Chapter 30 #2
“She said I must kill him. Diarmuid.” The confession poured from my lips, a drop of tea too hot to swallow, and Cormac glanced at me sharply.
“Then ye made the right choice to get away,” he said, turning his attention back to the road. “If I’d known goings-on would end like this, I’d have liberated ye much sooner. And how in the name of God did yer beau wind up here, of all places?”
“In a way, I’m glad.” And it was the truth. “For if he hadn’t, or if ye’d gotten me away from here before now, I never would’ve known that Diarmuid lived. That Teddy’s deception ran so very deep.”
“Aye.” With a nod, Cormac slowed the horses as we approached the village square, careful not to rouse the whole place.
We continued in silence, and once we were clear of the village, he turned to me once more.
“Can ye ever forgive me?” he asked. “If not for me, ye never would’ve had to endure all this.”
“Ye saved me, Cormac O’Dea. Once when ye brought us to yer home, once when ye transported me to the workhouse, again when ye brought me to Lady Catherine’s attention, and now”—I gestured toward the carriage at our backs—“tonight. I owe ye a great debt.”
“Aye, but debt isn’t quite the other thing, the forgiveness.”
“Ye’re forgiven,” I said, lips curling into a smile. “And I’ll be sure to pay ye back one day.”
“An eye for an eye,” he said with a laugh, and his words sent a jolt through my body. The Cailleach—the woman in white—had used those very same words. My eyes widened, but by his easy laugh, it seemed he’d meant naught by them. “Ye’re wishing near-death on me so ye can save me in return.”
“I think we’re up to four near-deaths ye must face so I can save ye,” I replied, pulling my cloak tight against the sudden chill.
He chuckled, and the sound of it tickled my heart with a feather of “mayhap.” Mayhap, one day, I could look back on everything and shake my head. Mayhap, the future held something better, something to grab onto and hope for.
The carriage rolled over a divot, and Cormac and I lurched forward as our team of four whinnied loud enough to call a bean sidhe. We rocked on, the carriage righting itself despite the lead pair rearing as they cantered.
“Woah, woah!” Cormac exclaimed, pulling the reins as I grabbed hold of the rail. “What the Devil has gotten into ye? ’Tis only a pothole.”
My pulse thundered, sending blood roaring to my ears, waiting until we’d come to a safe halt before twisting around to check on Diarmuid through the little window.
Bless him, he still slept soundly. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply, and thanked God for the resilience of children. Michael would’ve slept through an onslaught of cannon fire, and I smiled at this little thing that proved, in some way, that the child within was indeed my own blood.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Cormac breathed, shifting to stand as he secured the reins into the footboard hook. “What in the …?”
My gut roiled, gripped with sudden fear, meted boldly in tandem with the tremor in Cormac’s voice.
And I turned. Slowly. Then rose to join him and followed his gaze.
I gasped, knees buckling as a wave of nausea threatened to overtake my senses.
Because there, before us, was the village … the same village we’d already traveled through.
With shaking hands, I disembarked, feet and hem disappearing beneath the heavy fog as I stumbled toward the back of the carriage, half-bent as all the blood rushed from head to toe.
One step. Another.
’Til at last I met the rear wheels and dared stare into the darkness beyond.
At what lay there, if the village was, in fact, somehow still before us.
At the curved walls, high as those of the Moore-Vandeleur estate.
The entrance … to Browne House.
“How?” I exclaimed—for the fifth time.
“H’ya!” Cormac cried, snapping the reins with fervor. I clutched the rail, knuckles blanching as we raced toward the village, this time not slowing more than necessary as the horses thundered through the main square.
I wasn’t going mad—we’d already traveled through and cleared the village boundary. We had … hadn’t we?
Foolish.
The word came unbidden to my mind’s eye, and I bit my lip. Was it my voice or another’s? But I supposed the origin was nay as important as the content. Foolish. I was that, aye.
Foolish to think we could escape in the night.
And foolish to think I could somehow change my circumstances.
For when all ye want is presented on a silver platter, things are never what they truly seem.
If nothing else, I was grateful for all that had happened at Browne House, for it reminded me of that fact.
The memories of what came before my family’s death march had subsided to a distant inkling somewhere in those first few weeks, and survival had overtaken all sense.
And here I was again, bound into an agreement from which escape meant fatality.
Blinded as I once was by the ends, I knew now the ease by which they could be attained was always presented with false process.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as standing in as Wilhelmina.
Of course, it wouldn’t be as easy as that.
But who could have predicted this? It was beyond imagining. How could we have wound up back at the house … unless we’d never left in the first place?
Homes now watered down to naught but gray streaks with each slap of the reins, I glanced at Cormac.
Teeth clenched, his wild amber eyes stared ahead, trained on the horizon.
“Almost clear,” he called, snapping the reins once more.
Yes. Almost clear, for this time we were well and truly on our way.
The horses whinnied in unison, and I marveled at the way their thundering hooves cut through the blanket of fog.
“What in the blazes?” Cormac exclaimed, pulling the reins. A vein bulged at his temple, and the tha-dump of his pulse juddered against the delicate skin at the base of his throat.
I glanced ahead as the horses slowed, and all the air left my lungs in a whoosh.
For ahead, once more, was the village.
And I knew, without looking, that we were once again outside Browne House.
“No,” I whispered, placing my head in my hands as the carriage-and-four rolled to a gentle stop.
“Galway then,” Cormac hissed, turning the carriage. “We’ll go toward Galway.”
I grabbed his arm with sweat-slick palms as an uncontrollable tremor swept from my core to shaking limbs.
“G-Galway.” I affirmed his choice with a nod—because the direction we chose was something tangible, something that might make sense …
somehow. Naturally, south would heave us into a never-ending loop where we somehow wound up where we began.
Obviously, we had chosen incorrectly. Somewhere in the world, a scholar would know the whys and hows of it.
Fully turned now, and ready to venture northward, Cormac snapped the reins.
The horses hopped into step, trotting off into the night, and it took me a moment to realize that they were indeed moving.
Pulling us.
Zzzzzp.
Something lashed in the fore, and pain struck my forehead. Time slowed as Cormac exclaimed, throwing an arm across my chest as the carriage rolled forward—while something warm and wet trickled from my hairline.
I reached up a hand and wiped, and only then did I realize that we were alone.
That the horses were … gone, their hooves clippetty-cloppetting away up the road.
I froze. They’d somehow become unhooked.
“Are ye all right?” Cormac asked, an edge of fear coloring the question. I nodded, and he quickly dismounted the rolling carriage, grabbed the frontal shaft with both hands and braced himself against it.
The carriage stopped.
“Let me just wedge a few rocks at the wheels, lest we roll again,” he said, panting with exertion. “Then I’ll tend yer wound.”
Wound? I frowned and touched my forehead again. Still wet. Still warm.
That’s when the coppery tang hit me.
Blood. I was bleeding.
“What … what happened?” I asked.
“Something snapped—breeching, togs, reins, who knows? Whatever it was hit ye in the face.”
“Diarmuid,” I whispered, sidling to dismount.
“Howld on,” said Cormac, popping his head up from beneath the nearest wheel. “Let me secure everything first, and then ye can check the babba.”
“No need.”
A clear voice rang out in the night, and I flinched, my heart leaping up my throat.
Crunch, crunch.
Step. Click. Step. Click.
I knew that rhythm, so well ’twas almost as though I’d never lived a day without it.
“What kind of a monster do you think I am?” asked Lady Catherine, rounding the side of the carriage to face me in all her glory.
She’d changed her attire. Immaculate ringlets framed her face, her signature top hat nestled comfortably above. A fine, tailed coat, bright with silver buttons, sat over a frilled shirt, and below, a black satin bustle skirt whispered above high-heeled boots.
“What is it that she wants?” Lady Catherine asked, kicking her walking stick forward so she might lean on it.
She. The Cailleach.
A lump formed in my throat, and it took everything I had to swallow it down.
“It must involve the child if you were prompted you to steal away in the night, and for my nephew to abandon his post.” Lady Catherine glanced sharply at Cormac, but he didn’t shrink from her the way I wished to.
“You’ll not be able to get away, I’m afraid.
No one can find this place, and no one can leave. ”
“What are ye talking about?” Cormac spat. “Didn’t that jackanapes in the guest wing make his way here from the beach? Don’t I leave when ye need? Didn’t you and I leave together to fetch Maggie from the workhouse?”
“Maggie no longer exists. She is Wilhelmina!” Lady Catherine exclaimed, words echoing in the quiet surrounds.
“And that was different. While the pact is in place, none can leave without Her grace. It’s the entire reason I needed you here, Cormac O’Dea, for I lost my last steward to illness—a person who can do business outside the boundary, one who can come and go with the protection of the Cailleach.
One who hadn’t made the pact. But it extends only to you, not to her.
Not to anyone else. That’s why you couldn’t escape.
He, our guest, could only have been led here by Her, to fulfill Her purpose. ”
My breath came in sharp shallow pants, making it difficult to breathe.
Lady Catherine tutted and reached out a hand to stroke my head. “Wilhelmina’s injured and must have had an awful fright. Come, Cormac. Leave the carriage here ’til morning and help her into the house. I need to know what happened.”
“I don’t trust ye,” Cormac hissed, stepping around the front of the carriage to face his aunt.
“Neither did your mother.” The words were soft, quiet in a way that set my heart racing. “And I suppose, in the end, she was right.”
Lady Catherine turned to me then, the ghost of a smile dancing across her lips. “Let’s fix this. Together. You and I.”
“That’ll be hard,” I said, my voice barely a whisper of breath. “For I no longer trust ye either.”