Seacliff (16 page)

She left the balcony and undressed, shivering and hugging herself against the cold. Then, for a moment, she felt James’s arms around her, his lips on her lips, and suddenly, fiercely, she willed him into the room with her. He would explain; she knew he would. She’d seen the looks he’d passed her at dinner, felt the touch of his hand; she’d wronged him by thinking he’d used her. She had wronged him indeed. Damn, she thought; if only she were in England with the time to sort things out…

She kicked at her dress and petticoats, which were piled at her feet, and kicked again. Then a third and fourth time until she started laughing and dropped onto the mahogany chest at the foot of her bed. Fool, she told herself. All this worry, yet she was forgetting the most important thing: she was not in exile, she was in
her
country and Oliver was just going to have to learn that as well.

A knock at the outer door sounded, and Gwen entered timidly.

Caitlin rose and walked toward her, taking a fur-trimmed robe from its wall peg to cover herself. She held out her arms, and they embraced, sobbing, as the loss they’d suffered came home in full measure. And when it was done she took Gwen’s hands and squeezed them tightly.

“Gwen,” she said quietly, “as long as I’m here you know you’ve nothing to fear for your homes or positions. And I’ve seen the papers, my father’s will, and there’s no doubt that Seacliff is
mine.”
She lifted a quick hand to silence the maid’s objection. “I know what Sir Oliver says, but there are things Stanbrooke the solicitor calls holes, through which the clever Welsh can make sure matters do not change simply because London wills it. This place is mine, Gwen, all of it. And you be sure the others know it, too.”

Despite Gwen’s smile, Caitlin could see the doubts glow in her eyes, but there was nothing more to say. She had her misgivings but it wasn’t the time to air them. Instead, she exchanged one last embrace before Gwen left, stared blindly at the door, and returned to the bed where she slipped beneath the embroidered quilt. Dancing shadows on the ceiling weighted her eyelids and deepened her breathing.

Yours, she thought. Remember that. Seacliff is yours. Don’t let them take it away.

But the last image she saw was of James Flint, smiling seductively at her. And she couldn’t remember if she followed his beckoning.

12

T
he mausoleum had been constructed of soft gray marble streaked by soft white. The bronze doors were taller than a man and unadorned. They were solid and heavy yet hinged in such a way that when the bolt was thrown aside they could be parted with little effort. Above the structure spread an ancient birch whose crown had been shaped in its earlier years to shade the marble and resist the strong winds that blew in from the west.

Caitlin stood just inside the threshold, her hands clasped loosely at her waist, the raven black of her hair cascading down her back. She was wearing a simple shepherdess dress, with a black silk tie around her throat, and a red ribbon wound through the lace at the neckline, which was just low enough to expose the tops of her breasts.

Ahead of her in the gloom barely retreating from the spilling sunlight was the back wall, where several bronze plaques marked the sealed drawers beneath them. Most of them had darkened with time, but one still gleamed, its mortar still freshly white. She stared at it for nearly an hour, allowing her mind to sort through childhood scenes dominated by her father’s presence: the winter nights when he protected her from the spirits walking the mansion, the light summer days when he stood at the base of the cliff and watched her wade into the water at tide’s ebb. She could not imagine him lying in the crypt alone. At one point she was grateful her last memory of him was when he was still alive, grumbling and laughing in spite of his monstrous illness.

And when, at another moment, she felt hurt and angered that he had left her on her own, she reminded herself that he was with her mother now, and Caitlin Morgan was a grown woman who could, if she’d a mind to, take care of herself.

Her weeping was done. There remained a quiet, empty space in her heart that she knew would never be filled, one tinged with loss and love. And with a smile that blended joy and sorrow she promised her father silently she would use the old pine tree as he had himself, to draw consolation and to reacquaint herself with what and who she was when necessary. Then she murmured, “I love you, Father,” and in the center of the floor laid a single rose she had taken from the garden.

A backward step, and she pushed the doors closed and threw the bolt. She touched the cool bronze in one final gesture, and her eyes blinked rapidly as she walked away from the mausoleum, noting without really seeing the headstones that marked the history of the village.

And she stopped, suddenly.

There in the distance, in the middle of a brilliantly green field, was a man on a massive white horse. It took her no time at all to recognize him, and her left hand clenched into a fist at her side. She realized Griffin Radnor had followed her, and he looked like a blinding white ghost in the middle of the day. There was no thought of permitting him to catch up with her. The ghost, she thought, was a good way to think of him—a specter from her past that could touch her only faintly like a childhood memory.

She glared, hoping his keen perception might note her displeasure. Then she made her way quickly along the gravel path through the cemetery. Davy was waiting on the road for her with a pony and trap. She glanced up as she neared the low iron gates and saw him wipe a voluminous sleeve under his nose hastily. She smiled, as much at his sorrow as in relief that he had not seen Radnor prowling the fields. That would have been too much. Davy had never kept secret his admiration for the master of Falconrest, and she did not wish to endure his clumsy reminiscences now.

The smile almost faltered, however, when the young man’s expression altered suddenly, and his back straightened as if he’d been prodded with a knife. Following his gaze, she turned her head to the right and saw a scrawny man leaving the front of the narrow gray stone church. The temptation to hurry on was stifled instantly. Sooner or later, once an appropriate period of solitary mourning had passed, the villagers would make their way to Seacliff to express their condolences. Tradition dictated they do so. There was no way she could avoid the painful procession of visitors, and she knew she might as well greet the first of them now. Especially since this one would probably be the least enjoyable.

Once through the gate, then, she swerved and walked along the grassy verge until she came to a break in the wall that ran parallel to the road. There she stopped, hands at her waist, her face composed while she waited for the vicar.

Ellis Lynne was a scrawny man, blinkingly myopic, with flyaway brown hair he was forever spitting back into place. His frock coat was too long, his breeches too loose, his white cotton stockings bunched at knees and ankles. Though his demeanor was properly solemn on virtually every occasion, he had a habit of making a sound distressingly like a chuckle whenever he asked a question. To those who were used to it, it passed by unnoticed; to others it made him appear the perfect fool. Caitlin, however, knew the latter was distressingly far from the truth.

“My dear, I am truly sorry for your loss,” he said as he came to the gate, his voice a high-pitched monotone. His hands felt clammy as he grasped hers and wrung them in sympathy. “Truly, truly sorry.”

She lowered her eyes, accepting the condolence, and as quickly as she dared she retrieved her hands.

“But,” the vicar said, clapping his hands once, “we shall never forget him, will we?” He prattled on for several minutes, Caitlin wondering if they were mourning the same man—so effusive was his praise. “However,” he said with a ferret-like smile, “it’s a new life to which you’re accustomed, is it not, Lady Morgan? I do believe the valley is in good hands.”

“We will do our best, sir,” she said politely. “At least for the time being.”

Lynne frowned, his spiked eyebrows meeting in a tangle over the top of his nose. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, m’lady.”

“Well,” she said airily, “what I meant was—”

“You mean, you have no intention of remaining at Seacliff?”

“Why, of course I’ll be here, vicar,” she said, puzzled at the sharp intensity of the question. He relaxed visibly.

“For the better part of the year.”

He lifted his pointed chin and stared around the churchyard. “I see.”

“Well, no, not really, you don’t,” she said, increasingly sorry she’d stopped to see him at all. “Sir Oliver, as you well know, does have his family estate back in England, and he certainly cannot leave it forever. Quite naturally, we’ll be traveling back and forth to see both places.” She forced a laugh she hoped sounded rueful. “I have a feeling I shall be run ragged in a year’s time, don’t you think?” He said nothing for a moment, simply clearing his throat. Then: “So you will not, as I’ve been given to understand, stay the year round.”

“For heaven’s sake, who told you that?”

“I thought it was common knowledge.”

She glanced up and down the road, then nodded slightly to Davy, hoping he would see her and ride the trap up.

“A pity,” Lynne said absently. “A pity.”

“Well, I won’t be gone as long as before,” she told him, checking her tone so it sounded natural. “And we do have Mr. Flint.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, smiling. “Mr. Flint, indeed. He has kept the machinery oiled, as the new phrase has it. There’s no doubt about that.”

She lifted her hands with a smile just as Davy pulled up behind her. “Then there’s no problem, is there?”

The vicar plunged a hand into his rumpled waistcoat and pulled out a dull gold watch, thumbed over the plain cover and held the face close to his eyes before squinting hard at the sun. “Ah,” he said with an apologetic smile, “I have an appointment with Master Randall in his shop.”

“And I must be getting home.”

“A pleasure, Lady Morgan,” he said as she climbed into the back of the tiny cart and adjusted herself on the seat. “Do keep yourself from becoming a stranger.”

“I’ll do that,” she promised, and grabbed the sides as Davy clucked the pony into motion. She waved and turned away from the vicar, expelling a deep breath and rolling her eyes heavenward. The man was a human rat rooting for gossip, and she’d no doubt her plans would be all over the village before mid-afternoon. She didn’t mind, since the news would have come from the household anyway sooner or later, but she wished she had been more politic in her pronouncement. She had a terrible sinking feeling that Lynne would make it appear as if she couldn’t wait to leave. And there was her father, not yet cold in his grave.

A
few yards from the church stood Lynne’s thatched cottage, and a hundred yards from that, toward Seacliff, was a thick grove of tall oaks whose foliage was confined by weather and growth to the top branches. She was trying to force her mind onto more pressing matters than Reverend Lynne’s sensibilities when, out of the comer of her eye, she caught a shadow that did not belong.

“Davy, stop a moment,” she said.

The trap rattled to a halt, and she shaded her eyes to see into the grove more clearly. And when she did she gasped. “My God, Davy!” Davy turned quickly, saw where she was looking and peered after her. Setting his whip suddenly on the seat beside him, he vaulted to the ground.

“Davy, no!”

He ignored her. The wall here had long since crumbled into small stones and dust, and he hurried across the grass to the first gray bole, where he leaned and stared. From a smaller, gnarled tree protruded a thick branch that held no leaves, no buds, not a hint of twigs. A thick rope had been tied around its thick arm, and from the end of the rope dangled the body of a man. His clothes were in rags, his face blackened, his hands swollen, but his disfigurement in death was not sufficiently severe to prevent Davy from recognizing him.

With a gasp he turned around and lurched back to the cart, leaned hard against the pony and shuddered as he breathed as deeply as he could. Caitlin instantly climbed out and, deliberately avoiding a glance into the grove, put her arm around his shoulders.

“You know him, Davy?” she asked, whispering.

He nodded shakily and gulped several times before he could find his voice. “Lam,” he said, and-swallowed again. “Lam Johns. He were the lad what worked for the vicar after you and the major went to England the first time. He…” Davy suddenly whirled around, forcing Caitlin back. He reached under the seat and grabbed a long knife. “I got to cut him down, mistress,” he said loudly, and raced off into the grove.

Caitlin, weak with shock and horror, struggled back into the cart. By the time she’d sat down, Davy was back, sweating profusely and trembling.

“Not by his own hand?” she asked as the trap jumped into motion.

Davy shook his head. “He was hauled up, mistress. He was hanged.”

A hanging. Not since her grandfather’s time had anyone in the valley been sentenced to hang. The most severe punishment her father had ever doled out was ostracism, which inevitably led to self-banishment. Either the villagers had taken justice into their own hands for whatever offense Lam Johns had committed, or…

Impatiently she waited until the trap pulled to a stop in front of the house. Then she jumped to the ground, shoved her way through the unlatched door, and marched down the central corridor until she reached the glass-paned doors at the back. Oliver was sitting at a white wrought-iron table on the lawn, glass in hand, port by his side. She pushed through the door and strode toward him, not bothering to return his smile when he glanced over his shoulder.

“My dear,” he said, rising, “I—Caitlin, is something wrong?” She stood behind the chair opposite him, and grabbed the back until her knuckles whitened.

“Wrong? What could be wrong? I paid my respects to my father, spoke with the vicar, and saw a dead man in the grove. What could possibly be wrong?”

“Oh,” he said, and resumed his seat. “Oh.”

“Oh,” she said, bitterly mocking him. “Oh. And is that something else you’ve decided to take care of without consulting me, Oliver?”