Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Blood once sundered may yet be bound,
If love and life in union found.
When son is born of both their line,
The curse shall break, the stars align.
Let peace take root where envy grew,
And heal the hearts your hatred slew.
—From the last letter of
Lenore Ashcombe
written to her sister
By morning, the storm had spent itself. The world beyond the windows lay shrouded in white, every branch and fence post sheathed in glittering ice. The air was crystalline and still, the silence profound after the night’s howling fury.
Gabriel stood in the doorway of the cottage, his breath fogging in the cold.
The Reverend’s body had been carried out before dawn, left in the small shed behind the house until the magistrate could be summoned.
Gabriel had done it himself as there had been no one else to see to the task.
It was not the first time he’d had to cart a corpse away, but something about this instance was different.
There was a darkness that clung to the reverend even in death—and though he had covered the man respectfully with a length of sacking, the image would not leave him.
Eliza had slept for a few hours at last, her head pillowed against his shoulder while the fire burned low beside them. He had not slept at all.
When the sound of sleigh bells reached him through the morning quiet, he felt something inside him unclench. Two of his grooms, bundled in wool and furs, reined up before the gate. The sleigh gleamed silver with frost, the horses steaming in the bitter air.
Within the hour, they were on their way home.
The journey to Ravenswood was slow, the narrow lanes treacherous with ice.
Eliza sat beside him, wrapped in blankets, her face pale but composed.
She had not spoken much since waking. Her eyes, shadowed and too bright, remained fixed on the horizon as though she could not quite bring herself to look back.
When at last the great house came into view—its dark roofs glittering with frost, its chimneys spilling faint traces of smoke—Gabriel felt an overwhelming surge of relief.
Helena Ashcombe was waiting for them at the door. The moment she saw her granddaughter step down from the sleigh, she gave a small cry and hurried forward, gathering Eliza into her arms.
“Thank God,” she whispered fervently. “Thank God you’re safe.”
Eliza clung to her, her composure fracturing at last. “I thought I wouldn’t be, Grandmama. I thought—”
“Hush, my darling. You are here now. That is all that matters.” Helena drew back slightly, her keen eyes searching Eliza’s face.
For a moment, something flickered there—a recognition that went deeper than mere relief.
Her fingers brushed her granddaughter’s cheek.
“You’ve changed,” she murmured. “I can see it.”
Eliza blinked, startled. “Changed?”
Helena smiled faintly, though her expression was solemn. “You found it, didn’t you? The thread that binds us all.”
Eliza hesitated. “If you mean magic, I… I don’t know. I only know that he would have killed me if I hadn’t done something.”
“And you did.” Helena’s tone was gentle, but sure. “Our gifts come when they’re needed most. They always have. You’ve no cause for shame.”
Before Eliza could reply, Gabriel shared the more pressing details of what had transpired upon their return.
“I’ve sent word to the magistrate in Lincoln,” he said quietly.
“I told him the Reverend came to the cottage intending to coerce my wife into returning to the village, that he fell ill and died there. The truth, more or less. There is no reason for further inquiry.”
Helena inclined her head. “You’ve done wisely, my lord.”
He offered a weary smile. “Wisely or not, I’ll sleep easier when the matter is behind us.”
“It wasn’t even really about me,” Eliza said. “He used our wickedness as an excuse. He was the illegitimate son of Ramses Hawthorne.” She glanced at her grandmother whose expression shifted into one of profound grief. He’d been Helena’s love, lost to the curse.
“Vengeance then?” Gabriel asked.
“Greed. The madness of it, I suppose,” Eliza murmured.
“He was not rational. Not sane. Obsessed, I think, with taking back what he felt had been stolen from him when Ramses had died without first marrying his mother.” She took a breath.
“He meant to kill you… to make it seem as though you had taken your own life after me dead, or at least evidence of my death. Then he was set to purchase Ravenswood as you are the last legitimate heir.”
“And now none of that will occur,” Gabriel insisted. “Now we will both live long, healthy and happy lives here in this place together.”
Eliza didn’t respond. She couldn’t. What he spoke of was something she’d never dared to dream. But she wanted it. Desperately.
He excused himself then to see to the rest of the arrangements—dispatching the grooms, ordering hot water for Eliza’s chamber, ensuring the Reverend’s remains would be respectfully tended once the magistrate arrived. Only when every duty had been seen to did he allow himself to seek her out again.
He found her in the small sitting room that adjoined their chambers, standing by the window where the weak winter light filtered through the frost-patterned glass. A shawl lay around her shoulders, her hair unbound and falling loosely down her back.
She turned at his step, and he was struck anew by how fragile she looked—and yet how composed. The faint color in her cheeks was proof of returning warmth, but there was a depth in her eyes now that had not been there before.
“You should be resting,” he said softly.
“I can’t,” she admitted. “Every time I close my eyes, I see him.”
He crossed to her and took her hands gently in his. “He can’t harm you now. That’s done with.”
She nodded, but her gaze slid toward the fire. “Perhaps. But it doesn’t feel done. It feels… unfinished somehow. As if something greater has been set in motion.”
Gabriel glanced past her, toward the hearth where a single bloom rested in a small glass vase—a deep red rose, its petals frosted at the edges. He had placed it there himself, unable to part with it even after all that had happened.
“I meant to ask you about that,” he said quietly. “When I came upon the cottage yesterday, I noticed the last of the roses still clinging to the bush outside, though the frost had nearly claimed them. And I realized something—something that doesn’t make sense.”
She turned toward him, puzzled. “What doesn’t?”
“The rose I found in the village,” he said.
“The one that led me to you. It came from that same bush. I know it did. But the Reverend hadn’t been near the cottage then, not yet.
He couldn’t have brought it. He wouldn’t have had the time.
And I can’t imagine he would have left something so telling…
not when it could have interrupted his plans. So where did it come from?”
Eliza stared at him, her brow furrowing. “I don’t know.”
He gave a low laugh, though there was little humor in it. “I’ve faced musket fire and cannon shot without flinching, and yet I can’t make sense of a single flower.”
“Perhaps you’re not meant to,” she said softly. “Perhaps it isn’t something that can be explained.”
He studied her face, her expression calm and distant in the glow of the firelight. “You think it was… what? Some manifestation of this power you spoke of?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, but her voice was thoughtful now. “I only know that it was the rose that brought you to me. If you hadn’t seen it—”
“I would have been too late,” he finished quietly.
The fire cracked, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. He reached for her then, drawing her gently against him. She came willingly, resting her cheek against his shoulder.
Outside, the ice was beginning to melt, droplets sliding down from the eaves in slow, silvery lines. The sound was soft, steady—a rhythm like the ticking of a clock marking the end of one thing and the beginning of another.
“Some puzzles,” Gabriel murmured, brushing a kiss against her hair, “are better left unsolved.”
Eliza smiled faintly, her arms tightening around him. “Then let this be one of them.”
They stood that way for a long while, the fire warm at their backs, the snow-bright world glinting beyond the windows.
And though neither spoke again, both knew that the rose would remain a mystery—a quiet, living echo of the power that had bound them together, and of the curse that, at long last, seemed to have met its match.