Chapter 7
T HE N ORTHEAST COAST OF S COTLAND M C C LAIREN’S I SLE S IX MONTHS LATER
L ord Carr looked down from the tower window at the bleak courtyard of Wanton’s Blush. A storm was coming in. A stiff wind smote the rocky island with backhanded fury, ripping what leaves were left from the branches of oak and rowan and hurling them across the square. Overhead, dark mauve-veined clouds rolled ominously westward. If one turned around and looked out the east windows, one would see huge waves shattering themselves on the jagged rocks surrounding the island.
If one were to look out the east windows. Which Carr would not. Had not, in fact, in years if at all avoidable. Not that his present view pleased him any too much.
Like a cheap whore too long in the trade, Wanton’s Blush was showing her coarse antecedents. All the accoutrements Carr had so painstakingly plied upon her homely surface could no longer hide what she was: a Scottish drab.
The redbrick he’d ordered to cover her facade had crumbled in places, the gaping pox marks exposing the gray hand-hewn rock beneath. The courtyard he’d had paved with shimmering pink granite had heaved, pushed from below by tough Scottish turf that sprouted like hairs on a hag’s chin.
The corrosion had seeped inside, too. Oh, not drastically—and not yet too apparently—but the signs were there. The expensive plaster moldings had cracked in several rooms. Chipped marble mantelpieces went unrepaired. Water stains darkened the walls of the south wing. Nothing too remarkable but telling.
Carr had acquired Wanton’s Blush for the price of some information. In his youth he’d come to Scotland for an extended vacation, thinking to stay until his creditors in London forgot the immense sums he owed them. He’d accepted that he was bound for a lengthy visit. There he’d met Janet McClairen, the doted-upon cousin of this very castle’s one-time owner, Ian.
She, being rich and smitten with him, and he, having nothing much else to do, married. They’d lived here, under Ian’s benign auspices until Carr had decided he was tired of the décor . So, when the opportunity had arisen with the ill-fated Jacobite rebellion of ’45, he’d relayed pertinent information about its leaders to Lord Cumberland. After the rebellion had been squelched and Ian and his kin either executed or deported, the grateful Cumberland had seen that Wanton’s Blush and its lands went to Carr. Then, Carr had changed the décor .
He’d made Wanton’s Blush over, sparing no expense in converting her into a showpiece. A U-shaped fortress built on the highest outer curve of the island, the main body stood perpendicular to the sea. Two wings sprouted from towers at the north and south corners, protecting the wide interior courtyard from the constant winds. Italianate gardens had once bedecked the terraces Carr had cut beneath the courtyard but the years had watched the slow encroachment of the native weeds. And since none of Carr’s guests were wont to spend their waking hours idling there—their waking hours being primarily nocturnal—he did not fight too hard for those Italianate conceits.
The problem was, Carr admitted without regret, Wanton’s Blush no longer interested him. It had served its purpose—indeed, still served its purpose: enticing from afar the wealthiest and most notorious gamblers of England’s most distinguished families.
Carr was no fool. He still poured enough money into the cursed place to tempt jaded palates. Wanton’s Blush still boasted the best wine cellar in Scotland, the best chef in England, and still contained a premier collection of artwork and artifacts, treasures he would take with him when he left here and returned triumphant to the scene of his former humiliation. The old venom seeped to the surface.
After Janet had died, Carr had set about accumulating enough wealth to pay off his dunners and set himself up as befitted his station. It had been slow going. Too slow. So he’d married another heiress whose wealth hadn’t been nearly as grand as she’d intimated to him, the bitch. She’d met with an accident, as had his third wife.
By then he’d had the wealth he needed, but King George, grown sanctimonious in his dotage, had long since taken umbrage with Carr’s unfortunate habit of losing wives. He’d not only made it clear that Carr would not be welcomed back in London, nor in any society that the king—damn him—controlled, but he’d written him an edict: If any female ever again died while under Carr’s care, Carr would pay for it with his own head.
And so, Carr had sat up here in this northern nowhere for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years in unofficial exile—first self-imposed, later imposed by a king’s will.
But soon all that would be over, Carr thought, drumming his fingers. Wheels were turning. The wooing of some, the blackmailing of others, flattery, coaxing, threatening … all his exertions were on the cusp of bearing fruit. Soon. A few months and he would once more reign in London’s exalted society.
But first, he thought, turning from the window, he needed to attend to a few immediate matters, a bit of housekeeping before he quit Wanton’s Blush once and for all.
He crossed the room, approaching a shriven, unkempt figure hunched over a Uttered table. He wondered if the old witch knew the reason the sea-facing windows were draped. Probably. She seemed to know everything. Not that he cared overly much. What could one old Gypsy do to such as him? Except be of use.
“Well, what do you see, Pala?” Carr asked, examining the nails of his hand.
The woman shifted, her layers of discolored shawls and patched skirts swirling out and settling over her feet. A seamed and leathery face peered up at him from between a curtain of lank gray hair.
“Well?” he prompted.
She stabbed one filthy finger at the little pile of ivory knobs scattered across the table’s mahogany surface. “She loved you. No man owned so much love as you had from her.”
A little thrill, all the more exotic for being so very rare, ran up Carr’s spine. Pala was referring to Janet, his first wife, the only woman he’d ever truly loved. For a second, Janet’s face danced before him: a black silken fall of hair, pale skin, dark amber-colored eyes. She smiled, an off-balance smile, utterly charming. Her eyes glowed with unhappy affection, unhappy because loving him had never made Janet happy.
“Yes,” he said to himself. “She did.”
“She loves you still.”
The Gypsy’s voice abruptly dispelled his sentimental mood.
“She loves you even from the grave.” The Gypsy’s sly accents curled through the air, wheedling and testing.
Calmly Carr sauntered over and looked down at the table where Pala had spread her divining tools.
“Oh, yes. I’m certain she does.” His lips curled into a semblance of a smile. “Is that why she’s haunting me? Her and her thrice-cursed clan? Because she loves me so much!”
He slammed his fist down on the table and the intricate configuration of bones burst apart, skittering across the surface and falling to the floor.
Pala speared him with a venomous glare and dropped to her knees. She scooped up the knucklebones and cradled them against her sunken chest, crooning indecipherable gibberish under her breath. “You have broken one!” she said accusingly.
“Yes?” His brows lifted with mild annoyance. His composure had returned. “What of it? You could buy the hands from a dozen corpses with the money I’ve given you.”
“Pala never asks for money.”
Carr smiled. At times the old Gipsy could be amusing. “Of course not. I forget your exact words but the gist of it was that such an act might sully the purity of your discourse with the spirits. Yet you’ve never refused my ‘gifts.’ Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Pala crouched lower. Her mouth was sulky.
“How much do you imagine my ‘gifts’ have amounted to since I found you lurking in my stables two years ago?”
“I am not lurking,” she protested feebly. “I … I follow the spirits. They tell me you are in danger. I come to warn you. Did I not warn you of the mad dog?”
Carr regarded her through hooded eyes.
“You know this true!” Pala insisted, jerking her head up and down. “For you, I read the portents, I listen to the spirits whisper, I see what has gone before and I see what will come. Has Pala not been of use to Your Grace many, many times?”
“A few,” Carr allowed, pulling a chair out from beneath the table and dropping down into it. Pala had warned him about the rabid dog. Just as she’d seen the foundering of a smuggler’s ship and the rich trove that washed ashore from it. And certainly she knew more about him than any other living person, far more than anyone could without supernatural aid.
He stretched out his legs and laced his fingers across his flat belly. The feel of the silk-embroidered waistcoat soothed him.
“Please, most gracious sir.” Pala’s voice dropped to an unctuous mewl. “I read the bones for your guests, too. They like.”
“You’ve been an effective little diversion, I’ll grant you that,” Carr murmured. “It is hard enough to lure Lord Sandwich away from his cursed Hellfire Club and harder still to keep him here with his rich and largely insensate companions. You sometimes manage to do that, what with your augury and omens. How much real, I wonder? How much fraud?”
He leaned forward, fixing Pala with a meaningful stare. “Don’t ever take me for a fool, Pala. Don’t ever be so unwise. Or greedy.”
The Gypsy’s gaze slipped away from his. She dropped her bones into a leather pouch, drawing the thong about her neck and tucking it into her bodice. “I don’t lie to you. I tell you only what the spirits tell me. What the bones say. If they lie …”
She shrugged and Carr smiled at her sophistry. The old witch was a woman after his own heart. If the bones lied, how could it be her fault? She was simply a messenger.
“You know why I trust you, Pala?” he asked. “Aside from the fact that if you were to ever prove untrustworthy you know I would kill you, that is?”
The cheap necklaces about her thin throat rattled as she cautiously shook her head.
“It is precisely because your messages from the spirit world reek more often of gin than brimstone. An infallible witch? An honest one?” He laughed. “Those qualities don’t exist among noblemen so how could they exist in the likes of you?
“No, Pala, it is precisely because you fail and cheat and whine that I listen. You are treacherous and cowardly. Only the dead could prompt someone like you into risking her neck by claiming she hears them.” He settled back once more. “It isn’t so long ago that witches were burned. But you know that, don’t you?”
Pala hunkered in the center of the room, like a rabbit baited for a fox.
“Now then, I know you heard something, saw something, or even smelled something among those bones of yours. Something to do with Janet. What was it? And no more drivel about her undying love.” A little prick of something like regret rose within him. He ignored it. The dead returned for one reason only: to annoy the living. “In point of fact she did die. Now what … did … you … see?”
A sudden blast of wind rattled the glass in the windows as a low moan issued from the chimney.
“I cannot help what I hear,” Pala finally whispered. “You ask and ask, you know when I lie. I not lie. She loves you. Even now, even after what you did. She forgives.”
“Oh.” He stood up and was about to walk away when he heard her speak, her voice flat and soft, marked by the lack of inflection in which she issued all her most accurate portents.
“She desires …”
“Yes?”
“To be reunited with you.”
Carr snorted, disappointed. More maudlin sentiment. He’d over seventy guests in residence this day. Since Pala did not appear to have any suggestion on how to rid the castle of the haunts, he’d best go attend the living.
“She wants to be with you.”
“Well, I’m afraid the dear girl will have to wait a bit, won’t she?”
His smile faded as he saw the intensity with which Pala stared at him. He was not mistaken. He’d engendered it in enough men to be wholly familiar with its every aspect. Pala was afraid.
“There is more,” he prompted. “What do you know!”
“She is not waiting. She comes back. To forgive. To protect from them. As she always did.”
Them. The McClairens . Alive, Janet had shielded him from their unproven certainty that he’d betrayed them, refusing to believe he would do such a thing. At least, at first. By the time she’d died, so too had most of her clan. Later, thanks to the fortuitous whoring of his son Raine, he’d had the excuse he needed to kill off any remnant of that cursed clan.
In truth it had been no great surprise when the McClairens had begun creeping from their graves, seeking in death the retribution they’d been denied in life—though they’d certainly bided their time in coming back.
Janet … now Janet was a different story. Yet here was Pala claiming Janet was only now returning. It made no sense; Janet had been haunting him for years.
“In what form will she haunt me? When will she come back?”
“Now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She is no spirit no more. She has found a vessel. Here. At Wanton’s Blush.”
“What do you mean?”
“She is reborn in another. One who is not aware she shares her body with another soul. But you will know. You will recognize her.”
His heart hammered painfully in his chest as he moved forward, grabbing the old woman’s arm and hauling her to her feet. “If you are lying I will tear your heart from your chest myself and force it down your throat.”
“I not lie!” Pala cried. “She loves you. She wants to be once more with you!”
Carr flung the old woman away, running a trembling hand through his peruke, shoving the wig back on his head.
Janet returned, he thought numbly.
He had to find her.
The door to the tower room slammed open. Pala, her skirts bunched high, scuttled out and disappeared down the steep tower staircase. Carr followed a moment later, his expression distracted. Blindly he followed the winding stairs downward and through a low arched door. He turned sharply and collided with a stooped female figure.
A thick black veil concealed the left side of her face leaving the right side uncovered, exposing a twisted mouth, deformed jaw, and one sunken eye obscured by a drooping, nerveless lid. Carr recoiled. It was hideous.
The creature shrank against the wall, her twisted body trembling.
“Who in God’s name are you?” Carr demanded.
“Gunna, Yer Grace,” the old woman mumbled in thick Highland accents, lifting the corner of her veil across her mouth.
“Damn, another witch! Whatever are you doing in my house?”
“I do fer yer daughter, sir. Miss Fia. Have done fer years.” The woman shuffled sideways like a land crab. It was repulsive.
“’Swounds!” Carr swore softly under his breath, looking away. He remembered now. Fia had an inordinate and inexplicable fondness for this creature—Gunna, was it?—and she, in turn, seemed to be the one person who had some influence on his increasingly intractable daughter.
“What the hell are you doing here, hag?” he demanded.
“Followin’ yer bidding, Yer Grace,” the old woman mumbled.
“How so? By spying on me?” he demanded.
“No! No, Yer Grace! Ye said as how whenever I’m not tending Miss Fia I should keep meself to the east and upper rooms where the sight of me wouldna offend ye or yer guests. So here I be, Yer Grace.”
Carr looked about and blanched. Surely enough, the window behind Gunna framed a view of the churning North Sea. Somehow, what with his distraction, he’d taken a wrong turn and ended here, overlooking the very cliffs from which Janet had fallen to her death.
A little thread of apprehension tightened his back muscles and set his scalp tingling. It was as if Janet herself had led him here.
“Yer Grace?” he heard Gunna ask.
He quelled the shudder taking hold of his limbs and fixed his attention on her cowering figure. His pride would never allow him to reveal anything even remotely akin to dread to so wretched a creature.
He brushed past her, sneering as he went, “For a man who loves beauty why do I suddenly find myself surrounded by hags?”