Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery) (33 page)

An icy band of fear wrapped around my chest, holding me immobile.

“Now,” he continued in the same silky tone he’d used when he first stepped out of the shadows, “I’m done wasting my time. We have a little boat trip to make across the firth this evening, though I fear the rain will hinder our journey somewhat.”

“She’s not going with you,” Will told him, hugging me even closer to his back. I didn’t struggle against him—I was too terrified—but I did worry. With his hands behind him and his body shielding mine, he was defenseless.

“Of course she is,” Sloane said, his tone brisk. “With any luck, my oarsmen already have the boat pulled to shore below. We’ll be gone before the blood even stops pumping from your body.”

I tensed and shoved against Will, trying to get him to move, just as Dr. Sloane’s pistol fired, a percussive burst of light in the darkness. Will jerked backward into me, slamming me into the wall at my back. I felt a spray of liquid splatter my cheek. My knees gave out beneath me and I dropped to the floor with Will on top of me.

The acrid stench of gunpowder lingered in the air. Dazed, I pushed Will to the side and tried to feel where the bullet had struck him. But Sloane grabbed my arm and dragged me out from underneath him. He tried to force me to my feet, but I fought against him, screaming for Will. In the darkness, it was hard to tell, but I thought he moved. Was he alive?

Sloane struck me across the temple with the gun, knocking me to my knees. Pain exploded in my head, sharp and blinding. I couldn’t fight it.

I felt myself being lifted by an arm around my waist and shuffled forward a few steps. Then, from behind me, I heard Will’s voice.

“I said . . . she’s not going with you.”

Sloane turned and dropped me to the floor just as Will seized hold of him and flung him away from me.

“Run,” he ordered me before kicking Sloane where he lay crumpled on the floor just inside the third-floor chamber.

I lurched to my feet and steadied myself against the cold wall, trying to shake away the cobwebs from my mind. “Run!” I heard Will shout again, but I couldn’t leave him. He was bloodied and bruised from his fight with Donovan, and now he’d been shot. If I didn’t help him, he would surely die.

He groaned in pain as Sloane struck back, and I staggered toward the doorway. That was when an arm grabbed me from behind.

How I’d missed the sound of feet running up the stairs, I didn’t know, but I struggled against the man’s grip.

“Kiera, it’s me,” Gage’s familiar voice shouted in my ear.

I nearly collapsed in relief.

“Come. Let’s get you out of here.”

“No,” I protested, pushing away from his chest. I could still hear the thwacks and thumps of men fighting in the chamber beyond. “We have to help Will. He’s been shot.”

“
I’ll
help Will. You need to get out of here,” he protested and tried to turn me toward the stairs.

I staggered unwillingly down a step, but turned back as soon as Gage had released me to rush into the chamber. He glanced back over his shoulder and shouted, “Go!” But I still didn’t listen.

I stepped forward to watch as Gage drew a pistol from the waistband of his trousers and pulled back the hammer with a click. Sloane and Will were locked together in combat and it was almost impossible to tell them apart in the gloom. Gage waited for the men to separate long enough for a clear shot, exhibiting far more patience than I had. Will was battered and bleeding from a gunshot wound, for heaven’s sake. I was about to open my mouth and scream at him when Sloane landed a blow to Will’s torso that sent him crumpling to the floor. His target clear, Gage fired his weapon. The flash of the miniature explosion momentarily blinded me. We heard a thud and a grunt, and Dr. Sloane stumbled back against the wall. But rather than fleeing the scene as Gage yelled to him to do, Will pushed to his feet and lunged at Sloane.

That was when I heard the ominous crack, too loud to be bone on bone or even a pistol report. The two men paid it no heed, continuing to slam each other into the outer wall, the one with the two-foot hole in it. As I watched, the stone began to fissure, breaking apart.

“Will!” I shrieked and leaped forward, trying to warn him.

Gage had moved forward a few steps to help Will, but stumbled to a stop as the wall began to collapse. He wrapped his arms around me as I tried to move past him.

“Will!” I shrieked again, fighting to break free of Gage’s hold.

With a deafening roar, the wall and part of the floor and ceiling crumbled before our eyes in a cascade of rocks and debris, swallowing Will and Sloane.

I screamed and crumpled to my knees. Then I started to cough and choke as the collapsing rubble sent up a plume of dust, enveloping Gage and me. He sheltered me as best he could, gathering me in his arms and covering me with his body. I wheezed and sobbed against his chest, clinging to him.

The castle shifted and rumbled, threatening to send more of its stones crashing down and bring us with them. But I didn’t care. All I knew was darkness and heartache and Gage’s strong arms.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

W
ill’s funeral was held three days later, a gray and gloomy day fitting to the occasion. The fine autumn weather we had enjoyed earlier in the week was broken, and winter fastened its grip on the world and on our hearts. Most of the leaves had fallen during the rainstorms that followed the night of Will’s death, and I fancied the trees and the sky were crying for Will, too.

There were few guests. Few that were welcomed, anyway. Gawkers and newspapermen lined the perimeter of the cemetery, eager to see the ornate coffin of the war hero gone mad, the fallen laird of Banbogle, whose death had been foretold by a howling dog, like so many of his Dalmay ancestors before him.

After the service, we retired to Dalmay House for tea and a selection of savories none of us seemed to have much of an appetite for. We gathered in the drawing room, where I curled up in a wingback chair by the windows, watching the rain trail down the glass in tearful streaks. I knew the others were concerned for me—I could see it in their faces, hear it in their voices—but I could find no words to reassure them. So they hovered about me, as if they thought their presence might comfort me when all it did was remind me of their worry and make me want to burrow deeper inside myself.

Philip and Alana, who had arrived late the evening before, sat on a settee a few feet from my chair, listening to Gage and Michael explain some of the details they had yet to hear. Alana asked specifically about the hound, and Michael explained the legend. His voice was hoarse with grief and fatigue.

“We’d originally ridden for Cramond, you see, thinking Will might have tried to visit Mr. Wallace. But we met up with a pair of my footmen we had sent to the village earlier in the day to search for Donovan. They admitted to having dawdled at a pub adjacent to the bridge over the river and swore that my brother could not have gotten past them and into the village without their taking notice.” His chair shifted with a creak. “We were just about to set off again when our old stable master rode up to deliver Kiera’s message. We immediately rode for Banbogle, following the firth’s coastline. That’s when we heard the dog howl.”

That mournful bay that had frightened Will and me to a standstill and alerted us to Donovan’s presence on the stairs beyond.

“And you feared it was the legend?” Alana gasped.

“Yes,” he choked out.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach and sank deeper into my chair, knowing my posture was far from proper, but not caring. I still wasn’t certain how I felt about the howling dog being the supposed portent of Will’s death, but I couldn’t deny it had happened. Not when Gage and Michael, and some of the other residents of Dalmay House, had heard it, too.

While Michael struggled with his emotions, Gage took up the tale. “We arrived in time to find two men dragging a little skiff ashore, and after overpowering them we tied them up and went to search the ruins. We found Mac near the base of the tower knocked unconscious. He was barely breathing and bleeding profusely from another wound to his head. Michael tried to rouse him, but when the wall came crashing down . . .”

It had claimed Mac for its victim as well. Michael barely had enough time to get out of the way of the falling debris.

In honor of his service and sacrifice, Mac had also been laid to rest that morning, in a grave near the Dalmay mausoleum. That way, even in death, he would never be far away from the man he had served so faithfully in life.

“And while Michael tended Mac, Gage, you went in the castle after Lord Dalmay and Kiera,” Philip deduced.

I could feel his gaze on me, even through the fabric of the chair.

“What I don’t understand . . .” he continued, his voice tight with disapproval “. . . is what they were doing there in the first place.”

My spine stiffened, and I fully expected Gage to inform him that I’d disobeyed his order to stay at Dalmay House, but he didn’t.

“Mac realized where Lord Dalmay had gone after Michael and I had already ridden toward Cramond. And fearing he would do himself harm, Mac and Kiera went to Banbogle to try to stop him. They couldn’t have known Dr. Sloane and his lackeys would show up to cause trouble.”

“Oh, my. Were they planning to take William back to that asylum?” Alana asked.

I shifted in my seat, not wanting Philip or my sister to know the truth about Dr. Sloane’s intentions for me. They felt so much guilt after what had happened to me at Gairloch two months prior, and though I knew they would feel some remorse that I had been put in danger again, I wanted them to be spared the added horror of knowing Dr. Sloane’s plans.

“He wanted to silence him. And Kiera. So they couldn’t share what they’d uncovered.”

I sank back in my chair and closed my eyes, grateful for Gage’s discretion.

“What will become of Banbogle now?” Philip asked Michael, ever concerned with estate business. “I imagine you’re not going to leave it standing.”

“No,” he replied, his grief now better under control, though never far from the surface. “I’ve already hired a contractor from Edinburgh to tear it down. I simply can’t bear to look at it anymore. My father should have demolished it years ago.”

I reached up to finger my amethyst pendant, thinking that if he had, Will might still be with us.

I heard Lady Caroline’s gentle voice as she leaned in to murmur something to Michael. I knew he was grateful for her presence, and I was as well, at least for his sake. But I couldn’t stomach the sight of Lady Hollingsworth. I imagined there would be no impediment to Michael and Caroline’s marriage now that he was the Baron Dalmay. I swore that if I saw even the tiniest flicker of satisfaction in her eyes, I would not stop to think before I slapped her. But she behaved with perfect decorum, and we departed Dalmay House without a row.

I returned to Edinburgh with Philip and Alana that afternoon after the funeral. Lucy did not join us. I found I could not ignore her betrayal, and she accepted my decision without a fuss, admitting she wanted to return to Gairloch and her family. So she took the next mail coach north to resume her old position as an upstairs maid, hopefully a little wiser in the ways of men and the world than before.

Gage followed us to Edinburgh to turn over the information we had gathered about Dr. Sloane to the Royal College of Surgeons, while Michael took the same evidence to a local magistrate he respected, trusting the matter of Larkspur Retreat would be taken care of quickly and effectively. And it was. For weeks afterward the newspapers in Edinburgh ran stories about the notorious doctor and his asylum.

All told, almost two dozen patients were liberated from Larkspur Retreat, and Sloane’s records and the island’s tiny graveyard revealed dozens more who had not survived his brutal treatments. Patients like Lady Margaret, whose brother, the current Duke of Montlake, now knew what had become of her, and Miss Wallace, whose father could at least feel some relief that his daughter’s killer could never harm anyone ever again. I hoped that would enable all of them to rest in peace.

I derived some satisfaction in knowing that it was William who, in the end, had triumphed over Sloane and effected the release of so many of his patients. That he had, in effect, conquered his demons. But it was a cold comfort.

I tried to settle in Edinburgh, to find my place again in Alana and Philip’s household, but I no longer belonged there. It was like trying to fit into a garment I’d already outgrown.

Philip suggested I keep busy, that I take on a few portrait commissions. But after I honored a request made by Michael, and immersed myself in the task of painting Will’s baronial portrait, spending night and day in my studio for an entire week, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up a brush. It was as if whatever artistic ambition I’d possessed died with the final touches I made to Will’s posthumous portrayal.

Instead I wandered the house listlessly, avoiding everyone, particularly my sister. Some days I spent hours strolling the streets of Edinburgh, from the wide avenues of the New Town to the dank, twisting lanes of the Old Town, until the cold or rain or dragging steps of the footman accompanying me drove me indoors. Once or twice I tried to pick up a book, but the words could not hold my attention, nor could the pianoforte or my viola. The children made me cross, and the sampler I tried to stitch, never my favorite activity in the first place, almost drove me to violence.

The only emotion capable of pulling me from my cotton-wrapped world was anger, but I hated the rages that seemed suddenly to come over me. They were so unlike me, and I knew they concerned Philip and Alana without their having to say a word. I could see it in their eyes, in the way they whispered together, in the way they cautiously broached a topic. Such as that of Sebastian Gage, who had effectively abandoned us since our arrival in the Scottish capital.

After the wall collapsed at Banbogle, and the castle had settled, Gage had carried me from the ruins and through the woods to Dalmay House. I remembered little of that evening except the crushing grief. He had left me in the care of Lucy and Mrs. MacDougall to be bathed and have my cuts and bruises seen to. However, I could not be comforted. So when Gage returned to check on me later, he gathered me in his arms and held me close until I wore myself out from weeping and fell asleep sometime in the early hours of the morning.

But when I awoke, he was gone. And he had been careful to keep his distance ever since. He didn’t ignore me or go out of his way to avoid me, but he never sought me out, and there was a hesitation, a reserve that had not been there since the first day of our meeting at Gairloch. I wasn’t sure what I had done to make him pull away from me, but with each passing day the aloofness between us had grown, until now our brief encounters on the street or at social events were so stiff and formal we might have been strangers.

I was angry and frustrated by it, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to remedy it. After all, Gage had distanced himself from me once before. It wasn’t my place to chase him. I hadn’t the energy for it anyway. But I felt the sting all the same. Particularly since I could have used a friend. Someone other than my sister, who was smothering me to death.

So when my brother Trevor wrote to me and asked me to come stay with him at Blakelaw House, our childhood home in the Borders region, I accepted.

Alana fussed and fretted over my decision to leave, but Philip seemed to understand my need to get away for a time. My sister had recovered her appetite and some of her energy since arriving in Edinburgh, so she was no longer in danger, and I needn’t feel guilty for leaving her. But, in any case, I promised I would be back before it was time for the baby to be born.

Philip talked to me of familiar comforts and country air, but I thought of nothing but escape—the confinement of the city, of my sister’s household, of the pain and fury that seemed to be consuming me from the inside out. I knew I couldn’t remain this way, wallowing in grief and anger. Despising the things I had always loved. Something inside me was broken, and I had to find a way to fix it, to move forward, or else all my struggles to overcome the shadows of my past had been for naught. Gage’s diving into the water at Gairloch to save me had been for naught. Will’s sacrifice had been for naught. And I couldn’t allow that to be true.

The day I was to travel to Blakelaw House was brisk and windy, so by necessity our final good-byes were done in the vestibule before I hurried down the steps of the town house and into the awaiting carriage. The door was slammed shut by the footman as I turned in my seat, and I only had a moment to be surprised before the man seated across from me thumped the roof with his cane and the horses set off.

Gage studied me warily, as if I might bite him. He needn’t have worried. I was too stunned even to react when he reached across to help spread the lap blanket over me I had lifted from the seat.

I eyed him guardedly in return, wondering what his presence here meant, and whether I would like it. It had been over a week since I’d seen him last, at a dinner party. We’d exchanged greetings and polite small talk, but nothing more. I sat in my usual place at the edge of the drawing room while he charmed the assemblage. If I’d needed another reminder of all the reasons why we didn’t suit, that had done so quite effectively.

I rested my feet on the hot brick wrapped in cloth that had been laid on the floor of the carriage to keep me warm and waited for him to speak. He couldn’t keep me waiting much longer or otherwise the coach would reach the outskirts of Edinburgh before he finished speaking, and he would have a long walk home to his lodging rooms on Princes Street.

Unless he planned to accompany me. That thought made my heart leap in my chest. But then I shook it away as nonsense. He would return to London soon, recalled by his father or his own inclination.

Gage, who had long since settled back against the squabs to observe me, finally spoke what was on his mind, keeping his tone carefully neutral. “So you truly did intend to leave without telling me good-bye.” It was a statement, not a question.

His words pricked my temper and I scowled. “How could I, when I’ve barely seen you? After all, I can’t exactly call on you. I might be a bit unconventional, but I would never be so forward as that.”