The Sherbrooke Series Novels 1-5 (113 page)

She waited, working her hands that were tied behind her.

“Colin is a bastard,” he said abruptly, grinning hugely at her. “Ah, yes, a real bastard, as in his mother was a whore and slept with another man. Arleth knew but since she nurtured hopes of marrying the earl herself after Colin’s mother died, she feared he’d turn on her if she told him the truth, so
she just made up that story about Colin’s mother and her kelpie lover. Ah, some kelpie! A flesh-and-blood man with a flesh-and-blood rod.

“The old earl never married Arleth. He bedded her, but nothing more. Then he died and Malcolm became the earl. Arleth loved Malcolm, none of us could figure out why. Malcolm was a rotter; he was petty and mean-spirited. He was occasionally quite cruel. Ah, but then he, too, passed on to his just rewards in Hades and Colin became the earl of Ashburnham.

“But you see, he was a bastard. It is I who should have become the next earl, I who should have inherited Vere Castle. Arleth was distraught when Malcolm died. She hated Colin, oh aye, she certainly did. She promised to give me proof of his illegitimacy, the old hag. She promised me the proof so Colin would be set aside and I would be the earl of Ashburnham.”

Sinjun held perfectly still. She didn’t even blink. He was furious, nearly out of control. She was more afraid than she’d ever been in her life.

He seemed to calm. He was sweating profusely. When he spoke again, his voice sounded a bit singsong, as if he were reciting words that had been in his mind for a very long time, playing themselves over and over. A justification, perhaps, for any guilt.

“Arleth tried to kill you through neglect. It was revenge against Colin because he was alive and Malcolm was dead. You survived, more’s the pity. Then the old witch had an attack of conscience. After all these bloody years, an attack of conscience! I killed her because she refused to give me the proof. I wanted to snap her scrawny neck, but I thought perhaps you would all believe her guilty of killing Fiona if you believed she’d hung herself.”

“You tied the knots much too tight at the base of the chandelier. She wouldn’t have had the strength to do that.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter now. I will have fifty thousand pounds. I will go to America, I believe. I will be a wealthy man there. I’ve decided not to kill you or Colin, unless you force me to it. Then again, perhaps I shall. There’s no reason to, really, though. I’ve never hated you or him. But killing—it exhilarates me, makes me happy in those precious moments.”

“Did you kill Fiona?”

He nodded, his expression suddenly dreamy. “Perhaps I should kill Colin. He always had what I wanted, even though he never realized it. Fiona was besotted with him, but he didn’t give a good tinker’s damn about her. She drove him mad with her ceaseless jealousy. She shrieked at him if he even looked in the direction of another woman. She didn’t care about Vere Castle or any of its people. It was just Colin, only Colin. She wanted him to be her lapdog. He should have just beaten her, it would have helped, but he didn’t. He just withdrew from her. But I wanted her, loved her, and she rejected me. Yes, Arleth gave me a potion to pour into Colin’s ale. Since the old earl and Malcolm were both dead, she didn’t care if the whole bloody castle died; she was quite ready to assist all of them to the grave. Colin drank it and passed out. I broke Fiona’s pretty neck and tossed her over the cliff. She pleaded and promised she would love only me, but I didn’t believe her. Perhaps I wanted to for a moment or two, but then there was that odd exhilaration again. I couldn’t stop once I’d begun. I was quite the artist, Sinjun. I arranged Colin’s unconscious body right there, nearly over the edge but not quite. Had I been lucky, he would have fallen; had I been
lucky, he would have been hung for her murder. But I wasn’t lucky at all.”

He stopped then, as if the spigot had turned off.

But Sinjun had to know. “Did you hire a man to kill him in London?”

“Yes, but the fool failed. I came to visit my dear cousin all happy as a clam in the home of the damned earl of Northcliffe. Safe from me, he was, but I was busy. I thought, were he to die in London, far away from Scotland, things would be easier for me, and they would have, damn him. Your brother behaved as I suspected he would when I sent the letter accusing Colin of killing Fiona. But you, Sinjun, you were completely unexpected. Whisked your lover away from London, away from your family’s interference, away from me.

“Colin blamed Robert MacPherson for everything, though all Robbie did was steal a few sheep and butcher a couple of Kinross crofters. He did try to shoot Colin in Edinburgh and even botched that up. He hit you, the blundering sod. He believes himself so cruel and wicked, does Robbie. He does it because he’s so pretty. The meaner he is, the less pretty people will see him to be. I told him that Colin had killed Fiona and he believed me because I also told him a very real truth—that I loved his sister and that I couldn’t bear that Colin get away with her murder. I convinced him that it was his responsibility to avenge his sister’s death.”

He turned then and yawned. “I don’t wish to speak anymore. Indeed, I’ve told you more than another living soul. If you have more questions, my dear, perhaps you can ask God when you reach heaven—if I decide to send you there, of course. Ah, a decision to sleep on.” He laughed.

“I think I’ll take a short nap. Perhaps a long one. You just relax, my dear, listen to the rats and their
gnawing. I’ll try not to snore.”

He unfolded several blankets, spread them on the floor, and careful not to touch his clothes to the dirt, he lay down. His back was to her.

She gave him twenty minutes. She’d needed but ten minutes to work her hands free, finally. Her wrists were raw and bleeding. It didn’t matter. Soon now, very soon.

H
E DIDN
’
T SNORE
, damn him. If only he would, she could be certain that he was really sleeping.

She couldn’t afford to wait longer. If he was pretending in order to catch her, then so be it. She had to try. Slowly, Sinjun leaned down and began to untie the knots at her ankles. It took longer to untie the knots than it took the rats to eat through the paper to get to the crumbs.

At last she was free. She rose. Quietly, very quietly. She immediately collapsed back onto the chair. Her legs wouldn’t hold her. She rubbed her ankles, rubbed her legs, one eye on her hands, the other on MacDuff. He shifted suddenly. Her breath stuck in her throat. He turned onto his back now.

Oh God, don’t let him awaken.

She tried to rise again. This time she succeeded. Slowly, she walked toward the croft door.

A rat shrieked. Sinjun froze in her tracks.

MacDuff stirred, then groaned in his sleep.

She had her fingers clutching the handle. She pressed it down. Nothing happened. She pressed again and shook it.

There was a loud squeaking noise. MacDuff jerked and sat up. “You little bitch,” he screamed at her, and jumped to his feet.

Sinjun had sheer terror in her favor. She jerked
open the croft door and plunged into the darkness outside. Thank God for the fetid damp night, deep and fathomless. The ground beneath her feet was suddenly spongy, then wet, the wetness slapping against her slippers, sucking and loud. Her feet suddenly sank into quagmire, the dank muck pulling at her skirts, weighing her down. Smells were all around her, awful smells and strange sounds from creatures she would rather not see.

He was right behind her, yelling, “You damned bitch! You’ll die in the swamp! I told you it was unlikely I would kill you! Come back here, all I want is the money and you’ll be free! Surely even you don’t think I could get away with murdering both you and Colin and perhaps your brothers, as well! Don’t be stupid, get back here!”

Oh no, she thought, oh no. He sounded close, knocking against branches behind her. She turned, panicked, and ran into a tree. She nearly knocked herself out. She stood there, trying to get her bearings again, hugging that damned tree. It was bent forward toward the still, thick water and its trunk felt slimy. She felt herself being drawn deeper into the thick mud. She clutched the trunk, trying to pull herself free. It didn’t work. She was sinking, the filthy slime nearly to her knees now. Her great plan, all for naught. Either she would sink here in this swamp or MacDuff would kill her. Why didn’t he sink like a stone? He weighed three times what she did, why the devil didn’t he sink?

“Jesus, you stupid bitch, I should leave you here to be sucked under.”

MacDuff hauled her free of the muck and without hesitation threw her over his shoulder. “Any more trouble from you and I’ll strike you again.”

She was breathing hard, her face hitting his shoulder. She wanted to be sick but she had no
intention of succumbing. She swallowed hard. She had to do something. She’d wanted only to run away from him. Damnation, all for naught.

Then, quite suddenly, she was flying off MacDuff’s back, striking the ground and rolling onto her stomach. She heard Colin’s voice and it was cold and furious. “All right, you damned bastard, it’s all over.”

Sinjun turned over quickly. She saw Colin holding a pistol on MacDuff. Thank God he hadn’t tried to fight him. MacDuff would have broken him in half. Then there were her two brothers and Sophie and Alex, all of them there in a half circle, watching, silent as stones. All of them holding pistols.

Colin dropped to his knees and gathered her up. “Sinjun, are you all right?”

She stared up at her husband. “What did you call me?”

“I asked you if you were all right, damn you. You’re filthier than a Loch Ard goat.”

“Yes, certainly. Colin, you called me Sinjun.”

“It was a slip of the tongue, done in my excitement. Now, MacDuff, we will all go to that dismal little croft and I want some answers from you.”

“Go to the devil, you filthy devil’s spawn! How did you manage this? Damn you, I saw you riding Gulliver to Edinburgh and coming back to Vere Castle. I saw you! It isn’t possible that you knew I was there!”

Douglas spoke for the first time. “It was me you saw. As for discovering your hidey-hole, we had a dozen or so lads stationed all about the perimeter on the lookout. Jamie spotted you. It was quite easy after that.”

MacDuff just stared at Douglas. Then he turned back to Colin. “I wouldn’t have killed either you or Sinjun. I just wanted to leave. My father left me little money, Colin. You could afford fifty thousand
pounds since you married her. I just wanted a little bit of her fortune. It was all Aunt Arleth’s fault.”

“You killed her,” Colin said, his voice shaking with fury, with betrayal. “God, I trusted you. All my life I trusted you, believed you were my friend.”

“Yes, was. Only, things change. We became men.” He looked down at his feet, then, with a fierce cry, he rushed at Colin, grabbed his gun arm, jerking it upward, and crushed his cousin to him, his massive arms tightening around his back, cracking his ribs.

Sinjun was on her feet in an instant. She froze in midstride. The gun went off.

Sinjun screamed.

Slowly, so very slowly, Colin pushed free of MacDuff. He crumpled to the ground. He didn’t move.

There was utter silence. The night sounds became louder. Sinjun fancied she heard one of the rats shriek.

“He knew he couldn’t get away from all of us,” Douglas said slowly, looking at the pistol he held in his own hand. “He saw that Ryder and I were armed.”

“We were, as well,” Alex said.

Colin stared down at his cousin, the man he’d loved as a boy and respected as a man. He was dead. He looked over at his wife. A look of intense pain crossed his face. “So many people lost to me, so many. Did he tell you why, Sinjun?”

She felt his pain, his wrenching betrayal. No more, she thought, no more. She looked at him straight in his beautiful eyes. “He told me that he murdered Fiona because she rejected him. He killed Aunt Arleth because she had proof that he’d killed Fiona. He was in financial difficulties, as he told you. He wanted to leave Scotland and he had to have money. We were the likely source. That’s
all there was to it, Colin. Nothing more.”

Colin’s head was bowed. “Nothing more?” he asked, not looking at her.

“No, nothing more. He didn’t want to kill either of us, Colin. I think he was sorry for all the tragedy he’d caused. Thank you for saving me.”

“Ah,” said Douglas, “then you’re not going to claim that it was the damned Virgin Bride or the absurd Pearlin’ Jane who sent us here to save your white hide?”

“Not this time, brother dear.” She smiled up at her husband. He looked at her closely. He lightly ran his fingertips over the bruise on her jaw. “You’re a mess,” he said. “A beautiful mess. Does your jaw pain you much?”

“Not much now. I’m all right. Just dirty and awfully tired of these foul swamp smells and sounds.”

“Then let’s go home.”

“Yes,” Sinjun said, “let’s go home.”

Two days later, Sinjun went to Aunt Arleth’s bedchamber. No one had been in the room since they’d found her body. Thank God the rope had been taken away. There was no sign that a tragedy had occurred here, yet the maids wouldn’t even come as far as three feet from the door.

Sinjun closed the door quietly behind her and stood there for a moment, just looking around. She saw signs quickly enough that MacDuff had searched in here to find his proof that Colin was illegitimate. But he hadn’t found that proof. It was still here, unless Aunt Arleth had lied to MacDuff about it, and Sinjun didn’t believe she’d lied about that.

She searched methodically, but at the end of twenty minutes she hadn’t found a thing out of the ordinary. She had no idea what she was looking for, but she knew she would know when she found it.

Another twenty minutes of searching and she was nearly ready to concede that Aunt Arleth had spun the fantasy from her own tortured brain.

She sat in the chair that faced the small fireplace, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes.

What would the proof be?

Suddenly, she felt a warmth steal over her, a prodding sort of warmth that made her rise instantly from the chair. She stood perfectly still, wondering what the devil was going on, and then, just as suddenly as the warmth had come to her, she understood it. It was Pearlin’ Jane and she was here to help her.

She walked directly to the long brocade draperies that hung from ceiling to floor on the far east side of the bedchamber. She knelt down and lifted the hem of the drapery. There was something very solid sewn into the wide hem.

The thread wasn’t all that secure. She gently pulled it open. Out fell a small packet of letters tied with a faded green satin ribbon.

They were letters from a Lord Donnally and they were yellowed with age, the paper crinkly. They covered a three-year period, the first one dated nearly thirty years before.

Well before Colin’s birth.

All the letters were from Lord Donnally’s estate in Huntington, Sussex. She read a few lines, then hastily folded the paper and slipped it back into the ribbon. She withdrew the very last letter in the packet. It was dated after Colin’s birth.

She read the faded black ink written in a spidery hand:

My dearest love,

 

If only I could see my son, hold him, just press
him against my body once. But I know it can’t be. Just as I’ve always known you could never be mine. But you have our son. I will abide by your wishes. I will not seek to see you again. If ever you need me, I am here for you. I will pray that your husband will cease his cruelty, that he won’t hurt you . . .

The handwriting was blurred here and she couldn’t make it out. But it didn’t matter. She’d read quite enough.

Sinjun dropped the letter into her lap. She felt the wet of her tears slowly drop on the back of her hands.

The warmth seemed to swirl around her. She knew of course what she had to do.

Sinjun left Aunt Arleth’s bedchamber ten minutes later. The room was warm from the fire that had burned briefly.

She went into the drawing room and walked directly to the fireplace. She stood there, looking up at Pearlin’ Jane’s portrait. It was between the earl’s and his wife’s, just as Pearlin’ Jane demanded that it should be.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Who are you talking to, Sinjun?”

Her name on his lips was wonderful. She turned around to smile at Colin, her husband, her lover, the man she would willingly give her life for. Now he was safe and so was she and they had life ahead of them.

“Oh, I was just talking to myself, really. I think that Pearlin’ Jane’s portrait needs a good cleaning. Is there someone qualified at minor restoration?”

“There must be. If not in Kinross, why then, in Edinburgh.”

“I think Pearlin’ Jane deserves the best. Let’s take
the portrait to Edinburgh. Also, it just occurred to me that I would have been sorely in the wrong had I sent Robert MacPherson to Australia.”

“It would doubtless have improved his character, but it wouldn’t have been justice. I’m rather relieved that you failed in that particular endeavor. Incidentally, I saw him this morning, told him all about MacDuff.”

“Don’t tell me he apologized to you.”

“Oh no, but he did offer me a mug of ale. In his house. And none of his men or servants held guns or daggers toward me. Also, it appears he’s trying to grow a beard.”

“Did you see Serena?”

“No. He sent her posthaste to Edinburgh to take charge of their father’s household. He fancies he’s washed his hands of her, but somehow, knowing Serena, I doubt it.”

Sinjun grinned at him. She walked into his arms and hugged him close. “Did I tell you yet today that I adore you? That I worship you? That I would peel grapes for you if any were available and pop them into your beautiful mouth?”

“That would be nice,” he said, and kissed her mouth and the tip of her nose, and smoothed his fingertip over her eyebrows.

“I love you, husband.”

“And I you, my lady wife.”

“Ah, that sounds wonderful, Colin.”

“Before I attempt to have my way with you here in the drawing room, where are the wives?”

“The last time I saw the wives, Sophie was arguing with Alex about where the rose plants would be best situated.”

“Douglas and Ryder are out working with the crofters. Indeed, I had planned to come in and simply say hello to you and perhaps just give you one
kiss. I told them that they were old married men and thus didn’t deserve the same benefits that I was entitled to. Kiss me, Sinjun.”

She did, with gratifying enthusiasm.

He kissed her until she was breathless, then he squeezed her tightly against him. “Jesus, if anything had happened to you I couldn’t have borne it.”

She felt his big body shake. She hugged him more tightly, kissing his neck. Then she felt the soft warmth again, swirling around her, about both her and Colin, but he didn’t appear to feel it. Then it began to recede, but there wasn’t any coldness in its place. No, in its wake was perfect stillness and a sort of softness in the air itself. Then, suddenly, Sinjun heard a faint lilting sound that could have been a laugh, perhaps.