Chapter 17
Nicholas broke into a run, heedless of the cliff’s edge.
“Gillian!” Please let her be fine. The thickening fog obscured his vision, but the path before him was empty.
He raced along it, shouting her name over and over, fingers trailing the wall beside him.
The trail began to descend, moving away from the castle walls to the rocks and river below.
He stopped, chest heaving. This couldn’t be happening.
“Gillian!” His bellow scraped his throat raw. “Gillian!” There was no answer.
He turned and started back up the path, feeling as if he were trapped in a nightmare. Why had she come here, the little fool? Why?
Nicholas kept walking, yelling himself hoarse, refusing to consider the obvious. She’d come out here for the ghost. He knew it. When he found her, he would shake her and shake her and put his fist through a wall because he might lose her. Please God, let her be fine.
He was back at the postern door. Several men-at-arms stood there, staring at him as if he had horns sprouting from his forehead.
“Did she come back this way?”
They shook their heads.
“Why are you just standing there? Get torches—I want the entire path searched. Now!”
They scattered like roaches from light. He swung back around, staring wildly out into the foggy night, at the cliff falling off sharply a few feet away.
He could hear her last scream echoing in his ears.
The beginnings of a black, irrational rage clawed at him.
Why? There was no such thing as ghosts and magic.
Why couldn’t she accept that? Why would she get herself killed over it? He couldn’t stand it.
He staggered to the edge of the cliff and yelled her name into the night.
A man-at-arms cleared his throat behind Nicholas. “My lord?”
Nicholas turned toward him, not really seeing him, his eyes searching for some sign of her everywhere he looked. Maybe she’d returned to the castle. Maybe he’d somehow missed her? Walked right past her? On a path that was three feet in width. Not likely.
“Should we send some men below . . . to search the river and rocks?”
“No!” Nicholas roared. “She didn’t fall. Search the castle. Maybe she went back inside.” Then why had he heard her scream his name?
The man quickly backed away. Rose appeared from the fog, eyes wild, auburn hair flying around her like a fury. Her dark eyes narrowed in on him.
“You killed her!” she screeched and came at him.
“Rose—” He caught her shoulders as she flew at him, nails raking him across the cheek. He shoved her away, and she fell onto the path. She flung her hair back and glared up at him. “I’ll see you dead for this!”
“I didn’t kill her!” He raked a shaking hand through his hair.
He couldn’t think properly. Something very bad was happening.
Rose thought he’d killed Gillian. A tight, icy ball of dread formed in his gut, and it worked its way upward, constricting his chest and throat.
“Bloody Christ, Rose—I did not murder my wife!”
“Liar,” she hissed. “You think because you’re an earl you can get away with this? You can’t just collect murdered wives and servants. Why, I’ll—”
“Rose, listen to me.” Nicholas thought for certain that he was going mad. He’d walked into some horrible nightmare that kept getting more and more macabre. Rose opened her mouth to spit more venom at him. He grabbed her arm and shook her. “Listen to me!”
Evan’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Leave off, my lord. She’s distraught.”
She’s distraught? Nicholas was distraught. He released her abruptly. She dropped to the cobblestone path, buried her face in her hands, and began to weep.
“Rose.” He said her name plaintively, wanting her to stop her weeping because damn it! Gillian was not dead. She couldn’t be. Slowly, like a cut tree, Rose tipped forward until her forehead touched the stones, sobbing her sister’s name.
Dead, dead. Everyone stared at him as if he were a fiend bent on further mayhem. Even Evan had a wary look in his eyes. They all believed he’d tossed another wife to her death.
He put his hands to his face. “This cannot be happening.” He raked his hands savagely through his hair, wanting to rip it out if he thought it would do any good. He backed away, back to the cliff path, and resumed his desperate search.
The sun rose, burning off the fog and clearly illuminating the path.
But the light revealed no clues about what had happened to Gillian.
Nor could Nicholas find a trace of the servant who’d come to him about Gillian, the one who’d said he’d been sent.
Sent by whom? When Nicholas had described the servant to Evan and others, everyone had denied seeing him, or even knowing who he was.
They’d all looked at Nicholas as if he’d been lying.
As if they’d known some truth about him—that there was no servant, that he’d followed his wife into the garden, then thrown her from a cliff.
He loved her! He wanted to rage it at them, beat it into their heads so they stopped staring at him like a dangerous madman. Why would he murder the best thing in his miserable life? It made no sense. Couldn’t they see that?
He scoured the entire castle before finally giving the order for the men to go below. To look for her on the ground. It felt like an admission of defeat. His chest was an empty void. Dead.
He walked blindly to his chambers and sank into the chair behind his desk. He stared at the documents that he’d been working his way through before his life unraveled. Again. None of it mattered. He’d vowed to protect her, and she’d not even lasted a month in his care.
He sat that way for a very long time. Unmoving, staring blankly at his desk, a hollow bark echoing in his ears. As if the world had stopped and he did not want it to start again.
Evan appeared in the doorway. “My lord, they didn’t find her below . . . but she could have fallen in the river, so there would be no body.”
When Catriona had fallen they’d done the same for a time, searching the castle and the base of the mountain, waiting for a body to wash up somewhere.
He’d sent men to follow the river, looking, but they’d never found her—only her cloak, caught in the brambles on the cliff path, the clasp broken, ripped from her throat as she’d fallen.
“Send some men downriver,” he heard himself say.
Evan gave the order but didn’t leave. Nicholas wanted him to go away, but he couldn’t find the energy to speak.
His throat hurt. Everything hurt. He felt as if someone had rammed a lance into his chest. He could barely breath without pain wrenching through him, and he feared that at any moment he would disintegrate.
“There’s a party at the gate,” Evan said.
Nicholas dimly remembered one of his men informing him of their approach more than an hour ago. “Who is it?”
“The countess’s sister, Isobel Kilpatrick and her husband.”
And he’d thought matters couldn’t possibly get worse.
“Let them in,” he said.
Again Evan gave the order but didn’t leave. What else? Nicholas refused to look at the knight.
Evan came into Nicholas’s privy chamber and closed the door. He crossed to the whisky decanter on the cabinet. Nicholas watched with a sense of detachment as Evan poured a cup of whisky and brought it to him.
“Here, my lord, methinks you need this.”
Nicholas slapped the cup out of Evan’s hand. The knight jerked back. The cup clattered to the floor, spraying whisky everywhere.
“You think a drink will make this better?”
“No, my lord.” Evan’s stone mask was in place.
Nicholas dropped his head into his hands. Nothing would make this better. Nothing.
“Go away.”
Sir Evan left.
Broc barked and scratched at the connecting door, reminding Nicholas of the last time he’d seen Gillian. Curled in bed with Broc, sleeping like an angel. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his fists into them to gouge out the memory.
Broc’s barking grew monotonous, so Nicholas let the dog in.
Broc raced past him, sniffing frantically at all the furniture, then bounding to the door leading to the corridor.
He scratched at it, whining and barking frantically.
The dog was in a frenzy, and Nicholas wondered if he somehow sensed what had happened.
Nicholas sat heavily in his chair and called the dog. Broc came to him, but when Nicholas tried to pet him, he ran back to the door, yipping and turning in circles. He raced back to Nicholas again, repeating the ritual.
Nicholas had a sudden recollection of when Broc had arrived.
He had done something similar and had eventually led him straight to Gillian, sitting in the garden.
The memory of her, sitting on a stone bench, surrounded by flowers and smiling up at him, knifed through him. He stood with a surge of hope.
“Come on, Broc— you’ve something you’d like to show me?”
What Gillian couldn’t understand was, if she was dead, why did it hurt so much? Her head ached so that she couldn’t open her eyes, her hands stung, her face throbbed, her right arm burned like a brand, and the rest of her body was filled with a general pulsing ache.
She couldn’t stop shivering either, it was so cold.
Wind lifted her hair as it blew across her, the strength of the breeze at times nearly rolling her over.
Something squawked loudly in her ear. Where was she?
She curled the fingers of her left hand and felt grit beneath them, followed by a harsh sting that shot through her abraded palm.
Memories came to her, disjointed. She’d been on the path .
. . she’d seen the ghost . . . pain . . .
the pain had come back. The counter curse had failed.
She’d been struck with pain and had fallen.
No, someone had pushed her. She squeezed her eyes shut, her stomach rebelling, pain splintering through her head until the blackness returned.