Chapter 9 #2
“He is not likeable,” Minerva said, meaning it. His presence exerted a strange pull, made her feel jittery and breathless, but she was not so na?ve as to imagine that reaction had anything to do with liking him.
There was something about him, something she could neither name nor dismiss, something a part of her recognized. He was dangerous in a way she could not specify, a way that lured her to move toward rather than away. She was afraid of him in a way that was not entirely unpleasant.
No, she did not like him. But she liked the way he looked at her, his gaze touching her, making her body tingle in a foreign and wicked way, making her pulse race and her cheeks heat. The realization left her disoriented and uncertain.
She moved to stand by the front window, staying to one side so that if he turned, he would not see her watching. He stood for a time looking out at the horizon—she wondered what he saw there that she did not—before he climbed into his elegant black carriage without looking back.
She told herself she was glad of that.
A lie.
She stayed at the window until the carriage had long disappeared from view, her pulse pounding and a jittery awareness thrumming in her veins.
The wind carried in from the sea, slapping the glass hard enough to make it tremble.
The cottage door closed behind Miss Ashworth with a firmness that gave her away. She was composing herself. He had made her need to. And he found, to his considerable irritation, that he was glad.
He stood by the carriage a moment, the wind dragging through the long grass and carrying the sting of salt from the sea.
Miss Ashworth.
The name sat ill with him. Formal. Distant. A barrier, neatly placed.
He had no fondness for barriers.
Minerva.
He turned the word over in his mind. Not a soft name. A name with weight and edges, one that expected something of the woman who carried it, one who watched, learned, adapted, endured.
She had stood her ground when he challenged her, her gaze steady, her emotions held under tight control. He had anticipated exactly that. He had not anticipated that she would occupy quite so much space in his thoughts.
Minerva, then. Not Miss Ashworth.
The familiarity was not permission granted, but instead taken, a trespass he allowed in the confines of his mind where no rules but his own held sway.
She stood at the window now. He knew it without turning.
He felt the weight of her attention like the heat of the sun on his back, warming the ever-present chill inside him.
She was a watchful creature, and as such would not allow him to depart without observing the manner of his leaving.
He recognized that quality because it was his own.
Curiosity. Wariness. He knew that combination well. Wariness kept him alive. Curiosity made him wonder if staying alive was the same as living.
She had asked if he meant to frighten her, the question direct and unvarnished. His answer had lacked honesty because honesty was complicated.
He wanted her gone. Minerva, with her steady gaze and her tart words and her courage.
He wanted her gone from this cliff, this house, the inheritance that had passed to her and the nightmare that came with it.
He had pressed her in service of that want, had felt no qualms about frightening her in service of the outcome.
Whether that made it acceptable was a question with only murky answers.
He had long ago made his home in the murk.
Charcoal shadows drifted across the water, thinning and gathering again as the morning light broke through the clouds only to be swallowed once more. Below the cliff, waves broke against the rocks in slow, rhythmic detonations.
And beyond the headland…there. The ship. Three masts rising above the deck, square-sailed, save the mizzenmast which was rigged fore and aft. It moved across the water with a quiet inevitability. Despite the wind, its sails hung slack, heavy as wet wool.
Dashiell watched her without surprise. He had seen the Lady Jane often over the years. The first time had been the day Jory Tregian died.
As always, trying to recall that day brought both pain and frustration.
He recalled Jory’s voice as they stood at the bottom of the cliff, arrogant, combative, though he had no memory of his words. He recalled starting the climb, Jory already pulling ahead.
He recalled the Lady Jane, slicing through the water with her sails limp, carried forward by some unseen force.
He recalled whispers, someone else there, but a face, a name, a voice were all beyond his ability to grasp. The memories were not quite right, filmed over and vague, as though he had watched events happen to someone else from a short distance away.
Since then, the Lady Jane never left him for longer than a few months.
Time would pass without a glimpse of her, then she would return, gliding through the mist or rain.
Sometimes he convinced himself he imagined her.
Other times, he pretended he mistook different vessels for the ship of his memories.
Mostly, he wondered if she appeared for another reason entirely. If she sailed in his wake as a reminder that he was a monster, someone who had not merely failed to save Jory but had helped the darkness claim him. The evidence suggested he had done just that.
He did not pretend that the ledger would balance if he kept what happened to Jory from happening to anyone else. It would not. Still, the debt he owed Catherine was his to pay, and his intention was to pay what he could of it by releasing Minerva from this place and its burdens.
And yet when she had stood before him this morning, chin lifted, eyes bright, tart words on her tongue, his best intentions had evaporated.
What was it about her that reached inside him and confounded his ordered logic? Dissecting his attraction and naming the parts of the whole would not serve him. It was the whole that mattered. And the whole included more than just desire. He liked her.
Which was precisely the problem.
His plan had been simple and clean. At best, it would ensure she never arrived; at worst, it would see her gone before the house and the legacy worked on her, before the darkness oozed through the gaps and the inheritance consumed her.
A good plan. A principled plan. The plan of a man acting in her interest rather than his own.
But he was not always a principled man. He was a man with holes in his memory and a certainty that those holes contained things no good man would want to know. Because in the places without holes, he remembered doing things that were anything but good.
The outcome he wanted for Minerva required her absence. What he wanted for himself required her presence. He knew which he should choose.
The ship moved on, silent, inevitable.
He climbed into his carriage, denying the urge to look back at the window. At her.