“I’ll stay right here,” Cecelia said, holding up her hands as though surrendering.
“Tell me what my sins are,” the earl said. He made a forward motion with his hands. “Let me hear them. What else do they think I did?”
“They think you killed the late duchess,” Cecelia said.
“I didn’t. She jumped.” He made another forward motion with his hand.
“What happened that day?” Cecelia asked.
“We were up here talking. And she jumped. She just jumped. She said His Grace knew about us and that he was angry. And she couldn’t bear her life anymore. I tried to stop her. I tried to stop her.”
He didn’t look upset by this at all. If anything, he looked irked that he had to stop to explain it.
“Did you love her?”
He waved a breezy hand through the air. “She was a means to an end.”
“A means to what end?” Cecelia asked.
He shrugged, pacing again. “I needed funds for my estate. His Grace is good with investments. But she ruined me.”
“And she made you angry when she ruined you. So, you shoved her from the turrets. She fell to her death.”
“I would never have pushed her.” He laughed, but it was a sound with no mirth. “I thought about it many times. But her daughter was with us that day. She walked in looking for her mother. Her mother didn’t want her to see me. So, she tried to rush her from the room. But I think the girl could smell her mother’s desperation.” He laid a hand on his chest. “I would never have shoved her from the tower with the little girl there. I’m not a monster.” He looked shocked.
“I didn’t know Lady Anne was there,” Cecelia said.
“What are my other sins?” He motioned for her to continue.
“You tried to shoot Claire and Lord Phineas.”
“Yes, I did do that,” he admitted. “But I hadn’t slept for days. Do you think they would accept my apology?”
Cecelia bit back a snort. It was difficult, but she did. “We could try. Shall I go and get them?”
He motioned with his gun, jabbing it toward her. She flinched every time he moved it. “No, no. That’s no good. I need your help. Tell me what to say to them. Tell me what will fix it.”
Cecelia certainly doubted that anything could fix this man. Particularly not while he was alone with her with a gun. Marcus would find her soon. She was sure of it. He would come. He always did.
“I’m not a bad person,” the earl said, clasping the sides of his head between the gun and his flattened palm. “She always said I was a bad person. But I’m not.”
“Who said you were a bad person?” Cecelia asked. She sat down on the low stone wall that surrounded the turrets.
“She did.” Mayden sat down on the other side of the stone room and began to rock slowly back and forth, back and forth.
“Who is ‘she’?” Cecelia asked, keeping her voice low and soft, although all she wanted to do was scream and run.
“Her. My mother. The late countess.” His rocking became faster and faster. He clutched himself with his arms.
“What did she say to you?”
“I can’t repeat it. It’s too vile.”
Cecelia could help him. She knew she could. “Will you let me help you?” she asked. She leaned toward him. He was leaving her in his mind, she could tell.
“I need for someone to help me,” he said. A tear rolled slowly down his cheek.
Cecelia’s heart broke for him. “I’m going to reach into my reticule and then I’m going to show something to you,” she said slowly. “Will that be all right?”
He looked at her, focusing only slightly, and he nodded.
“I have magic dust, and I’m going to blow it into the air. I want to see the truth. Will you be all right with the truth?”
“The truth about me?” He pressed a hand against his chest. “You can see the truth about me? That’s all I’ve ever wanted anyone to see. I want someone to see the truth.”
Cecelia poured some magic dust into her hand and said the words, “See every lie, see every sin, but before we do, let’s go back to where it begins.” She blew the dust from her hand, and it began to swirl in the air.
A small tornado of magic dust formed in the middle of the space, and the wind spun, waving cobwebs and dirt into her face. But then the dust began to take shape. Rather than the pictures she’d expected to see of scenes from his head or memories, she saw his thoughts. They came out in single words. The word “fear” formed in the cloud, and then it grew teeth like a tiger and chomped its way across the turret.
He’d known fear. Mayden moved his feet from the path of the chomping word. He began to tremble. But he didn’t look away.
The word dissolved, and another took shape. “Hopeless” formed in the dust, and it wafted about like a kite caught in a storm. It had no direction, and it had no place to land. It just floundered about, with nothing to anchor it. “Rage” formed next, and it beat itself about in the dirt, bouncing off the walls and against the floor.
This was what was in the man’s head. And it was there in the most elemental of ways. It was almost as though he’d never grown past a certain point in his life.
Suddenly, lifelike people made of magic dust shimmered in the middle of the room. A couple dancing. Their kisses were loving, their laughter real. He gasped. “My mother,” he said. “And my father.” He reached a hand into the mist, and they vanished. He cried out. “Come back.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “That was before he died. Before she became sad.”
The next image was that of a woman in bed and a little lad running to her side, only to be told to leave. He needed his mother, and she’d shooed him from the room. She threw things at him until Cecelia could even feel the lad’s pain.
“Your mother changed after your father died,” Cecelia said calmly.
He nodded, continuing to watch. Two men formed in the dust. They looked alike. “My brother,” he said.
“What happened to him?” Cecelia asked.
Then image changed to that of a duel, and she saw the man fall to the ground in a pool of blood. “He died,” Mayden said simply.
She saw the image of three caskets being lowered into the ground. They couldn’t all have died at the same time, but this was in his mind, after all. “My mother,” he said. “My brother. And my father.” He took a deep shattered breath. “They all left me.”
“They all died.”
He turned to her and snarled, “They all left me!”
She nodded, finding it easier to agree.
“When did you break?” Cecelia asked softly.
The image changed, and the vision of a little lad being smacked by an older woman, probably his mother, came into view. “I changed then.” The scene changed to a different one of violence. “And then.” Still the same woman, another scene. “And then.”
The little lad grew up to be a man. But the man was broken. She could see it in his eyes. And he could as well.
“This is what I am,” he said.
“Our memories can make us, or they can take us,” Cecelia said. “It looks like yours took you.”
“They took me,” he repeated, but his tone was flat.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
He looked up at her as though he looked for salvation.
“My sins, show them to me.”
Cecelia turned to face the wall. She couldn’t watch any more.
He grunted as each scene changed. She could hear that much. He began to fidget. And he scrambled to get away from the images until he was pressed against the low stone window, and he sat inside its frame.
“Don’t fall,” Cecelia said.
“I have done too many bad things.”
“It’s all right. I can take your memories and put them in a box. I can fix you.”
“No one can fix me.” He let the gun fall to the ground, and it went off with a resounding boom and a flash of light. Cecelia covered her ears an
d waited for the pain to hit her.
***
Marcus searched the ballroom calling Cecelia’s name over and over. “Why did you let her walk away from you?” Marcus shouted.
“We thought Mayden went with you,” Claire explained. She buried her face in Lord Phineas’s chest.
“Where would he have taken her?” his father asked.
Marcus jerked his compass from his pocket and flipped it open. It would show him where home was. Cecelia was home. “West,” he said. And he began to run in that direction. Mayden probably hadn’t taken her from the house, that much Marcus was sure of. He had a reason for being there. Now Marcus just had to figure out what it was. He ran through the corridors of the castle, with his entire family and Cecelia’s father running behind him. When he reached the lowest level of the turret, the compass began to spin. “Where now?” he asked himself.
But then a shot split the quiet of the open space. “Cecelia!” he cried. He couldn’t lose her. He simply couldn’t. He would die without her. He ran as fast as he could up the winding staircase.
He stopped in the doorway of the open room, and his heart jumped from his chest when he saw her standing there. Cecelia was safe. She was well. She looked out the window, rather than at the scene behind her. She held her palm flat, urging him to stop. How could he?
Mayden sat in the open stone window, a look of revulsion on his face.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Mayden was too engrossed in the changing scenes before him to even look at Marcus.
“He dropped the gun and it fired. But I’m fine.”
“I’ve never been so scared,” Marcus said. He turned to hold his family back. “Stay,” he said to them.
“I will trade my life for hers,” Cecelia’s father said. “Let me up there. I don’t care what happens.” Marcus refused to let him pass.
Cecelia finally turned and looked at Mayden. “I can help you.” The dust settled at their feet, all the life gone from it.
“I hurt too many people,” Mayden said. His eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
Marcus agreed. But Cecelia said, “I can help you, if you’ll let me. I’ll take your memories and lock them away in a box. You can start anew.”
“It’s too late.”
Mayden rocked in the open window. And Marcus could almost feel his pain. “He’s broken, Marcus,” Cecelia said. “But we can fix him.”
“I’m not certain there’s any fixing him. He’s not redeemable.”
“There’s hope,” Cecelia said.
“The hope died inside me a long time ago.” Mayden pointed toward where the dust had fallen. “The things I’ve done. I wasn’t even aware of all of them.”
“Did you show him everything?” Marcus asked.
Cecelia shook her head. “Only some of it.”
“There’s more?” Mayden asked.
Cecelia nodded.
Mayden smiled. But he looked directly into Cecelia’s eyes and said, “Thank you.” Then he leaned backward and fell from the window.
Cecelia ran to him, but Marcus thrust her out of the way. He reached for Mayden, but the man slipped through his fingers. He leaned over the side and caught the sleeve of the man’s coat. He grunted, holding tightly to Mayden’s arm.
“You can’t save me. No one can,” Mayden grunted, trying to shake loose of Marcus’s grip.
“I can if you’ll let me,” Marcus ground out. He reached to catch Mayden’s jacket with his other hand. But the material tore, and Mayden wiggled. “Hold still. I’ll pull you up.”
“Let me go,” Mayden said clearly.
“I can’t. My wife won’t like it.” His grip was slipping.
“She’ll have to be angry at you, because I won’t let you save me.” He jerked his shoulder, until he began to slide from the sleeve of the coat. “Thank you for trying,” Mayden said. And then he slipped free of the coat entirely. Marcus reached, trying to catch him as he slid free. But he moved too fast. And then he was gone.
Marcus ducked back inside the turret, refusing to watch when Mayden hit the ground. A soft thud met his ears, and Cecelia rushed into his arms. Marcus pressed his eyes closed tightly, trying to forget the memory of the way the man looked into his eyes, right before he shook loose of his grip.
“I always thought he was a coward and so weak,” Marcus breathed.
“Oh, Marcus,” she said. “He was in so much pain.”
“I saw some of it,” he said. “Are you all right?” he kissed her forehead. Cecelia sobbed into his shirt.
“How could he survive after all those years of abuse?”
“He didn’t,” Marcus said. “Something died within him a long time ago.” He looked at his father. “Will you go and check to be sure he’s not in pain?”
Claire covered her face with her hands and cried. Then she wiped her eyes and said, “Who would have thought I’d be crying about the Earl of Mayden’s demise?” She laughed, a watery chuckle. “Marcus, you have to be certain he has a funeral. And treat him with respect from here going forward.”
“I promise we’ll take care of him.” He kissed Cecelia’s forehead again.
“He wanted absolution,” Cecelia said to the room. “He wanted forgiveness.”
“Well, he has it,” Lord Phineas and the duke said at the same time. They were the two people he’d wronged the most. And they’d just forgiven him.
“Can we go home?” Cecelia whispered to Marcus. She kissed his neck softly. “Please. I need you.”
He needed her, too. More than anything.
Epilogue
Marcus held his baby girl, a cloth between him and her because she really liked to cast up her accounts, usually on his shoulder. He looked over at Cecelia and winked. “I think she’s getting hungry again,” he warned. His daughter wiggled in his arms, and he adjusted his grip on her so that he could look into her face.
“Just because she made a noise doesn’t mean she’s hungry,” Cecelia declared. “If you want to look at my breast, you just have to ask nicely.” She leaned across the picnic blanket and kissed him softly.
“Haven’t you two figured out that’s where those things come from?” Allen asked, looking toward Marcus’s new daughter. Allen’s eyes shone brightly and he appeared more relaxed than Marcus had ever seen him.
“There’s more to it than kissing, little brother,” Marcus teased. “Do you need for me to educate you?”
“Yes, please!” Ainsley cried, from where she lay with her head upon Allen’s knee. His hand rested on her swollen belly. “Because we have no idea where babes come from.”
Ainsley and Allen had married almost nine months ago to the day. And she was heavily pregnant with their first child. Allen couldn’t be happier. And Ainsley was glowing. Though she was a bit uncomfortable at this point.
“At least ours will not be a miracle birth after only seven months,” Allen scolded.
His mother called out from where she raced down the stream with Lady Anne, Sophia, and Claire’s older children toddling behind them. “Seven-month babes are the thing now. In fact, Marcus was so brilliant that he had to be born after a mere seven months himself.”
“Oh God,” Marcus groaned. “Can we change the subject?”
“Yes, please,” Cecelia said as she took the baby from his arms. He wrapped his arms around them both. There was nothing better than having his daughter and his wife in his arms at the same time. He’d thought Cecelia made him complete, but it just got better as time went by.
Claire and Phineas helped to keep the small children from the river. Sophia and Robinsworth had left to walk alone down the river some time ago. Marcus’s youngest sisters, Hannah and Rose, sat on a blanket, both taking turns holding the newest additions to the family. Both Sophia and Claire had new babies.
“I love it when we’re all together,” Marcus’s mother said as she ran past them, chasing one of the toddling babes.
“It exhausts me when we’re all together,” Lord Phineas said. He scooped one o
f the children into his arms, making him squeal. Marcus couldn’t tell them all apart. Not when there were so bloody many of them.
Marcus’s father lay in the grass, making a chain of daisies. He leaned over and placed it on Marcus’s daughter’s head. She looked up at him, blinking her blue eyes at her grandfather.
They spent a lot of time in the land of the fae. Marcus and Allen took turns handling their father’s lands in the other world, and they split their time in the land of the fae as well. They made time, however, for days like this when they could all be together.
Cecelia’s father sat down on the blanket beside Marcus and Cecelia and held out his hands. “Let me hold her. You two can go take a walk or something.”
Cecelia wiggled her brows so only Marcus could see it. He grinned and pulled her to her feet.
“Wait,” Lord Phineas said. “We were supposed to be next.”
“Too late,” Marcus teased. “We have someone to watch our one child.” He pointed to where Mr. Hewitt held his daughter. “The joy of having only one child, Finn. Too bad you’ll never experience that feeling again.” He chuckled loudly.
“I’m going to call it,” Allen called toward their retreating backs. “Another babe nine months from today!”
Marcus certainly hoped so.
Cecelia walked over to the sign that stood by the riverbank and dragged her fingers along the raised letters.
Unpardonable Errors
1. Never let a human adult see you in faerie form, unless that human is your spouse.
2. Never let your dust fall into the hands of the untrained.
3. Never share the existence of the fae with anyone who might betray the fae world.
4. Never use your magic to cause harm.
5. Never be afraid to fall in love with a human.
The unpardonable errors had changed only subtly, but they had changed, and for the better. Marcus and Cecelia had worked hard in their positions as two of the Trusted Few, and change had overcome the land.
Beneath the sign were written the words:
Love deeply.
Live passionately.
Magic abounds.
Marcus slid his hand into Cecelia’s and she squeezed it gently. They looked back at the group gathered on the hillside. The magic between them was stronger than ever, and it would last well past their lifetimes.
The Magic Between Us (Faerie) Page 22