But even staying alive took too much effort for him at times.
He’d been hoping to die for the past three years.
“There is someone who comes once a week,” he said. “But I have no need for servants. Is that what you are? A servant?”
“I am a very good maid,” she said. “Perhaps I could help the person who comes to Blackmoor once a week. I could…”
He cut her off, rather rudely. “I told you there were no positions,” he said. “It is unfortunate that your coming here was a wasted effort, but you will leave now.”
There was a pause before she answered. “It is night and the storm is lashing the land,” she said. “May I at least remain until the storm stops and morning comes?”
“You may as long as you do not disturb me.”
“But you are ill,” she persisted. “I have brought tea and gruel. You should eat something if you are to get well.”
He snorted. “Well,” he muttered. “I do not care if I get well or not. Does that shock you, Miss Emma Fairweather?”
“It is your life, sir. If you do not wish to get well, that is your choice.”
“It is, indeed. But should you try to heal me, it would be a wasted effort on your part.”
“Healing the sick is never a wasted effort,” she said. “My father used to say so.”
“Was he a surgeon?”
“He was.”
He grunted. “I hate surgeons,” he said. “Lying bastards. I hate anything to do with surgeons, which means I more than likely hate you, too. Will you leave me now?”
“If that is your wish.”
“It is. But before you go, bring me my bottle.”
“What bottle?” She sounded confused.
He grabbed the big walking stick that was next to the bed, the one he always kept at hand to help him find his way. He thumped it loudly on the floor.
“My bottle,” he demanded. “It should be near the bed. Or perhaps it is near the hearth. I might have left it there before I became ill. Find it, you dull girl.”
The woman moved away from the bed and the man with the big stick. He could hear her shuffling about until her shuffling stopped and then deliberate footsteps came to the bed.
“Here it is,” she said. “It was over near the…”
He cut her off by grabbing at it. His hand shot out, grabbing wildly until he found it. Even laying down as he was, he drank of the cheap wine, the stuff that the old cook brought him every week. She usually brought him three or four bottles, but those were gone in the first few days and he had to wait the rest of the week for a new supply to come. This particular bottle was the last of the inferior, tart red wine.
He drained the contents.
Tossing it towards the hearth, it smashed on the wall.
“You are not dull after all,” he said as the powerful wine began to course through his veins. “You knew enough to do as I said and bring me my drink. For that, you may remain as long as you wish provided you do not disturb me.”
He could hear her lingering at the end of his bed. “If there are no positions here, then I shall be gone in the morning,” she said, rather stiffly. “But I thank you for shelter for the night. If you will excuse me, I will trouble you no further.”
Her footsteps moved towards the door but he stopped her.
“Wait,” he said. “Do not go just yet. Come back here. You said you’d brought me tea?”
“Aye.”
He put his hand up to his head, feeling that he was indeed with fever. Heavily, he sighed. “I cannot remember when I have not had this fever,” he said. “It has been days at the very least, perhaps even weeks. I pray for death but it does not come. That is why I do not want you to tend me. Do you understand?”
“Aye.”
“Then the rules are established.”
“Aye.”
He suddenly shifted, sitting up in bed and holding his head because it was aching a great deal. It had been a very long time since he’d had the opportunity to converse with someone, anyway, and the wine was loosening his tongue.
“Since I have given you permission to remain here tonight, you will entertain me,” he said. “Do you know how to sing?”
There was a long pause before she replied. “You told me not to disturb you.”
“Entertaining me and disturbing me are two different things.”
“Then I cannot sing.”
He thought on that. “I suppose that was too much to ask considering you had come here looking for a position as a maid,” he grunted. “I suppose maids are not trained to sing. Where did you come from, anyway? I asked you once before but you did not answer me.”
He could hear her shifting around, perhaps nervously. “Scarborough.”
“And your family?”
“I have none.”
“But you said your father was a surgeon.”
“My father is dead, sir.”
“What happened?”
What happened…
Chapter Five
The Awakening
That question rang in Emma’s mind.
What happened?
For someone who had told her not to bother him, he was being terribly intrusive. He’d awoken from his fevered stupor, rude and gruff, and the truth was that she intended to stay away from him for the evening. She didn’t want to be in the presence of someone so clearly bitter. She’d had enough of that as of late, mostly from herself, and she didn’t need an echo of the cynicism she felt over life in general. Whoever the man was, he was clearly unhappy.
So was she.
She turned for the door.
“I will trouble you no longer, sir,” she said, ignoring the question. Quickly, she picked up the candle nub because the corridors of this ghostly place really were quite dark. “If you are hungry, the tea and gruel are next to your bed, though they are cooling by now. Good evening to you.”
She could hear him calling at her as she rushed from the room, out into the corridor where the cat was following along at her heels. As she headed for the stairs, the cat cut in front of her and almost tripped her. She eyed the feline unhappily as it perched on the edge of the steps as if uncaring that it had nearly sent her plummeting to her death.
Silly cat!
When Emma was certain the cat wasn’t going to dart out in front of her again, which was never a certainty when it came to cats, she quickly took the stairs and returned to the kitchen to make herself her own hot cup of tea before finding a couch to sleep on. She wasn’t going to return to the second floor, where she knew there were beds, because the sick man was up there and she didn’t want him wandering into her room while she was asleep.
Better to stay as far away as she could from him.
Down in the kitchen, the fire in the heart was still burning and the pot of water she’d put over the flames was simmering. Using some of the water, she made herself a cup of tea, hot and strong, and sat down to drink it. It was fortifying. There was also some gruel left in the small iron pot and she used her finger to scoop it up, eating the first real food she’d had in a couple of days. When the tea was gone, the porridge finished, and the fire covered once again, Emma went on the hunt for a couch.
She found it in the haunting reception room.
It wasn’t even covered up to preserve the fabric cushions. Years of dust had settled on it and she had to beat the cushions out a bit to shake out the dust before she was able to lay on them. Using her satchel as a pillow, she lay on the old couch in the bereft chamber, staring at a ceiling that had once been painting with glorious scenes and colors.
In fact, the entire room had been.
In the weak light of her tiny candle, which was still burning, Emma could see the room itself; the walls were a pale green and upon those walls were painted hummingbirds and ribbons, all in a pattern, all of them dancing around the corners of the walls and up to the ceilings where there was an explosion of detail.
Birds, flowers, cherubs and more were above her head
. She couldn’t see most of the detail because it was so dark, but what she could see was exquisite. And then, there was the painting over the old, dark hearth, the one she’d seen when she’d first entered Blackmoor Hall. A young woman in a white dress, her yellow hair curled around her face. She was quite pretty and Emma found herself staring at her.
There was something innocent and loving about that face.
Sitting up from the couch, she found herself moving closer to the painting to get a better look. The girl had a faint smile on her lips and a kitten on her lap. It took Emma a moment to realize that it was the same cat that had nearly tripped her on the stairs, a black and white feline that was sitting contentedly on the young woman’s lap.
And with that realization, she found herself very curious.
A faded house and a man living all alone with the cat that appeared in the picture of a young woman. Who was the young woman? A wife? A sister? That same curiosity had her moving to the walls with the painted birds on them which, upon closer inspection, had a good deal of gold in them.
Rich.
Had Blackmoor Hall once been so rich?
It was all a great mystery.
With the puzzling situation of Blackmoor on her mind, she turned back for the couch. She had just sat down on the old cushions when she heard tapping at the door, a hollow kind of rapping as if someone were doing it with a club or stick. Looking over to the partially open parlor door, she could see a figure in the darkness.
“Are you in here?”
It was the man from upstairs.
“I am,” Emma said. “I came down here to sleep so that I would not disturb you.”
He entered the room, a walking stick in his hand, the same stick that had tapped against the parlor door. It was quite dark, even with her tiny candle, but he didn’t bump into anything. He moved like a man who knew the room intimately, moving over towards the hearth as he coughed and wheezed, indicative of his illness.
“’Tis cold in here,” he said. “Why did you not start a fire?”
Emma watched his darkened form over by the hearth. “I did not wish to impose,” she said. “Fuel for the fire is expensive. I would not presume to use that which does not belong to me.”
He remained over by the hearth. “You are considerate,” he said. “And I was rude. I do not often have visitors, so my social skills are sorely lacking these days. You showed proper concern for my illness, enough to make me tea and gruel, which was kind.”
“It was no trouble, but I am sorry to have disturbed you in my attempt to help.”
He waved her off. “I am not used to being helped,” he said. “As you can see, I live here alone. I am alone.”
Emma received the strange impression that he wanted to talk. He’d come all the way downstairs to find her and now stood, lingering, as if there were something more that needed to be said.
She responded to his statement.
“Were you born here?” she asked.
“Here?” he repeated. “Aye, I was. Blackmoor Hall is my home. I was born here and I shall die here. My name is Asher de Russe and I am the lord of Blackmoor Hall. My formal title is Baron Westhorpe, if titles are something that impress you. The house, the titles, became mine when my father passed away about four years ago this October.”
And you have let the house go to ruin in that time? Emma didn’t say what she was thinking, but it was clear that he’d let everything waste away. “Asher is an… interesting name, my lord,” she said. “Is it a family name?”
He shook his head. “My father was a scholar,” he said. “He came from a long line of warriors and soldiers, and I fear my grandfather never got over the fact that his only son preferred books to battle. I was named for a Phoenician god of war, Asher or Ashtar or Astarth, as he is sometimes known. His counterpart is Astarte, the goddess of war. If I were born a girl, that was to be my name. Astarte is also the evening star and I was born on a night when it was particularly bright. Destiny and all that, if you believe in that sort of thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was meant for war.”
“And were you?”
“Not as everyone had hoped.”
The bitter young lord had quite a story to tell. The more he spoke, the more he seemed to loosen up. He was still hacking and coughing, and Emma knew that he was still ill, but he seemed much more alert.
Friendly, even.
Perhaps it was all of the wine he’d ingested.
“Astarte,” she repeated softly. “It is a pretty name. Did your father school you on ancient deities, then? You seem to know much.”
He sighed, which ended in a coughing fit. When the fit subsided, he spoke with a scratchy voice. “My father was a very learned man who had a fool for a son,” he said. “And you, Miss Emma Fairweather? Your father was a surgeon. Did he school you on medicine?”
She nodded. “He did,” she said. “He was a very good surgeon and my mother was an excellent nurse. They made a good team.”
“And they are both dead?”
Her eagerness to talk abruptly faded, as it often did when speaking of her parents. “Aye,” she finally said. “Both.”
“I asked you what happened when you were in my room but you changed the subject,” he said, quite astute. “Was it a terrible tragedy, then?”
“Does it matter?”
He snorted. “It does not,” he said flatly. “But you think you are the only one who has ever known a tragedy? How very selfish of you. And foolish. Do you see the painting over the hearth? The one of the girl in the white dress?”
Emma instinctively looked to the hearth, of the woman with the cat on her lap. “Aye.”
“Her name was Eulalie,” he said. “I was to marry her but I killed her before we could take our vows. You are not the only one to know tragedy, Miss Emma Fairweather.”
I killed her.
Those three words rang in her head. Was he confessing to a murder? Grabbing her satchel, Emma stood up quickly, moving away from him, heading for the parlor door. His head turned in her direction.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
Emma was at the door, backing away from him. “I… I shall find shelter elsewhere.”
“There is no shelter for miles in any direction. The moors are dangerous on a night like this.”
“No more dangerous than it is inside this house.”
He paused in the darkness as Emma turned and ran for the door. “I did not murder her,” he called after her. “But I did kill her. It was an accident, but it was my fault. Is that why you are running?”
Emma was just about to yank open the entry door but she came to a halt. Her hand was on the latch and she could feel the door shuddering under the winds from the storm outside. No, she really didn’t want to run out into that mess, but his words had her spooked. Still on edge, she turned back to see Asher standing at the reception room door.
“Answer me,” he said. “Is that why you are running?”
“Aye.”
“Then don’t,” he said, turning back into the room. “Come back inside and sit down. I did not murder her intentionally. I was driving my new phaeton and it overturned. Eulalie was killed instantly. That is when the darkness came to this place and left me as you see – a worthless wreck of a man. So, you are not the only one to have known tragedy, Miss Emma. I have known my share as well.”
As he wandered back into the reception room, Emma’s hand came off the door. The bitter young lord had turned vulnerable; she could hear it in his voice. Now, she knew why. His softly-uttered statement explained a good deal. Hesitantly, she returned to the reception room, dark and shadowed. She stood in the doorway, watching him over near the hearth.
“It was a carriage accident,” she said softly.
His head turned in her direction. “What was a carriage accident?”
“My parents,” she said. “They died in a carriage accident. We were coming home from a party at one of the finest houses in Scarborou
gh, called Gray Gables. It is the home of the Stepney family, a wealthy family and friends of my parents. We were traveling home after dark and the carriage lost a wheel and went off the road. The lantern on the side caught fire and my parents were killed.”
“But you managed to escape,” he said, his voice strangely gentle. That didn’t seem natural coming from him. “How did you manage to live and your parents did not?”
Emma thought back to that terrible night, something she had always labored against remembering, but his question brought it back whether or not she wanted to think about it. It was dark in the reception room, so dark that he couldn’t see her features or the terrible burn scar on the left side of her face and neck that had happened when her hair caught on fire. He couldn’t see the burn scars on both of her hands where she’d tried to save her mother, who had been burned alive in the carriage.
He couldn’t see the evidence of her sorrow.
Clothing covered the scars on her arms where her dress had caught fire. All of those physical scars were concealed by clothing or darkness, but the mental scars couldn’t be concealed. They were still quite fresh and quite apparent.
The guilt that never went away.
“I do not know,” she said after a moment. “Truthfully, I do not know. One moment, we were on the road beneath a new moon and in the next, the carriage was overturned and in flames, and I was sitting on the embankment. I do not even remember how I got there. I tried to help my parents, but it was futile. The carriage was quickly consumed by the flames.”
“So you watched them die.”
His words were like a dagger to her heart, the latest dagger in a long line of them that pricked at her every time she thought of that fateful night.
“Aye,” she whispered. “I could do nothing.”
Asher was silent for a few moments. “Then I am sorry for you,” he said. “I know what it is like to shoulder that guilt.”
Emma’s emotions, which she kept so closely guarded, began to weaken. “Much like you, their deaths were my fault,” she said. “I wanted to go home, you see. There was a young man I had my eye on and Julia Stepney stole him away from me. She knew I was fond of him and she took him, anyway. Hurt, I demanded my parents take me home even though it was very late and we had rooms at an inn in Scarborough. That wasn’t good enough for me; I wanted to go home. So, my parents took me home. And it cost them their lives. Perhaps you would not understand the guilt I experience over the cost of my petty demands. It cost me everything.”
The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides Page 4