Chapter 18
The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.
“Bastard!” Rage roused me from slumber, and before the word had fully left my lips, I snapped upright, gaze blurred and wild as my eyes fought for purchase in the darkness.
A thin layer of sweat coated my skin, and I slicked a palm over my damp forehead, to shove stray strands of hair up into my sleeping bonnet.
The pulse at my throat pummeled against my collarbone, in tandem with panting breaths that threatened to send me into a faint.
Remember? How could I forget any of it? It’s not like there was a void where the last three years hadn’t happened, for God’s sake … but the anger?
I slapped my chest over and over, willing my lungs to slow, to inhale deeply, calmly. To gather myself, my thoughts. To pull myself together.
Is this what Michael wanted? To remember the rage? The emotion? But what good was that when I had a job to do and a future at the end of it: impersonate one young widow to attain a home, somewhere I could do honor to my family?
With care, I pulled back the duvet and swung my legs off the bed before checking the incense. Its steady burn told me it was in no danger of petering out anytime soon. Good. I stood and gathered the robe that lay ready on an armchair.
Anger and rage could do naught but plant a bitter seed in my soul, a seed that would bloom to hatred so fierce, I’d hate myself the rest of my life.
Hate that I’d trusted a noblewoman after all I’d been through, hate that I’d done her bidding to receive a small fortune, hate that I’d be the only O’Shaughnessy to gain aught from such ill-gotten gains.
But the puzzle pieces tickled the very back of my brain, urged on by the thunderous roar of the storm outside.
And my skin crawled with what-ifs as I threw on the robe.
Fzzt.
I whipped around at the sound to find a spark diminishing on the slate before the hearth. The fire was still lit—if not roaring, decently smoldering. In four steps, I grabbed the poker and went to work, adding three new sods of turf before using the embers to light a taper.
I needed to think. Touching the taper to a candle on the end table near the hearth, I smoothly picked up Cormac’s copy of The Count of Monte Cristo and sank into the armchair.
I’d always prided myself on not taking to fancies, but my head swam with them as I stared at the plain, leather-bound cover.
Michael was dead, and if his soul was uneasy, surely he would’ve visited me long before now.
Why did he choose here to visit, of all places?
I shook my head. Between Beth corroborating the woman in white’s warning that I was not the first faux Wilhelmina, Dr. Brady claiming there was naught amiss with the incense, and Cormac mentioning the rumor that Lady Catherine might possibly be a dark sorceress … had I gone mad?
My heart skipped a beat as a thought froze the blood in my veins. What if I’d contracted some disease at the workhouse, and this was all but a fever dream? Eyes widening, I opened the book, isolated a single page, and sliced my index finger along its edge.
“Ow!” I exclaimed, before quickly examining the finger in the candle’s glow. Tiny red beads pilled against torn skin, and relief warred with terror as I realized this was real. I was here.
Why on earth did Michael need me to remember my anger … or worse? Perhaps I had forgotten something. A detail so dark, ’twas best to forget it completely.
I stiffened. The seanchaí. In my memory, he had spoken of ghoulish lights in the countryside and called them the féar gortach.
Was that what I’d seen from my window?
Fzzt. Another spark. I glanced in its direction.
The fire roared in the hearth, dancing wildly as a howling draft screeched around the cracks of the heavy curtains.
Gooseflesh pimpled my arms, and I pulled the robe tighter. Distraction. I needed one.
With a shake of my head, I turned my attention back to The Count of Monte Cristo and found where I’d left off.
If I could just lose myself in the pages, I knew I could settle my mind.
And yet something about Edmond’s story terrified me, and I feared it might fuel the rage in my soul.
My darkest thoughts—the ones that should give me pause.
Vengeance. But Edmond Dantès’s vengeance was purposeful. Calculated. Was I not also seeking vengeance in my own way? To live a quiet life, without a landlord to breathe down my neck … that was my vengeance. My final dance. The only power I had.
Scrrrreeeeeeeaaaaaach.
The wild wind blew, and I closed my eyes. It was naught. Naught but the scrape of a tree branch against the window.
Remember.
I froze, spine tingling as a chill snaked up my spine. Edmond Dantès. I needed to get back to the book. Yes.
I lowered my eyes, but the letters on the printed page blurred as I stared.
Maggie … ye’re forgetting.
“I’m not!” Frowning, I slammed the book shut and rose from the chair by the fire. “I remember everything, Michael! What is it I must remember?”
My heart leapt in my chest as a new breeze ruffled the hem of my nightgown. My pulse hammered at my throat, an unending thrum of heat and speed that forced its way to my ears. They filled with a whad-ump that threatened to consume me, to devour me whole.
Creak.
I whipped around, eyes wide as I sought the source of the sound. In the firelight, the shelves of porcelain dolls seemed to stare, their painted gazes following as I took a tentative step toward the bed.
Crreeeaaaaakkk.
A shriek wound its way over my tongue, and I clamped a hand over my mouth as I glanced at the door. At the widening triangle of moonlight that expanded over the wooden door.
It was … opening. But Michael’s voice came from behind—
Don’t go out there, his voice whispered.
“Wh-who’s there?” I called … at least, I thought I did. My body was so frozen I wasn’t sure I’d said the words aloud. “Who’s outside the door?”
There was no response. Nothing.
I glanced at the bed and bit my lower lip. It was best to simply listen to my dead brother’s advice and dive beneath the covers ’til morning. Morning, when I could make a list of all the happenings with a clear mind. Morning, when daylight would bolster my courage.
But from the corner of my eye, a shadow darted beyond the now wide-open door. From left to right. A swift motion accompanied by the swish of silk and crinoline.
“Beth?”
Heaving a shaky breath, I stalked toward the door, brows furrowed as I readied myself to lash out. To scold. To strike her with the broad side of my tongue and declare it wasn’t amusing.
A jest, surely?
“You jackanapes!” I declared, stepping into the hall, ready to make Beth promise to never do something so awful again.
The shadow had moved from left to right, so I turned in that direction, certain she couldn’t have reached the main staircase.
But it wasn’t Beth.
A cool sheen of perspiration coated my brow as the woman in white turned to the side, and slowly walked toward the wall.
Lightning flashed through the window at my back, and her edges were no longer translucent, but solid. Her hair hung in muddy strands. Her body, modestly concealed by the ragged remnants of a dirty chemise—once white—now torn and bloody. But it was her eyes that chilled me to the bone.
Or the lack thereof.
They had been gouged from her face, and rivers of blood ran from the sockets.
A scream rose in my throat as her outline shimmered, a strange blurring of what was real from what was not, as she walked through the wall.
I couldn’t breathe. My chest was wound tighter than a bowstring, threatening to crack beneath the pressure of my lungs.
Crying, a low wail that whispered of heartache and agony, drifted on the air, and my eyes locked onto the place in the wall through which she’d disappeared.
My brow furrowed, and before I knew what I was doing, one foot dragged in front of the other, as if my mind needed to know.
If I was right. If it was the same spot.
The curtain. The ancient door with its myriad of ancient locks.
You should have listened to him.
Her disembodied voice croaked in my ear, breath like ice raising the little hairs of my arms as I placed a shaking hand against the door to the attic. The voice was old, wheezing over rattling lungs, and so weathered I couldn’t tell male from female.
But I knew for certain it wasn’t Michael.
This voice grated like chains, a-clinking in the echoed chamber of a vast dungeon. A weakened prisoner in the throes of anguish.
Feed me, Maggie.
“Feed you what?” My voice was naught but a breath as I fought to steady the wartime drum a-pounding in my chest. It was naught. My mind playing tricks. Then why, for the love of God, did my neck turn? I squeezed my eyes shut.
A glacial hand landed on my shoulder. Hard.
Fingers gripping my flesh until light flashed through my mind, fading until Lady Catherine’s shape took form behind my closed eyes.
She stood in a darkened room, with only the glow of a single candle for light, bent slightly to speak to the figure before her.
“What is it you want most?” Lady Catherine asked.
The same words she’d asked me at the workhouse …
but she wasn’t speaking to me. The figure in my vision was a child.
A little girl, bedraggled with grime, blond hair hanging in greasy threads.
A shadow loomed behind Lady Catherine, something dark and eerie, the stench of rotted flesh emanating from the void. A flash.
“What is it you want most?” Lady Catherine asked again. This time speaking to another blond girl, older than the first, but in a similar state of despair. Thin, but tall, mayhap in the first blush of pending womanhood. The shadow behind Lady Catherine seemed more solid now. Taking form. A flash.
“What is it you want most?” The same question. This girl was older still. Sixteen or seventeen, with the curves of a woman grown. Blond. Pretty. The shadow wore a long gown, a singular length of fabric.
“What is it you want most?” This scene I recognized, though I couldn’t believe the wraith she spoke to—the sunken eyes, the sharp lines, skin so thin it was naught but a wisp of parchment.
Me. This was me. And the shadow looming behind Lady Catherine was no longer a shadow, but a woman.
She wore a long white dress embroidered with gold, with long bell sleeves and a golden belt shining bright on her hips.
A waterfall of black curls cascaded down her back, and the golden crown on her head spoke of royalty. Of wealth. Of an ancient queen.
My eyes popped open, ready to confront whoever had grabbed my shoulder. Ready to scream. Ready to demand the meaning of this.
Except … there was nothing there.
Wild-eyed, I whirled on my heel, frantically searching the hallway for whoever had touched me, but there was nary a whisper of anything out of place.
The sky lit up once more beyond the window at the end of the hallway, throwing unnatural blue-white light through the glass, and a deep, dissonant, disembodied chuckle resonated from behind.
From the door. The door to the attic. I recoiled, heart dropping into my gut as I slammed my back against the opposite wall of the corridor.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” Making the sign of the cross, I retreated to my bedchamber, reciting the Lord’s Prayer over and over until I’d stepped over the threshold and latched the door. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
I tugged on the door for good measure and ran toward the window, so I might cool my forehead and drag myself back to the here and now.
My mind wandered to Cormac as I pulled the heavy curtain aside. I envied him in that moment. His cottage. His distance from the house.
Leaning forward, I allowed the cool glass to counter my heat. To ground me. To help me breathe. Eyes shut, I continued the Lord’s Prayer until my heart slowed. Until the chill in my bones was spurred by the draft, and not the dread that branched through my veins, a disease invading my life’s blood.
Until I felt safe enough to open my eyes.
And wished to God I hadn’t.
For there, in the storm-tossed plain of limestone crags and ravines, several greenish lights bobbed in the violent darkness, and my chest tightened.
They shot right, then halted, before swinging to the left.
Lightning flashed, a great sheet of bright light that turned night to day for the space of a heartbeat, but it was enough.
Enough to see the twisted limbs in the distance, and the eyeless figures testing the air for whatever it was they hunted.
In a blink, they turned again and ran off over terrain that even surefooted men wouldn’t attempt to walk without full daylight. Chest tightening, I fought to steady my breaths, now shallow and rapid as my eyes told me that which my mind could not fathom.
The lights, they belonged to the Daoine Uaisle—just as the seanchaí had claimed, all those years ago.
His lordship feared her, Maggie. The woman in white’s voice, clear now, devoid of all grit, echoed through my mind. Feared her ’til the day he died.
I shook my head. The woman in white, Lady Catherine, Lord Browne, and the lights—the féar gortach. They were all connected, I was sure of it.
What is it you want most?
Revenge. That’s what I’d told Lady Catherine when we’d first met, and it was as true now as it was then.
Not the rage-fueled kind that laid waste to my enemies, but to know that if Teddy ever learned I’d lived—never mind that I lived well, and free—he’d cut his teeth on the knowledge.
To know Colonel Moore-Vandeleur would be eaten with guilt.
To know Lady Grace would succumb to one of her fainting spells.
But in order to remain safe long enough to receive my payment, and enact my own flavor of vengeance, I had to assess what kind of danger I was truly in. For nothing, and no one, would keep me from fulfilling my task. And God help anyone who stood in my way.