The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4)

by Rebecca Lochlann

He was a madman. And so was Curran, from the look of things. Her husband made not a single protest at this assault. Whistler lifted handfuls of her hair and held them out to the light in the window. “I must paint her.” He faced Curran. “Has she ever modeled?”

  Sullen resentment colored Morrigan’s cheeks.

  “Didn’t you hear?” Curran said. “The lady is Mrs. Ramsay. My wife.”

  Whistler’s gaze boldly traveled the length of her body. “Would you care if she posed naked?”

  Anger twined with astonishment, leaving Morrigan speechless. Her fingers tightened on the glass as she considered throwing the lemonade in his face.

  “Good Lord, Whistler,” Curran said with a half stifled laugh. “Apologize this minute.”

  “But why? All the aristocracy wants to be painted. Can you not see it in your Kilgarry, commanding everyone’s attention? It will, you know.”

  “I would imagine.” Curran snorted.

  Whistler studied her with an indifference she found unfamiliar and disconcerting. He was interested, aye, but not in her. She held no fascination for him except in whatever way her coloring made her useful. Perhaps Kit would have become like this one day, had his dreams not been thwarted by Enid.

  “I’ve already had my portrait painted, thank you,” she said, fairly imitating Douglas Lawton in a vile mood.

  “Eh? What’s that?” Whistler shrugged. “He could not have done you justice.” He gave a high, piercing laugh. “Besides, do ladies ever have too many portraits of themselves?”

  “We’ll talk,” Curran said, “and let you know.”

  “My mother lives with me. She could chaperon, or you could come along yourself if you like.”

  “We really must go.” Curran crossed to Morrigan and patted her fist. “We’re late for an appointment.”

  Whistler rolled a cigarette and struck a match. Smoke curled in acrid waves, stinging the inside of Morrigan’s nose. “I’m having a breakfast next Sunday. Do come, Ramsay. Rossetti and Swinburne will be here.”

  “Morrigan?” Curran’s regard was a blend of apology, guilt, and a sparkle of ill-suppressed laughter.

  She could only shrug. While they worked out the details, she tried to replait her hair, but without a looking-glass, she couldn’t be sure how well she succeeded, and Whistler didn’t return the fastener. As she and Curran left, he called after them. “I’ll have your promise! I must paint her. Me, not Rossetti.”

  Curran caught Morrigan’s hand and they ran down the stairs, laughing.

  “No wonder he lives with his mother,” she said. “Who else could bear him?”

  “Have you never heard of him?”

  “No, why? What’s he done?”

  “He’s rather well-known.”

  She gave another shrug.

  “My country lass.” He kissed her cheek. “What does it all matter, anyway?”

  They strolled along sun-streaked Cheyne Walk. “Whistler’s work isn’t well received,” he told her. “It doesn’t fit modern tastes. But I think he has genius. His Nocturnes are exquisite and there’s one, of his mistress— Jo is her name, I think— that’s inspired. Whistler sees painting as visions of patterns in nature, rather than a rendition of facts.”

  “He has a mistress?”

  Curran laughed. “The more obnoxious artists are, the more ladies they acquire.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Would you like him to paint you?”

  “I don’t want to see myself staring from every wall at Kilgarry. And I won’t pose naked.”

  “He’d try to seduce you.”

  She stiffened and struggled to keep her voice as casual as his. “You don’t sound vexed. Is he that grand a friend?”

  Curran brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I’m not a monster. I don’t want to lock you away or throttle every man who admires you.”

  “Oh, look.” She tugged him onto the picturesque Battersea Bridge, pointed at a pretty sailboat, and chattered about boats and picnics and Lily and the baby, determined to divert them from this tender subject they had never yet discussed. She wasn’t ready. Her emotions were as snarled as windblown hair.

  Fortune favors the bold, the Mackinnon clan motto bravely announced. She wished she could be as bold as whoever chose that saying.

  Pink evening light softened the buildings and river. Curran’s face held resignation and guilt, but he smiled and said nothing.

  * * * *

  His wife reminded him of a doe preparing to bolt. Curran didn’t have the heart to force the issue. She’d insisted she was only helping Seaghan tend Aodhàn that day, and he knew for a fact Aodhàn often caught strange fevers. But the way she’d sneaked from Kilgarry without a word had left him snared in visceral anger, and more importantly, alarm. Every instinct had clamored at him to get her away.

  The idea of her possible infidelity stung like the bite of an adder, but almost worse was his own self-condemnation, born the moment he’d raised his fist to her. He could think of nothing more heinous than being drunk and striking a woman, and what if she’d done nothing to deserve it? Whisky and an overactive imagination may have conjured those pitying glances from the servants.

  He tried never to think of that day in the tunnels at Cape Wrath but for Diorbhail’s promise, which always gave him comfort. Morrigan is yours. Somehow he didn’t think she would lie about that, not even to protect her mistress.

  Shortly after they arrived in London, while Morrigan slept off the long, wearying journey, Curran had gone to Quinn’s offices, seeking news. Quinn was still out of the city, he was told, but one letter had come for Mr. Ramsay.

  He unfolded the missive. Quinn’s familiar scrawl, on his official letterhead, jumped out at him.

  There is much mystery here, and as I’m not only an outsider but also English, no one wants to confide in me. I have heard rumors of a lycanthrope, or angry ghost, that plagued the area some months ago, killing twelve local men. I’m trying to find out more but most here speak only Gaelic. I often get little more than babbling. The woman I hired to cook and clean speaks English, but often chooses to pretend she doesn’t, and I think she’s stealing from me. There’s no use getting rid of her, as I’m quite certain anyone else I might retain would be the same. I do apologize for not yet having the information you require, but I will persevere.

  Diorbhail’s promise, and the way Morrigan had taken him into her body and heart since they’d left Glenelg nearly convinced Curran he was wrong in his suspicions. He almost penned a letter telling Quinn to abandon his investigation, but decided to wait a few days.

  The two meandered along the Chelsea Embankment. Curran flagged a hansom and gave the driver Richard Donaghue’s fashionable address on Arlington Street.

  Lily met them at the door. “There you are,” she said. “You’ve been gone so long I started to worry. Has Ramsay kept you entertained?” Clasping Morrigan’s arm, she led her guest upstairs, waving Curran away with some blethering about a new gown, pins, and a fitting.

  “Your wife is a rare jewel,” Lily had told him soon after they’d arrived, then she had instructed him not to keep Morrigan in London overly long, for fear its pervasive taint would infect her.

  Curran watched them ascend. Morrigan was making some excuse about her untidy hair. She had no idea what an uncommonly beautiful woman she was, though he inundated her with compliments and every mirror could verify the fact. She often returned his flattery with half-disbelieving glances, and lately, there’d been something more. This morning, he’d said, English females are a milksop lot next to you. A fleeting expression had passed across her face, one that left him questioning his eyesight. She’d looked annoyed, and he’d swear her spine stiffened. Pulling away from his embrace, she’d crossed the room, plucked an apple from a bowl, and peeled it with a small silver knife.

  When he’d asked her if something was wrong, she’d merely shrugged, sent him an expressionless glance, and said, “The heat.”

  Every answer lay hidden behind
those dark eyes. How she felt about Aodhàn… and Olivia… and her marriage.

  Another odd thing happened as he’d watched her peel the apple. The long scarlet spiral of apple-skin dropped to the plate. She lifted one juicy, milk-white sliver to her lips and left it there, holding it between her teeth as she sliced another.

  The room, with its unmade bed, discarded clothing, and remnants of breakfast, swirled into a different scene— an orchard. White blossoms swam in apple-scented breezes. Yet he still saw Morrigan as well, beyond the trees. Using her tongue, she took the apple slice into her mouth. Her fingers lifted another, and again placed it tenderly between her teeth.

  He wanted to be that fruit. Drawn in, torn, crushed until he lost cohesion and became one with her capillaries and membranes. Truly joined at the most elementary level in an endless dance punctuated by the sound of her breath and beat of her heart.

  The throb of the scar next to his eye had disrupted the strange images and returned him to the reality of London and their comfortable bedroom. He’d pressed his fingers against his brow and drew them away drenched with blood.

  Morrigan hadn’t noticed his moment of insanity. Touching a napkin to her lips, she rose and crossed to the bell pull to call a servant while he slipped behind the dressing screen to examine his reflection in the looking-glass.

  He dabbed the blood with his handkerchief but it kept welling, filling in the space he’d blotted.

  Everything went black; a rushing sound filled his brain and blinding flashes interfered with his eyesight. His heart wallowed and pitched.

  Lily’s giggle jerked him out of his reverie. He glanced up in time to see his wife and her new companion vanish into the upstairs corridor, leaving him staring stupidly at the staircase. Only a moment had passed.

  Certainty welled like the blood in his old scar, which had congealed and stopped with the use of styptic. Morrigan needed him. Him, not Aodhàn Mackinnon. Not Seaghan, Beatrice, or Ibby. She needed him more than even Diorbhail. Somehow, someday, he would prove necessary to Morrigan in ways neither could yet comprehend.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BEATRICE THOUGHT FIONNA a fool when the woman complained of a pall hanging over Kilgarry’s old stones, and claimed she’d seen the bluish light of a dead-can’le twinkling along the sea road.

  “Someone’s going to die.” The housekeeper crossed herself.

  “Pish,” Beatrice said. Though everyone else seemed despondent, Beatrice rather enjoyed having the master and mistress gone.

  The next night the dogs all started howling at the same moment. A grim portent, Beatrice had to admit, and the beasts did act afraid. They whined, skulked, and pressed their tails between their legs. That foolish Antiope stopped eating. She’d always been skinny, but now her ribs stuck out like a rotted boat’s.

  The master and his bride had been gone nearly a month, yet Fionna, Tess, and Violet still dragged about like the world was caving in. Tess seemed worst affected, skittering with long face and fearful eyes that slid from Morrigan’s aunt as though she feared being the victim of some evil spell. Have your pretty beliefs been knocked to bits? Beatrice wanted to say. If your father had lived, you would’ve learned the pure uselessness of men, no matter how rich they are or kind they seem.

  She thought of the long ago day when Tess’s father had stepped onto a cornice of snow at the edge of an embankment. It had collapsed, taking him down the rough hill until a half-buried boulder crushed his skull.

  To Beatrice, it meant one less hungry mouth among the starving survivors of the Glenelg clearings. Logan had been inconsolable. Tess was too young to understand, but Fionna had since raised her daughter on glorious tales of her fine upstanding da. Beatrice snorted whenever she heard those stories. John Dunbar had enjoyed his private diversions, the kind a man would never want revealed to his offspring, and Fionna apparently agreed. She churned out one pretty fabrication after another. She might even believe them herself by now.

  Beatrice knew better than most how folk kept their wee secrets, things that could destroy generations of families if they ever came out. Why, the idea of a drunken Master Ramsay threatening physical harm to his child’s mother, or the possibility of Aodhàn Mackinnon blithely copulating with his good friend’s wife not four months after she’d given birth, had torn these ladies’ safe Catholic world asunder.

  With Curran and Morrigan away in outlandish places, Beatrice could imagine herself the mistress of this stately house. Freed of the endless chores that had monopolized her days at the Wren’s Egg, she sometimes thought she’d go mad from idleness. She spent a good amount of it in the kitchens with Janet, who always had something sweet to nibble. That’s where she’d settled, in a rocker by the open window, when Violet burst in waving a letter.

  “It’s from Mistress Ramsay,” she cried, tearing the envelope.

  It had been a good while since they’d heard from the couple. The first note had been a cursory scribble, stating that they’d spent a few days at Torridon and Cape Wrath, and were on their way to London, with a brief line stating they didn’t know when they’d return.

  This missive was longer and more cheerful, with descriptions of shopping sprees and sightseeing. Still, there was no mention of when they planned to come home.

  The letter implied an excess of those aimless delights reserved for rich folk. Matters were improved then, since the ignominious flight at the beginning of June.

  “It’s like a faery tale,” Violet said. “Mistress was an ordinary maid like us. Now look at her. She was lucky she lived in that port town. Nothing’ll ever happen to us, stuck here, mountains on one side and the sea on the other. We’ll be spinsters all our lives.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Tess murmured.

  Beatrice knew the cause of Violet’s pessimistic tone. A lass from some wee village on Skye had appeared a few days ago with her father, and had accused Logan of getting her with child. Tears and arguments had spewed between Logan and Violet, Logan and Fionna, Logan and the lass from Skye. Beatrice had overheard him threaten to move someplace where females wouldn’t haver a man clean out of his senses.

  “I pray Master Curran and his bride will find happiness again,” Fionna said. “I’ve felt sad ever since they went away. I do wish things could be like they were before….”

  “She always was a willful hissy,” Beatrice said. “Never appreciated what others did for her. The master should have given her a clout or two that night. It might have helped matters.”

  Fionna set down her embroidery with a bang. “What a thing to say. Mistress Ramsay is a dear sweet lass. Master Curran would not have married her otherwise. And he would never strike her, nor any woman.”

  “Was it her dear sweetness made him shatter a whisky bottle like he wished it was her head?”

  Fionna clamped her mouth shut and turned away.

  “Aodhàn Mackinnon’s caused this trouble.” Violet smoothed the crisp sheets of paper on the worktable.

  “Hist, missy,” Fionna said. “None of that.”

  “It’s true though.” Tess lowered her head over the rolling pin and vigorously flattened a daub of pastry. “It’s all due to him. A poor fisherman, hardly able to clothe himself. And he’s so much older, and no’ friendly, or handsome, or anything. He never even smiles. When she has Master Curran and darling Olivia. And master, so in love with her a blind man could see it. Seaghan knows. Isn’t that why he and Aodhàn no longer speak, and why Aodhàn has gone away?”

  Beatrice rose heavily. “Have you finished that letter, girl?”

  “Aye,” Violet replied, her voice squeaking, “but for a postscript saying Mistress Ramsay has seen an elephant.”

  “Well, I’m away for a walk. I won’t listen to this bellyaching over two such spoilt weans.” Off she went, slamming the door.

  * * * *

  Patrick Hawley fought through bouts of sweating and convulsive spasms. He could hardly lift his head. He foggily remembered coming to Glenelg on the ferry from Skye. It seemed li
ke he’d hired a pony so he wouldn’t have to walk, but there was no pony now. His clothes were wet, as though he’d been caught in a downpour; mud was caked under his nails, and ground into his palms, and an all-too-familiar stench told him he’d soiled his trousers.

  After Curran Ramsay broke his nose and knocked out a tooth, Patrick left Glenelg. He’d wanted to be far enough away to feel safe while he healed, but not too far, for he meant to have his revenge on the bastard who hurt him, and Aodhàn Mackinnon, and finally, most especially, Morrigan Ramsay.

  He’d found an inn across the strait in the village of Kyleakin. A healing woman had provided salve for the oozing sores that erupted all over his body after that bitch knifed him. His tongue had swelled, making it impossible to eat anything but the thinnest broth.

  It was still swollen, but he no longer felt hungry.

  He had improved, though, hadn’t he, over on Skye? He was certain of it. The moment he felt better, he returned to Glenelg and skulked around the outskirts, keeping to the forest cover where he could. He saw Aodhàn Mackinnon, but only at a distance, and never Morrigan Ramsay or her husband. Every thought of her brought him to the edge of insanity. He’d almost had her squirming and bleeding under him again. He would have, too, if it hadn’t been for the cursed knife.

  This was the second time Aridela of Crete had nearly killed him with that knife. His fever brought the memory into startling clarity… the battle on the shore at Amnisos, between his army and the army of the Mycenaean king. She had pulled the knife from her own chest where he had buried it, and with one clean, quick swipe, cut his throat from ear to ear. He remembered the pain, the terror, the sensation of his life draining swiftly away with the cascade of hot blood. If a warrior hadn’t happened to run past, near enough to seize, he wouldn’t be here.

  Years later, Chrysaleon almost managed to complete what his dead wife started, not with the knife, but simple starvation and a fancy cage. Harpalycus could be seen, mocked, tormented… by all the inhabitants of Knossos, but not touched. The guards had been given strict orders about that.