Seduced by a Stranger (26 page)

And she knew not if he spoke of his suffering or hers. Or perhaps both. Two pieces of broken pottery, brought together at the jagged edge, made whole, though imperfect still.

He loved her. He would not say it unless he meant it with every breath and every fiber of his being. He was not a man to say anything lightly.

Her heart danced in a rough, jagged rhythm. Her breath whooshed from her lungs as though a blow had been struck. It had. His words were like a physical thrust, stabbing as deep as they could go, filling her, lifting her, offering her the impossible.

He loved her and so he gifted her with his trust, opening his metal box, but more than that, opening his heart. She could only begin to imagine what that cost him.

Wanting to offer her own vows, her own baring of heart and soul, she parted her lips, intending to speak, but no words came out, only the soft huff of her breath.
Say it. Say it.
But she did not. She only stared at him and wished she were so brave.

As though he knew her thoughts, he said, “Tell me when you are ready, Catherine. I can wait. You have no idea how long I can wait.”

But she did. She knew how long he had waited to be free, how long he had waited for his vengeance. He would wait that long for her. She knew it.

“Read them. And then burn them,” he said. “I shall await you in my chamber.”

Turning, he headed for the stairs, leaving her alone with only the hiss and the pop of the fire for company, leaving her with his secrets open and bare on the table. Trusting her with them.

“Wait,” she cried, and tore after him, pausing at the top of the narrow staircase, seeing the shadowy shape of him below her. He paused, but did not turn, only stood on the stair with his back to her. She needed to tell him she loved him. She needed to set the words free.

But when she made to speak, something entirely different came out instead.

“I killed him,” she said, feeling both heavy and light. “Jasper Hunt. I was lying on the pallet where I had birthed my child. Two days had passed, perhaps three. I do not know. I was ill. Feverish. He came to that room. I heard the rasp of the key.” She shuddered, forced herself to go on, the words coming faster now, in a hushed frantic rush. “He pushed the door open. The baby,
my
baby began to wail. Jasper staggered in. I could smell the stale stink of liquor on him. ‘Make it quiet,’ he ordered, and I tried. I tried. But the baby would not quiet. Jasper came to stand beside me, and he reached down, tore my child from my grasp, and put his hand over the baby’s mouth. ‘Quiet,’ he cried. And again, ‘Quiet.’ I tried to take the child from him. I begged. I pleaded. I clawed at his wrist and his fingers, but he only kicked me away.” Her voice grew hoarse. “He held his hand there, and in the end, my son was quiet.”

She swallowed the sob that choked her, forced herself to go on. Below her, on the stair, Gabriel was preternaturally still.

“He fell upon me, tried to…to…
take
me, but he was so far into his cups that he only fell asleep, his weight crushing me so I could not breathe. I pushed at him and struggled, and finally, he rolled enough that I could wriggle free. But when he rolled, he knocked the candle and the flames began to dance. They licked at the rug, the curtains, the bedsheets…”

“And you took your child and you left Jasper Hunt there, in your bed, to burn,” Gabriel finished, his tone flat.

She put her palm across her mouth, and took a jagged, raspy breath.

“I did.” She forced the admission through lips that felt frozen. “I watched from the lawn, holding my dead baby tucked inside my dress, still warm against my breast. The flames leaped and danced and burned my childhood home to the ground, and Jasper danced in the window. He screamed and screamed then, and for two days after. A part of me was sorry when he died. I wanted him to live forever, just like that.” Her body trembled, though she could not say if it was horror for her own story and the memories and the pain, or the relief of finally setting it free that made her shake. “So you see, I killed him.”

“I know,” Gabriel said, and finally looked back at her, his face pale in the darkness, his eyes burning, fierce. He came up the stairs to her then and pulled her close and held her, just held her, for what seemed a very long time. “I have known all along, my brave love.”

Then he stepped back and held her gaze long enough that she understood what he told her. She could have said anything, and it would not have mattered. He loved her.
Her
. For all she was, and all she was not.

And now it was her turn to discover what was in that metal box, to know his secrets and accept or reject him.

He loved her enough that he even gave her that.

Offering a faint smile, he turned away once more and descended the stairs, disappearing round the bend.

Absolution, just like that.

If only she could truly forgive herself so easily. Not for Jasper’s death—he had made his own ugly choices—but for the death of her child.

It was only after she stood there for some moments, wrestling her emotions under control, living and reliving the past few moments, that she understood Gabriel’s smile.

He knew more than what she had admitted aloud. He knew she loved him. The very act of trusting him with her secrets had told him so. And he expected that she would love him still, no matter what the letters and journals revealed.

Catherine lit a taper in the fire and touched it to the candle on the desk. The room was dim, but there was light enough to read by. She settled in the high-backed leather chair. Carefully she withdrew the packets of letters from the metal box, and saw that there were three leather-bound journals, as well.

She started first with the letters addressed to Gabriel St. Aubyn, Cairncroft Abbey. Tipping them to the light, she read Sebastian’s descriptions of his travels. One letter stood out from the others, the words eerie and disconcerting. Tracing her finger over the page, she read them twice.

I have heard talk that a mummy is to be sent home to England to be unwrapped before an audience of physicians. I should like to be there when they do, to see for myself the places they made the cuts in order to remove the lungs, liver, intestine, and stomach. These the ancient Egyptians stored in jars made of stone or ceramic or even wood. If only you could see them, carved and decorated. You would think them wondrous things of fascination, I am sure. I find them mysterious. I wonder at the purpose of such deliberate dissection. I wonder, too, that the heart, they did not take. Gabriel, it would be wonderful if you were here. Perhaps we could even try to make a mummy ourselves using a dead bird or other small creature
.

 

The description was evocative. She could not help but think of Martha Grimsby and the clipping she had read, so thoughtfully provided by Mrs. Northrop. Again, she recalled the suspicions she had felt after meeting Sebastian for the first time, her curiosity about whether he had been in London at the time of Martha’s death. From the dates on these letters and the things written therein, she knew he had been at Cairncroft Abbey at approximately the same time that the dead girl buried in the unmarked grave had been found. In fact, she thought she recalled someone—Madeline? Gabriel?—had mentioned that Sebastian had been the one to find her.

Was there significance in that? She could not bear to think so, but the possibility nagged at her.

Carefully, she set that letter aside, and then took up the packet addressed to Geoffrey St. Aubyn, Hanham House. She had no question of how Gabriel had come to have these letters in his possession. Gabriel had been incarcerated in a madhouse, and now, his brother was there in his stead. Or was his brother dead now?

Gabriel had never said, she realized, and it had not occurred to her to ask.

She read letter after letter, and at length, she set the whole pile aside and put her palm on the small of her back as she arched and stretched.

Idly, she reached for the first of the three leather-bound journals and flipped it open to the first page. Childish drawings greeted her. Tipping her head, she studied the first one. It appeared to be a cat pouncing on a mouse. She flipped to the next page and the next and each one depicted a predator taking its prey.

A memory touched her, of drawings in a similar style. She had seen them before, but could not think where. Flipping pages faster now, she gave only cursory scrutiny to each. By the end of the journal, the look of the sketches changed. Matured. And the drawings became increasingly more gruesome.

Sliding the next journal along the desktop, she flipped it open. A drawing of a flower, and on the next page more flowers, and on the next, a tree. Again, she felt an odd sense of having seen these before. Turning another page, she froze, gasped, horror clogging her throat. The drawing was some sort of animal—a cat? A fox?—lying in a pool of blood. She wanted to think otherwise, wanted to imagine her vision betrayed her. But, no, though the drawing was crude, it could be mistaken for nothing else.

She turned the pages faster, her breath coming quick and harsh, and a soft cry escaped her as she came to the very last sketch. Four jars. And below them on the page something that looked like the beef liver she had watched Cook prepare as a child.

She was panting now. Closing her eyes, she willed her breathing to slow. To whom did these journals belong? Three boys had lived at Cairncroft Abbey—Gabriel, Geoffrey, and Sebastian—and one of them had grown to be a monster. These journals documented that. Or perhaps, one of them had been a monster all along.

Or was it someone else? A servant? A villager?

A shiver crawled up her spine.

Not Gabriel. She trusted
that
truth.

Slamming the cover shut, she laid her palm flat atop it. She did not want to know everything contained herein. She certainly did not want to look at the next book. Breathing in a jagged rhythm, she sat there and stared at the fire.

Burn them. Burn everything.

Scooping up the journals and the letters, she hurried to the hearth. There was a thick oval carpet there covering the stone floor. She knelt on it, feeding letter after letter to the flames, and finally, opening the journals and laying them face down on the fire, watching the orange and red tongues curl and dance.

Beautiful, cleansing fire.

Catherine went first to Madeline’s chamber, though her heart bid her go to Gabriel’s. But Madeline had been alone too long and she would work herself into a frenzy. Better to soothe her first, then slip away. She wanted nothing weighing on her, no other thoughts in her mind when she went to Gabriel’s arms, to his bed.

Her feet were heavy on the stairs, and her lids pricked, though she did not weep, did not even understand why she wanted to. She felt as though there was something clear as day before her eyes—something frightening and dangerous—and she was not seeing it.

The passage that led to her chamber and Madeline’s was dark. The doors on all sides were closed tight. She paused a moment in her own room, taking only enough time to splash water on her face and hands, locking her door behind her and slipping the key in her pocket. The hallway seemed to stretch before her interminably, and she found herself reluctant to return to Madeline’s closed and quiet bedroom, to the dim light and the smell of liniment.

But she must. Only a little longer and she could be with Gabriel, touch him, hold him, tell him all the things in her heart.

The passage seemed very long and very quiet and she quickened her pace, feeling a strange, inexplicable urgency. Madeline’s door was partly open, and she pressed her palm flat against it and pushed on the wood until it swung inward. Her gaze slid to the bed, and she froze, for Madeline was not there.

“Where did you go for so long?” came the petulant query, and she turned to find Madeline sitting in the chair before the fire surrounded by stacks and stacks of books. It seemed that every book she had stored in her bedroom for so long had been moved close to the fire to form a series of towers like the turrets of a castle.

And in their midst sat Madeline.

“I went walking. I had a need for some air,” Catherine replied, startled to realize that her friend had not only left her bed, but had dressed in a walking gown and combed and pinned her hair. “You look very well, Madeline,” she said.

“Thank you.” Madeline thrust her lower lip out in a pout and closed the book that lay open on her lap. “I waited and waited and when you never came, I was forced to rise and ring for the maid. Peg was the one they sent. I do not like her. She is awkward and rough, her fingers tied up in splints.” She tipped her head to the side. “You should have been here to help me. You are my friend, as I have always been yours. You have no one but me.”

The words were harsh. Unkind. And no longer true.

She had Gabriel, but she thought it would not be wise to say so.

“Well,” Madeline said in the face of her silence. “Things change.” Her words carried a hard edge of anger.

Uncertain of Madeline’s mood, Catherine offered, “Would you like to go outdoors? Perhaps a walk by the lake?”

Madeline glanced at her from beneath her lashes. “Not yet, but soon.” Her gaze slid to the open door. “Would you close it, please, Catherine? And lock it, as well?” She lowered her voice. “It is Mrs. Bell. She has come three times to bring me food and drink.” She nodded at the small table by the window, where a covered plate sat. “Smell it,” she said. “Go ahead.”

With a frown, Catherine did as she bid, lifting the cover and leaning down to sniff the array of cold meat and cheese and bread. There…she
did
smell it. Almonds.

Dropping the cover on the plate with a clatter, she spun to face Madeline, horror congealing in her breast. Were all Madeline’s fears and terrors true? Was the housekeeper trying to poison her?

“Madeline—” she began, only to have her friend cut her off.

“Not now,” Madeline whispered, glancing frantically about. “Did I not tell you the walls have ears? Please, close and lock the door.”

Seeing no other way to ease her dismay, Catherine did as Madeline asked, pushing the door shut and turning the key in the lock. There was an unpleasant finality to that, as though she entombed the two of them in this dim, dark space. She did not like to be trapped in this room with the door closed and locked and the windows shut tight.

“Give the key here,” Madeline said. “Oh, please, Catherine, let me have it. I will only feel safe if I have it in my hand.”

Catherine knew that feeling quite well, yet she was loath to part with the key, to give someone else, even a friend, control over her in that way. She wanted to be able to open the door at her will, not at Madeline’s whim. She hesitated, and then laid the key atop the high bureau next to the door. When she looked to Madeline once more, she was startled to see that she was smiling, a tight, ugly smile that Catherine could not understand.

The firelight danced across her features, painting her skin and hair with gold, coloring her smile as red lips and white teeth, small as a child’s. For a moment, she did not appear at all herself, but rather a doll painted to look like Madeline.

It was then that Catherine heard the sounds, low but quite distinct, footsteps echoing, not in the hallway but behind the walls. She spun, startled, her gaze flicking to the door, then to the far wall across from the bed, then back to Madeline once more.

“Do you hear it?” Madeline asked, her lips stiff. She turned her face to the wall, then away. “He is come for me.”

“No.” Catherine crossed to her and knelt before her, taking Madeline’s hand between her own. “It is only an ancient servants’ tunnel in the wall. I have seen it myself. There are no monsters, no creatures that come for you.”

“I never said a monster had come for me.” Madeline laughed then, the sound like fragile china fallen from a table to shatter against a hard floor. “I said that
he
has come. At last. I have waited so long. It was no mean feat to grease their palms and see him free. And then he could not come right away. He had business in London to see to first. But he is here now. He is here.”

Catherine only looked at her, uncomprehending. But there was something…something she felt certain she ought to know. “Do you speak of Sebastian?” she asked, though a part of her knew already that Madeline did not.

Madeline closed her hand tight around Catherine’s, squeezing until bone rubbed on bone. She leaned in, bringing their faces close.

“Do you think you are sly? And wise and wily?” she whispered. “I am smarter than all of you, dear girl. I always have been. Smarter and more sly than my aunt and uncle, or the headmistress or the teachers at Browning. Certainly wiser and more wily than any of the other girls.” She paused and shook her head. “When I heard what you had done, that you had killed a man, your own guardian, I thought you would do. I thought we could be true friends. That you would understand. But you have proven a disappointment, Catherine. That you have.”

Yanking her hands free, Catherine fell back, the impetus sending her sprawling. “What do you mean?” But she
knew
. In that second, she recalled exactly why the journals had seemed so familiar, the drawing style was something she had seen before. They were Madeline’s pictures.
Madeline’s
. She recalled her sketches and paintings from Browning, and the way Miss Chalmers, the drawing teacher, had frowned and shaken her head and taken Madeline’s work to show the headmistress again and again.

Madeline was the killer? How was that possible? She had been here, at Cairncroft with Catherine when Martha was killed, and here in this very chamber when Susan was murdered.

Again came the footfalls from behind the wall and then a scraping and dragging sound as the portal swung wide. She jerked her head toward the sound, her thoughts as twisted and tangled as a knot of string.

A man stood there with a candle, and behind him yawned a great, black hole. Catherine blinked against the light, and she saw long honey-gold hair and eyes of liquid topaz and chiseled features painted in light and shadow by the small flickering flame.

“Gabriel,” she cried and scrambled to her feet, her heart pounding, her mouth dry. She rushed to him and skidded to a stop only inches away, never so glad to see anyone as she was to see him. From the corner of her eye, she saw Madeline rise and cross to the door, but she thought it did not matter now. If she fled, Gabriel would catch her.

Taking deep, shaking breaths, Catherine trembled with the horror of what she had only just come to know.

“The journals. They were Madeline’s. I remember now.” She held his gaze, cold and flat, and a chill started deep inside her, though she could not say why. Words tumbled free, faster, more urgent. “She used to draw sketches just like that when we were at school. Terrible pictures that made the other girls cry. She said she only drew the world as she saw it—”

“—for the spider
does
eat the fly, and the ants the dead worm. The fox eats the mouse.” Madeline cut her off as she stepped close behind her. Catherine jerked to the side, feeling hemmed in and trapped. “I have always wanted to know what it feels like to die. But no one would tell me. Not until the day I saw my cousin kill the bird in the woods. And then I knew. We were destined to be together, to share our fascination. I was meant to see what he did that day. I shared my thoughts with him. My ideas. And he took them and used them as thread to embroider his tapestry, ever more intriguing and complex.”

Catherine could not bear to look at her. The thoughts Madeline shared were horrific in and of themselves, but to look into her guileless blue eyes as she spoke of such things was too terrible. She jerked her gaze to Gabriel’s face, a thick lump choking her throat. He did not reach for her or touch her or close his fingers upon hers. Instead, he only looked at her with his head tipped to the side.

“Are you afraid?” he asked, and smiled.

Her blood turned to ice in her veins.

His voice was wrong. His eyes were wrong. She saw that clearly now. It was as though Gabriel had shed his skin and someone else entirely had stepped inside to wear it like a suit.

“Geoffrey,” Catherine whispered, horror congealing in her gut like cold blood pudding.

“Geoffrey,” Madeline mimicked her, and stepped forward to press a kiss to his cheek. “Aren’t you astute?”

Catherine backed away another step, and Geoffrey followed her, two strides for her one.

“How did you get away from Hanham House?”

“He told you about Hanham House? How unexpected.” He shrugged, a sharp, angry movement. “Gabriel’s precious Dr. Vincent left recently. The doctors there now know their
business
well and care to keep their income more than anything else.” His eyes grew colder still. “In all the years I have been there, no one has come to visit, save Madeline. And when she paid them to set me free, she said they had only to continue to charge my brother for my care and he would pay, none the wiser. That way, they got twice the coin for none of the work.”

He stepped closer still and lifted a lock of Catherine’s hair from where it had come loose to lie along her shoulder. Then he leaned in and pressed her hair to his nose, breathing deeply.

With a gasp, she turned her face away and yanked her hair from his grasp, horrified to have him stand so close and touch her at all, even her hair.

“She is not for you, dear.”

“She
is
.” He snarled. “You promised.”

“There is no time. We must be away.” Madeline patted his arm and gave a brittle laugh. “We shall find you another. Did I not guide you to Martha? Was she not a lovely treat? This one must be sacrificed to the fire. We discussed it. You recall. It is the only way.”

The words penetrated her numbed thoughts and Catherine stumbled back until she was pressed against the wall.
Martha
. Madeline had told this monster where to find Martha. And Catherine had given her the direction. She had written to Madeline about her friend, told her Martha’s name and that she ran a school in St. Giles. It would have been an easy matter to make inquiries with that. Dear God. She had handed Martha to a killer.

No, not
a
killer. A pair of killers. Monsters.

Her chest heaved and her palms were slick with sweat. She felt sick, bile crawling up her throat.

And the smell of smoke stung her nostrils.

She looked about and realized that the smell was carrying from the tunnel. The smell of smoke and fire.

Edging to the side, she tried to reach the bureau to retrieve the key that would open the door and see her flee this chamber and whatever horrors they planned. Geoffrey watched her with a hawkish gaze, but made no move to stop her. Frantic, she fell against the bureau and reached up for the key, disappointment lodging in her gut like a lump of coal.

It was not there. Of course. Madeline had taken it.

Her gaze flashed to the open panel of the servants’ tunnel, but Geoffrey blocked her way.

With remarkable strength for a woman who claimed to be an invalid, Madeline yanked the coverlet from her bed and dragged it across the floor, tossing one end into the crackling hearth and leaving the other to trail over the piles of books. She was no more ill than Catherine. It had all been a dupe.

“What of the laudanum, the poison?” Catherine asked, hoping against hope that if she kept them talking long enough, Gabriel would come searching for her. Would he know to look here, or would he go only to the ruined tower to search for her?

Madeline slanted her a glance. “Oil of bitter almonds, cooked to make certain it was harmless. I had to make sure that you found no allies here, trusted no one. Making you suspect Mrs. Bell was the easiest way.”

“And the night Mrs. Bell came to give you the extra dose of laudanum? The night she said Gabriel instructed her to do so?”

“Geoffrey looks exactly like his brother. Even you were fooled for a moment, just now.” She looked to Geoffrey, who stood with arms folded across his chest, blocking Catherine’s path to the open door of the tunnel. “This place will go up like a tinderbox. I shall enjoy watching it burn. Did you set the other wings alight?”

“Yes. As you say, the place should go up like a tinderbox,” Geoffrey replied, the sound of his voice making Catherine shiver.