“I hate milk.”
The kettle was about to boil, and Rand had been watching it longingly, but Clover whisked it off the fire. As he stared in astonishment, she took a mug from the cupboard, went to the bucket in the corner, and drew off the cloth that protected it. Brightly, she said, “I know what to serve you. Anne just delivered the milk, fresh from the cow, still warm and with the cream scarcely risen. Of course, there’ll not be as much cream for my husband if I disturb it now, but—”
“Don’t destroy your day’s cream for me,” he said feebly, but she dipped the mug into the bucket and drew it up dripping with foamy white.
She placed it on the table in front of him. “’Tis an honor to do it for the lord.”
He wanted to gag. He really did hate milk, especially milk so thick it clotted in his throat before he could swallow it. But what was he supposed to do? Knock that hopeful smile off Clover Donald’s face? She’d had too many smiles knocked off in her life. Grinning feebly, he lifted the mug, saluted her with it, and drank.
It was just as bad as he remembered, and he was containing a shudder when she said, “I’m surprised at Betty. Why hasn’t she been serving you warm milk with honey and pot herbs mixed with your breakfast and before bed?”
“I haven’t exactly told anyone about these cramps,” he admitted. “They bother me less and less. I think it’s just that I’ve walked so far today.”
“Why?” She darted a frightened look at him. “If I may be so bold?”
“I’ve spent most of the afternoon searching for my niece, who has taken it into her head to explore the estate without her mother’s permission, and my wife, who…well, I’m looking for my wife, too.”
“Oh.”
She was frowning as if uncertain of him, and he could almost hear the grinding as the conversation halted again. Unwilling to face the silence, he said, “I wouldn’t be so worried, or so fatigued, either, but Sylvan and I walked to the mill this morning.”
Clover Donald lifted her gaze full into his face. “Why?”
Smiling at her reassuringly, he said, “I’m surprised you haven’t heard the rumors. Everyone in the village knows. We’re going to reopen the mill.”
Clover staggered backward as if she’d been struck by lightning.
“Clover?” He stood up, thinking she was ill. She certainly looked ill. “Clover?”
Her mouth worked, then the quiet, pitiful little woman shrieked, “You can’t!”
“What do you…?”
“You can’t. He’ll kill you. He’ll kill you all. Don’t you know you can’t stand against his power?”
Confused and horrified, Rand asked, “God’s power?”
“No, you fool. The vicar’s. Merciful heavens, what have you done?”
The ghost never appeared in the daylight, but here he loomed with his foot on her skirt, and he frightened her more than he ever had in the blackness of night. Yet some corner of her mind still grappled to comprehend this—that the minister who had done so much good had also inflicted so much pain. That he waited to kill her with an anticipatory gleam in his eye. Sylvan whispered, “You can’t do this, Reverend. The Bible says—”
Drawing himself up, he thundered, “How dare you tell me what the Bible says. You have not been at university, nor have you memorized Scripture nightly, with the threat of my father’s stick over your head.” Infuriated, he lifted the pipe—and a large something fell in the mill behind him, shaking the floor. He whirled, his attention distracted.
Sylvan jerked her skirt out from under his foot. He stumbled. She sprang up and ran.
Holding her skirt high, she leaped over machinery, over boards and piles of shale. Heart pounding, she stretched out her neck like a horse trying to win the most important race of her life. She had to get out of doors. She had to free herself from the shadow of the mill. The sun struck her in the head as she neared her goal, and as she ran the sun embraced her more and more.
She was Mercury, she was Triumph, she was the living embodiment of a goddess. She jumped off the floor of the mill onto the dirt and gave a hoot of victory.
She made it! She made it, and even in a race outdoors through the gathering darkness, she had a chance of success, for she knew what he did not. Betty was coming with the villagers.
Taking a chance, she glanced behind her. He wasn’t following her.
He wasn’t behind her. He wasn’t anywhere near her. The mill stood as silent and dark as if it were empty, when she knew it was not. It held James, and the Reverend Donald…and Gail.
Gail, who had knocked something over to give her a chance to flee. Was the vicar seeking the source of the noise in the mill?
Would he find Gail? Valiant Gail, the girl he called a child of sin?
Sylvan had to go back in. Her hands turned clammy at the thought, but she’d faced worse things than a murderous preacher in her day. She’d faced the wounded at Waterloo and watched them die.
Rage blew her fear away with the force of the ocean’s breeze. She had watched men die on the battlefield, for Mother and country, and now a minister who styled himself the hammer of God had killed Garth and Shirley and crippled Nanna, and was trying to hurt her and Gail in some maniacal desire to halt the march of time. She’d seen so much of death, and like a plague, this clergyman brought more.
Leaning over the monument Gail had built to her father, Sylvan scooped up two large stones and weighed them in her hands. She didn’t want both her hands full, yet she wanted to take all the stones with her and rain them on the Reverend Donald. He deserved it.
If only she knew where he was and what he intended.
Taking her shawl from her shoulders, she laid the rocks in the middle and tied them inside. Picking it up so the rocks dangled like shot in a sling, she started to creep back.
Then she straightened her back and lifted her chin. What use was creeping when the man either stood in the shadows and watched her come or paid her no heed and sought Gail?
“Reverend Donald,” she called, trying to sound as firm as Wellington himself. “I’m coming back in. I want you to put down the pipe.” She listened for laughter and heard nothing, not even a yell from James.
That was worse than laughter.
She kept her eyes wide as she stepped back onto the floor she’d so cheerfully abandoned just a few minutes ago, but the sun’s light had ruined her vision. She shuffled along, moving from the light to dark. A giant ridge beam, the main support of the roof, leaned from the cross ties in the still existing roof to the edge of the foundation, and she used it as a guide. With her hand on the smooth oak, she groped along. She stubbed her toe on a pile of heavy shale shingles. She was blundering into a trap, but she knew well what she sacrificed, and why. She would distract the minister from his quest for Gail.
“Reverend Donald,” she called. “I can’t believe that a man of the cloth could justify killing the duke of Clairmont.” The wind whistled through the tumbled lumber. She walked on until the dark enveloped her, and she wished she could once again see the real ghost. She needed his intervention now. “You did blow up the mill, didn’t you?”
“Not to kill His Grace!”
Although she expected him, she jumped. Quickly, she turned to face the vicar as he slipped in behind her, cutting off her escape route. Her elbow struck the beam. “Ouch!” She grabbed the tingling joint, and the rocks in the shawl banged the wood, making far too much noise and frightening her more than he ever could.
His body was in shadow, but the light formed a halo around his blond head, and he looked reprovingly at the lacy white thing she held. “What do you have in your hand, my child?”
She wanted to conceal her makeshift weapon like a boy caught with a frog in church. Instead she lifted her chin. “It’s defense.”
“What good will it do you? You can’t use it. You’re too compassionate.”
His certainty made her stagger, and she wondered—could she? Could she ever inflict pain? “I would in defense of a child.”
Lifting his head, he looked around at the pile of shingles behind him, at the oak beam. “So it is Gail who remains in the mill.”
“No!”
He looked back at her. “You might as well admit it. What else would have brought you back when you had escaped?”
Through the mist of his lunacy, he saw too clearly, and she realized how desperately she wanted to save Gail. Gail had lost so much by this man’s hand; she didn’t deserve to lose her life, too. “Perhaps I returned to face a murderer.”
“It wasn’t murder, I tell you!” The jagged edge of the roof was right above their heads, and the vicar looked up into the dusky sky as if he sought divine assistance in controlling his temper. “It was God’s justice.”
A brew of anger and exasperation made her say, “I’ve heard a lot of nonsense in my lifetime, but saying that you sabotaged the steam engine and then that it was God’s justice is the worst.”
He seemed to grow taller, and in the deep, chiding voice of a minister, he said, “You have no understanding. I owe you no explanation.” He stepped toward her. “And God owes you only death.”
It wasn’t anger that etched his face, but determination, and it chilled her to realize how firmly he believed himself justified in this duty. Her fingers clenched the shawl until they ached, and she battled to maintain her aplomb. “I think you should tell me, then, why you believe you’re innocent, for if I die, I will fly to God’s side and He’ll ask why I’m there so prematurely.”
“You’re only a woman, and a wicked one at that. You’ll not have a chance to speak with the Lord.”
Rand’s deep voice said, “Perhaps you could explain this to the duke of Clairmont, who is the lord to whom you owe loyalty on earth.”
Sylvan staggered, her limbs abruptly losing vigor.
Rand had come. From beyond hope and prayer, he had come. Tears of joy sprang to her eyes, but what good were they? She might be a woman and an object of the vicar’s scorn, but she wasn’t a weakling. Swinging the shawl, she brought it up under the pipe he held and knocked it out of his hand. As it flew through the air, he grabbed for her, but she leaped back and his hand closed on thin air. She taunted, “You were right, Vicar. I couldn’t use my weapon to hurt you.”
He went for her again, but this time Rand jerked him around and clipped him under the chin with a punishing right. The vicar went down into a pile of slate roof tiles, scattering them and clattering them. James began a new barrage of yelling while Rand approached the floundering clergyman. “Tell me why you’re not a murderer.”
Sitting up, the vicar touched his swelling jaw with one finger. Harshly, he said, “I thought everyone would be at the wedding when that contraption of the devil exploded. That your brother was here, and the women, was God’s work, not mine.”
“Damn you!” Rand grabbed him by the cravat and half lifted him by the throat. “You killed him and you’re too egotistical to even feel remorse.” He hit him again and again, glorying in the crunch of tendon and bone beneath his fists.
But someone grabbed his arm. Someone said his name. “Rand, stop. Stop, Rand. You’re hurting him.”
“I know.” Rand dragged breath into his scorching, deprived lungs. “I like hurting him.”
Someone petted his face as he stood over that damnable assassin. “I know, but I can’t watch it.”
Rand looked into Sylvan’s face, and the bloodlust began to fade beneath her anxious, loving expression.
“Rand?”
She was begging him, and he closed his eyes. “All right. I won’t kill him.”
“Thank you.” She kissed his knuckles where the skin had swollen and burst. “Thank you.”
Smiling with acrid pleasure, he stroked the place in her cheek where her dimple appeared. “If not for you…”
And pain exploded in his hip. He collapsed with a cry, and the vicar staggered to his feet and kicked him again with his hard, shiny boots. Rand rolled away from the agony.
“You dare contest the wrath of God?”
“You’re not God!” Sylvan cried, flying at him with her fists, and the clergyman slapped her and sent her flying.
Rand shouted, “You’re a murderer! A madman!”
The Reverend Donald paid him no heed, stalking after Sylvan with the vindictiveness of a man who’d heard the truth and abhorred it. Rand tried to rise, but his joints, worn and bruised, rebelled and he collapsed.
The vicar stood over the prostrate Sylvan. Rand wildly sought a weapon, then crawled toward the pipe the Reverend Donald had been clasping. His fingers curled around the smooth, cool metal.
But something dropped out of the darkening sky onto the vicar’s back. He screeched and the creature hanging from his shoulders screeched, too.
Gail. It was Gail! Rand gripped the pipe, but he couldn’t throw.
The Reverend Donald bucked like a mule, but Gail dug her hands into his hair and clawed at his face. Yelling at them, Sylvan came up and caught Gail around the waist. The vicar hung on to Gail’s ankle. The little girl kicked at him with her other foot.
Rand brought himself to his feet. Relief swept him; he could still stand. Consternation rocked him; in this condition, he couldn’t avenge his brother, and he desperately wanted to. Someone had to.
He concentrated on the Reverend Donald, scarcely noticing that the sun seemed to rise again. Then he realized flames moved within the mill.
The women had come. Their men stood behind them.
From the village, the farms, and Clairmont Court, they came bearing rush torches. They held them high and moved deliberately, their accusing stares on their vicar.
He froze, looking at them as if amazed by their presence.
“Reverend,” Betty said sternly, “let go of my child.”
He released Gail, but only to draw himself up and say in a voice of disdain and command, “Stand back!”
Betty ran at them, and Sylvan pushed Gail ahead of her. Gail met her mother and Betty caught her in her arms as if Gail were a baby, swinging her up and away from the minister’s madness. Sylvan wrapped her arm around Rand’s waist, but whether to support him or to get support from him, she did not know.
The Reverend Donald spoke in a solemn tone. “You cannot halt the advance of God’s justice.”
Nanna stepped out of the crowd, a crutch under her arm and her amputated leg suspended. “’Tis not God’s justice ye’ve meted out,” she said. “But yer own.”
Gesturing grandly, the Reverend Donald said, “How dare you claim to know God’s will—you, an ignorant woman who’s never been beyond the boundaries of your own village?”
“How dare ye claim to know God’s will?” Nanna countered. “It is not for a mere man to know.”
The vicar stepped toward her. “I know, and you will all die if you resist.”
“We’ll all die eventually, anyway,” Beverly said. “But when ye help us to heaven, it’s called murder.”
“Yes, it is.” Clover Donald’s tiny voice spoke from the back, and the women cleared the way for her. “Bradley, yes, it is.”
The flames of the torches reflected in her husband’s eyes. “I might have known you would betray me, Judas.”
“Oh, Bradley.” Clover blubbered, wiping at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “Don’t you understand? It’s over.”
“It’s not over!” he roared.
“What are ye going to do?” Loretta lisped slightly, teeth missing from his attack. “Kill us all?”
“It’s the only way to bring this parish back into the fold.” But the mighty vicar faltered.
“Kill us all?” Nanna repeated scornfully. “Not even ye can justify that.”
James was still shouting and banging, but he stopped abruptly, and the scrape of metal sounded as someone moved the machinery back from the door. Then James, Jeffrey, and one of the village men stepped into the light.
Three more accusing faces, three more people the Reverend Donald had harmed. James cradled his fingers. Jeffrey returned t
o the shadows. The villager moved behind Nanna and she leaned against him.
The mill grew quiet. Only the Reverend Donald’s harsh breathing broke the silence. Night had fallen, and the torches fluttered in the breeze. He did look like the ghost now—like Garth and the first duke and, Rand supposed, himself. He also looked sick, conscious of what he’d done and how hopeless his situation had become.
He put one hand up; everyone jumped back. He paused and stared, then rubbed his hand against his ear. “What do you plan to do?”
He sounded almost meek, but Rand didn’t trust him. “What should I do with a man who betrayed the family who fostered him?”
“I didn’t owe my loyalty to you, but to the Lord.”
“You spied on me.”
“It was God who brought you to your feet at night.”
“And it was you who made me think I was mad.”
“It was God’s work I did.” The vicar pleaded now.
“No.” Sylvan stepped out of the shelter of Rand’s embrace.
“It was. It was, it was!” In fury, he smacked the slanted oak beam with his fist. Lumber, nails, and heavy shale tiles slid off the shattered roof and rained down on them in response.
The flooring shook as each heavy tile hit and broke. The women drew back. Clover sobbed out loud. The Reverend Donald spread his arms wide and cried, “Don’t worry, my children. The Lord speaks through me, and I say you are safe. Safe!”
“Safe even from you,” Rand said. “It’s a long, weary road to Bedlam, Donald, and we’d best start you on your way.”
Still posed in his all-encompassing posture, the vicar hesitated as if shocked. “Bedlam?”
Clover Donald echoed, “Bedlam?”
“He’ll go to Bedlam as a madman, or go to the gallows as one who murdered a duke,” Rand said relentlessly. “Perhaps in Bedlam they’ll have a use for his delusions.”
“Bedlam?” the Reverend Donald repeated again. “You cannot send the hammer of God to Bedlam. I will not go.” He bowed his head and wrapped his hands together under his chin in a prayerful attitude. “I am innocent!”
And a shale tile slid off the roof and smashed into the back of his head.
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