Lord of Sin

by Susan Krinard

  He had seen both.

  “You have taken a witch to your bed,” Makepeace said, sensing his weakness. “You stand on the very lip of Hell.”

  Sinjin rolled to sit with his back against the wall. “If such broad claims and illusions are all you have to offer as proof—”

  Makepeace surged up from his chair. “Puppy,” he snarled. “What must I do to convince you? How far must she go? Is it not enough that she has, in your very sight, used her powers to harm? That she killed your brother?”

  “She would never have harmed Giles.”

  Makepeace sneered in disgust. He lifted his hand as if he would work some new mischief and then sank into his chair again. “You continue to deny that she had anything to do with your brother’s death. Yet it was she who manipulated both him and Lady Westlake so that the woman would shoot her lover. She made them both mad, by driving Lord Donnington to desperate lust for the girl Mariah and promoting the foulest jealousy in Lady Westlake’s heart.”

  “Why? What possible purpose could she have for such acts?”

  “Because she hates us. She hates the Wares, who once bore the name of Makepeace. It has been her purpose for the last two centuries to take the lives of every male in each generation. Only I have been able to salvage one heir in each family, to carry on our name and continue the battle.”

  The apparition’s words made no sense until Sinjin cast his memory back to his father’s generation, and his father’s, and all the others about which he had learned as a boy.

  In every family, several sons had been born. In each, all but one heir had died in young adulthood, childless, often after they had inherited the earldom, leaving it—as Giles had left his title—to a younger brother.

  “Accidents,” Makepeace said. “Was that not always the way of it? A fall from a horse, a shooting mishap, a drowning, a suicide. All coincidence, Sinjin?”

  Of course they were. They must be. To believe that Nuala was over two hundred years old, that she could conceal such malice in her heart and yet lie in his arms, filling him with the kind of happiness he hadn’t known for as long as he could remember…

  “Think also on this, boy. Have you never wondered how the Earls of Donnington came by their great wealth? It was I who brought it about. I who advised my grandson beyond my own death, urging him to support Charles the Second during his exile in France. From King Charles he received the earldom and lands enough to make him rich. With every passing year, I have made the Wares more wealthy still.”

  “Then I am not the first to receive the signal honor of your ‘advice?’”

  “Not at all. I merely suggested…a whisper in your ancestors’ ears when an opportunity for advancement arose. And you?” He smiled that skeletal smile. “I whispered in your ear when the witch came to you.”

  Sinjin clung to his composure, remembering his original purpose. Not to give in to the ghost’s threats and blandishments, but to learn.

  “Everything you have said is balanced upon the presumption that Nuala and all her kind are evil,” he said.

  “Would I be here, separated from Heaven, if she were innocent?” A deep weariness passed over Makepeace’s face, and he closed his eyes. “I ask your help not only for myself and my murdered father, not only for the generations who have suffered, but for the sake of this new age, this new city. If you have any doubts about what the witch may do, what she has done to your family, then you must not shut me out.”

  Doubts. God, yes. He had doubts. Nuala was not innocent. Whether or not she had been ultimately responsible for Giles’s death, as he had once believed, she was capable of violence against anyone who crossed her. She could not or would not control her abilities.

  Perhaps Makepeace’s father had deserved what had become of him. Perhaps he had “driven out” a people who did not deserve such treatment. Sinjin had no way of knowing. But if he were to ask Nuala of her past, of her supposed age, of her alleged crime, would she ever admit to any of it? To him, whom she had so soundly rejected?

  “Even if I were to accept anything that you have told me,” Sinjin said, “I will not be your weapon of revenge. I will not harm Nuala.”

  “Harm her?” Makepeace leaned his head on his hand, and had he been a living man it would have seemed as if he were weeping. “I would punish her, yes. But I would not take her life.” He looked up, the hollows in his face no more than wells of shadow. “It has been so long. So long. I have let my anger get the better of me. But I am no murderer.”

  Sinjin picked up the razor again. The sharpened edge cut a thin red line in his finger. “What would you have me do?”

  “Complete the vow. Strip Nuala of her powers, so that she may never harm another living soul.”

  Strip her of her powers. What would that mean to a two-hundred-and-forty-four-year-old witch?

  Salvation. Freedom from a cruel master she was incapable of defying. A normal life. The happiness Sinjin knew eluded her.

  “How is such a thing to be achieved?” he asked thickly.

  But Makepeace’s shape, previously so solid in appearance, had begun to dissolve as if he were losing the power to hold himself in the mortal world.

  “You must learn for yourself,” he said, his voice growing faint. “Go to Donbridge. You will find a concealed door behind the paneling in the library. It contains a book written by my father.”

  “A book? What sort of book?”

  “I cannot stay.” Makepeace’s shape became so transparent that the chair was fully visible through it. “You will find the means at Donbridge.”

  And then he was gone, only a trace of dark mist left behind.

  Sinjin stood very still, waiting. Makepeace did not return. The room was deathly silent as Sinjin found his way back to his chair.

  So he was to go to Donbridge and find a book that would explain how he was to put a stop to this madness. If he were to believe anything Makepeace had said. If he were to learn that this mysterious method of ending Nuala’s power would do her no harm.

  He knew there were things the ghost had not told him, things he had kept hidden. But what choice did Sinjin have?

  Go to Nuala one last time. Speak with her. Ask her for the truth.

  But she had closed her mind and her heart to him. It had gone too far.

  He summoned his valet to help him pack.

  “WE HAVE FOUND HER.”

  Nuala focused again on Clara’s face. It was good news. The best. Deborah had been discovered at a country house in Kent, one of her late husband’s properties previously unknown to the Widows. She had been persuaded to return to London…not by the Widows, who had assumed the work for which Nuala should have been responsible, but by Ioan Davies, who had insisted upon accompanying Clara, Frances and Julia Summerhayes on their sojourn to Kent.

  “They cannot be separated,” Clara said with an air of bemusement. “It is most definitely love, despite the barriers that ought to exist between them. Even Tameri has acquiesced to the inevitability of Deborah’s downfall.”

  Inevitable, indeed. If Nuala required any further proof that her magic had become as wild and undependable as a Fane lordling’s honor, Deborah’s situation must have provided it. Nuala had been bent on putting Deborah and Melbyrne together, and she had been wrong. Blindly, inexorably wrong. Her path forward was now clear.

  “Of course she will not stay in London,” Clara continued. “It does not appear as if those ridiculous rumors will gain any further traction, but there would be the worst sort of talk once Deborah’s relationship with young Davies became known. She might defy Society, but Davies will not permit it. I believe they mean to—” Clara cocked her head. “I should not tell you what Deborah will tell you herself. She, Julia and Mr. Davies should arrive by two.”

  So soon. It was nearly ten o’clock now, and Nuala knew she was in no fit state to speak to anyone.

  “I…will not be here to see her,” she said. “I am leaving London. I do not know when I shall return.”

  Clara lea
ned forward in her chair. “What nonsense is this?” Her eyes narrowed. “Has it something to do with Lord Donnington?”

  “Nothing,” Nuala said too quickly. “Whatever you may have heard…I have not been flinging myself at his head in the expectation of a proposal.”

  “A proposal?” Clara laughed. “What an astonishing thought. I have heard no such talk. But we have noticed that neither you nor Deborah have attended our gatherings in the past weeks, and you have been seen speaking intimately with Donnington on more than one occasion. Of course it had seemed that you had no liking for each other….” Her voice trailed off. “What goes on between you and the earl, Nuala? Has he been pursuing you?”

  “Nothing of the kind. You are quite right—we despised each other from the moment we met. I…I knew him before I came to London, before my marriage. It was not a pleasant acquaintance.”

  “Ah.”

  “I knew I might see him again, but expected that we would avoid each other. Apparently, Lord Donnington’s quarrelsome nature could not be denied.”

  “I see.”

  Clara did not see. A bee had found its way into her bonnet, and she had already drawn her own conclusions.

  “I have been a poor friend to all of you,” Nuala said. “But you need have no fear that I will follow Deborah’s path. I have recently learned of certain holdings from my husband’s estate in Scotland and Northumberland. It is necessary for me to visit them before I can determine what must be done with them.”

  “But surely you can put this off until another day, when Deborah—”

  “I cannot.” Nuala rose. “Deborah is safe. She does not need me now, and I must finish preparing for my journey. Please give Deborah and Mr. Davies my very best wishes for their future happiness.”

  Clara stared, realized that she had been asked to leave, and got to her feet.

  “Something is wrong,” she said. “You are not yourself. We should be poor friends if we did not stand by you in your time of need.”

  “When I am in need, I shall tell you.” Nuala broke for the drawing room door. “I shall send a letter from Northumberland when I reach my destination.”

  Blowing out her breath, Clara followed Nuala into the hall. She paused at the door, clearly prepared to continue her arguments. Without thinking or considering her actions, Nuala whispered the simplest of spells, and the older woman’s face went blank. She murmured a goodbye and descended to her carriage.

  Sickened by her sudden action against her friend, Nuala leaned against the wall, afraid she might not make it up the stairs to her room. It was so easy to work this shadow-magic to get her way. Second nature now, when for so many years even the whitest magic had been a careful practice, considered deliberately before the most rudimentary spell was spoken.

  No longer. She was losing control of the very powers she had worked so hard to keep.

  Working her way along the wall, Nuala reached the staircase. Within the hour she would be gone…north, just as she had told Clara. There was a man in Scotland, a witch who had been said to have relinquished his powers and become a monk. If he still lived, perhaps he could show Nuala the way to relinquish her own.

  There was grave danger in such a purging, a chance that she might not survive the process. But she was prepared to pay that price.

  It was her last hope.

  Nuala climbed to the first-floor landing and braced herself on the banister. One way or another, this must end. She would end it.

  But not without saying goodbye to Sinjin.

  DONBRIDGE WAS AS QUIET as the grave.

  Only a handful of servants remained during the Season, and they maintained a strict state of efficient invisibility that suggested they were keenly aware of their master’s mood. The moment he arrived, Sinjin changed his clothes, raided the kitchen for a sandwich to stave off insistent hunger, and went directly to the library.

  He found the hidden cupboard door after only a few minutes of searching. The cracks in the paneling were almost invisible; he was not surprised that he hadn’t noticed them before, having spent little time in the room since his accession to the title.

  His hands shook as he found the catch and the door swung open. The dank smell of mildewed paper filled his nostrils. The book he found was small and bound in red-dyed leather, its pages threatening to crumble before Sinjin had turned the first page.

  He sat behind the desk and laid the book before him. The cover was blank, but the frontispiece displayed a primitive illustration of a woman, half-naked and leering, her hands raised as if she would attack the reader with weapons spun of air.

  The woman looked like Nuala.

  Sinjin turned the page with such haste that he nearly tore it in two. He ignored the damage and continued past the Scriptural verse on the next page to the first chapter.

  Of Witches, the title said. By Comfort Makepeace. Dense, crabbed writing crowded the paper, words shaped in antique script and an Old English dialect. Sinjin bent over the book, translating the language as best he could.

  It was obvious that Comfort Makepeace had despised the women—and men—he named witches. Line after line described the evil they had worked among men since the days of Christ, how they were not bound by God’s law, or Man’s. They poisoned wells and struck down livestock merely to display their power; they killed those who dared attempt to expose them for the tools of Satan they were.

  Sinjin closed the book, his eyes aching. Such extreme accusations could not be rational or true. They smacked of fanaticism. Just as had Martin Makepeace’s threats and warnings.

  Rising quickly, Sinjin scanned the bookshelves. Few of the volumes had been touched in years; Giles had not been a great reader, and Sinjin kept his own personal favorites in his rooms. But after a time he found a history of England wedged between Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a well-worn copy of Tom Jones.

  The section on the English witch-hunts was no more than a few paragraphs, but it was enough. Sinjin closed the cover and returned the book to its place.

  He had been an utter fool. How had he not seen it from the first? Perhaps Comfort Makepeace had not been a witch-finder himself, but the man had clearly hated them enough to be such a monster.

  Returning to the desk, Sinjin thumbed through the old tome’s fragile pages, pausing at each illustration. Most were crude wood-block prints of various witches performing wicked magic on innocent, terrified men, women and children. Not one depicted a hanging, a flogging, or any other overt act of violence against the loathed creatures.

  Yet Sinjin’s gaze was caught on a sequence of illustrations near the end of the book, as primitive as the rest, but even more sickeningly evocative. In the first illustration, naked woman stood facing a man in the same dark, sober clothing worn by Martin Makepeace. Her hands were bound, and her hair flowed loose about her shoulders.

  In the second illustration, the woman lay on her back on the ground, and the man crouched between her thighs. In the third, he was stretched out on top of her. And in the last, the woman knelt with bowed head, defeated. Clumsy though the illustrator was, he had managed to convey a terrible sense of despair in the woman’s body.

  Sinjin swallowed and read the text beneath the pictures. It was very explicit, both in the description of the physical act and the words that must be spoken as it was done. The cantrip was more effective if the witch were willing, but her cooperation in the coupling was not required.

  Shutting the book, Sinjin dropped it to the carpet. It was obscene. Yet this was what Martin Makepeace had intended that he should find, the instructions he was meant to follow.

  He walked out of the library and slammed the door, as breathless as if he had run several miles. He couldn’t do it. Not at any price.

  The familiar, icy chill returned, running along his limbs and spine.

  “Makepeace,” Sinjin said hoarsely.

  The ghost didn’t appear, not even in the form of the mist that always presaged his materialization. But Sinjin heard
the apparition’s voice just the same.

  “Do you still doubt?”

  “Did your father hang witches?”

  “He tried to halt their evil, but he did not kill them.”

  “He merely raped them.”

  “Reciting the cantrip in the act of coupling is the only means of breaking their power.”

  “Then you’ve got the wrong man to do your dirty work.”

  “I have the right man. A man who is the last of his line, and will die without issue should he fail.”

  “You expect me to believe that Nuala would kill me?”

  “Or make certain that you have no sons of your own. She knows who you are, boy. She has always known.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then believe this. She will not realize what you have done. You may guide her, teach her to be a good, humble woman. And she will be well when it is finished. She may yet earn salvation.”

  “And you? What will become of you?”

  He waited for Makepeace’s answer, but none came. The chill passed away.

  Dizzy with shock, Sinjin wandered up to his room. She couldn’t have deceived him for so long. She couldn’t have pretended their passion, the bond that had grown between them. She couldn’t be over two hundred years old. She couldn’t have killed Giles, or his father’s brothers, or all those sons of previous generations.

  Yet there were unicorns, and fairies and ghosts. Ghosts who remained attached to this world for the sole purpose of securing what they believed to be justice.

  Sinjin sat numbly on the bed and considered the worst. If Nuala really were what Makepeace had claimed, then Sinjin had but two choices: do as the book instructed, or let her continue on her path of wanton rage. Anything she might tell him must be presumed to be a lie. If she were wholly innocent of the crimes of which Makepeace had accused her…she might suffer a little while, but in the end she would be well again.