* * *
As Jonathan ran nearly all the way across the moor to Rose Cottage, he discovered he was not in quite the fighting shape he’d thought he was. Wheezing, he banged on the door and called her name.
No one answered.
“Madeline!” He jiggled the door, found it unlocked, and let himself inside.
No one was home. There were only four rooms on the first floor and two above, and no one was in any of them. He ran back through the garden and knocked on the door of her workshop; this was locked, but he peered through the windows, and it too was empty.
He ran back into the house one more time.
This time he looked more carefully, and he saw the cup of tea by the hearth fire. He touched it and found it was still almost piping hot.
She was here, or she had been.
She was hiding from him.
He swore and turned around, but of course there was no sign of her. Goddess alone knew what tricks she was using to hide. He stormed to the center of the foyer and shouted up the stairs, knowing his voice would carry through the house.
“Madeline—Madeline, please! Madeline, I must speak to you!” Silence. He ran his hand through his hair and swore heatedly in Catalian under his breath. “Madeline, this is no game! My grandfather—Goddess bless, Madeline, he’s more mad than my father was. You’re in danger. Emily is in danger. We all are, and I don’t know what’s happening, and I don’t know how to find out! I need you! I need to talk to you, to try and solve this—” He cut himself off and ran his hands over his face. “You’re not here. You wouldn’t ignore me this long, not with what I’ve told you. And if you are, and you—” He laughed bitterly. “Then we are truly lost.”
He started to leave, took four steps into the hall, then doubled back and planted himself again at the bottom of the stairs.
“Damn you!” He slammed his hand on the railing. “What the devil is this about, Madeline? What pride is eating you now? Is this some very delayed reaction to my stupidity with Andrea? Or am I now flattering my vanity?” He ran a hand through his hair. “No, it isn’t. This, woman, is your infernal pride.”
He gripped the banister and stared up to the empty top of the stairs. “You’re here. You’re in this house, and you’re probably under your damn bed. I bet you a handicap of twenty fencing points, Madeline.” He laughed, but it pinched. “Goddess bless, but what we would have been if I had not been such a fool. Of course, now that I know the family traditions, we were probably doomed even if I hadn’t made everything so expedient.” He curled his fingers into the wood. “Whitby put that demon in my father, Madeline. He knew it had gone into me. He was waiting for it to turn me into a man. I told him you had it now, which was a mistake. He’s going to come for you.”
He waited, breathless, for some response.
There was none.
He swore and kicked at the stairs. “Damn your pride, Madeline Elliott!” He kicked again. “Is it keeping you warm under your bed? Is it better than coming down these stairs, better than letting me help you?” He advanced a step, his heart pounding now. “Madeline, I would take you out of here. I would take you far away, to places no one could reach you. I have been so many places now, and there are things I have seen… Everything I saw, Madeline, every time all I wanted to do was turn to you and ask you if it made your heart dance with wonder too. And you were never there. You should have been. Let me take you now. Let me help you, Madeline.” He closed his hand over the medallion hanging from his neck. “I can feel you, love. I can feel you up there. I know you are there the same way you knew I was coming, so you could hide.” He gentled his voice. “Please—please, Madeline. Please come down to me.”
He waited again.
There was still nothing but silence from above.
Jonathan felt his heart catch, then ache; then, as he had taught himself with her so long ago, he let his heart harden too. He pushed off the stairs and backed away. “Very well. You have made your choice.” He put his hands in his pockets and walked back down the hall.
This time he made it as far as the kitchen.
He stormed back, slammed his fist into the wall, knocked the mirror to the floor, then tossed it across the room, making it shatter.
“I loved you,” he whispered angrily at the stairs. “All the time I was gone, all the time I was in hell, I loved you. I dreamed of you. I fantasized of you. Oh, the fantasies I had of you, of making love to you, of holding you, of dancing with you—of just looking at you, of touching your face, your hair. When I thought the demon was going to take you, I died so many times. Do you know what hell it is, Madeline, to die over and over again, but to never find peace? Do you have any idea what that is like?
“I loved you, and even though you are a stupid, pride-filled wench, I love you now. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and wait for you to get your head out of your arse!” He laughed. “It does, I suppose, mean I am going to run around like a madman trying to make compensations for the fact that you are a prideful idiot who will not accept help. Because I can’t just forget you. That’s been made plain. And every time you die, Madeline, I die. Every time. Even when you are completely stupid and bring it on yourself. Is it the same for you? Do you ache when I ache? Or are you up there laughing? But no, you won’t be. You’ll be up there crying, sobbing where no one can see. Well let me tell you this, little miss witch. When you found out what I did with your cousin, when you heard I betrayed you, and when I admitted it, you only asked me one question, and you only asked it once. You asked, ‘why?’ And I did not answer, because even though I had done it to hurt you, to get your attention, I couldn’t bear to hurt you to your face. But Whitby’s sadistic scheme must have worked after all, because I find I am now, after carrying hell inside me for ten years, man—or bastard—enough to tell you.”
He leaned forward on the banister and whispered, but he made certain it was loud enough for her to hear.
“Because of your pride, Madeline. Because I was tired of being held at arm’s length from you by that cold, heartless pride.”
This time when he left, he didn’t turn around and go back.
He let himself out through the house and headed back across the moor. He considered staying in the bushes to watch for her, but he was very sure she knew how to watch for him, witchlike, and that she would never let him find her if she did not want to be found. Instead he stopped at the Goddess tree.
He leaned against the bark and closed his eyes, taking comfort from the familiar rustling of the leaves in the branches above. He ached at the thought that she might be in trouble and he had waited too long to let her come to him. He raged at the idea that she had heard him speak and still hadn’t revealed herself.
Pride, Madeline. It will kill you in the end.
He sighed, a ragged, fearful sound, then headed back to the abbey. No more cleaning or improvements. No more fussing and waiting. There was a fight coming? Fine. He knew nothing of magic. But he knew fighting.
He doubled his pace again and hurried back to the abbey.
* * *
As Jonathan returned to the abbey, in the village, Emily was running errands.
She hadn’t wanted to leave Madeline at all, but she’d already put off rounds as long as she dared, and so she told herself it would be a brief trip to take care of only the barest of necessities. She’d planned to do just a bit of buying and selling, picking up some flour and selling a few bundles of lavender and reassuring regular patients that Madeline would be by soon. But when she ventured into town, she found a quick, quiet trip wasn’t possible. As soon as she arrived, she found herself surrounded by whispers and dubious glances wherever she went. Emily didn’t understand why this was happening, and it made her uncomfortable. No one ever looked at her. No one ever paid any attention to her, but suddenly everyone was whispering and pointing and, frankly, looking angry. She hugged her bundle of lavender tighter to her chest. But why? What could she possibly have done to deserve this?
And then she ran into Alan, and she learned the answer.
She stopped short as he stepped out of his carriage; it was the first time she had seen him since that night in the fog, and she had not yet sorted out in her head how she should behave toward him. She knew she should be furious with him, that for him to have not just ignored her safety but to have put her in harm’s way to secure his own escape was deplorable, but that was just the trouble. She could not believe he had done such a thing. It was not like him. It must have only seemed like that. He could not have been so kind to her, so flattering before, and then behave in such a way. But now that she stood in front of him, now that he was bearing down on her with such cold intensity, she began to doubt.
He didn’t even nod a greeting at her, only took her elbow and led her farther into the street. “You will walk with me,” he said.
Emily tried to keep up, though she stumbled over her skirts in the rough ruts of the road because he was moving too quickly; the load of lavender left her with no free hands to lift her skirts. “Alan, what has happened?” she asked aloud and privately added, Please explain this behavior to me. Explain why you are so cold. Explain why you have not called to see how I escaped the alchemist or the beasts. Please make your actions make sense.
He stopped walking when she tripped a third time. He turned to face her, his eyes sharp and angry, his jaw rigid. He gripped her arm tightly.
“Is this some sort of joke? Is that what the two of you are thinking? Is this some sort of revenge because I haven’t paid call on you since we were together last week? Is that what this is?”
His grip was hurting her. Emily tried to pull away from it. “Alan, please, I don’t understand—”
He reached up and took hold of her other arm as well, gripping it with just as much force. On the street behind them, passersby had stopped to watch, and heads soon appeared at doorways and faces at windows. They watched the scene on the edge of the street intently.
“You knew this was the month I was taking over for my father. You knew this was when I was being observed by the State, that this was my moment to attract attention and perhaps”—he lowered his voice to an angry whisper—“Goddess willing, get myself out of this sinkhole of a parish! You knew! And what did you do? What did you and your sister do? You cover for her while she runs off with her old lover. In my parish, with the State coming!”
Emily blushed hotly. “Alan, you don’t understand! Jonathan was hurt. She went to heal him—”
“I heard the rumors, Emily! I know the old stories!” He was practically shaking her now, using her body to emphasize each word. “And I notice she’s not out here defending them, is she? She’s not out in her habit, healing. She has you running around doing her work so she can bring down the wrath of the witches’ Council on us, on me, because our witch has turned into a whore!”
Emily’s teeth were hurting from banging together, and she wanted to cry, to shrink into herself, but she was too stunned, too shocked to do anything but bear his hurtful words and his hands. She could not look away from his cold, angry eyes.
A shadow fell over Emily, and a brown hand closed over Alan’s shoulder, its fingers curling into the muscle. A soft, strangely accented voice spoke near Emily’s ear.
“You will let the lady go,” the voice said with quiet authority that left no room for argument.
Alan did, slowly, with a sort of reluctant embarrassment, not for what he was doing so much as being called out for it. He released Emily, shook the stranger from his arm, and glared at him. “What foreign trash are you, to demand anything of the acting magistrate?”
“I am Timothy Fielding,” the stranger said, still calm, “equerry to Jonathan Perry.”
The now considerable audience gasped at this; Alan gave the stranger his full attention, and Emily used this moment to step back and to the side and glance at her rescuer. He was indeed foreign and quite tall. He was brown from head to toe, and his hair was black and wavy and curling near his shoulders. He had a pleasant, almost pretty face, but he was not smiling.
“As Mr. Perry’s equerry, I am also a subject of the House of Whitby. You may be the magistrate of this parish, Mr. Lennox, but not of Mr. Perry, nor of me. I may be foreign-born, but from the standpoint of the law, I am as Etsian as you are, and in point of fact, higher ranking than you.” He smiled, a gesture with no warmth or friendliness of any kind. “I believe you were interrogating Miss Elliott regarding her sister’s activity with Mr. Perry. You will discontinue this, and you will put any questions on this matter to me. You will trouble this young lady no further, and you will not put a hand on her again in public or in private. Is this understood?”
Emily felt a hand gently brush her elbow; she startled when she saw Stephen there. He was out of breath, and he had sweat on his brow. He nodded to her, looking concerned, then looked up at Alan, angry.
But Alan was too caught up in his own fury to notice anyone else, even a Perry. “You dare order me!” He took a step closer to Timothy Fielding. “I’ve heard about you. You’re that love slave Perry has as a servant. You’re no equerry. You belong in a pillory. I won’t take orders from a rotten foreign molly.”
Fielding’s already dark eyes darkened further, and when he spoke, his voice sounded dangerously quiet. “Mr. Lennox. Do not insult the intelligence of these people. They know full well that to accuse a gentleman of a House of a lie is a serious offense. I believe it is quite clear that I am speaking here in full legal representation of Jonathan Perry; many of them have already seen my seal, young man. On top of your other slurs, will you add to it that I should produce it for you too, and call them liars as well? Should I anticipate your words, perhaps, as a formal challenge? Will you be sending a representative to fight me in your stead, or shall I inform our lawyer to pay call upon you?”
Alan had gone white. He glared at Emily as if this too were somehow her fault. Stephen took a step forward and moved between them, glaring right back at Alan, who at last realized his House had a blood representative present. Likely with images of Whitby’s potential wrath in mind, he took a step backward.
Fielding’s smile turned feral. “Perhaps I have inflamed your intent. Perhaps you were only acting in the interest of protecting your parish, and now that you have verified I am not some charlatan out to swindle your good people, perhaps you would like this moment to retract your hasty insults? As one gentleman to another, sir, would you care to withdraw?”
Stephen’s hand on Emily’s elbow tightened. She watched, unsure of how to feel as Alan shrank back, furious but subdued. “I withdraw,” he said through his teeth, his words barely audible. His eyes, however, promised he would not soon forget this.
Neither Emily, Stephen, nor Mr. Fielding moved as they watched Alan turn and march back down the street toward the inn. Once he was gone, however, Fielding turned and nodded to Stephen. “Come,” he said, his voice much gentler now. “We must take her out of the middle of the street.”
They flanked her, Stephen on her left and Mr. Fielding on her right, leading her in the opposite direction of where Alan had gone.
“I have deliveries,” Emily whispered, clutching tight to her papered bundle of lavender. “And some shopping—” She cut herself off as she realized people were still staring, watching. The faces swam before her, and she cut herself off, feeling suddenly so light-headed that she was sure if the two men did not each have a hold on her, she would certainly fall down.
“I will finish your errands for you, Miss Emily,” Mr. Fielding said in a tone that brooked no argument.
“We have you, Emily,” Stephen said. “It’s all right now.”
To her horror, Emily burst into swift, silent tears.
“Hush, hush now.” Timothy Fielding handed her his handkerchief and moved in closer, shielding her from prying eyes with his body, moving them more quickly now until they passed the blacksmith and headed down a side street. He had his arm around her shoulders now, but it was Stephen who took her elbow, steering her
gently.
“I don’t understand,” Emily whispered, pressing the equerry’s sweet-smelling linen at the corners of her eyes in a vain attempt to stop her tears. “I don’t understand why he said such things. I would never! Madeline would never—” She cut herself off, pressing the handkerchief over her mouth to stifle a sob.
“He will not trouble you again, Miss Elliott,” Mr. Fielding said. “I promise you that.”
But Emily could not stop the torrent now. “I don’t understand what I did!” she whispered. “We… He was so… He had… He said… I let him—” She shut her eyes and shook her head, feeling sick and foolish. “Such a ninny, such a foolish ninny, to ever think that he—that I was good enough!”
Strong hands pressed her shoulders down, and she felt the world tilt a little before a bench appeared for her to sit on. Stephen had not let go of her hand, and he was now crouching before her. She looked at him, realized what she had just confessed, and turned as red as an apple.
“I have deliveries,” she whispered, trying to take her hand back, clutching the lavender tightly. “I need to take this to the g-grocer.”
Mr. Fielding gently pried the lavender from her grip. “I will make your delivery for you, Miss Elliott. Mr. Perry will see you safely home, where I hope you will take some rest.”
His kindness made Emily want to cry all over again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because it needs to be done,” he said. “Because Jonathan would do it if he were here. Because you were in distress, and because your sister has yet to claim any sort of payment from Jonathan for her considerable services.”
“She’s just been so tired,” Emily said. “But she doesn’t take payment, not like you mean.” She started to cry again, hating that she was being so soppy, but she couldn’t seem to stop. “It isn’t true! He said such horrible things, and they aren’t true!” But she thought of the still-missing shift and added silently, I hope they aren’t true.
The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil Page 24