Lord of Darkness

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  Megs looked away from her dearest friend. Sarah had come to live with her at the St. John estate in Cheshire nearly a year after Megs’s marriage to Godric, so Sarah didn’t know the real reason for their hasty nuptials.

  Megs shook her head, gazing out the carriage window. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see …”

  When she didn’t finish the sentence, Sarah moved restlessly. “See what?”

  Where Roger was murdered. Even the thought sent a shard of dull pain through her heart. She’d directed Tom the coachman to drive into St. Giles, hoping to find some lingering trace of Roger. There hadn’t been, of course. He’d been long dead. Long lost to her. But she’d had a second reason to look around St. Giles: to learn more about Roger’s murderer, the Ghost of St. Giles. And in that, at least, she’d succeeded. The Ghost had appeared. She hadn’t been adequately prepared tonight, but next time she would be.

  Next time she wouldn’t let him get away.

  Next time she’d blast a bullet through the Ghost of St. Giles’s black heart.

  “Megs?” Her friend’s gentle murmur interrupted her bloody thoughts.

  Megs shook her head and smiled brightly—perhaps too brightly—at her dear friend. “Never mind.”

  “What—”

  “Goodness, are we here already?” Megs’s change of subject was not subtle, but the carriage was slowing as if they’d finally arrived at their destination.

  She leaned forward, peering out the window. The street was dark.

  Megs frowned. “Maybe not.”

  Sarah crossed her arms. “What do you see?”

  “We’re on a narrow, winding lane and there’s a tall, dark house up ahead. It looks very … um …”

  “Ancient?”

  Megs glanced at her companion. “Yes?”

  Sarah nodded once. “That’s Saint House, then. It’s as old as dust, didn’t you know? Didn’t you see Saint House when you married my brother?”

  “No.” Megs pretended to be engrossed in the dim view out the window. “The wedding breakfast was at my brother’s house and I left London a sennight after.” And in between she’d been bedridden at her mother’s house. Megs pushed the sad memory from her mind. “How old is Saint House?”

  “Medieval and, as I remember, quite drafty in winter.”

  “Oh.”

  “And not in the most fashionable part of London, either,” Sarah continued cheerfully. “Right on the riverbank. But that’s what you get when your family came over with the Conqueror: venerable old buildings without a lick of modern style or convenience.”

  “I’m sure it’s quite famous,” Megs said, trying to be loyal. She was a St. John now after all.

  “Oh, yes,” Sarah said, her tone dry. “Saint House has been mentioned in more than one history. No doubt that’ll comfort you when your toes turn to blocks of ice in the middle of the night.”

  “If it’s so awful, then why did you accompany me to London?” Megs asked.

  “To see the sights and shop, of course.” Sarah sounded quite cheerful despite her gloomy description of Saint House. “It’s been forever since I was last in London.”

  The carriage jerked to a halt at that moment, and Sarah began gathering her needlework basket and shawls. Oliver, the younger of the two footmen Megs had brought with them, opened the door to the carriage. He wore a white wig as part of his livery, but it didn’t disguise his red eyebrows.

  “Never thought we’d make it alive,” Oliver muttered as he set the steps. “Was a close one with them footpads, if’n you don’t mind me saying so, m’lady.”

  “You and Johnny were very brave,” Megs said as she stepped down. She glanced up at her coachman. “And you, too, Tom.”

  The coachman grunted and hunched his broad shoulders. “Ye an’ Miss St. John best be gettin’ inside, m’lady, where ’tis safe.”

  “I will.” Megs turned to the house and only then noticed the second carriage, already drawn up outside.

  Sarah stepped down beside her. “It looks like your great-aunt Elvina arrived before us.”

  “Yes, it does,” Megs said slowly. “But why is her carriage still outside?”

  The door to the second carriage popped open as if in answer.

  “Margaret!” Great-Aunt Elvina’s worried face was topped by a cloud of soft gray curls intertwined with pink ribbons. Her voice was overly loud, booming off the stone buildings. Great-Aunt Elvina was rather deaf. “Margaret, the wretched butler won’t let us in. We’ve been sitting in the courtyard for ages, and Her Grace has become quite restless.”

  A muffled yelp from inside the carriage emphasized the statement.

  Megs turned to her husband’s house. No light betrayed human habitation, but obviously someone was at home if a butler had earlier answered Great-Aunt Elvina’s summons. She marched up to the door and lifted the great iron ring that served as knocker, letting it fall with a sharp bang.

  Then she stepped back and looked up. The building was a hodgepodge of historical styles. The first two floors were of ancient red brick—perhaps the original building. But then some later owner had added another three stories in a paler, beige brick. Chimneys and gables sprouted here and there over the roofline, romping without any seeming pattern. On either side, low, dark wings framed the end of the street, making a de facto courtyard.

  “You did write to tell Godric you were coming,” Sarah murmured.

  Megs bit her lip. “Ah …”

  A light appearing at a narrow window immediately to the right saved her from having to admit that she hadn’t notified her husband of their trip. The door opened with an ominous creaking.

  A lone servant stood in the doorway, stoop-shouldered, his head topped by a flaking white wig, a single candlestick in one hand.

  The man drew a slow, rattling breath. “Mr. St. John is not rec—”

  “Oh, thank you,” Megs said as she walked straight at the butler.

  For a moment she feared the man wouldn’t move. His rheumy eyes widened and then he shifted just enough so that she could glide by.

  She pivoted once inside and began removing her gloves. “I am Lady Margaret St. John, Mr. St. John’s wife.”

  The butler’s shaggy eyebrows snapped down. “Wife—”

  “Yes.” She bestowed a smile on him and for a moment he merely goggled. “And you are …?”

  He straightened and she realized his posture had made him look older than he really was. The man couldn’t be past his midthirties. “Moulder, m’lady. The butler.”

  “Splendid!” Megs handed him her gloves as she glanced about the hallway. Not impressive. There appeared to be a veritable village of spiders living in the beamed ceiling. She spotted a candelabra on a table nearby and, taking the candle from Moulder, began lighting it. “Now, Moulder, I have my dear great-aunt waiting in the carriage outside—you may call her Miss Howard—as well as Miss St. John here, Mr. St. John’s eldest little sister … if that makes any sense at all.”

  Sarah grinned cheerfully as she deposited her own gloves in the bemused butler’s hands. “I haven’t been to London in several years. You must be new.”

  Moulder’s mouth opened. “I—”

  “We also have our three lady’s maids,” Megs continued, handing the candle back to the butler as he snapped his mouth shut, “four footmen between ours and my great-aunt’s, and the two coachmen. Great-Aunt Elvina would insist on her own carriage, although I have to admit I’m not sure how we’d have all fit in only one carriage anyway.”

  “It would never have worked,” Sarah said. “And your aunt snores.”

  Megs shrugged. “True.” She turned back to the butler. “Naturally we brought Higgins the gardener and Charlie the bootblack boy because he is such a dear and because he’s Higgins’s nephew and rather attached to him. Oh, and Her Grace, who is in a delicate condition and appears to take only chicken livers well minced and simmered in white wine these days. Now, have you got all that?”

  Moulder goggled. “Ah …”r />
  “Wonderful.” Megs shot him another smile. “Where is my husband?”

  Alarm seemed to break through the butler’s confusion. “Mr. St. John is in the library, m’lady, but he’s—”

  “No, no!” Megs patted the air reassuringly. “No need to show me. I’m sure Sarah and I can find the library all by ourselves. Best you deal with my aunt’s needs and see to the servants’ supper—and Her Grace’s. It was such a very long journey, you know.”

  She picked up the lit candelabra and marched up the stairs.

  Sarah trotted up beside her, chuckling under her breath. “Luckily you’ve started in the right direction, at least. The library, if I remember correctly, is on the first floor, second door on the left.”

  “Oh, good,” Megs muttered. Having once screwed her courage to this point, it would be fatal to back down now. “I’m sure you’re looking forward to seeing your brother again just as much as I.”

  “Naturally,” Sarah murmured. “But I won’t be so gauche as to ruin your reunion with Godric.”

  Megs stopped on the first-floor landing. “What?”

  “Tomorrow morning is soon enough to see my brother.” Sarah smiled gently from three steps below. “I’ll go help with Great-Aunt Elvina.”

  “Oh, but—”

  Megs’s feeble protest was made to the empty air. Sarah had already scampered lightly down the stairs.

  Right. Library. Second door on the left.

  Megs took a deep breath and turned to face the gloomy hallway. It’d been two years since she’d last seen her husband, but she remembered him—from the little she’d seen of him before their marriage—as a nice enough gentleman. Certainly not ogrelike, anyway. His brown eyes had been quite kind at their wedding ceremony. Megs squinted doubtfully as she marched down the corridor. Or were his eyes blue? Well, whatever color they’d been, his eyes had been kind.

  Surely that much couldn’t have changed in two years?

  Megs grasped the doorknob to the library and quickly opened it before any last-minute second thoughts could dissuade her.

  After all that, the library was something of an anticlimax.

  Dim and cramped like the corridor, the room’s only light came from the embers of a dying fire and a single candle by an old, overstuffed armchair. She tiptoed closer. The occupant of the ancient armchair looked …

  Equally ancient.

  He wore a burgundy banyan frayed pink at the hem and elbows. His stockinged feet, lodged in disreputable slippers, were crossed on a tufted footstool so close to the fireplace that the fabric nearest the hearth bore traces of earlier singeing. His head lolled against his shoulder, casually covered by a soft, dark green turban with a rather rakish gilt tassel hanging over his left eye. Half-moon spectacles were perched perilously on his forehead, and if it weren’t for the deep snores issuing from between his lips, she might’ve thought Godric St. John had died.

  Of old age.

  Megs blinked and straightened. Surely her husband couldn’t be that old. She had a vague notion that he was a bit older than her brother Griffin, who had arranged their marriage and who was himself three and thirty, but try as she might, she couldn’t remember her husband’s actual age being mentioned.

  It had been the darkest hour of her existence, and, perhaps thankfully, much of it was obscured in her mind.

  Megs peered anxiously down at the sleeping man. He was slack-jawed and snoring, but his eyelashes lay thick and black against his cheeks. She stared for a moment, oddly caught by the sight.

  Her lips firmed. Many men married late in life and were still able to perform. The Duke of Frye had managed just last year and he was well past seventy. Surely Godric, then, could do the deed.

  Thus cheered, Megs cleared her throat. Gently, of course, for he was the main reason she’d come all the way to London, and it wouldn’t do to startle her husband into an apoplectic fit before he’d done his duty.

  Which was, of course, to make her pregnant.

  GODRIC ST. JOHN turned his snore into a snort as he pretended to wake. He opened his eyes to find his wife staring at him with a frown between her delicate brows. At their wedding, she’d been drawn and vague, her eyes never quite meeting his, even when she’d pledged herself to him until death do they part. Only hours after the ceremony, she’d taken ill at their wedding breakfast and been whisked away to the comfort of her mother and sister. A letter the next day had informed him that she’d miscarried the child that had made the hasty wedding necessary.

  Grim irony.

  Now she examined him with a bold, bright curiosity that made him want to check that his banyan was still tightly wrapped.

  “What?” Godric started as if surprised by her presence.

  She swiftly pasted on a broad, guileless smile that might as well have shouted, I’m up to something! “Oh, hello.”

  Hello? After two years’ absence? Hello?

  “Ah … Margaret, is it?” Godric repressed a wince. Not that he was doing much better.

  “Yes!” She beamed at him as if he were a senile old man who’d had a sudden spark of reason. “I’ve come to visit you.”

  “Have you?” He sat a little straighter in the chair. “How … unexpected.”

  His tone might’ve been a trifle dry.

  She darted a nervous glance at him and turned to aimlessly wander the room. “Yes, and I’ve brought Sarah, your sister.” She inhaled and peered at a tiny medieval etching propped on the mantel. Impossible that she could make out the subject matter in the room’s dimness. “Well, of course you know she’s your sister. She’s thrilled for the opportunity to shop, and see the sights, and go to the theater and perhaps an opera or even a pleasure garden, and … and …”

  She’d picked up an ancient leather-bound book of Van Oosten’s commentary on Catullus and now she waved it vaguely. “And …”

  “Shop some more, perhaps?” Godric raised his brows. “I may not have seen Sarah for an age, but I do remember her fondness for shopping.”

  “Quite.” She looked somewhat subdued as she thumbed the crumbling pages of the book.

  “And you?”

  “What?”

  “Why have you come to London?” he inquired.

  Van Oosten exploded in her hands.

  “Oh!” She dropped to her knees and frantically began gathering the fragile pages. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

  Godric repressed a sigh as he watched her. Half the pages were disintegrating as fast as she picked them up. That particular tome had cost him five guineas at Warwick and Sons and was, as far as he knew, the last of its kind. “No matter. The book was in need of rebinding anyway.”

  “Was it?” She looked dubiously at the pages in her hands before gently laying the mess in his lap. “Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?”

  Her face was tilted up toward his, her brown eyes large and somehow pleading, and she’d forgotten to take her hands away again. They lay, quite circumspectly, on top of the remains of the book in his lap, but something about her position, kneeling beside him, made him catch his breath. A strange, ethereal feeling squeezed his chest, even as a thoroughly rude and earthly one warmed his loins. Good Lord. That was inconvenient.

  He cleared his throat. “Margaret?”

  She blinked slowly, almost seductively. Idiot. She must be sleepy. That was why her eyelids looked so heavy and languid. Was it even possible to blink seductively?

  “Yes?”

  “How long do you plan to stay in London?”

  “Oh …” She lowered her head as she fumbled with the demolished book. Presumably she meant to gather the papers together, but all she succeeded in doing was crumbling them further. “Oh, well, there’s so much to do here, isn’t there? And … and I have several dear, dear friends to call on—”

  “Margaret—”

  She jumped to her feet, still holding Van Oosten’s battered back cover. “It simply wouldn’t do to snub anyone.” She aimed a brilliant smile somewhere over his right shoulder.
/>   “Margaret.”

  She yawned widely. “Do forgive me. I’m afraid the trip has quite fatigued me. Oh, Daniels”—she turned in what looked like relief as a petite lady’s maid appeared at the doorway—“is my room readied?”

  The maid curtsied even as her gaze darted about the library curiously. “Yes, my lady. As ready as ever it can be tonight anyway. You’ll never credit the cobwebs we—”

  “Yes, well, I’m sure it’s fine.” Lady Margaret whirled and nodded at him. “Good night, er … husband. I’ll see you on the morrow, shall I?”

  And she darted from the room, the back cover of poor Van Oosten still held captive.

  The maid closed the door behind her.

  Godric eyed the solid oak of his library door. The room without her spinning, brilliant presence seemed all of a sudden hollow and tomblike. Strange. He’d always thought his library a comfortable place before.

  Godric shook his head irritably. What is she about? Why has she come to London?

  Theirs had been a marriage of convenience—at least on her part. She’d needed a name for the babe in her belly. It’d been a marriage of blackmail via her ass of a brother, Griffin, on his part, for Godric had not fathered the child. Indeed, he’d never spoken to Lady Margaret before the day of their wedding. Afterward, when she’d retired to his neglected country estate, he’d resumed his life—such as it was—in London.

  For a year there’d been no communication at all, save for the odd secondhand bit of information from his stepmother or one of his half sisters. Then, suddenly, a letter out of the blue, from Lady Margaret herself, asking if he would mind if she cut down the overgrown grapevine in the garden. What overgrown grapevine? He hadn’t seen Laurelwood Manor, the house on his Cheshire estate, since the early years of his marriage to his beloved Clara. He’d written back and told her politely but tersely that she could do as she wished with the grapevine and anything else she had the mind to in the garden.

  That should’ve been the end to it, but his stranger bride had continued to write him once or twice a month for the last year. Long, chatty letters about the garden; the eldest of his half sisters, Sarah, who had come to live with Margaret; the travails of repairing and redecorating the rather decrepit house; and the petty arguments and gossip from the nearby village. He hadn’t known quite how to respond to such a flurry of information, so in general he simply hadn’t. But as the months had gone by, he’d become oddly taken with her missives. Finding one of her letters beside his morning coffee gave him a feeling of lightness. He’d even been impatient when her letter was a day or two late.