The Official Essex Sisters Companion Guide (32 page)

She stared at him, the breath shuddering in her chest, unable to answer.

“I killed her with that gun,” he said. “You asked me once what it would take to kill my soul.” He rolled the unresisting body of Rosy back from his chest. Her head fell back against his arm, white and still. “I should think this will do it, don’t you? I’ve killed the most innocent person on all my holdings. Killed a child.”

Looking at Rosy, Annabel for the first time understood the existence of the soul. Not because of what Ewan said, but because the body he held was not Rosy. That which made it Rosy was gone, flown to a kinder place.

The little cottage was utterly silent, a silence broken only by the sound of the bees, humming in the roses.

After a time Annabel got up and went into the other room and looked without touching at the broken body of Rosy’s nurse. Then she went out to her horse.

Sweetpea whinnied at the smell of the blood on Annabel’s skirts, and tried to get away. But Annabel swung onto her back and galloped away, back to Ardmore Castle.

If anyone had been watching the cottage, they would have seen a Mr. Maclean arrive two hours later, followed by two litters and men, and somewhat after that, more men with hunting dogs, and horns, and long guns.

The Earl of Ardmore accompanied Rosy’s body back to the castle, where it was put in the chapel under Father Armailhac’s care.

The earl didn’t sleep in his own chamber that night.

Ewan woke in the chill of a back bedroom, and for a moment he couldn’t think where he was. He reached out for the warmth of Annabel’s body but she wasn’t there. And then suddenly a surge of cold fear gripped his heart and he remembered.

He’d killed Rosy. Rosy was dead. He’d killed another man as well.

He tried for a moment to pray, but he knew there would be no warm feeling of response, and there wasn’t. He was alone. Alone in a fathomless, empty world without a soul, without a future, without God’s love.

The loss was wrenching. He didn’t know how sustaining the certainty of God’s love was until it was taken from him. He was—
damned
.

He had always felt faint curiosity about the state, but now he knew what it was to be damned. Damned was not pitchforks, or fire. It was loss, cold, and silence. The silence of being cast out, having done the unthinkable, of having killed a child, an innocent one, someone you love.

He felt his teeth grind together and got up, swinging his legs over the side. He had to think. To pull himself together. For a moment he thought of going to Father Armailhac and begging for forgiveness, pleading with the father to intercede . . .

But there was no hope, no point, no reason. He had felt the comforting presence of his soul for years, its existence as well-known to him as the beauty of God in a field of blue flax.

It was gone. There was no one who could bring Rosy back to life.

He felt as if he were watching himself from an incalculable distance, a man like any other sinner on the earth: not blessed, as he had thought. Not loved, as he had thought. A man who takes a pistol and kills his sister. A man who has done an unforgivable sin.

He had never imagined such loneliness.

He got up. He didn’t feel like taking a bath, so he didn’t ring the bell. Instead he raked back his hair and simply walked out of his chamber.

Father Armailhac was waiting for him, of course. Numbly Ewan allowed the priest to take him into his study. They sat in silence, the monk’s fingers telling prayers on the beads he held in his hands.

“I believe you are despairing,” Father said finally.

Ewan met his eyes. They were so kind that he almost ran from the room. He didn’t deserve that look. “I killed her, Father,” he said hoarsely.

“Tell me.”

So he did: about holding Rosy in his arms and watching her fall away, even as he still felt the weight of her body.

“Death is like a falling away,” Father Armailhac agreed. “Could you think of it as God taking her from your arms, into His?”

“No.” There was no point in sweetening it. “I killed her with my own careless bullet. I took her life. I—”

As always, Father Armailhac seemed to know what he was saying before he said it. “Self-punishment is
not
the same thing as damnation,” he said gently.

Ewan swallowed. “You think I am worrying about myself when I have killed Rosy?” But he was, he was. He felt as if he were drowning in a slough of despair, grief, and self-hatred. And fear.

“Yes,” Father Armailhac said. “I would guess that you have lost your faith, Ewan. That you feel deserted and unloved by God. Those feelings are inaccurate.”

Ewan stood up. “I have to arrange for the funeral, Father.”

The monk looked up at him, more tired and older than Ewan had ever seen him. “Don’t be too harsh on yourself, Ewan. Please.”

Ewan bowed.

He left to the gentle click of prayers falling on the air.

They buried Rosy in a little churchyard strewn with buttercups and maiden’s lace. The gash in the earth where they laid her was next to the simple markers that identified the graves of Ewan’s father and mother, his brother and sister.

Ewan stood beside the coffin and wept unashamedly, his head bowed, and his chest heaving. Annabel stood next to her husband, afraid to touch him in case he would repulse her, or worse, she would remind him of how Rosy died.

Then Father Armailhac moved between them and took one of each of their hands tightly in his. “We say goodbye to Rosalie Mary Malcolm McKenna,” he said, “knowing that she was a child of light, and a child of God. She is blessed, for she died in the Lord . . .”

Annabel couldn’t listen. Imogen was staring at the coffin, her face shadowed and white. Tess was crying in her husband’s arms. Nana was weeping silently, tears falling
down her old face. Gregory was brushing his arm over his eyes, trying to turn from an eleven-year-old boy into a hardened man overnight. And as she watched, Josie wound her arm around him and shook him a little, as if to say,
Be sensible
, and he turned his face into her shoulder.

When this was over . . . she could talk to Ewan. For the moment she stood rigid, miserable, praying as she had never prayed before.

But Ewan again didn’t come to their bedchamber, although she fell asleep waiting for him. She woke at dawn and began to seriously look for her husband. He wasn’t sleeping on the third floor. He wasn’t eating breakfast. Then she had a thought and walked through the chilly dawn down the little path that led to the chapel.

Father Armailhac was there alone, sitting in a pew, looking exhausted. “Do join me, my dear,” he called to her.

So she sat beside him and they watched in silence as light began to filter through the small blue stained glass window above the altar. Slowly the rose window filled with light until it glowed like a great colored pearl on the wall.

“I try to watch this every morning,” Father Armailhac said. “It reminds me of the beauty men can create.”

“They can destroy so much,” Annabel whispered. She felt as if the shards of her marriage lay about her in the dust.

“Nothing that is strong and true will be destroyed by grief,” he said, his voice gentle and understanding.

Annabel knew just what he was telling her. She and Ewan hadn’t shared anything strong and true, and so their pleasant illusion of a marriage had been destroyed.

“That is
not
what I meant,” the monk said sharply, putting a hand on hers. “You and Ewan will have many years together and doubtless weather many griefs side by side. But the two of you together are as beautiful as that rose window.”

“Perhaps,” Annabel said, exhausted. “I can’t find him, Father. We haven’t spoken. And—” She couldn’t say it.

“And?”

“I’m so afraid,” she whispered.

“Of what, child?”

“That he wants me to leave. I saw it in his eyes. I think he wants me to leave.”

She was desperately hoping that Father Armailhac would burst into a flurry of denials. But he said nothing for a long moment. “I hope that is not the case,” he said finally.

She swallowed.

“It would merely be a matter of Ewan taking time to find himself again. He has lost so much, you see. It may be that he wishes to push you away, before he loses you as well.”

Annabel sat in the pew, gazing at the clear blues and reds of the window until she was quite certain that she could speak again without weeping. Then she said: “Do you know where he is, Father?”

“Most likely in his study.”

She rose and then stooped to kiss the monk’s cheek. “Take care of him for me,” she whispered.

Ewan was sitting at his desk writing a letter. The morning sun was leaking a cold blue light into the room, just beginning to rival the Argand lamp that stood on his desk.

Annabel’s heart stopped at the sight of him, and then started beating a quick rhythm in her ears. “Ewan,” she said, “we must talk.”

He rose. “I have been meaning to find you.” His voice sounded casual, polite. “I must apologize for what I said to you in the cottage. I should never have implied that you had any part in my killing Rosy.”

“You didn’t
kill
Rosy,” she protested, her heart turning to stone at the sound of his uncaring voice. “It wasn’t like that!”

“It doesn’t matter how we portray the action. My point is that I should never have implied that you had a part of what happened, and I most regret it. You handed me the pistol in order to defend both of us; it was inexcusable of me to blame you.”

“Ewan!” she cried. “Don’t do this! Don’t shut me out, please,” she said, her voice breaking. “You do not have to grieve for Rosy all alone.”

His eyes dropped from hers and stopped for a moment at the thick bandage on the inside of her left arm, and then went back to his desk. “Believe me, Father Armailhac seems to be at my shoulder every time I turn around. I am not alone, but I’m having difficulties sleeping at the moment. I’m sure everything will return to normal in due course.”

He didn’t mean it for a moment. Annabel could see in his eyes that as far as Ewan was concerned—

“But you don’t really blame me, do you?” she whispered.

“No.”

She could see he meant it.

“I blame myself.”

“Don’t—don’t—” but Annabel couldn’t even put into words what she meant to say.

He looked at her and she saw with a pang that his face was thinner. Had he eaten in two days? He had never joined them at the table.

“I see you think I’m in anguish,” he said, his voice kind. “I’m not, Annabel, although I’m grateful for your concern. As a matter of fact, I feel rather numb.”

Annabel felt a jolt of anger. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe me,” he said, and there was almost a trace of humor in his voice. “I’m not sitting about weeping. I have actually finished a tremendous amount of work that I neglected while in London. I am not in agony by any means, Annabel.”

“Why are you being so cold?” she cried.

“As I said, I feel a bit numb at the moment. Likely due to the shock of killing someone.” He paused for a moment. “Killing two persons, I should say. And I seem to have—to have temporarily lost my faith, likely due to shock. It will wear off.”

His detached tone was too much to bear. “Stop being such an utter idiot!” Annabel half screamed at him.

His eyes narrowed. “Your reaction is unwarranted—”

“So is your stupidity!” she cried. “There
is
something wrong with you, Ewan Poley. You’re blaming me for killing Rosy, aren’t you? Why don’t you just say so? If you want me to leave, tell me so!”

And then she waited with pure terror in her heart. Of course he didn’t want her to go. Of course it wasn’t her fault. Was it?

“Of course I don’t want you to go,” he said. There was a chilly tone in his voice that suggested the opposite.

“Then why aren’t you coming to me,” Annabel said, her voice falling to a whisper. “If you’re not angry with me, why aren’t you with me?”

“I haven’t felt sociable,” he said. “But I will certainly come to our chambers this evening if you have missed my attention.”

The tone in his voice made her feel like a wanton who was demanding sexual favors from a grieving man. “I don’t know how to talk to you,” she said, stepping back. “I don’t know how to help you.”

For a moment there was a flash of agony in his eyes. “I think I would just like to be left alone for a while.”

“Left alone,” she said, suddenly tired to the bone. “You want me to leave.” All her terrified thoughts of the last two nights were right. He did want her to leave.

“You’re my wife,” Ewan said. “Of course I don’t want you to leave my house. Where would you go?”

“I have many places to go,” she said tonelessly. “The real question is you. Why do you want to be left alone? Why don’t you want me to—to comfort you?” She reached out her hand to him but he pulled back.

There was an instinctual revulsion there that wounded her to the heart the way nothing else had.

“Oh God,” she breathed. “It is over, isn’t it? You’ll never forgive me.”

“I can’t seem to make it clear to you, Annabel, but this has nothing to do with you. I was irrational in the moment after Rosy’s death. But I do not blame you.”

She didn’t believe him. “A question,” she said. “With
honesty
.”

It was the key word from their game. “Of course.”

“What do you feel toward me at this moment? Do you—” She swallowed. “Do you still love me? The way . . . the way you loved me before?”

He said nothing.

“What do you feel, Ewan?” she said, hearing the harshness of her own voice.

“I wish I had never gone to London,” he said finally, his voice infinitely weary. “I wish I had never met your sister, and never met you. And that’s the—”

“The God’s truth,” she finished for him. “I see.”

“But you are my wife, and I’m sure this will all blow over in a short time. We’ll go back to being the way we were before.”

“No it won’t,” she said. The room was whirling around her. She knew, she’d always known, it was too good to last. She, Annabel Essex, was not the sort of woman whom men fell in love with. She was the sort whom men fell into desire with, and desire didn’t last. It was only Ewan, in his blind romantic naiveté, who had mistaken desire for love.

Desire fled before hardship like the night before dawn. But love, the kind of love she had thought Ewan felt for her,
that
love was only strengthened by misfortune. If he loved her, she would have been the only one who could comfort him. She knew that because—because he was the only one who could have done the same for her.

“I can’t stay here,” she whispered.

“You can’t leave. You’re my wife. You’re the countess.”

“Yes, I can,” she said flatly. She turned to go, not wanting to look at him even one more time. It hurt too much.

He came out from behind the desk and followed her, coming up behind her to catch her wrist. She didn’t notice until she sensed him behind her and lurched away, a broken scream coming from her throat.

He froze.

“I’m sorry,” she said, breathing quickly as if she’d just run a race. “I am having some difficulty getting over what happened. I didn’t mean to—to remind you of Rosy.”

Ewan stared at Annabel. “You were afraid of me.”

“Only of people coming up behind me,” she said. “Only that. I’m not going to start throwing vases.”

“Annabel—”

But she couldn’t bear to hear him say things to her. Say anything, anything at all, now that she knew he didn’t love her.

“Don’t go,” he said, reaching out a tentative hand. “I’ll get over this. You’re my wife and I love you.”