wicked magic on innocent, terrified men, women and children. Not one depicted a hanging, a flogging, or any other overt act of violence against the loathed creatures.

Yet Sinjin’s gaze was caught on a sequence of illustrations near the end of the book, as primitive as the rest, but even more sickeningly evocative. In the first illustration, naked woman stood facing a man in the same dark, sober clothing worn by Martin Makepeace. Her hands were bound, and her hair flowed loose about her shoulders.

In the second illustration, the woman lay on her back on the ground, and the man crouched between her thighs. In the third, he was stretched out on top of her. And in the last, the woman knelt with bowed head, defeated. Clumsy though the illustrator was, he
had managed to convey a terrible sense of despair in the woman’s body.

Sinjin swallowed and read the text beneath the pictures. It was very explicit, both in the description of the physical act and the words that must be spoken as it was done. The cantrip was more effective if the witch were willing, but her cooperation in the coupling was not required.

Shutting the book, Sinjin dropped it to the carpet. It was obscene. Yet
this
was what Martin Makepeace had intended that he should find, the instructions he was meant to follow.

He walked out of the library and slammed the door, as breathless as if he had run several miles. He couldn’t do it. Not at any price.

The familiar, icy chill returned, running along his limbs and spine.

“Makepeace,” Sinjin said hoarsely.

The ghost didn’t appear, not even in the form of the mist that always presaged his materialization. But Sinjin heard the apparition’s voice just the same.

“Do you still doubt?”

“Did your father hang witches?”

“He tried to halt their evil, but he did not kill them.”

“He merely raped them.”

“Reciting the cantrip in the act of coupling is the only means of breaking their power.”

“Then you’ve got the wrong man to do your dirty work.”

“I have the right man. A man who is the last of his line, and will die without issue should he fail.”

“You expect me to believe that Nuala would kill me?”

“Or make certain that you have no sons of your own. She knows who you are, boy. She has always known.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then believe this. She will not realize what you have done. You may guide her, teach her to be a good, humble woman. And she will be well when it is finished. She may yet earn salvation.”

“And you? What will become of you?”

He waited for Makepeace’s answer, but none came. The chill passed away.

Dizzy with shock, Sinjin wandered up to his room. She
couldn’t
have deceived him for so long. She couldn’t have pretended their passion, the bond that had grown between them. She couldn’t be over two hundred years old. She couldn’t have killed Giles, or his father’s brothers, or all those sons of previous generations.

Yet there were unicorns, and fairies and ghosts. Ghosts who remained attached to this world for the sole purpose of securing what they believed to be justice.

Sinjin sat numbly on the bed and considered the worst. If Nuala really were what Makepeace had claimed, then Sinjin had but two choices: do as the book instructed, or let her continue on her path of wanton rage. Anything she might tell him must be presumed to be a lie. If she were wholly innocent of the crimes of which Makepeace had accused her…she might suffer a little while, but in the end she would be well again.

You may guide her, teach her to be a good, humble woman
. She would need
him
, turn to him for comfort. Be with him.

No. I do this for her. For those she might harm. Not for myself.

Good God. He was seriously considering it. She would never forgive him. Never.

“Your lordship?”

The footman’s voice was muffled through the door, but it held a note of urgency. Sinjin got up and let the man in.

“I beg your pardon, your lordship, but there is a lady to see you.”

Black premonition bit at Sinjin’s heart. “Did she give her name?”

The footman handed him the card. Sinjin crumpled it in his fist.

“Conduct her to the drawing room and inform the servants that they are to have the rest of the day off.”

The footman bowed and retreated. Sinjin took a deep breath and prepared himself to meet her again.

Nuala was waiting in the drawing room, her gaze fixed on a portrait of Sinjin and Giles with their father. It had been painted when Giles was ten and Sinjin eight; they had looked very much alike then.

“Sinjin.”

She didn’t smile as she turned to face him. There were hollows under her eyes, and her skin was pale.

Two hundred and forty-four years
, Sinjin thought. He imagined he could see it now, an ancient sorrow in her gaze, a weight of decades and centuries.

“I was not sure if you would see me,” she said.

He didn’t ask her to sit. There would be no lengthy conversation. “If you have come to explain…”

“No explanation could be sufficient. I can only ask you to forgive me as best you can. We shall not…” She hesitated, her throat working. “I shall be leaving London for a time. It is likely that we shall not meet again for many months.”

Her words came as a shock. It wasn’t that Sinjin hadn’t considered that a separation might relieve him of an untenable choice; if Nuala were simply to vanish, he could take no action against her.

But he felt no relief. “Where are you going?” he demanded.

“To Scotland. I believe it would be better for me to leave London and remain in solitude.”

“Solitude?”

“Yes. Perhaps, in time, I may learn to be quite ordinary again.”

In spite of her solemnity—even in light of all that had happened—Sinjin could barely stand to be near her without taking her in his arms. “You wish to be rid of your magic?”

“If it is possible.” Abruptly she moved toward the door. “I only came to say goodbye.”

He caught her before she reached the door. She melted into his arms. He kissed her, and she returned the kiss with fire and hunger and desperation.

S
INJIN BARELY HAD TIME
to close the door before Nuala had unfastened her skirt and began working on her petticoats. In a fever equal to hers, Sinjin helped her shed the garment and stripped away her drawers. She needed no spells to drive him mad with lust.

He kissed her frantically as he lifted her and carried her to the largest chair in the room. With trembling fingers he unbuttoned his trousers, lifted her bottom and spread her thighs apart. She was already wet and swollen, pink lips begging for his caresses. But he could not wait. Bracing his knees on the chair seat and his hands on the back, he entered her with one smooth thrust.

Nuala was no longer thinking of apologies, of the journey ahead, of the monk who might cure her of her particular madness. She was only aware of the feel of Sinjin as he moved inside her, his breath catching with each motion. There was nothing gentle in the taking, nor did she want gentleness. She locked her legs around his waist, urging him on, begging him to drive as deep as her body would allow.

Only at the end, when they were both near the
glory of completion, did she hear him begin to speak, in a low and rhythmic chant. She recognized the words and their fell purpose, and her mind detached itself from her quivering body.

He doesn’t know what he is doing
. He couldn’t. But as the cantrip began to do its work, and his thrusts became more insistent, she felt the words’ power begin to work through her, reaching their climax as Sinjin released his seed inside her. As her helpless body followed his, she heard cruel laughter. Not from Sinjin, who collapsed to his knees and pressed his face into the hollow beneath her ribs, but from the one who had used him as a tool of vengeance.

She had not understood. She hadn’t guessed, even when she had puzzled and worried over Sinjin’s inexplicable behavior. How long had Makepeace been with them? How had he reached Sinjin and taught him to use the spell?

Don’t you know, witch?

The old, terrible memories returned, and with them the knowledge she had hidden from herself, from the very senses that should have revealed the truth from the moment of her arrival at Donbridge over four years ago.

She closed her eyes and let her hands rest gently on Sinjin’s hair. He must have learned the truth of his heritage. She couldn’t know how long he had been aware of it, but she was certain he’d been ignorant of his descent, and of Makepeace, when she had worked as a maid at Donbridge. Surely he’d still been ignorant when they’d met again in London, or he would have taken action long before now.

Yet it really didn’t matter. Makepeace, whatever he had become, must have deceived Sinjin and convinced him that Nuala should be stripped of her magic. How much had he lied to achieve his ends? Had Sinjin taken her in hate?

No. There was no hatred in his eyes as he lifted his head and met her gaze, only a great sorrow and regret.

“I’m sorry, Nuala,” he said, his voice raw with emotion.

“Why?” she asked, stroking the disheveled hair away from his forehead. “I wanted it, too.”

He rose and backed away, his walk unsteady, and fetched the coat he’d tossed over the sofa. He covered her from waist to knees and retreated again.

“Do you…Are you well?” he asked.

“How could I not be?”

He swallowed. “Nuala…I know the truth.”

She sat up, pulling the coat with her. “About what, Sinjin?”

“That you were alive two hundred and forty years ago.”

She didn’t insult him with a denial. “It is true,” she said. “I could never find a way to tell you.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you.” He turned away, dragging his hand over his mouth. “Martin Makepeace came to me,” he said. “Do you remember him?”

If only she could laugh. “Yes.”

“Did you know that it was possible for a man to return from the dead?”

“Yes.”

“I did not. But after all I’ve seen…” He shook his
head with a sharp jerk. “He told me that I was the last of a line his grandson had founded in the seventeenth century. He spoke of my ancestors, about why so many of the male line have died since the first Ware was ennobled. He told me what you did to his father.” He glanced toward her, the lines etched between his brows drawn tight. “Did you kill Comfort Makepeace?”

“Yes.”

He leaned over the sofa, his face so white that Nuala feared he would be ill. “Why? Did he hurt you? For God’s sake, tell me!”

Nuala was silent. To reveal the full truth would destroy him. He had enacted the spell because he’d assumed that she had committed a heinous act of murder. The guilt of knowing he had been deceived…

“He claimed you and your kind were evil,” Sinjin said, “and that Comfort only wanted to stop you from hurting others.”

“He did attempt to stop us.”

“Did you…kill members of my family?”

She could not let him believe such a thing, though she knew her weakness to be despicable. “No, Sinjin. I did not.”

“Have you killed others?”

Her body was growing numb. “No. No others.”

His breath shuddered out. “I had to make sure of you,” he said, his face a mask of anguish. “I never believed you were evil, only that your abilities…the temptation…You were turning into someone I didn’t recognize…so much anger…”

He was right, of course. She had intended to put
an end to the temptation herself, even at the possible cost of her life. Now there would be no journey to Scotland, no seeking of a man who might or might not be able to cure her.

“I know, Sinjin,” she said. “I know what you have done. And I do not blame you.”

“God!” He slammed his fist into the sofa’s back. “If only you’d been honest with me from the beginning. If only you’d explained…”

“You wouldn’t have listened.”

It did not seem possible that his expression could hold any more anguish. “If there’d only been another way. Any other way.”

She was amazed to find herself capable of smiling. “I do not hate you, Sinjin. I am relieved that I am no longer…beset by temptation. You have taken that burden from me.”

He returned to her chair and dropped to his knees. “I would care for you for the rest of my life, if you would accept. But I know that is impossible.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am afraid it is.” She felt the weakness collecting in her legs. “I must go.”

He bounded up again. “I can’t let you,” he said, his voice sharp with panic. “You’re ill.”

With exquisite care she levered herself out of the chair, still clutching his coat to her waist. “I am perfectly well.” She reached for her discarded petticoats. “Please, let me go.”

“I won’t—”

The room spun around her. Sinjin caught her before she fell.

“Nuala!” He gathered her in his arms and carried her to the sofa. She felt his hands in her hair, on her face. “What in God’s name have I done?”

She was afraid to open her eyes. “It will pass.”

“Tell me what to do.” His voice was raw with panic. “How can I help you?”

“Don’t worry.” She reached for him, traced his dear, tormented face with her fingertips. “It is only temporary.”

And it was. The dizziness passed and left in its stead a peaceful lassitude. A part of her knew she should leave Donbridge before the spell took its full effect. But her body was no longer hers to command. Somehow she must make Sinjin understand that it was not his fault. Somehow she must…

The lassitude overwhelmed her, and she sank into a dream of her family. And of Christian, whom she had mourned so long. He would not blame her that she’d given her heart to another. They would all greet her soon. She had finally paid her debt. She had won her redemption at last.

“R
IDE HARD
,” S
INJIN
told the stable boy, pressing the note into the young man’s hand. “Change horses if you find it necessary. This message must reach Mrs. Summerhayes before sunset.”

The boy touched his forehead. “I will, your lordship.”

He left on Shaitan, bursting away at a gallop. The stallion could not endure the pace indefinitely, but there would be fresh horses for hire at nearly every
village between here and Cambridge, where the boy would wire the message to London.

Nothing more could be done. Sinjin ran back into the house, found the doctor descending the stairs and accosted him.

“How is she?”

The doctor’s grave expression gave his answer even before he spoke. “She is very ill,” he said, “but I can find no cause. Are you quite certain, Lord Donnington, that you have provided every detail of how this came about?”

Every detail. As if this man would ever believe, let alone find a way to reverse what had happened in the drawing room.

“You must help her,” Sinjin said. “Money is no object. If you must call in specialists, assistance of any kind…”

“I can certainly do so, Lord Donnington, but I can promise no different result. I have seen no case like it before. Lady Charles is…” He turned his face aside. “Have you called for her family?”

Sinjin braced his legs against a wave of terror. “I have wired her nearest relations in London,” he said. “Only tell me who else to send for, and I’ll see it done.”

With an almost imperceptible shake of his head, the doctor jotted down several names and handed the note to Sinjin. In minutes Sinjin had sent two more riders, a second to Cambridge and the other to Huntingdon. He had already arranged for the doctor to remain at Donnington for as long as necessary. Until Nuala recovered.

She
must
recover.

As night fell, he sat by Nuala’s bedside and prayed. Nuala didn’t hear him; she lay in a near-coma, eyes closed, skin drained of color, her breath frighteningly shallow. Sinjin held her cold hand, trying futilely to chafe some warmth back into it. After several hours the doctor returned and insisted he leave the patient to her rest.

There was nowhere for Sinjin to go, nothing more he could do. He walked into the park, past the folly where, not so long ago, he had learned that entire worlds existed beyond the one he knew.

He stood under the bright moon and flung back his head.

“Where are you?” he shouted. “Show yourself, you lying bastard!”

Makepeace, if he heard, chose not to respond. Sinjin shouted himself hoarse, but he might as well have been speaking to the mice and foxes.

He dropped to his knees, beyond despair. A moment later he had himself in hand again. He got up and trudged back to the house. The doctor, half-asleep in his chair, started awake again and shook his head. Nuala’s condition had not changed.

It was midmorning when the Widows drove into the lane. The dowager Duchess of Vardon, Ladies John Pickering and Riordan, Mrs. Summerhayes, Lady Selfridge—all had come. They did not need to know precisely what had happened to hold Sinjin responsible.

Only Mrs. Summerhayes revealed no overt emotion. When Sinjin showed the ladies into the drawing
room, she gazed at him without reproach or anger, only a quiet sort of waiting. As each of the widows went upstairs in turn, Mrs. Summerhayes remained quietly in her chair. After an hour Sinjin couldn’t bear it any longer.

As if she’d anticipated his request, she rose and followed Sinjin into the library.

“You must help me,” Sinjin said. “Help me to save her.”

The young woman turned to gaze at the fireplace where the charred fragments of Martin Makepeace’s book lay scattered among the ashes. “I speak for the dead,” she whispered. “I do not control them.”

“I don’t believe that. You knew I needed help the moment we met.”

“But I did fail to warn you. I didn’t recognize the danger. I…I am to blame.”

Sinjin seized her arm. “Our mistakes are irrelevant now. There must be a way to undo what I have done.”

She met his gaze. Her eyes were wet with tears. “What did you do?”

Sinjin told her. She listened without comment until he had completed the entire sordid story.

“You did not know what you were doing,” she said at last.

“No. God help me. I didn’t know she would be…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. He had no defense, even had he wished to offer one. He had let himself accept just enough of what Makepeace had told him because the ghost’s apparent desires had meshed so well with his. He had fallen prey to his own gnawing
doubts. All because he had become afraid of Nuala’s power, and what it might do to them both.

“I will pay any price to save her,” he said.

Mrs. Summerhayes sat abruptly, the tears spilling onto her cheeks. “If I knew the price, I would tell you.”

“Summon the ghost. Make him speak.”

“I will try. Please, sit down.”

He obeyed, every muscle taut with fear. Mrs. Summerhayes closed her eyes, resting her hands on her lap. Her breathing deepened. For an instant her face took on the expression he had seen in her parlor before the apparition had appeared. Then the expression was gone, and Mrs. Summerhayes opened her eyes.

“I cannot,” she said. “This house prevents me.
His
influence is too powerful.”

“Then we’ll go somewhere else,” he said. “There must be a place…”

“I am sorry. He is beyond my reach.”

“For God’s sake, there must be a way!”

“I do not know it.”

He surged to his feet and strode to the door.

“Lord Donnington.”

Hope stilled his heart. “What is it?”

“Part of what the spirit told you is true. I believe that Nuala did kill Comfort Makepeace. But not for the reasons he claims.”

Sinjin pounded the door with his fist. Of course Nuala had had a reason, but she had refused to defend herself. It was as if she had
wanted
to die.

She wasn’t fighting. She had given up.

He entered the entrance hall just as a maid was con
ducting new guests into the house: Lady Orwell and Ioan Davies. Deborah was clearly distraught, Davies hollow-eyed. They stopped when they saw Sinjin.

“How is she?” Deborah asked anxiously. “We came as quickly as we could….”

“She is very ill,” Lady John said as she descended the stairs. “I will take you to her.”