Peter tried to bring her back to the conversation at hand. “Alyce, why did William want Edward to marry Dahlia?”
“For the money, of course. He’s broke. We were going to lose the estate. He said you were very wealthy because of some railroad investments and would save the estate if it were Dahlia’s home.”
Peter shook his head. Standford’s situation was more dire than he could have imagined, if that was his logic. “So why did William kill Lady Sweet?”
“He knew that she would advise Dahlia against marrying Edward because she liked that James Kent. William tried to persuade Lady Sweet that Edward was a better choice, but he said she wouldn’t listen and she even threatened to tell you about his wishes. He couldn’t let her do that.” She shook her head. “No, he couldn’t let her do that. So he killed her on the road from the station to her aunt’s. He said they would blame it on bandits and thieves or just bad luck. I tried to tell Sir Randal at her funeral.”
Peter had a vague recollection of Alyce going on and on about William leaving unexpectedly about the same time as Lady Sweet’s trip, then returning shortly after the news had arrived of her death. He wondered if what happened to his Dahlia could have been prevented had they given her ramblings more consideration. Everyone else in the room tried to take in the information Alyce was supplying. Some doubted the information to be true, but what else could compel a woman to kill her own brother?
“Alyce, who was the fourth woman?”
“Dahlia,” she croaked, unable to keep her voice from cracking. “Dear, sweet Dahlia.”
“Dahlia is alive, Alyce. She was badly hurt, but she is alive.”
Alyce shook her head emphatically. “He killed her spirit though. I’ve heard. He killed her music. She doesn’t hear the music anymore.”
Peter swept a sidelong glance at his housekeeper, who was suddenly inspecting the floorboards.
“She won’t hear my music anymore,” Alyce whispered. She looked up at Peter, pain and hurt in her eyes. “Did you know she heard my music? She said it was lovely music, and played it for me. It was like a music box would play.” Tears spilled from her eyes, down her cheeks and onto her bloodstained dress, causing the red to go slightly pink where they landed.
“God bless her for finding anything left of me that was lovely. She made me so happy to know that someone would remember something good about me. She said she never forgot any music – ever.” Anger flared in her eyes. “She would have remembered something beautiful about me!” she shouted. “But he took that away from me, too!” She stomped her foot on the floor, then turned against the wall and slowly slid down to the floor, crying. “He took that, too!”
Everyone in the room realized that Alyce had as much reason for wanting to take revenge on William Standford as they had – perhaps even more.
Peter walked over and helped her off the floor and into a chair. He looked at her with kindness. “Alyce, why did William attack Dahlia if he wanted her to marry Edward?”
“He said ruining her reputation would end all talk of her refusing Edward. He said Edward would be the only one who would accept a girl who had been with another man, especially under these circumstances.”
“Little did he know,” said Steven venomously. “James married her! He loved her enough to marry her regardless of what that brute did!”
Alyce looked up at Steven as if she hadn’t noticed before that he was in the room. “He did?” she asked in a little voice.
Steven nodded, and Alyce started to laugh. Then she kept laughing – hysterically. “I,” she tried to talk but started laughing again. “I killed him…too soon!” She slapped a hand on her knee, continuing to laugh. “I killed him before he knew that! Oh,” she said, wiping her eyes and leaving a wet, red smudge across her cheeks. “Oh, how I would have loved to see his face when he learned that!”
Just as quickly as the laughter had started, it died. “Oh,” she gasped, her countenance again a picture of distress and fear. “He would have been so angry, he might have killed me next,” she whispered, looking frightened as if the ghost of her brother could still torment her. She started rubbing her wrists again. Peter noticed for the first time they were covered in bruises.
He looked up at Alvaro, then around the room. He inclined his head towards Glenda, who nodded back at Peter.
“Come, Miss Standford,” she said softly but firmly, easing the woman out of the chair. “Let’s get you out of these clothes and into bed.” Alyce complied without a word. Glenda looked back over her shoulder and nodded at Peter. She would take care of their murderous dormouse of a neighbor while they decided what to do.
Part II - Scotland
Chapter 62
The site of MacFarlain castle silhouetted against the dusky sky filled James with a sense of relief. It had been a long trip from Cirencester during which he had been constantly worried about Dahlia’s comfort and well-being. Mercifully, she had spent most of it in a drug-induced sleep, but she would occasionally moan as if in pain and at times toss her head from side to side with a furrowed brow as if her dreams troubled her.
“She sleeps fitfully,” Matty had commented. “I think the memories are there, just below the surface, like a watchful sea monster waiting to snatch her and pull her under.”
James knew that Matty had stayed with Dahlia night and day since the accident. He also recognized that the young maid knew Dahlia’s habits, thoughts, dreams, and moods quite intimately and he would need her close by to help him with her recovery. He and his wife were, in fact, strangers to one another in so many ways and he had a new appreciation for the nervousness of grooms and brides as the union of their lives approached. Most couples had advance knowledge of their marriage and therefore time to contemplate all the little details of a shared life together that he and Dahlia were not afforded. Since he would not be able to discuss any of these details with Dahlia for a time, he would need Matty to guide him. At first tentatively, then more easily, their question and answer exchanges went on back and forth as the miles swept under the train and the hours of that long journey passed.
James had started with the most pressing question of all. Matty had told him the doctor had come to the conclusion that she had been raped – or at the very least an attempt had been made – due to the fact that Dahlia’s undergarments had been torn, and there had been blood and bruises on her upper thigh. When asked her opinion, the maid had shook her head and said she couldn’t be sure one way or another. The possibility was there, however, and they had to protect her as best they could.
By the time they reached the Scottish border and changed to the West Highland Railway line, James and Matty had established an unusual familiarity borne of their mutual concern for Dahlia and the intimate nature of their conversation. James shared with Matty his concern about physically sharing the same bed with Dahlia. Given her troubled sleep, what if she were to awake remembering the attack, only to find a man in her bed? He feared such an abrupt awakening would send her into hysteria. Matty had been worried about the same thing, and was glad that James had voiced it first. Married they might be, but she had not been sure what the sleeping arrangements would be upon their arrival in Scotland, or at what point in Dahlia’s physical recovery he had thought to press his conjugal rights. The fact that he had voiced similar concerns to her solidified her impression of him and that his decision to marry her was disinterested in any way beyond his love for Dahlia.
As the carriage drew within sight of the castle, Matty gazed out of the window in wonder then exclaimed, “It’s pink!”
James laughed. He remembered his first look at the castle when he was a boy and had cried out the same phrase. “The pink shade originally came from the blood of a bull that was mixed with the lime to cover the stone, a process called harling the Scots have used to keep the moisture out of the masonry. Legend has it that using the blood of a bull would protect and strengthen the walls against invaders.”
Matty made a face at the use of animal blood,
making James laugh again. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We haven’t used blood in the whitewash for hundreds of years. It’s a plant-based dye now. Some sort of berry.” He didn’t add that a new coat of the mixture had not been applied in his lifetime. Repairs to the enormous structure were few and far between, only undertaken when they were necessary and certainly not for esthetics. His mother’s family, the MacFarlains, still held position and prestige within Dumbarton county, but the familial wealth had waned over the centuries for a multitude of reasons.
“Only the residential area of the complex still in use has that treatment,” he added. Matty looked again, and could discern that the rest of the walls expanding from either side of the main building were in fact gray. She hadn’t noticed them before as their color faded into the surrounding hills and low clouds that all had taken on various shades of gray in the dusk.
“It’s so big!” She couldn’t see the ends of the walls, and thought she made out the topline of several other towers.
“It is. At one time, more than two hundred people lived within its walls. Now only about thirty of my extended family actually live there. Most of the folks who work the land are tenant farmers and live in cottages throughout the property.”
The carriage came to a halt, prompting a murmur from Dahlia. Matty hopped out and held the door open as James carefully collected his wife in his arms.
Torches lit the courtyard, and the huge double wooden doors of the keep opened, flooding the area with the brightness from within. As James stepped out of the carriage, he saw his mother and grandfather walking towards him.
Dahlia heard their greetings and opened her eyes with great effort. An effusively bright light blinded her momentarily and she blinked. She saw the outline of a grand doorway within a rose-colored tower topped with spiral turrets. Two silhouetted figures were coming towards her as she floated towards them. As her eyes closed again, she smiled inwardly, contented with the knowledge she had arrived at the gates of heaven.
-----
Heaven was short lived, as Dahlia found when she finally awoke. Pain seared through her head and her body before she even opened her eyes. When she did, she found only one eye opened, and it gazed upon a high, plastered ceiling with a faint trace of a watermark. Her bedroom didn’t have a stain on the ceiling. Confused, she closed her eye then opened it again. The stain was still there. She turned her head and didn’t recognize anything in the room. She knew she couldn’t be dreaming as she never dreamed pain like that which she felt quite vividly from head to toe. Turning her head the other way, she saw a body on a velvet loveseat. The legs attached to the body hung over the arm of the furniture and a large stockinged foot protruded from the duvet which covered the rest of the body save a tuft of black hair sticking out the opposite end.
Utterly confused, Dahlia tried to sit up to make sense of her surroundings. The effort caused her to cry out in pain. She fell back against the pillows as the inert body on the sofa sprang up and the duvet was thrown aside in one fluid motion. Dahlia stared at a disheveled James. At the same time, a door to the room flew open and Matty appeared in its opening looking equally tousled and rumpled as if she, too, had been asleep in her clothes.
“Mr. Kent?” Dahlia asked in surprise.
“Good morning,” he replied hesitantly, looking from her to the maid, who hurried to the bedside table and measured out a dose of the laudanum.
“Good morning,” Matty said, cupping one hand under the spoon filled with the thick liquid. Before Dahlia could respond, the spoon was in her mouth and she instinctively swallowed as Matty tipped the handle upwards.
“Where am I?” Dahlia said as soon as the spoon was withdrawn.
“In Scotland,” replied James, coming to sit on the foot of the bed where she could see him without turning her head.
“Scotland?” She looked him questioningly, then at Matty.
Without missing a beat, Matty said, “Don’t you remember?” But as she turned to return the spoon to the bedside table, she glanced down at James.
“Remember what? Why am I here? ” she addressed her questions to both of them. Then, just to James she added, “Why are you here?”
James tried to smile a confident, reassuring smile. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember our wedding?”
Dahlia frowned. Slivers of vague memories flitted through her mind. “I…thought that was a dream…”
James chuckled. “A pleasant dream, I hope. The doctor said you might not remember certain things,” he said. Matty marveled at how convincing he was, knowing from their conversations on the train just how worried he was about how much she remembered and how best to lie to the young woman. “That was quite a nasty fall you took.”
Dahlia was more confused than ever. “Fall?”
James looked from Dahlia to Matty and back to Dahlia. “You were thrown and landed on the fallen tree by the base of the tor.” The doctor had suggested that anything they told Dahlia be based in fact as much as possible with regards to the details. James watched her face and knew she remembered the huge tree that had been hit by lightning the year before. “And no, I didn’t spook your horse this time!” He laughed lightly, and Matty wondered at his ease with which he played his part.
Dahlia started to smile at this, also remembering her ire at James when he had whipped his shirt by the trail on the mountain and spooked Talisman. The smile faded quickly, however, as she tried to piece together the events that had led up to this morning.
“When was this fall? When did we get married?”
“We were out riding just a week after our wedding – not a fortnight ago.”
Matty watched Dahlia’s face, holding her breath to see if she would believe what she was being told. Apparently, Dahlia could find nothing in her memory to contradict this account.
“And…why did we come to Scotland?”
“We had planned it so,” was all he said.
For a moment, Dahlia felt foolish that she didn’t remember something she had helped plan. “Oh,” was all she could manage. Nothing made sense. She couldn’t remember anything. A thousand questions were on the tip of her tongue. “What about…” she started, only to lose track of that particular thought and she closed her eyes to try to get it back.
James looked at Matty; it was her turn. “There, now, Miss Dahlia. Let the medicine work. Just rest now. We’ll be back to check in on you later.”
Dahlia murmured what sounded like assent. Her eyes fluttered, but remained shut. James and Matty didn’t move for several seconds. Then, James got off the bed slowly and walked towards the door through which Matty had arrived. She followed after him into her adjoining bedchamber and closed the door.
“So far, so good, I think,” whispered James.
Matty nodded. “Aye, but the questions will continue until she is satisfied or until she remembers the truth.”
Chapter 63
Over the next few days, Dahlia had ample time to try and piece together what she could remember. Between doses of laudanum, she would concentrate on events in the recent past she could remember. She remembered Lady Sweet’s death, bringing renewed pain to her mind to accompany the constant pain in her body. Of the events that would have preceded her engagement and marriage, however, she remembered nothing clearly. She thought she remembered James asking her if she would marry him, but it was all foggy – like a dream rather than a memory. Struggling to put a timeline together, she could recall the ground getting hard as the brisk days of autumn started to begin with a light frost in the mornings. Beyond that, she could not recall. She could see out the window that snowflakes were dancing on a wind. Was it winter already? Had the holiday’s passed? A list of questions formed in her mind to ask Matty and James. She noted that she barely had time alone with either of them; they always seemed to be in the room with her together. Matty continued to give her the thick liquid that clouded her mind. On the third day after awaking in a strange room, in a different country, Dahlia refused to take the proffe
red dose.
“I don’t need it, Matty,” she stated.
“I can tell you are still in pain,” countered Matty.
“The pain is constant, but I can handle it. I’ve been thrown by a horse before.”
Matty’s flashed her a look, then glanced away as she replaced the spoon and bottle on the bed stand. “Never like this,” she said. “At least try to rest.” She started to leave the room, but Dahlia stopped her.
“Matty, wait. You must tell me what happened. Why did James and I get married?”
“You told me you loved him,” the maid replied without looking at her.
“Yes. But why did father give his permission for me to marry now? I remember kissing James, but did I do something…shameful?”
“No!” Matty said vehemently, looking directly at Dahlia now. “You did nothing wrong, Dahlia.”
Dahlia gave a sigh of relief. “Thank heavens. I thought perhaps…well you know. That we had to marry quickly.”
Matty looked uncomfortable for a moment, but then she turned to Dahlia and said again, “You did nothing wrong, and James has always been a gentleman with you.”
Dahlia felt better for the confident manner in which Matty said this, but when Matty left the room, she realized the older girl still hadn’t shed any light on the reason she and James had married so precipitously. Why hadn’t they at least waited until the spring when the Roma returned? Surely she would have insisted on her brother and Maripaz and the rest of the clans being there for the most important day of her life? The last she remembered was the Roma had been in the south as they normally were for the winter. She could not imagine being so selfish as to have them all travel back to Cirencester with bad weather coming on.
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