Chapter Sixteen
Evan did not appear at the stables that day, though nearly everyone else connected with the estate did, making excuses to come by. Alan—ordered to stand guard—did not stray far from his post and listened to much of what went on inside.
Annista did not leave the stallion’s side. After some time she accepted Billy’s help, the two of them seeming to fall into an accord.
Once they’d tended the stallion’s wounds, they tried to get him up. Without success.
Father came by, eyeing dubiously the door of the stable beside which Alan stood.
“Where is Evan?” Alan asked him.
Father grimaced. “Back in his bed and asleep, if ye can call it sleep.”
Their eyes met. All Alan’s life he’d had a strained—and strange—relationship with his father. He was a second—a spare, as so many second-born sons must feel. All care, all attention, all notice had gone to Evan and little enough to him. To Evan would go the estate. The hope for the future.
A bleak hope, as it turned out to be. Evan had always been difficult. His parents, Alan, and all the servants and tenants had learned to work around him, to dodge his moods, to avoid provoking him at all cost.
What good had it done them? Here they stood with Evan a score-and-six years of age, Alan barely two years younger, the country in turmoil and a steady hand needed to guide them through without losing everything. Did they have that steady hand?
Evan had grown to be a madman. A monster, as Annista had labeled him. Alan doubted that even his father could deny it.
Was that what working around Evan’s foul moods, tiptoeing past his rages, had earned them?
All these words were exchanged in the look between Alan and his father. They’d never seen as one, nay. But danger brought even strangers together.
They lived now on the sharp edge of danger.
“Where is the lass?” Father asked.
“The lass?”
“Yer wife.”
Alan jerked his head. “Inside.”
“That beast will kill her.”
The horse? Or Evan?
“She will no’ agree to leave Tempest.”
“Ye can bid her awa’.”
Alan raised an eyebrow and Father continued, “Ye be her husband.”
In name only. Sworn to do not so much as touch her, lest by accident or necessity.
His wife was fierce. She was brave, if foolish. Her courage made her—well, beautiful, even if that beauty proved of an ilk Alan had never before contemplated. Or appreciated. A man might be fiercely attracted by such a woman.
The thought shocked him. He could not go there. He dared not.
He jerked his head toward the stable again. “Go on in,” he told his father. “Tak’ a look at wha’ your precious lord and heir has done. Then mayhap ye can persuade Annista awa’.”
Father gave him a long glare. Went in. He did not immediately emerge.
Alan stood contemplating the rear of the house as he had for the past hours unnumbered, counting the chimneys—thirteen, an unlucky number surely—and trying to sense Evan’s presence.
Like a disturbance in the weather, his brother was.
A storm one could feel approaching in one’s bones. All remained quiet yet.
A maid came out from the kitchen and emptied a pail into the garden. A lad carried two buckets across the yard.
Alan listened for voices from within. He could hear nothing, even though Father and Annista must surely be speaking to one another.
What would Father do about Evan? What could he do? Any discipline should have been handed out years ago.
Alan dimly remembered that once upon a time it had been attempted, aye. No discipline, punishments, or consequences ever seemed to take with Evan. They only tended to fan the flames of his inner rage.
Alan remembered—far from dimly—the last time Father had truly attempted to correct his firstborn.
Evan had been perhaps fourteen and big for his age even then.
He had deliberately, in anger, broken something that belonged to Mother, a treasured relic of her own mother’s, Alan thought it was. Had done it, as so often, out of spite.
Father had tried thrashing him. Evan had turned on Father with a look as savage as that of a rabid dog. Had snarled very much like one. Had wrested the crop out of Father’s hand and raised it, an incipient threat.
Alan, a witness, had waited for Father to knock Evan down, waited a full count of twenty heartbeats before he realized what Father already knew. Evan was the bigger and the stronger, and Father could not overpower him.
Aye, he could have called a brace of footmen and had them wrestle the lad to submission before disciplining him. But how humiliating would that be? For them to lay hands on their future laird, the man who would one day give them orders…?
Was that the moment when it had all slipped away out of control?
In the intervening ten years and more, Evan had continued to grow in strength and ferocity. A throwback to their ancestors, Alan had heard Father say. For no civilized man could act the savage so profoundly.
The thing was—
The thing was, Alan had grown nearly to match Evan. Och, he had not the anger nor the ferocity. But in stature, aye, he was a near match. He’d not grasped that truth himself till he’d faced his brother up in the bedchamber.
So now he must grapple with that truth. Now he stood guard, protecting his wife and the injured horse. Armed only with his protectiveness, no match for Evan’s maddened rage. If it came to an out-and-out battle, with Evan not half-sotted, could he prevail?
He doubted it.
Then again, he could not permit Evan to further attack the horse. Or the woman.
Annista, so Alan reflected, had ignited something here in this family that had picked its way through life for so long. Those who’d avoided bearding Evan even when his cruelty extended to his docile wife.
Aye, they’d all known that Robena suffered, if not what she suffered.
Annista was right and just in her anger. They had failed Robena. The grave in the churchyard was his failing as much as anyone’s.
Father appeared at the stable door, Billy accompanying him. The two men stood and talked in low voices so Alan could not catch the words.
When Father stepped out, he looked grim. “They canna get the beast up. They tried again while I watched.” He glanced at Alan. “Ye be right in that your wife refuses to leave him. Claims she will protect that animal fro’ further harm should Evan return. Curse the lass.”
That made Alan frown. “She has courage.” More perhaps than the rest of them, but he did not add that.
“He will kill her,” Father said starkly. “If he comes out and finds her there—he will. The horse is his property. He will tolerate nay interference.”
Alan lifted his chin. “Then I will ha’ to stop him.”
“Can ye guard her every minute?”
“If I maun.”
“Ye will ha’ to rest. Sleep.”
“Just as he will ha’ to swill his whisky. Pass out.”
Father snorted, yet a new look came to his eyes as he regarded Alan, a look Alan had never seen there before. Consideration? Surely not respect?
Deliberately, Alan said, “’Tis only yoursel’ can do somewhat about him.”
Father bridled. “What? I will admit he is long beyond my control—”
“Aye, so. Yet ye could banish him.”
“Wha’?”
“Disown him. Toss him fro’ the estate.”
For an instant, Father appeared speechless. Then he croaked, “I and wha’ army? Foolish lad!” He turned and spread his arms. “He considers all this his. Why d’ye think he behaves the way he does?”
“Because there is somewhat amiss in his head. Rot has set in. It started long ago. Get yer men, go up and put a lock on the outside o’ his door. Do it now while yet he sleeps.”
“I canna!”
“Why?”
“He would tear the place apart.”
“Let him. He will ha’ to live in the wreckage.” Alan had never spoken so to his father, had never dared, but aye, with Annista’s arrival much had changed.
“Keep him prisoner?” Father’s voice fell to a harsh whisper.
“And if anyone found out? That the heir to Kallan was locked awa’ by his own family—’twould be perceived as a weakness.
These are troubled times. If it is thought a stain o’ madness touches us—wha’ will that do to our support o’ the earls who stand against the queen?
Her agents will put it out that we are all madmen. ”
Alan did not know what to say. His father’s obsession with the politics of the country was a madness in and of itself.
“At least bar his door till he can dry out. I do no’ think the drink causes his madness but surely it exacerbates it. Tears him fro’ whatever thin moorings he retains.”
“Aye.” Father looked daunted at the thought of it, but he nodded. “I will speak wi’ Toland.” The blacksmith. “See can a lock be fitted.”
“Till then, ye maun bar the door. Place footmen there.”
“He will kill any footman.”
And there it was, plain and simple. Out in the air.
Evan would kill.
Had he killed his wife? Had she fallen down the stairs as Evan claimed, rendered weak and dizzy by her illness?
Had she been fleeing him in the night?
Had he pushed her?
None of them would ever know, lest Evan admitted it.
“Can a bar no’ be fitted to his door?”
“I do no’ see how. There are no brackets—”
“The blacksmith can fit those.”
Something akin to terror bloomed in Father’s eyes. “No without Evan hearing.”
“Let us go and see.”
They walked up together in through the door by the kitchen and utilizing the narrow back staircase that clattered beneath their feet.
It was already too late when they reached Evan’s chamber. It lay empty, the bedclothes tumbled and stinking.
Evan, gone.
God—or the devil—alone knew where.