Chapter 13 #2
No answer came.
He knocked again, harder, and was met with the same obstinate silence. Ephraim was not home, then. Out on his morning rounds, perhaps, or already at the castle attending to whatever duties the day required.
Lucien tried the door and found it unlocked, a small mercy in a morning that had offered precious few.
He stepped inside and was immediately enveloped by the residual warmth of the banked fire, the familiar smells of woodsmoke and gun oil and the sharp, earthy tang of drying herbs that hung in bunches from the low ceiling.
He went first to the fire, crouching before it and holding his hands toward the embers until the pain of returning circulation made him hiss through his teeth.
Then he rose and rummaged through Ephraim’s belongings, pulling on a woolen shirt that hung nearly to his knees, a pair of rough trousers that he had to roll three times at the ankle, and a woolen coat that the gamekeeper kept on a peg by the door.
Thick socks followed and a pair of polished shoes that were three sizes too large but would serve well enough to get him back to the castle without losing his toes to frostbite.
He might have to buy Ephraim a replacement pair if the older man was angry that he took them.
The warmth of the clothing should have been a comfort, but it only served to make the cold inside him more conspicuous. The depression had settled in now, dense and smothering, pressing down upon his shoulders like a physical weight.
He was going to lose her.
Whether he sent her away or exiled himself, the result was the same.
The woman who had broken through every defense he had spent four years constructing, who had looked upon him with such passion, who had given herself to him with a generosity that humbled him to his very marrow …
she would be gone from his life. And he would be alone again, only this time the loneliness would be worse, because now he knew what it was to be wanted.
Connected to another in a meaningful way.
The fire crackled and settled. A draught crept beneath the door and wound about his ankles. Somewhere outside, a crow called once and was silent.
He needed to return to the castle, face whatever the morning had brought, and begin making the arrangements that duty demanded. There was Verity to think of and his mother and the estate and a dozen other responsibilities that would not pause simply because his heart was breaking.
Scotland? If he withdrew to the highlands, could he find a place too remote for the beast to encounter any living souls?
He pulled the coat tighter around himself and stepped out into the cold.
The path from the cottage to the castle wound through a stand of birch and pine, the trees pressing close on either side and the snow lying thick and unmarked except for the tracks of small animals.
Lucien walked with his head down, his thoughts a grim procession of duties and farewells, when the sound of approaching footsteps brought him up short.
Heavy footsteps. Deliberate. The crunch of a large man’s weight upon frozen ground.
Lucien rounded the bend and found Ephraim coming toward him.
The gamekeeper was dressed for the cold, his battered hat pulled low over his brow, his leather coat dark buttoned shut. He carried his rifle over one shoulder and, in his free hand, a lantern that still guttered with the remnants of its flame, though the morning was now fully light.
Lucien opened his mouth to greet him, but the words died before they reached his tongue. Ephraim was not looking at him.
The gamekeeper’s gaze was fixed upon the ground, upon his own boots, upon anything and everything except Lucien’s face.
His shoulders, usually set with the squared confidence of a man who feared neither weather nor beast, were hunched forward, as though he carried something heavy upon them that no one else could see.
Lucien’s heart dropped. Into his boots, he thought with bitter irony, if he had not been wearing ill-fitting shoes.
“Ephraim.” His voice came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw by cold and dread. “What is it?”
The gamekeeper stopped walking. He stood very still for a moment.
Then he lifted his head, and Lucien saw the answer written across his face before a single word was spoken.
It was the face of a man who had been asked to deliver news that would shatter the world of the person standing before him.
And who would have given anything, his arm, his livelihood, his own life, to be spared the telling.
“There’s been a death, m’lord.” His voice was flat, stripped of its usual gruffness, as though emotion had been wrung from it like water from a rag. “In the village. Old Mr. Milton. Found at first light by his daughter, on the path behind his cottage.”
Lucien did not speak. He could not speak. The words reached him as though from a great distance, muffled by the roaring that had started in his ears.
“Savaged,” Ephraim continued, his eyes dropping away again. “By a wild animal, they’re sayin’. The wounds … they weren’t the work of any dog or fox. Too deep. Too savage. And frozen, as though he had lain long in the snow.”
The roaring grew louder. Lucien felt the ground shift beneath his feet, though nothing had moved. The trees, the snow, the sky. All of it tilted and swam before his eyes.
“No,” he whispered.
But Ephraim’s face did not change, and the truth of it settled over Lucien like a shroud.
His knees struck the frozen ground before he was aware of falling.
The impact sent a jolt of pain through his legs, but it was nothing compared to the agony that was tearing through his chest, rending him apart from the inside as surely as the wolf’s claws had rent old Mr. Milton on a dark path behind his cottage.
“I have killed a man.” The words emerged as a ragged exhalation, barely audible, barely human. He pressed his palms into the snow on either side of his knees, the cold biting into his skin, and bowed his head. “God forgive me. I have killed a man.”
Ephraim said nothing for a long moment. Then, quietly, with the terrible honesty that was both his greatest virtue and his cruelest weapon, “Aye, m’lord. It appears that ye have.”
The confirmation struck like a blade between the ribs. Lucien bent lower, his forehead nearly touching the snow, and a sound tore from him that was neither cry nor groan but something older and more desolate, the sound of a man whose last thread of hope had just been severed.
“How?” he managed, though the word felt like ash on his tongue. “How am I breaking free? The chains held for four years. Four years, Ephraim. Iron and silver both. What has changed?”
“I don’t know, m’lord.” The gamekeeper’s voice was heavy with the weight of shared failure.