Secrets of the Highwayman (19 page)

After Melanie had run out of the room,
Suzie went to follow her, just as Nathaniel made the same move. They both stopped, and then Suzie changed her mind and turned instead to glare at the two men. “I hope someone here is going to fill me in,” she said threateningly.

The shock of seeing her intelligent and conservative younger sister having a fit of nervous hysterics over a man who probably died before Queen Victoria, had deeply unsettled her.

Nathaniel shook his head. “No. I think it is up to Melanie to tell you what is troubling her.”

He might be dreamy-looking, but Suzie didn’t take that bossy tone from any man. “Obviously I think so, too, but she’s not here,” she said tartly. Frustrated, she turned her attention to Eddie. “What about you, Eddie? Got any opinions on what’s troubling my sister? She’s only been here a few days, and already she’s a wreck. I
haven’t seen her like this since she was nine years old and…” Her voice trailed off. Something else had happened when Melanie was nine years old, and it had happened in Cornwall, not far from Ravenswood.

Eddie interrupted her thoughts. “Um, Suzie? I think Melanie is upset about my book.” He gave a diffident smile, his kind eyes wearing a worried expression. A real sweetheart, this one, despite the shirt.

“Your book, Eddie? What book is that?”

“I’ve rewritten the history of Ravenswood and Major Pengorren’s part in it.”

“Oh? No, I can’t see the connection yet, but go on.”

Eddie cleared his throat. “Well…” and he launched into his theory.

Nathaniel watched Suzie concentrating as the rambling story unfolded, and thought again about following Melanie. But he knew she needed time alone to consider her situation. Her relationship to Pengorren was a stunning revelation, but it also made a terrible sense. He had noticed himself how Melanie’s dazzling looks were so similar to Pengorren’s. The glamour was something she’d inherited.

She must leave. She wasn’t safe here, he knew that, had known it since last night. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. He wanted to keep her with him for the time left to him. But now he knew he had to persuade her to go home with her sister.

Nathaniel wandered over to the mullioned windows, and St. Anne’s Hill stared back at him. The doorway into the between-worlds was silhouetted against the
cloudy sky. Nathaniel narrowed his eyes—he could just make out a shadow by the stone, a hound-shaped shadow.

“So, you think that Pengorren had some sort of, eh, faery glamour.” Behind him, Suzie sounded as if what she was saying was the most reasonable thing in the world. “Does that mean that I have it, too? And Melanie? And you, Eddie? How exciting.”

Eddie snorted a dismissive laugh, but he was beaming, pleased by the comparison. “Maybe some have it more than others,” he said, with painful honesty. “Your sister, for instance…”

His voice trailed off, and Suzie gave a thoughtful nod. “Yes. You’re right. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve always had some psychic abilities but Melanie is so closed down, so tightly reined in…There was a time when she used to see things. Then it stopped, and she used to get headaches, really bad ones. I always thought they were something to do with that shutting-down process, keeping everything confined.”

“My old gran used to read the tea leaves,” Eddie added helpfully, totally out of his depth.

Suzie laughed, and the atmosphere lightened. “And can you?”

Eddie smiled back. “Not really. But I can have a stab at it if you think it will help.”

“No, thanks. I know as much about my past as I want to, and as for the future…I prefer to let it unfold as a nice surprise.”

She looked up, catching Nathaniel watching them, and smiled as if she’d known all along that he was lis
tening. Now she came to join him at the window, standing very close beside him. He wondered whether she was trying to intimidate him into giving her the information she wanted.

“Nice view,” she said pleasantly, looking out over the park. When he didn’t answer she turned to him, tilting her head back so that she could give him a thoroughly searching look. “And how do you fit in, Nathaniel? I think you know a lot more than you’re saying.”

Amused by her manner, he returned her look with a smile. “I’m related to the Ravens,” he said truthfully. “Melanie asked me to come to Ravenswood.”

“Hmm.” She cocked an eyebrow, looking very like Melanie at her most skeptical. “I hope you’re being nice to my little sister, Nathaniel.”

Nathaniel’s smile faded, replaced by a deadly seriousness. “You have my word that I am. She’s more important to me than I can tell you. Which is why I want you to take her away from here. Now, today. She’s not safe.”

Suzie frowned, but her eyes stayed on his, as if she could see right inside his head. “If that’s what
she
wants.”

“She must go,” Nathaniel spoke with urgency. “She must see sense. Surely you can persuade her, you’re her sister?”

“Now,” Suzie admitted, “that’s where you might have a problem.”

Melanie sat on the clifftop with her knees tucked up under her chin, staring down at the half-moon beach and the incoming tide. Tough little plants were growing
around her, hardy enough to put up with the salt air and the wild storms and yet still scent the air with their perfume.

After she left the house via the servants’ back stairs, she hadn’t known where to go. She didn’t want to return to the others, she needed to gather her thoughts. She needed to come to terms with what she was.

A monster, like Pengorren.

She looked down the cliff steps, longing to walk on the sand, but it was too dangerous. The tide was coming in, and she wasn’t reckless enough to risk it. According to
The Raven’s Curse
Ravenswood was a very unlucky house. Lots of deaths.

But Pengorren didn’t want her to die just yet. He had plans for her…

There were voices. Crying out.

Startled, Melanie lifted her head to stare out to sea. Of course there was nothing. Just a haze along the horizon and some seagulls circling and diving, looking for their lunch. Maybe she’d heard a gull. But as much as Melanie tried to convince herself otherwise, she already knew that a ship was wrecked here long ago. Just as she’d known about the oak tree falling in the storm. She felt it, sensed the people who had drowned. She heard it again, the voices crying for help, faint but clear.

Melanie closed her eyes and gave in, letting herself go.

At once she felt cold. She was sitting on the clifftop in sunshine, but in her mind there was rain in her face and a gusting, savage wind pulling at her hair and her
clothing. She smelled salt and spray, and her heart was thudding violently. Fearfully. There was death out there in the water.

It had to be done.

Pengorren’s voice, in her ear.

Melanie started and swung around, ready to run. The adrenaline was pumping through her, and she was certain that if necessary she could have launched herself from the clifftop and flown like a gull.

But there was no one there. Pengorren was in her head this time, invading her thoughts. Just as he always would, as long as she stayed here at Ravenswood. Her gaze was drawn toward the old house and the opaque shine of the windows. Ravenswood was Pengorren’s house, his essence was here. And his physical presence? What about that? Where was Pengorren hiding?

A movement to the side. Suzie was heading along the overgrown path with her usual brisk determination. Melanie turned away and leaned her head against her knees, closing her eyes. She hadn’t decided yet whether she was glad or sorry that Suzie was here, but she was worried. Suzie was in danger and Melanie knew she would have to do her very best to send her sister home.

By force, if necessary.

Melanie waited until Suzie came up behind her before she spoke, her voice calm and faintly mocking. “You’ve taken your time. I was waiting for you to come and tell me you’d rung the funny farm and the van was on its way. Should I change, or will they bring the straitjacket with them? Hope they have my size.”

Suzie laughed, bless her, but the hand she pressed to Melanie’s shoulder wasn’t quite steady. “You know I’m not going to do that, or at least I hope you know it. Anyway, if I did ring, they’d have to take me as well, wouldn’t they?”

Melanie laughed back, surprised she could. That was one thing about Suzie, she could always make her laugh, sometimes at the most inconvenient moments. “I think out of the two of us I’m crazier.”

“You’re not crazy,” Suzie said quietly, and sat down beside her. “You’re a long way from that. Anyway, I remember when this happened to you when you were a child—you weren’t crazy then, just frightened. I think the time has come for you to accept yourself for what you are.”

“I hate what I am,” Melanie whispered. “You know I’ve always had an aversion to everything to do with the supernatural. All that trance crap and talking to spirits and reading the future in the tarot cards. I’ve never wanted any part of it. And now I can’t stop it from happening. The past is as clear to me as you, Suzie, and I’ve had visions of the future. I see…things I don’t want to see. I know things I don’t want to know. Oh God, you don’t know the half of it!”

“Look, you just need to learn to control—”

“I don’t
want
to control it. I want it to go away.”

Suzie was silent for a moment, considering her words. “Melanie, let me tell you what I believe, and yes, I know it sounds trite. Everything that happens happens for a reason. Because it’s meant to. Perhaps your, well, gift for
want of a better word, was meant to return to you here at Ravenswood. Perhaps there’s a reason you need it now when you didn’t before. Have you thought of that?”

Melanie picked at her fingernail and then stopped herself, squeezing her hand into a fist. She hadn’t bitten her nails since she was little, and she wasn’t about to start again now. Suzie was right; Nathaniel had said much the same thing. She accepted that this was all part of some “meant-to-be” scenario. She’d been chosen as Nathaniel’s companion in this time and this place
because
of what was inside her.

The voices interrupted her thoughts again, rising from the waves and calling out in mortal fear.

But Melanie refused to listen to them. She closed her mind, locked herself down. Always before such an action had caused her relief, but not this time. Now it felt claustrophobic, as if she was in a box in the darkness with only her own breathing for company.

“What is it?” Suzie asked sharply. “Melanie, you have to talk to me. I know there are things you haven’t told me yet. You might as well, you know. I may even be able to help.”

Melanie turned to her sister. Suzie’s face was pale, the freckles standing out, and she looked worried and serious and more than a little cross. As if she was reprimanding one of her sons for being thoughtless. Was
she
being thoughtless? Suzie loved her, and it couldn’t hurt to talk. Suzie might laugh in her face, but she mightn’t, either.

“I should mention,” Suzie added, “that Nathaniel has
told me he wants me to take you home. He was adamant. A bit scary, actually.” She grinned. “Gorgeous at the same time, of course. Where did you find him?”

“He wants you to take me home?” Melanie repeated, and shook her head in disbelief. “How can he ask that? He knows he needs me here.”

He was going to sacrifice himself for her, that was it. Return to the between-worlds for however long the queen wanted to keep him there, so that she could be safe.

If
she was safe. Melanie sat up straighter. Who was to say Pengorren wouldn’t follow her to London? Eventually. And Nathaniel would be gone by then, there’d be no one to help her. She’d be alone.

“No,” she said abruptly. “I’m not leaving. I’ll tell you why, Suzie, but keep an open mind, okay?”

Suzie snorted. “I always do.”

“Then here goes. The abbreviated version. That man I was telling you about on the phone, with the dazzling allure, the glamour as Eddie calls it. It’s Pengorren. Yes, Pengorren from Eddie’s book, the man who’s been dead for at least a century. Evidently he walked into the sea and drowned, but his body has never been found. Suzie, I keep seeing Pengorren in my dreams, waking dreams sometimes. A part of him is in the house and when I see him he’s reenacting his past, except I’m not a spectator, because…he knows I’m there. He can see me, and he talks to me. He knows my name. And just now you told me I was related to him.”

“Oh Melanie—” Suzie’s eyes were round.

“No, listen, that’s not the creepiest part of it. Pengorren is the man who was on the beach that day, the man
who came up to me, and you pushed him over and dragged me away. He’s the very same man, Suzie, I swear it.”

Suzie was still staring at her. “I want to say you’re making it up, but I know you’re not. I
know
you’re not, Melanie, because I’ve been thinking about that man again, too, probably because you are.
That
should tell you something about us. We’re not like ordinary folk. We’re fey, like Pengorren, only whereas he was a very bad man, as Eddie sweetly puts it, we are for the forces of good.”

“Don’t joke, and anyway I want to be ordinary.” Melanie’s voice was shaking on the verge of tears. “I’ve only ever wanted to be ordinary.”

“Sshh.” Suzie slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. For a moment they leaned against each other like children, comforted by the warmth and closeness of each other’s bodies.

Out on the sea the waves were rolling in toward the cliffs, the tide rising farther and farther up the small beach. A seagull shrieked as it flew past.

Suzie spoke again. “Does Nathaniel think Pengorren is trying to harm you, is that why he wants you to go home?”

“I don’t know for sure what Pengorren wants and neither does Nathaniel. He’s guessing, but going by Pengorren’s past history I don’t think anything he does would be very nice. Nathaniel believes Pengorren was responsible for the deaths of members of the Raven family back in the early nineteenth century. Major Pengorren gained a great deal from those deaths, but no one would
have thought of blaming him. He was universally loved. And yet, looking at the facts coldly and rationally, he’s the obvious suspect.”