He had set a trap on the edge of the orchard near Beth’s cottage and baited it with a chunk of cheese, clearly intending to catch Sophie. Instead, a dead limb was clenched in the vicious steel jaws. Seeing as to how there was no tree nearby, he took it that they owed Herne their thanks.
Ian gathered the men and told them about the trap, leaving out Herne’s part, of course. He needed everyone to keep a sharp eye. If they saw anything suspicious, anything, to let him know immediately.
He didn’t go back right away; he went to the barn instead and worked out some of his frustrations on the boxing bag. It wasn’t Herne today. It might never be again. Today it was the faceless, nameless monster who likely tortured animals as a child and had grown up twisted and preyed on women. Someone who hated him and knew about Beth.
Sean came before he was done, and he was glad to give him another lesson. Today, though, he let Sean have a go at him, so he could show him how to better read his opponent. Sean needed to learn defense and offense—know what blocks worked for what punches, and how to get past them. When he was done, he pulled a pail of water from the well and washed up outside before coming in the house. He gave his special knock on the front door and waited for Beth to open it.
God. Oh, God.
Nothing.
He heard Sophie crying, and he swore his heart stopped. He made himself move, testing the front door, testing the back, rounding the side of the house and cursing himself for not seeing how close one tree grew to the upstairs windows. Those were all closed, but one of the windows downstairs had been thrown open wide.
The bastard had been in the house when he left.
Years of survival helped Ian move past the fear, move past the emotion, and keep his thoughts focused on what needed done. He climbed in the window, knowing some of what he’d find. No forced entrance. Both doors were locked from when Beth had bolted them behind him. Now that he’d come, Sophie sought shelter in the music room, where Philip looked almost frantic. Édouard had cleared the shelves in the library, and his darling Beth was gone.
She was gone, but he knew where to find her.
When Beth’s kidnapper got tired of waiting for Ian to return, he’d carved a circle and a star in the floor of the wide central hall.
They were headed for the woods.
There was such evil in the man, Beth had fainted when Laurent Dubois touched her. She returned to consciousness in the music room, bound and helpless, with the black-eyed Frenchman testing the edge of his blade, waiting for her to wake up.
Evil. It emanated from him, fouling the air like a pyre of drowned sheep…only it had been his brother Édouard who’d drowned on his watch, and he blamed the Captain for it.
“He left a note,” he told her, the pain in him still as raw and fresh as when he’d seen his brother climb onto the Sea Siren’s railing and throw himself into the brink. “I knew, of course, that he was troubled. I knew that he had been drinking. The moon was as dark as his mood of late, with barely enough light to see, to know what he was about until it was too late, and he was gone. Taken from me because of your husband, and now I take him from you, oui?”
“Please, dinnae,” she whispered, even knowing her words would fall on deaf ears. The look in his eyes was inhuman, lit by the evil that dwelled inside him, that had driven him to kill, time and again.
“Non!” he hissed. “I have waited too long. Done too much. I vowed to avenge my brother’s death, I will! I almost succeeded in Port Royal. Our plan was perfect. Framing Jean Delacorte for the raid on the Gabrielle and arranging for Justin Vallé to be caught while attempting his rescue would have rid the world of two nuisances. Bryce Vallé would have had his brother’s fortune and le capitaine’s daughter if only the guard had not gotten greedy and let the girl go in early.”
He underscored his anger with the flash of his blade. “It was a risk, of course, knowing him to be innocent. While I do not engage in high-stakes games like the one that lost my brother his ship, I gambled that le capitaine would not reveal what he had been doing at the time. The British have little sympathy for smugglers, n’est ce pas? But Bryce, he wanted his brother gone. I suggested how we might do it with a minimum of risk to ourselves. Few men are a match for Justin Vallé in a fight. If the fight is fair….”
He angled his head and smiled cruelly.
The Captain had once said that he’d been used as bait for another. He didn’t realize that his arrest was this man’s fault, that Laurent Dubois was behind framing the Captain for the murderous raid on the Gabrielle.
“Prison was not kind to him,” Laurent hummed. “Special treatment cost us twice what we had planned. When the guards took too much pleasure in their work, we had to pay more for them to go easy on him. We needed to keep him alive long enough for his daughter to come, and Justin Vallé with her. But in the end, le capitaine escaped and Bryce was killed, leaving me alone to seek my vengeance, for my brother and for the crew I lost that night. Jean Delacorte eluded me once, but now…now, after years of waiting, Édouard will finally be avenged!”
When the Captain didn’t come, Laurent grew restless and began to pace, unable to sit any longer. At one point, he looked toward the front door, and at Beth, and she read his intentions in his eyes, even before he started stroking his knife.
“Oui,” he said. “I lost my brother and my men. One death is hardly fair. He should not go quickly. He deserves to suffer first. I believe that he needs to watch the one most dear to him slip away, as I once watched my brother.”
At that, thud came from the library. Laurent froze, listening, but there was nothing else. No call of welcome. No bootheel taps on the floor. Just a preternatural silence and the staggered sound of their breathing.
He strained his ear, thinking it must be the Captain. It had to be the Captain.
“Nay,” she said. “That’s Édouard. Yer brother’s spirit is here, and ye’ve upset him. He willnae want me harmed, when I’ve done nocht but show him kindness.”
“Silence, witch!” he snarled, the unholy light in his black eyes flaring. In two steps he was on her. Slicing a strip from her skirt, he gagged her, robbing her of spoken words, but that did not stop her mind.
Beth begged Édouard for his help.
Another book hit the floor. And another. Then the thunder of dozens being swept from the shelves.
“Come,” the Frenchman growled, and dragged her with him as he stormed to the library door, determined to prove her wrong, to punish her for mocking him, for using his brother’s memory against him, to make him feel pity for her. Books covered the floor. The shelves were empty.
And, although there was no one in the room, a single page lifted on the atlas on the table.
“Witch!” he hissed, pricking her throat, just enough to break the skin and make her knees threaten to buckle. “We will finish this in your place.”
Her circle in the woods, where he’d watched her do ritual and learned what she was.
“But first….”
He left her standing by the library door and went down the hall. Kneeling by the front entrance, he carved a sign on the floor—the same one he’d carved on Lucy Knowles, she intuited, feeling faint, and sick from the pleasure he took from it, and from her.
Poor Lucy, who’d discovered Laurent while they were both spying on Beth.
Laurent nodded his satisfaction in his handiwork. “He will know to come,” he said.
The Captain would come for her, and he would die for her—but not until he’d watched Laurent kill her first. The Frenchman would end her life as he had the others, without a qualm, ridding the earth of the fallen women that he’d preyed upon, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake as he followed the Deirdre from port to port. They had been prostitutes, one and all, until he came here.
He’d made the last one special, but it should have been her.
It still would be her.
It took every bit of Beth’s strength not to vomit. He wouldn’t care if she choked, although she sensed he preferred to kee
p her alive, to make her suffer first, but she had a child to think of. She must stay calm, and focused, and cooperate, hard though it was when she knew what he had planned. But anger the Frenchman, and wee Brendan would suffer his wrath.
Goddess, protect me! Protect us!
Laurent dragged her to the dining room on the east side of the house, farthest from servants’ row, facing the fields. He undid the pin, threw open the window, scooped her up, and dropped her from it, uncaring of how she landed. She flexed her knees to absorb the shock, but one foot hit an exposed root and threw her off balance. With no free hands to catch herself, all she could do was curl into a ball and roll onto the ground.
Following, he plucked her up, flung her over his shoulder like a sack of flour, and headed north towards the woods, tracking a path past the granaries that would take them through the east side of the orchard, with its hives still draped in black.
In her mind, Beth cried for help, from anyone listening, anything that could hear.
With every fiber of her being, every whisper of her heart, she called to the bees, called to Herne, called to the Captain to save her.
Laurent had been watching, waiting, anticipating the moment when his revenge would be complete. He had thought he might have to tarry until the next full moon or All Hallow’s Eve would lure her out to her circle. The intuited knowledge that he’d been there, that Herne and the oaks had said nothing, was disturbing. And telling. In a moment of awful clarity, Beth understood that Herne had let Laurent come into the woods. Laurent, who intended to kill the Captain.
Then he would not have to share.
Oh, Herne, she thought. Herne, what hae ye done?
She remembered the night at the cottage, when the wind had whipped up and the rain blew in, and how Herne had stamped his feet when the Captain came inside. Perhaps Herne did want the Captain gone, but, nature spirit that he was, he had not fully understood what it meant, letting Laurent in. He did not realize the danger in which he had placed Beth. Regardless of how he felt about the Captain, Herne would want her kept safe.
Herne, ye bastard! Look at me! If anything happens tae me, or the Captain, or our bairn, ye can kiss me forever goodbye!
Beth’s mouth was gagged, her hands were bound, but with her inner voice, she chanted. With her mind’s eye, she started weaving. By the time they reached the row of skeps, the bees were starting to swarm. Just the ones from the hives she’d already thought to harvest, those bees already destined to die. She had them wait until they were nearly at the edge of the woods before she let the first ones land.
She went still, centering herself, projecting an aura that had ever kept her safe from stings, but the Frenchman had no such protection. More bees landed, attacking her abductor, sacrificing themselves for her. Desperate to escape, he unburdened himself, dropping her on the ground, and ran west, toward the river.
She never knew such sweet relief as when the Captain saw her, and called her name, and would not stop chanting it, like a prayer of thanksgiving, as he cut her ties and removed her gag.
“Laurent Dubois,” she told him. “Édouard’s brother. He blames ye fer his loss. Oh, Captain! He is evil! He is a monster!”
“Stay. I’ll be back,” he promised.
Ian found Dubois not far into the timber, on the far side of a log, every inch of exposed skin covered with welts from the bee stings.
If Herne hadn’t already broken Laurent Dubois’ neck, Ian would have.
Dubois was dead. The investigation included a search of the Sea Siren, where Laurent had taken trophies from each of his victims, including Lucy’s Bible. Beth shared the story with the Captain, as she had understood it, both what Laurent had told her and what she’d seen when he’d touched her, carrying her off like spoils of war.
Ian let Beth talk, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was still missing something. He didn’t understand how this could happen, how Dubois could have come into these woods, and been allowed to spy on Beth. What the hell had Herne been thinking?
“Thinking?” repeated Beth. “He’s Otherworldly. He doesnae think like us, reason like us. He’s nae of the realm of men. If he’d known the Frenchman would try tae hurt me, he would never hae let him in the woods.”
Because it wasn’t good for the baby, Ian let it go. He listened to Beth calm Philip and absolve Édouard, and watched her draw down the next full moon on the refinished floor of the central hall of his house when she chose to make her circle here, rather than in the woods. And on Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, when the Veil is thinnest between this world and the next, Édouard’s spirit finally went up the stairs and into the pillar of Light.
It was Samhain, October 31, 1727, and it was Tuesday, when he learned what she planned to do about Herne.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“What do you mean, you’re going to promise him a baby?”
“Visiting privileges only,” she assured him, stung by the panic in his voice. “His choice of the child. I’ll share one wie the both of ye, but nae muir. He doesnae deserve tha’ much, after what’s happened, but I’m hoping it’s enough of a peace offering, and I’ll only do it if he agrees tae protect all of us, nae just me.”
“But, Jaysus, Beth! A baby? Our baby?”
It killed her to see the torment on the Captain’s face, the not knowing. After the fear came rage, and it took all of her resolve to keep from quailing before her husband’s growing Irish temper. “Please,” she begged him. “Do ye nae see, tha’ I maun do something? I kent I had tae, when I realized the only reason he’d hae let Laurent Dubois in the woods, was because Laurent intended tae kill ye. Herne is a part o’ this landscape. He’ll never leave, so we need tae mak peace. Otherwise, ye’ll be a widower, mak no mistake. I’ll die young from the worrying aboot ye, and ye’ll be raising our bairns without their mother.”
He had no words left, when he realized the truth of what she’d spoken. With her sensitive nature, the stress would eventually crush her tender heart. It went against all reason, but he could not argue, and in the end, he went with her to the woods.
Samhain was the Celtic New Year, marking the time when the Veil thinned between the worlds. Spirits could more easily manifest, and shades, restless or no, moved over the land. In the places of their births, rituals were observed, and the old ways honored. It felt like they should be here, as well.
It was the last night before the new moon, and outside was supernaturally dark. Beth carved a turnip and cut down a candle to fit. With the work she’d done, helping Édouard cross over, it was nearly midnight when they took a basket to the orchard cottage, lighting their way with the lantern she’d made. They built a bonfire outside with dead limbs she’d been piling, then went inside and lit a fire in the hearth.
Once food and drink was laid out on the table, Beth opened the cottage door and invited those gone on to partake of it. The Captain slung a sack of firewood on his back; she caught up her bundle of ritual tools and the jack-o-lantern, and they crossed over into the woods.
She listened as they walked, and between their footsteps she heard nothing. Nothing. It was almost as if the oaks were holding their breaths, waiting to see what Herne would do. When they reached her sacred space, she untied her bundle and cast her circle, setting up her Samhain altar beneath the midnight sky. It was cold enough to be uncomfortable, but she steeled herself and took off all her clothes, revealing the small, but unmistakable gravid curve of her belly.
The Captain built a fire in the middle of the circle she’d cast with the two of them inside it. If Herne was watching, he was doing it from a distance. She observed the High Sabbat, as she had each year since her arrival, only this time she had a husband.
This time, Herne did not come.
She finished the Samhain ritual, dissolved the circle, then gathered her tools. She was grateful for the Captain’s presence and appreciated the fine fire he’d built, warming herself by it while she dressed.
After all that, after everything she though
t to say, after what she planned to demand from Herne when she finished, he had stayed away. He stayed away, but she could not feel relieved. This thing between them was still unsettled. Her husband was still at risk, and she could no longer say, unconditionally, that she trusted Herne with her life.
Sophie came trotting up, and the three of them went first to the cottage to stash her bundle, then walked back to the big house. They said goodnight to Philip, who sang to Sophie and got the fox to stay downstairs with him while the Captain and Beth went where he could not go. Jason had refinished the downstairs hall, after the Captain sanded it, so that the carving was no longer there, but it had taken some of Mother Gordon’s holy water and a cleansing ritual to clear the energy left behind. At least now Beth could step on and over it. Before, she’d walked hugging the wall.
The Captain was quiet, lost in thought, and she dearly wished he would speak. He’d healed enough now, his mind was mostly closed to her. She could not just listen in, or eavesdrop like she could at the first, when he was in so many pieces that he’d lost all joy of living and wanted to die.
She knew that he was having a hard time with the idea of sharing a child with Herne, but the thought of never having peace, of watching the Captain ride off and never knowing if he would come back until he did, was making her miserable. Even the wild strawberries had seen her somber mood and had brought her a little bouquet of colored leaves and late dandelions.
The work on the spinning house interior was done. The layout was changed; the walls were painted: white fluffy clouds shaded with gray and blue and yellow drifted across the expanse of sky blue background. The new windows that Jason installed only added to the illusion, making it truly seem that Miss Denning was working outside. But even with the changes, India still could not bear to come in, where she’d found her mother’s body. Instead, she cleaned stalls and fed and curried, and her reward was getting to ride astride and fly the courses, as she had always wanted to do.
Ride the Wind: Touch the Wind Book Two Page 20