Whatever he was going to say was lost as he grabbed me by the arms and hauled me against him. His pain-filled eyes searched mine for answers and truth.
“I didn’t leave you for her to have.”
His hands encircled my head, his lips mere inches from mine.
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? None of it ever changed the way you feel in my arms, the way your eyes widen with desire when I touch you. This may be the only true thing that ever existed between any of us.”
His mouth was hard and bruising, forcing a whimper from me as his hands tightened about my skull and he sought the truth from me with his kiss. I surrendered my heart and soul for his perusal, and he groaned against my mouth. His touch gentled, his lips becoming softer, but no less demanding, and I returned his passion without shame or regret.
When at last he lifted his head, he looked nearly as dazed as I felt. He cupped my face gently in his hands, and gave his head a soft shake.
Eleanor burst through the study door. Soaking wet and leached of color, she grasped the doorpost for support.
“Cade, come quickly,” she panted. “There’s a body on the lighthouse rocks.”
He pushed past her without a word, and I slid my arms around her waist, leading her to a small chair near the door. Once she was seated, I poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the side table and placed it in her trembling hands.
“Do you know who it is?” I asked as she gulped the water.
“The maid, Susan McCray.”
I gasped in recognition of the name.
“What is it?” Eleanor asked, peering up at me.
“N-nothing,” I stammered. I couldn’t possibly tell her about the kiss Susan had seen or the hateful words she’d spoken at Desi’s funeral.
Lorraine appeared at the door, looking quite shaken. “Eleanor, darling, are you quite all right? Calvin told me you found poor Susan’s body. How horrible for you.”
Eleanor latched on to Lorraine’s hands, letting her sister-in-law pull her up from the chair and wrap a comforting arm around her shoulders. Without another word to me, the two of them left the room, deep in conversation.
“What in the world were you doing out there in this rain?” I heard Lorraine ask.
“I was worried for Devlin.”
“Oh, Eleanor, you must let that man go.”
Their voices faded away as they rounded the corner at the end of the hall.
Although I was tempted to follow them, I turned the opposite direction, toward the kitchen. I was my father’s daughter, after all, and I had been raised to care for the needs of the grieving.
“What utter nonsense, Kathleen,” Mrs. Hartley was saying as I slipped into the kitchen.
A dark-haired girl of about sixteen was seated by the fire, and the eyes of everyone in the room were fixed on her as she spoke, “I swear I heard it, Mrs. Hartley. Crying like I’ve never heard before. It was an omen, I tell you. An omen that something bad was to happen. Like Mrs. Scott herself come back to warn us. If only Susan would have listened.”
The short round cook looked up from the stew she was stirring as she listened to the girl’s tale. Her tearstained face registered surprise when she caught sight of me.
“Miss Garrett. Can I get you something?”
A collective gasp escaped several of the maids as every eye turned toward me. There were varying degrees of grief and fear on their faces, and I wondered what they would think if I confirmed Kathleen’s story. Although I firmly doubted it was Desdemona returned from the grave, I had no other explanation for the crying I had heard every night since my arrival.
“No, thank you. I heard about Susan, and I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help. Does she have family?”
It was quite possible she had a husband and children; at the very least she would probably have a mother and father who would be grief-stricken at the news of her death. The thought of the gruff and angry Calvin Scott acting as the sheriff and giving someone such news was hard for me to comprehend. Perhaps those things were left to Reverend Arnold, although he was so reserved, it was very nearly as difficult for me to imagine him as a comforting shoulder to lean upon.
“I used to go with my father to comfort families who had lost loved ones. Will Reverend Arnold go to them? Or will Sheriff Scott himself tell them?”
Mrs. Hartley spoke from her place beside the fire.
“Her sister is married to one of the groomsmen, Tom Shelton. We’ve already sent them home to deliver the news to her parents.”
Her usually kind eyes did not welcome me to linger, and I nodded in agreement. I was, after all, not a servant or even the local vicar’s daughter. Here at Almenara, I was one of the family. “Please let me know if there is anything I can do for them.”
“Of course, Miss Garrett. Thank you.”
“Not like her sister at all,” one of the maids remarked dryly as I stepped into the hall. The door closed on the murmur of agreement that rippled through the room.
Chapter Twelve
As soon as I left the kitchen, I pulled on my cloak and headed to the dunes behind the house. There had been a brief lull in the rain, but as I neared the place where a rocky path led over the edge of the dunes to the shore below, the skies opened up again and I was quickly drenched through.
The wind caught at my skirts and cloak, whipping them around my legs. My hair escaped from its pins and several wisps came from beneath the cloak to slap loosely about my face.
I could see nothing ahead of me except a wall of rain, and I stopped, afraid I would lose my footing and slide down the dune.
“What the devil are you doing out here?” Cade bellowed as he appeared on the path before me. He and three other men carried a shrouded bundle between them, and I knew it contained the battered body of Susan McCray.
I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was doing there, except for the morbid curiosity that drew me to see firsthand the place where my sister had been murdered days ago, and another pretty young woman had now met her own demise,
The question on my own mind was whether she had met it by accident or intent.
“Get back to the house!” His voice brooked no argument, but I shook my head, ignoring his command as I moved forward. The rain came down in sheets, biting into my face and hands with icy precision, but I pressed on, determined to finally gaze upon the rocks where Desi had died.
Cade shouted something at me about breaking my fool neck, but knowing he couldn’t stop me at the moment, I hurried on.
I picked my way over numerous rocks of varying sizes, and when I finally stood directly under the shadow of the lighthouse, the larger rocks that created a barrier between earth and sea blocked my path. Even in the pouring rain, I could see the tint of blood upon them, turning the water pink as it washed past them on its way back to the sea.
I shuddered with horror and hurried away from the water, toward the open door of the lighthouse. Above me, I could hear the voices of the men who were investigating Susan’s death. I strained to hear them as I entered, but it wasn’t until I was halfway up the stairs that their words became clear.
“Same as before,” one said.
“Cade got any reason to want this one dead?” the other clucked, and I cringed at the thought. He hadn’t been happy at her sly innuendoes during Desi’s funeral, but I hardly believed he would see that as motive enough to kill her.
I continued upward, intent on protesting their suspicions, but someone rushed past me, pushing me out of the way, and my feet lost their purchase. My head collided with the brick wall as I went down, and spots danced before my eyes.
For the second time that day, I opened my eyes to find myself lying on my back with Cade holding a cloth to my head. My vision was blurry, but I struggled to rise.
“Lie still, Fee,” Dennis Ames said, pressing a hand against my shoulder. His deep green eyes were dark with concern. “The doctor is on his way.”
“I’m fine,” I protested, but I didn
’t fight against either his or Cade’s grip, as I knew my weak attempts would prove futile against their combined strength. I felt bruised from head to toe, and my temple throbbed with pain.
“You’re not fine.” Cade’s declaration was choked with some emotion I suspected was anger. “What in the world were you thinking? I told you to go home. Those steps are a hazard at the best of times, and with the rain, and everyone coming in and out, they’re wet and slick as ice. If Dennis hadn’t been behind you and stopped your descent, you’d have tumbled all the way down the stairs.”
I reached up and touched my head gingerly, shocked by the blood that smeared my fingertips. “I’m bleeding?”
“You probably hit your head when you fell,” Dennis explained. “You were out cold when I caught you and carried you down.”
“Someone ran into me and I hit my head on the wall.”
“No one hit you, Ophelia.” I turned my face toward Cade’s icy stare.
“I’m sure it was an accident, Cade, and I shouldn’t have been in the way, but I know what happened.”
“That knock on your head has you confused, Fee,” Dennis offered. “There was no one on the stairs but me and you. Maybe a piece of plaster or a stone fell from the wall. I didn’t see or hear one hit, but it could have, all the same.”
Cade scrubbed a hand across his face but was kept from commenting when the doctor called out to us from the top of the dunes. Without a word, Cade scooped me into his arms and stalked through the rain toward the house.
“Thank you, Dennis,” I said to the young man trailing behind us.
“No problem, Fee. Glad I could be of service.”
He tipped his dripping hat my way before hurrying toward Calvin and a group of men who stood around the open wagon carrying the shrouded remains of Susan McCray. A small sound of dismay escaped me as it dawned on me how close I might have come to joining her there.
Cade didn’t speak, but his arms tightened around me, holding me even closer to his chest, and making me wonder if he was thinking the same thing.
Within minutes of Cade depositing me in my room, Richard had stitched up my head wound, diagnosed a concussion and multiple bruises, and inquired if I was out of my mind for going outside in such weather. I had expected a little more sympathy from him, I suppose, for his question irritated me quite thoroughly.
Before leaving, he gave Cade a small bottle of laudanum, accompanied by orders that I rest for several days.
“She’ll need this for pain. It will also help her rest. If you give her a healthy dose each night and again at noon, we shouldn’t have to worry about her dashing off on any more wild goose chases for a while.”
Cade walked the doctor downstairs and, although I tried to wait for his return, I eventually succumbed to the drowsiness caused by both my injury and the dose of medicine Richard had already administered.
Chapter Thirteen
I woke hours later. The thin light of the moon shone through the windows and my bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar. I remembered it closing behind Cade when he left the room, and I wondered if he, Dory, or even one of his relatives, had peeked in on their way to bed. My head and body ached and I gingerly touched the bandage on my forehead. Had I only imagined that someone hit me? Although I was certain I had felt someone push past me, it was possible I had simply slipped on the wet stone and fallen forward, or as Dennis surmised, a piece of the crumbling wall hit me and caused me to fall. Since Dennis swore no one had come up or down the stairs past him, I had no choice but to accept these as the only possible explanations.
The now familiar sound of weeping drifted through the open door, and I slid from my bed and tiptoed closer. The crying was quieter tonight, and as I pushed open the door, I thought I heard the soft coo of a mourning dove. I scanned the darkened hallway and stopped short at the sight of the girl standing at the window. The moon coming through the glass cast an ethereal glow over the white cloak that covered her head and shoulders. Her hands were cupped around a small gray dove and, as I had seen my sister do many times as a girl, she brought it to her lips for a soft kiss on its head, before setting it gently on the windowsill in front of the open window
“Desi?” I whispered, my heart leaping with joy even as my head told me it was madness.
At the sound of my voice, the girl turned and fled, past the staircase and down the opposite hallway.
“Wait!” I cried, running after her. She pulled open the door at the end of the hall and darted up the stairs to the roof. “Wait!”
I didn’t even think about my fear of heights when I dashed up the stairs behind her, and only stopped halfway across the roof when I realized she was nowhere in sight.
I barely registered the sound of running feet as the household responded to my cries.
Suddenly, Cade was beside me, demanding an explanation as he dragged me back into the hallway, where the servants who had rushed upstairs to defend me stood in a frightened group. I had no idea whether they were frightened for me or of me.
“What happened?” Cade questioned again, and I looked up at him.
“Nothing,” I said, unwilling to share this experience with anyone until I had time to examine it myself.
“What do you mean, nothing? You seem to be as hell-bent on falling to your death as your sister was.”
“Cade,” Mrs. Hartley gasped, and I wondered if I was the only one who noticed her omission of his title.
At her reprimand, he spun around and faced the small group. “You may all go back to your beds. Everything appears to be fine.”
They dispersed quickly, if somewhat reluctantly, each one daring a curious glance at the door through which my ghostly visitor had disappeared. I pushed past Cade and went to the windows. Thinking I might see some hint of the girl there, I scanned the empty courtyard below. There was no sign of her, no visible way for her to have made it off the roof.
With a heavy sigh, I started back toward my room, Cade following with his arms crossed in disapproval.
As I passed the window where the dove had been, I leaned out, certain I would find it somewhere on the veranda. Again, there was nothing there, and within seconds Cade’s hand closed about my arm and forced me to continue on.
Once inside, he pushed the door closed and motioned to the bed.
“Get in bed.”
I shook my head. I would not be spoken to like a child, and I most certainly would not obey him as if I were one.
“I think I’ll sit up and read for a while.” I sounded just like a petulant child.
“Ophelia, the doctor instructed you to stay in bed. I can’t imagine what you were doing on the roof, but you are still recovering from one fall and seem to want to push your luck with another.”
“Someone was at the window, Cade. She left a little bird there. I chased her down the other hall, but she disappeared on the roof.”
“What? Who?”
“I don’t know. I heard the crying, and the coo of a dove, so I went out to the hallway. She was standing there holding it. I saw her.”
He shook his head. “Perhaps it was the laudanum Richard gave you. I will speak to him tomorrow about the possibility that the medication induced hallucinations, or sleepwalking accompanied by a vivid nightmare.”
“I was not hallucinating! And I most certainly was not sleepwalking!”
“That is the only explanation, Ophelia. There was no sign of a woman on the rooftop or a bird in the hallway. The courtyard and the veranda were completely empty.”
“The servants say the house is haunted.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Comprehension dawned on his face and he stared at me in surprise. “You think you saw a ghost?”
I wasn’t really sure what I thought. I still couldn’t quite fathom a ghostly encounter, but I was having a harder and harder time convincing myself that the crying woman was anything else.
“My levelheaded, calm Ophelia thinks she saw a ghost?” he asked again, a smile playing a
bout his mouth. I wanted to slap him, but I had never given in to violence and refused to do so now.
“Did you know my father called me his little mourning dove and Desi his barn swallow? She always loved birds so. We would go out after a storm to look for nests that had fallen from the trees so that she could raise the abandoned baby birds. When the birds were big enough, she always let them go the same way. She would kiss them on the head, and then put them on the windowsill and wait for them to fly away. That’s what the girl in the hall did.”
“You think it was Desdemona’s ghost you saw? Really?” He did smile this time, and with gentle hands, he pressed me toward the bed. “Lie down, Fee.”
Tears burned my throat as I remembered lying beneath the apple tree in our father’s yard while Desi climbed to the highest branch possible. Had Desi been unhappy even then? Had she already felt the stirring of wildness inside her? Had she ever thought of casting herself to the ground where I lay? Had the future haunted her as the past did me?
“There’s a good girl,” Cade soothed, and I was surprised to find that I was lying back on my bed. He pulled the covers up over my chest and bent to place a soft kiss on my forehead. “You need to rest.”
Panic seized me, and before he could move away, my arms encircled his neck.
“Don’t leave me, Cade,” I heard myself say, fear causing my voice to quaver.
Dark eyes met mine, delved their depths and then softened with understanding. “I won’t leave you, Fee, but I can’t stay here in your bed.”
He gently extricated himself from my arms and turned toward the bedside table.
I watched him fill a spoon with medication and hold it out to me. I knew he was right, he couldn’t stay in my bed, but I didn’t care about propriety at the moment. Except for the kisses he and I had shared since my arrival, it had been years since I had been held in even the most innocent of ways.
Although my father had been somewhat lost in his own world, his arms were always open for either of his daughters, and I had grown up knowing I was loved. When I met Cade, I had been a girl confident in her youth and worth, certain I would find a man who would love me as my father had so obviously loved my mother. Now, here I was, a woman alone in the world and unsure of her worth as anything other than Reverend Garrett’s spinster daughter. In the past, I had rarely allowed myself the luxury of self-pity or restlessness. I had accepted my fate and made the best of it by serving the people in my community and remaining active at the church my father had ministered in for so many years.
When Swallows Fall Page 9