Chapter 55 #2
“Whoa, wait,” Peyton said. “First son? I never heard of a son named Ardin. She never mentioned him when we questioned her.”
“That’s because Faegan drowned him when he was five. Claimed it was a fishing accident, but I know I certainly didn’t believe that, and Hyacinth likely didn’t either.”
“Holy shit,” Ken said. “So that’s two sons he’s killed that we know of.”
“Yes. And a daughter, Kayleen. Back before 1900.”
“Da fuq?” Ken said, shocked. “How old was she?”
“She was fourteen, and he caught her kissing a human boy from the village. I don’t think he intended to kill her, but he was so enraged he punched her.”
Slack-jawed, Peyton stared at him. “And no one thought to frag that fucker then?”
“He claimed he chased her when she ran from the confrontation, and she tripped and fell, hitting her head on a rock. He killed the human boy, but back then, unfortunately, that wasn’t something the pack would have thought twice about.
“I wasn’t home when it happened. A few years later, my brother finally admitted to me what he’d done.
But after Kayleen’s death, Hyacinth was understandably never the same.
She was barely a mother to her sons, once Faegan climbed over her enough to get her pregnant again.
Then again, she was already traumatized before Faegan ever married her. ”
“How’s that?” Ken asked.
“He killed the love of her life. Or so I’ve heard. I tend to believe the rumors, knowing my brother.”
“What?” they all said, looking shocked.
“She was in love with a non-shifter, and Faegan, being head of the clan, said no to the match. Forced her to marry and mate with him. I wasn’t present when it happened.
I’d been off in London visiting cousins, and when I returned home, there she was.
Not long after, rumors filtered to me that a man’s death immediately corresponded with the events.
No one ever openly talked about it, of course.
I couldn’t even get Donnel to tell me the story, and he was usually shoulders-deep up Faegan’s bum and the first one to spread gossip. ”
“I hate him more with every new horrible fact I learn about him,” Ken said. “How was he never fragged before now? I mean, seriously? No one thought to sit outside the house and wait and shoot him?”
“He ruthlessly wielded a lot of power,” Hamish said.
“There’s not an empathetic bone in his body.
Plus, things were done differently then.
And that was when he still had loyalists in the pack who thought the same way he did.
Duncan certainly made the right decision to leave for America.
Trevor here is a true rarity who managed to rise through the ranks and take control while choosing a path of peace. ”
Trevor offered him a head-tip in thanks.
Ken darkly scowled. “As much as I hate her husband, unfortunately, I’ve seen what that kind of systematic abuse can do to a woman.” He met Hamish’s gaze. “Mom was killed by a fucker like that.”
“Still, I hope Tamsin doesn’t want anything to do with her,” Hamish said.
“As of right now, no,” Trevor said. “And none of us are asking her if she’s changed her mind. She knows if she wants contact with her, she can ask us.”
“Does Hyacinth want to see Tamsin?” Hamish asked.
“Yes,” Trevor tensely said. “Frankly, I’m conflicted, now that I know she tried to talk Faegan into accepting the dowry, and how much abuse she suffered.
” He sighed. “Well, let’s just say I don’t hate her quite as much as I once did.
Although I do pity her and no longer wish to kill her.
That woman hasn’t known a moment’s happiness in over a hundred years.
It’s a wonder poor Tamsin didn’t end up… ”
Trevor cleared his throat before he could continue. “She’s an amazing girl. If I didn’t know any better, I would refuse to believe that Faegan is her father.”
“Some people get children and damned sure don’t deserve them,” Hamish darkly said.
“Too true,” Trevor agreed. “Well, shall we?”
Hamish nodded and led the way to the room he remembered used to be Faegan’s office, a sitting room at the far end of the first floor.
It still was—had been—apparently, because there were boxes of papers all over, books stacked on the floor in front of empty shelves, and a general feel of having been torn apart but not completely destroyed.
“We searched his desk,” Trevor said. “Did everything but drag it outside and take an axe to it.”
Hamish walked around it to the back side. It’d been their father’s desk and was a hideous, huge Brobdingnagian monstrosity made of dark, nearly black wood. He couldn’t remember the species of wood, but it had obviously been polished to a gleaming finish throughout the years.
Figured it was one of the few things in the home that appeared to have been taken care of.
He set his glass of water on the desktop but refused to sit in the enormous, albeit modern leather chair.
It stank of Faegan.
Hamish knelt, felt around the bottom trim of the desk under the right-side drawers, and located the barely raised bump in one of the carved motifs. If someone had no idea what they were looking for, they’d likely never find it, even by taking the desk apart.
When Hamish felt the soft click of the latch release, he moved to the left side of the desk and pressed the matching bump on that side. That allowed him to reach up under the footwell and slide a hidden panel out of the way that concealed a tiny, shallow compartment that—
He sat back, holding up the old key in the palm of his hand. Like a skeleton key from a Victorian novel. It wasn’t tarnished with age, which told Hamish that, until recently, it’d likely seen regular use, and he imagined he felt the grease from Faegan’s palm upon it.
Trevor’s jaw gaped. “Bloody hell! What does that key fit?”
“Upstairs. Third floor. Eh, second floor, you all call it. I think in American English now, sorry.”
“Do you need me?” Ken asked Peyton. “I want to see what else I can find in those files.” He patted his backpack holding his laptop.
“Feel free to set up wherever you want,” Peyton said. “Even in here or in the dining room.”
“We have a secure Wi-Fi,” Trevor added. “The password’s in the dining room.”
“Thanks.”
Everyone else followed Hamish to the third floor, where several disused bedrooms were located, as well as the attic landing.
“We thoroughly searched the attic,” one of Trevor’s men said.
“I’m sure you did,” Hamish replied. Instead of opening the attic door, he walked past it to a walk-in linen closet and opened the door.
The shelves were stacked with old sheets and towels, neatly folded but smelling musty from disuse.
Hamish pushed through a few ancient coats hanging in the back of the closet and knelt, peeling back a small section of baseboard that didn’t look otherwise disturbed, but which exposed a small latch switch.
Upon pressing that the back wall swung in, exposing a small door with an ancient-looking lock.
And that’s what Hamish fitted the key into. Before he unlocked the door and pushed it open, he asked, “Have you had someone here constantly since he scarpered?”
The blood drained from Trevor’s face as he immediately intuited Hamish’s meaning.
“Most of the time, yes, we’ve had at least two people on the grounds.
But they have shift changes, or go out for food.
Never more than a few minutes here or there of people not being present, or at least one person being on guard. ”
“I don’t smell his scent fresh in here, but this whole place stinks of him anyway.” Hamish pounded on the door with his fist and froze, listening. When he heard nothing in response, no person scrambling around, he unlocked the door and pushed it open.
He didn’t know if Faegan had another key to this door hidden somewhere, but the fact that this key was in its hiding spot likely meant Faegan hadn’t managed a secret return.
There wasn’t an easy way to jimmy this lock short of trying to break the door down, and that would have obviously attracted attention.
Hamish took the lead down the short but claustrophobically narrow hallway into the main room.
Windowless, it sat under the attic, wedged behind the stairs and positioned in such a way that the layout of closets and bathrooms disguised its presence from all but the most determined of experienced architects.
Peyton, immediately behind Hamish, wrinkled his nose. “The scent isn’t fresh at all.”
“Hyacinth never mentioned this room,” Trevor said as he crowded in behind them. “We specifically asked her about these kinds of places.”
“I’m certain he didn’t tell Hyacinth about it,” Hamish said as he reached up to pull the light cord, casting the small space in a glowing yellowish light.
“He forbade her from unapproved wanderings up here. These were, back in my day, servants’ quarters.
When we were children, Father told us to keep this room secret, even from the servants.
He would have blistered our hides with a cane had we disclosed it.
If Mother knew of its existence, she never spoke of it.
Faegan, Donnel, Bryn, and I knew of it. Bryn only knew because she snuck up behind Father and spotted him going inside, so he had to bring her into the fold, as it were.
Even then, she still received a caning she didn’t soon forget. ”
He’d spent years trying to forget the sound of her pained, muffled cries while their father had forced her three brothers to observe her punishment and understand theirs would be tenfold if they told anyone about the room.
It hadn’t changed much from the last time Hamish saw it over a year before he departed. There was a mix of old crates he remembered, as well as newer boxes from the past decade or so.
“To the best of my knowledge,” Hamish continued, “there are no additional hidden spaces in this room. There is a hidden passageway on the second floor, running behind what was our parents’ room before Faegan took it over after their deaths, that is ostensibly a plumbing access corridor.
But he likely could have utilized that, too. ”
“Did Hyacinth know about it?” Peyton asked Trevor.
“She never mentioned it. Given the interrogations we’ve put her through, it’s highly unlikely.”
“Then he never told her,” Hamish said. “Father never ordered it be kept a secret, but it was not used for storage back then, as far as I remember. I doubt she would concern herself with anything like that.”
“Let’s check it out,” Peyton said.
Trevor had to exit first. “Please empty this room and bring everything down to the office,” Trevor asked his men, who immediately set to it once Hamish, Peyton, and Trevor cleared out of the way.
Hamish led them back downstairs to the western wing on the second floor, depressed to see that here, too, Faegan had made no efforts to update. While clean, it looked like a husk of its former self, with threadbare carpets and faded wallpaper.
Trevor and Peyton followed Hamish. He stopped at another linen closet sandwiched between the bathroom and the master bedroom. Here, the laundry had, until recently, obviously seen frequent use and didn’t smell nearly as stale.
Here, also, lay Faegan’s scent, but not any fresher than upstairs.
Hamish found the latch at the bottom of the wall and pulled the door panel open. “Does anyone have a flashlight? Sorry, a torch?”
“Here.” Trevor passed him a small LED light, and Hamish shone it into the dark space. Dust danced in its beam as he played it around without actually climbing in.
Then he spotted a pile of boxes down at the far end. “There,” he said.
Trevor pushed through into the space, taking the flashlight from Hamish as he passed. Hamish stepped out of the way so Peyton could follow. But the space wasn’t large enough for more than two people to move around in, and even then, only if they were used to being uncomfortably close.
It turned out there were eleven boxes. Using a bucket brigade method, they handed them out to Hamish, who stacked them in the hallway. Once they’d emptied it, Peyton produced a pocket knife and sliced the tape on the first box to open it.
It contained photos, some very old albums, and even older paperwork from as early as the late 1800s.
Hamish recognized a few of the people. “I’m certain these others were packmates, if not extended family,” he said.
They opened another box, and he was surprised to see it crammed full with pictures of Hyacinth and their sons, taken from before World War II. But Peyton had already moved on to slice open the next several boxes, which contained more paperwork and a few pictures.
“Let’s shift all these downstairs to the office,” Trevor said. “From the dust on them, I’d say they’ve been undisturbed for decades. I didn’t see any bare spots in the dust that would indicate he’d been storing something in there which was recently removed.”
Peyton nodded. “Agreed.” He turned to Hamish. “Any others?”
“Another plumbing corridor, but narrower than this one.” He led the way and they opened the access panel. Peyton shone a light inside, quickly emerging and shaking his head. “Nothing but dust and cobwebs.”
Before returning downstairs, Hamish checked a small panel inside the closet that had once been in his room, but nothing remained there except dust. He’d emptied it when he moved to the cottage and didn’t know if Donnel and Faegan knew of it.
“Would there be other places like that in the other bedrooms?” Peyton asked..
“Unlikely. I built that when I was not even fifteen.” He sadly smiled. “Bryn used to steal my sweets when she was little, and of course it annoyed me. When I was older, I showed it to her so she’d have a place to store anything she didn’t want our parents or brothers to find.”
“Such as?”
“She had a journal, but as far as I know she took it with her. I checked the space just after she left and found nothing.”
“All right,” Peyton said. “Let’s rejoin the others and see if there’s anything we can use.”