Chapter 15
Gillian had completely forgotten about the message she’d asked Gilchrist to send to Rose until her sister and Stephen Ross showed up at Kincreag a sennight later.
After the perfunctory greetings were out of the way, Nicholas left Gillian to visit with her family.
She took them to the west wing, confiding to them in a low voice all the odd things that had occurred since she’d left Lochlaire.
Though Gillian admitted that she wasn’t entirely certain the specters hadn’t been opium induced, Rose was convinced she had communed with the dead.
The three of them stood over the dollhouse, inspecting it carefully. Stephen propped his walking stick against the table and circled it, seating himself on the padded stool. He peered into the house thoughtfully. Rose exclaimed over the workmanship just as Gillian had the first time she’d seen it.
“I want one!” Rose said, making the portcullis rise and lower repeatedly. “I will make Jamie build me one for a wedding gift.”
Stephen put his hand over hers to stop her from raising it again, annoyed at the repetitive creaking. “Try something else now, eh?”
Rose cranked it a few more times, smirking defiantly at Stephen the whole while, but she finally tired of irritating him.
Stephen removed the blond doll from Gillian’s bed. “This is the one?” He studied the doll carefully, turning it in his fingers.
“Aye . . . it somehow finds its way back into the bed every time I take it out. Once it even disappeared from my pocket. Watch.” She took it from Stephen and set it on the table, then started to walk away.
He remained on the stool, blue eyes fixed intently on the doll.
Gillian came back and pulled on his arm.
“No, you can’t watch it. Nothing will happen if you sit and look at it. ”
He rose painfully from the stool. Gillian took his arm to help him, but he pulled irritably from her grasp. “I can walk without aid, Gilly . . . er . . . my lady.”
She raised her brows. “You don’t have to ‘my lady’ me, Stephen.”
He tugged an obsequious forelock in answer, and Gillian pushed at his shoulder.
Rose had wandered across the room to pluck at the lute’s strings.
“This needs to be tuned.” She moved to the window and began tuning the instrument.
Her long auburn braid nearly glowed in the sunlight spilling through the window, a myriad of dazzling colors glistening in the light—copper, gold, and amber.
Stephen gave Gillian a sidelong glance. “Can I look now?”
They returned to the dollhouse. Stephen was in front of her, so at his sudden stop Gillian bumped into him. He caught the edge of the house to steady himself, then sat heavily on the stool.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered.
Gillian peered into the house, knowing what she’d see. She took the doll out of the bed almost every day, and it always found its way back.
Stephen looked around the room warily. “Are you getting headaches?”
“A few, but no bad ones like at Lochlaire.”
“Maybe it’s possessed of a demon?” Stephen’s gaze was fixed on the doll, as if afraid to look away.
“Or maybe,” Rose said, joining them, “a ghost is moving it about.”
“Why would a ghost want to do that?” Gillian asked.
“I know not. Why don’t you ask it?”
Gillian frowned at her sister.
Rose smiled secretly, midnight blue eyes shining with excitement. “I think I found a way to break the curse.”
Gillian gasped. “Really? Let’s do it now. Stephen, you must watch for Nicholas.” When Rose raised an inquiring brow, she explained, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment, “He’s forbidden me from practicing witchcraft.”
Rose grinned. “You’re so obedient, Gilly.”
Gillian shrugged. Though she’d been quick to defy Nicholas’s edict, she did feel a pang of guilt. He’d forced her to be secretive by being so overbearing. Besides, it wasn’t as if she’d promised. In fact, she’d made a point not to promise, so she wasn’t technically breaking her word.
Rose set the lute aside. “I memorized the counter curse and brought everything we need.” She opened a small pouch that hung from her garter and removed a black candle. “Hold this.”
Gillian took the candle and held it in both hands. “Why is it black?” Upon closer inspection she saw that it wasn’t black at all but a deep, muddy red.
“Because it’s not just wax. I had to make it special for this spell. It should smell nice.”
Rose lit the wick with a candle from the candelabra, and after a moment a spicy scent filled the air.
Gillian nodded approvingly. “What’s in it?”
“Er . . . you don’t want to know.”
Gillian raised her brows and shifted her hold on the candle so that she gripped it gingerly with her fingertips.
Rose surveyed her thoughtfully. “Come stand over here.” Taking Gillian’s elbows, she steered her across the room, then took another minute to position her.
She removed a piece of chalk from her wee pouch and drew a circle on the floor around Gillian, then she drew several odd signs around the inside edge of the circle.
She stood, dusting her hands off, and glanced around the room.
Spotting the ewer and basin Gillian had brought to the room earlier that week, she poured water into the basin and carried it to where Gillian stood.
She removed several small packets from her pouch and sprinkled the contents of one into the water.
“What’s that?” Gillian asked.
“Salt.”
Rose passed her hand over the water, eyes closed, and said something in a language Gillian did not understand. Gillian glanced nervously at Stephen. He leaned against the wall near the doorway, watching them. He smiled encouragingly.
Rose pushed the water into the circle and positioned it right below the candle Gillian held.
“I purified the water,” Rose explained. “Some burning sage would be useful but not necessary.”
Rose tossed her braid over her shoulder and scrutinized the scene. “The fire and water purify you and your space within the circle. Mother said curses put bad magic out into the world. So by breaking this curse we will be sending this bad magic back out into the world. We must give it direction.”
“I think whoever cursed me should get the curse back at them.”
Rose shook her head. “We can’t do that unless we know who cursed you, and as we don’t . . .” Rose shrugged. “Perhaps there is someone evil you’d like to curse?”
Gillian looked anxiously around the room, as if a candidate would appear. “There’s no one.”
Rose chewed her lip a moment, then her eyes lit up. “We’ll curse an object, then we can bury it.” Rose fished around in her pouch until she located a satiny black stone. “This will work.”
She set the stone on the floor just outside the circle and made Gillian repeat after her words in a language that resembled Gaelic but made no sense to Gillian.
“What does it mean?”
“I’m not exactly certain,” Rose said. “But the important thing is that you understand the intent and put your will behind it. We want to break the curse and send the bad magic to the stone. So long as you keep that to the fore of your mind and infuse your words with that intent, it doesn’t really matter, aye? ”
Gillian did as her sister instructed. They chanted the words for what seemed a very long time, until the dripping candle wax burned Gillian’s fingers and her calves began to ache.
Finally Rose bade her to blow the candle out. She removed a shiny white oblong stone from her pouch. “Lick this in the sign of the cross.”
Gillian looked at the stone dubiously. “Why?”
“Just do it!”
Gillian licked the stone across and down, then offered it to her sister.
“Was it salty?” Rose asked hopefully, opening her pouch so Gillian could drop it in herself.
Gillian shrugged. “Aye, a bit.”
“Good.” Rose beamed. “The curse is broken.” She looked down her thin nose at the black stone on the floor. “We’ll bury it later.”
Stephen limped over to sit in front of the dollhouse again. “Did it work?”
“Rose says it did.” Gillian looked around the room but didn’t see or hear anything odd. No headaches, either.
“We need a test,” Rose said. “Any place that you know is haunted?”
“The cliff path,” Gillian said. “But not until midnight. And there has to be fog.”
“Look at this,” Stephen called from across the room.
They joined him at the dollhouse. His forefinger lay against the paneling of one of the rooms. When he saw that they both were watching, he pressed in on the paneling.
It opened; inside was a small lever. He depressed it with his finger, and with a creak, the outer wall of the dollhouse opened a crack.
Gillian gasped. “What is it?”
Stephen pushed it apart. It wasn’t much. A series of small wooden corridors and staircases, but as Stephen further manipulated the walls of the dollhouse, it became clear that this hidden hallway opened into most of the rooms, honeycombing the west wing.
“It’s a servants’ hallway. A lot of large castles have them. My uncle’s largest castle is riddled with them.” Stephen was the bastard son of a bastard son of the previous earl of Irvine. The current earl, his uncle, had raised him, so he had lived in castles such as this his whole life.
“How did you know it was here?” Gillian asked, gesturing to the house.
“Och, just look at it. It doesna match. The walls are thick, aye? But there’s a good bit of room unaccounted for here; it made no sense to me.”
“That’s very clever, Stephen,” Rose said, handing him his walking stick. “But now we must find a ghost.”
“We can’t go to the cliff path until midnight. Why not look here?” Stephen indicated the secret passageways in the dollhouse. “Gillian said the west wing was closed off and no one goes there. Seems to me the perfect place for ghosts to lurk.”
Gillian eyed the chalk markings on the floor nervously. “We should clean this first.”
“Not yet,” Rose said. “Let’s test it first, to be certain. There are a few variations of the counter curse, so if this one doesn’t work, we’ll try another.”