Dark Prince

by Eve Silver

  “It is tonight,” she said, horrified by dawning understanding. “You do this thing tonight. Your grand scheme to destroy my father. Make him pay.” She had thought there was time, that with her steady love she would soften him, ease the torments that drove him. Oh, foolish girl. Foolish girl. “Tell me, Aidan, what is your plan?” She studied his face. Did she know him? Did she know him at all?

  A part of her wished to protect her father, to save him from harm. The larger part understood that he had made his choices years ago, done things that he would need to atone for either in this world or the next. Gideon Heatherington had ripped apart Aidan’s life, consigned him and who knew how many others to immeasurable suffering. She knew that now. Believed it as truth.

  Her hand convulsed in the fringe of her shawl. Her father was a monster. It was a terrible thing for a daughter to recognize, a thing that could destroy her if she let it.

  The larger part of her wanted to save Aidan from himself, from his torments and shadows.

  “My own demons have made me wise,” she said. “I know with certainty that whatever you do, you can never reclaim your lost years, never clean the turbid river of your sorrow. Never strain your spilled blood from where it stained the ground and mixed with the sea.

  “You think your vengeance will heal you—” Her voice broke. “But I know it will steal your humanity, leave you an empty husk.”

  “I make no claim to any vestige of humanity.”

  “How?” she demanded. “How will you do this?”

  “The barrels will be left where they can be found in the Crown Inn,” he said. “The revenue men, along with Squire Craddick, have been summoned. They are likely already on their way there now.”

  “They will find the barrels. Use them as evidence of my father’s guilt,” she said. ‘‘You will see my father convicted for a crime he did not commit?”

  He leaned close, his expression hewn of stone. “Jane, he did commit this crime, and worse. Perhaps not at this time, with these barrels, but he is a wrecker, a killer.”

  Around them, men continued to move the barrels in a steady stream, like ants walking a single line.

  “Then why did you not simply have him sent to debtor’s prison in the first place? Why this elaborate scheme?”

  “Because you might have found a way to see him free of debtor’s gaol. And because the punishment must exactly fit the crime. I have no interest in seeing him in prison. I want him sent to the hulks, as I was.” He took a slow breath in, out. “He stole my life. He murdered my mother. He stole the life of my father. He saw me condemned to hell for no greater crime than surviving the wreck that he orchestrated. I will see Gideon Heatherington live the selfsame nightmare. A fitting justice, is it not?”

  Too fitting. Too perfect. She shook her head. “This will bring you neither peace nor joy.” When it was done, her father made to pay, and Aidan greeted a new day with his torment still biting at him, when he was finally cut loose from the sole purpose that had spurred him these many long years, what would he have left? What would drive him then?

  “This will destroy you.” She could not bear it.

  He spread his hands before him, strong hands. Her lover’s hands. “It will ease me, Jane.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you think to convince me that he does not deserve retribution?” Words spoken in low, harsh tones.

  “No. Not that.” Her voice broke. “I had hoped that I could...”

  “Could what, Jane?” His gaze burned into her, seeing her heart, baring her soul.

  Her lips parted. The room darkened about her and she was lost in his eyes. Gray. Blue.

  Almost purple in the frugal light.

  “Could what?” he asked again, softer, kinder.

  There was a hard pressure in her chest. Tears clogged her throat, and her heart pounded so hard that it left her dizzy and choked. Feeling as though she was falling off a sharp cliff, she opened her mouth and let the words escape, praying, praying. If only she could sway him.

  “I hoped you would come to love me,” she said, defiant now, and desperate.

  His eyes widened a fraction.

  She tore her gaze away. From across the room, the scrape of the barrels on the stone floor as the men dragged and lifted them was loud in her ears, and the sound of her own pulse, so fast and wild.

  Catching her chin between his thumb and first finger, Aidan tipped her face up, holding her only hard enough that she could not easily turn away. In his eyes she imagined a flicker of emotion, perhaps regret.

  “I thought I could make you love me,” she repeated, sad now. “That I would be enough.”

  The brush of his fingers on her cheek was gentle, and she realized she was crying. His chest expanded in a slow, deep breath.

  “I do, Jane.”

  Her breath stopped and her pulse stopped and the world fell away.

  “I do love you. And you are enough. More than enough. You are everything to me. But my vengeance, I cannot renounce.” His words shattered her. “I warned you, I am a man of dogged intent. I cannot betray the goals of more than a decade, forget the vows made in blood. I cannot betray who I am and the fires that forged me. I cannot betray the nameless others, other innocents your father harmed who have no life, no voice, no hope for peace unless I lay them to rest.”

  A tight and brutal fist closed around her heart. He did love her, and it was not enough to give him peace, not enough to free him from the shackles of hate.

  “There is a difference between cannot and will not,” she whispered.

  “Aye. Will not, then.” His thumb brushed her cheek. “Jane, love, I have almost no regret for what I will do. You must know that. The only regret I have is that it will cause you pain.”

  A hard press of his lips to hers, and then he was gone, leaving her standing with the clawed shreds of her heart bleeding in her hands.

  * * *

  Light gone, air gone, only hopelessness and despair left behind. Jane felt frozen, as though she had fallen into the ocean and sunk into the darkest, coldest depths.

  Aidan loved her, a wonder, a gift, but one touched by darkness, shriveled and withered.

  He loved her. And it was not enough to save him.

  In all her imaginings, she had never considered that he would love her and still seek his vengeance. She recognized now her hubris, or perhaps it was only naiveté. Still, the end was the same, and she was weary to the bone, heartsick.

  Her feet dragged as she trudged through the dark and damp corridor back toward the library. Stepping from the passageway, she could summon no surprise at finding Hawker waiting for her. She hesitated, wary of him for she had never ascertained exactly why he had been at her cousin Dolly’s that day.

  “Why are you not with him?” she asked dully.

  Hawker took the lamp from her hand and pushed the door to the passage shut behind her. “He sent me to be with you.”

  “My jailer?” she asked, and sighed at his obvious distress. “I am sorry. That was unkind of me.”

  “No… I mean...” His voice trailed away and his eyes slid from hers.

  “You know, then, what he has gone to do?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It will destroy him.”

  “Your father?” Hawker asked, but she could tell from his tone that he knew of whom she spoke.

  Still, she shook her head, and said, “Aidan.” Her voice caught. “He will find no peace in this, and what will be left to him then? He will have no one to hate. No one to blame. There will be only the poison in his heart with no release. It will turn in on itself, a rot that cannot be excised.”

  Hawker looked stricken, and she turned away, her composure near to shattering. After a long moment, she turned back to face him.

  “So he set you to watch me. Again. It seems as though we are inseparable, you and I.”

  “Yes.” Hawker gave a lopsided smile. “He bid me see you safe from harm, though I’ve been less than a fine hand at tha
t job, haven’t I?”

  She thought of the time he had steered her from misstep as they walked on the moor, and the dangers they had faced together on the Bodmin Road. He had been shot trying to keep her safe. But one memory nagged at her. “What harm did he think would befall me at my cousin Dolly’s cottage?” she asked.

  Hawker stared at her in obvious confusion.

  She pictured the flowered china on Dolly’s table, remembered the feeling of being watched, and the odd coincidence of Hawker’s arrival that day.

  Nothing made sense. Nothing. She felt as though she was peering into a murky pond, desperately trying to see to the bottom. If she could only dip her hand and sweep aside the muck…

  “You were to protect me at the New Inn, and again on the Bodmin Road, but what were you doing at my cousin Dolly’s cottage?” she clarified. “No.” She held up her hand, palm forward as she read his intent in his eyes. He meant to lie to her. “At least give me the courtesy of the truth.”

  His gaze slid away, then back. For an instant his lips tightened and she thought he would choose to prevaricate after all.

  He surprised her when he said, “Captain— I mean, Mr. Warrick has been working with Squire Craddick. There’s wreckers about, and His Lordship has no tolerance for that. He wants them gone.”

  Jane nodded her encouragement, but said nothing.

  “I was sent to your cousin’s home looking for anything to tie to the sinking of the Patience Grace, near a month past, on a fine, clear night. The ship was there and then gone, and Squire Craddick knew she was carrying boxes of gold coins, blocks of tin, coffee, sugar. None of that washed ashore. Only a chest of books, and the captain’s identification, and other small things. But nothing, not a single thing of great value. ’Twas as if someone had taken the finest pickings and left the slough to wash ashore. The squire found it more than passing strange, and His Lordship agreed. They believe wreckers sank her.”

  She remembered the man that Aidan had ridden off with on the Bodmin Road, the sensation that he had seemed familiar to her. Now she knew. Squire Craddick. Of course.

  “And what has the Patience Grace to do with my cousin Dolly? Surely you do not imagine that she is a wrecker?”

  “The Patience Grace carried passengers, as well. Some brought goods with them. Clothes.” He stared hard at her. “Fine china.”

  Jane swallowed a gasp, an image of Dolly’s plate and cup shimmering through her thoughts.

  “You see, nothing washed ashore,” he continued. “Nothing, save what I’ve told you, and then the body of that dead girl, Ginny Ward.”

  So that is what Ginny had seen. She had watched Digory Tubb wreck a ship. She had died for what she had witnessed and, based on what Digory had said earlier, her abhorrence of the deed. As well as her rejection of Digory Tubb.

  Wrapping her arms about herself, Jane felt her unease swell like a dark tide. “Aidan was on the cliff that morning when Jem and Robert found her.”

  “I was with him,” Hawker said. “We came too late. It was a bitter thing. We had hoped to find her alive.”

  “Surely you know it was Digory Tubb. Dolly Gwyn has no part in this horror,” Jane said. “There is no connection there, none whatsoever. What could you imagine you would find in Dolly’s cottage?”

  Hawker’s mouth tightened. “Not Dolly...” he said. “But one who tosses her the occasional crumb.”

  Jane waited for the denial to spring to her lips, but it never came. Because she knew. She knew who helped support Dolly, who gave her the occasional extra coin or little gift.

  A gift like a plate and cup with flowers that were a perfect match to those on Wenna Tubb’s table.

  Gideon Heatherington.

  Her father had been there the night the Patience Grace went down. He had sent her to the depths, and all those aboard with her.

  Jane pressed the back of her hand against her lips.

  “His Lordship suspects your father leads the wreckers.” Hawker ducked his head, looked away.

  ’Twas one thing to know that her father had done terrible things long ago, another thing entirely to understand that he did them still. What had she imagined? That his deeds were buried in a time before he met her mother? That his crimes were limited to a dark and distant past?

  She had deluded herself.

  Suddenly, she thought of Aidan’s story, the one that tarred her father with horrific deeds. She thought, too, of the night almost the entire town had stood on the beach watching the dying ship. She recalled her father’s dry clothes, and the light she had seen to the north, and the wagon.

  Had her father been on that wagon? Had he set a light to lure the ship to its doom?

  What was she to believe? What was the truth? Dear heaven, she had spent weeks suspecting Aidan of every horror, and now she was forced to paint her own father with the colors of a villain.

  Enough. Enough.

  “I am going, right now,” she said fiercely. “To Pentreath. To the Crown Inn.”

  Hawker stepped forward, and she glared him down.

  “You may accompany me. Or you may remain here,” she offered. “But you will not stop me.”

  “’Tis too late,” he muttered. “The deed is surely done by now. The kegs in place for discovery. Perhaps your father has already been arrested.”

  “I will see it with my own eyes.”

  Jane limped to her chamber as quickly as her twisted limb would allow. Her hand hovered over the cloak Aidan had given her, soft, warm, beautiful. She narrowed her eyes in defiance and closed her fingers on her old scarlet mantle.

  At the last moment, she took up Aidan’s cloak instead.

  Swinging it over her shoulders, she went in search of Hawker and found him waiting for her with a small, open trap that balanced on two wheels, harnessed to a pretty gray. For an instant, she wondered where the usual coach was, and then decided it did not matter.

  She climbed into the trap and felt a moment’s unease as Hawker took up the reins, wondering if perhaps she trusted too easily in his words and explanations.

  Then she looked to her own judgment. The man had taken a bullet for her, had risked his life on the Bodmin Road. She would not sit here and suspect him of affiliation with the wreckers, spinning needless complication. The situation was dire enough without adding melodrama to the mix.

  Heavy, low clouds blotted the moon. The night was damp and raw, the air bitter with a harsh wind. Drawing the hood of her cloak up, Jane was glad of her choice and the relative warmth. The crash of the waves came at her from all sides as they crossed the causeway, and then faded to a dull and distant roar once they drew closer to Pentreath.

  Hawker cleared his throat, and his hand strayed to the pistol at his belt. Her heart racing, Jane curled her fingers over the side of the trap. All she could hear was the clop, clop, clop of the horse’s hooves on the road, too loud.

  Finally, finally, the Crown Inn was there before her. And she was too late. Her heart near to stopped. There was Aidan’s coach in the yard, and at least a dozen horses. Squire Craddick and his men. They milled in the yard, but none entered the inn. She wondered if they had found the barrels, if her father had already been dragged away.

  As the trap drew to a halt, she had to stop and force a breath before climbing down. She felt sick and dizzy, seized by a horrified desperation, and her mother’s admonitions from years long past rang in her thoughts.

  Watch out for your father. Do you understand, Jane?

  She had promised her mother. Promised her. And she had failed.

  What had she imagined she could do here? Had she supposed she might turn back the hands of time and set all to rights? And even if she could, what was right? Everything Aidan had told her was true, but Gideon Heatherington was still her father…

  And then came a cruel and vicious murmur that stopped dead the whispers of the night and stilled even the slightest current of air. “There’s a dead man within. Murdered.”

  Chapter 16

  Jane
stumbled forward, away from Hawker and the two-wheeled trap, toward the open door of the bar and the crowd of men that blocked it.

  A dead man. Murdered. Terror tore through her, hot as fire, a bright pain.

  Aidan.

  PleasePleasePlease—

  Heart pounding, she skirted the edges of the group, but could get nowhere near the door. In desperation, she shoved her way forward into the thick of the throng. Above her head the familiar sign of the Crown Inn creaked back and forth, and the buzz of agitated conversation rushed around her, over her.

  She smelled a faint tinge of gunpowder, the acrid scent out of place in the mingled miscellany of ale and smoke and sweat that wafted from the open door of the pub. A ghastly apprehension sucked at her. Raising her elbows, she tried to push through, but there were too many people blocking her way, too many bodies wrapped in heavy coats for her to see anything save their backs.

  Her skin was clammy, her palms damp.

  She turned to her right, her left, rising up on her toes, her gaze raking the yard in frantic glimpses caught through the milling crowd. Her weak limb screamed in protest, but she held her vantage, desperate for some sign of Aidan.

  He was not there. Oh, God. He was not there.

  From the jumble of men’s voices, she caught snippets of information that twisted a cruel knot of fear deep in her belly, tighter and tighter.

  “...shot him dead, cold as you please...”

  “Clean through the heart.”

  “...will be the better for his loss.”

  “Who?” Jane caught the arm of the man closest to her. Aidan? Her father? “Who is dead?”

  The man she clutched glanced at her.

  “Who is dead?” she asked again, her voice high and thin and desperate, her heart battering against her ribs.

  “Go on with you,” he said, dismissive, not recognizing her in her fine cloak with the hood pulled up to shadow her face. “There’ll be gossip aplenty to hear soon enough.” He moved away and was lost in the shifting crowd.

  Wrapped in misery, Jane pushed and pressed, but she could not budge the crowd as he had with his broad bulk. She scanned the area, searching for Hawker. He was not by the trap, and she saw no sign of him.