"I wonder if there's anyone left alive to tell us the names of these poor souls," he murmured aloud, worrying his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. And who was to pay for the interments—the village council over which Talbot sat would be wanting to know that. There were so many dead, nineteen at least, so many to bury.
Talbot looked to Lord Greyleigh, but declined to ask the most powerful and richest of Severn's Well's inhabitants to donate the funds for a mass funeral. It was not so much that Talbot feared the master of Greyleigh . . . well, truth be told, that was it. But unlike others, it was not Lord Greyleigh's physical appearance that troubled Talbot—although Greyleigh was the oddest-looking bird to have ever resided in Greyleigh Manor. The man's hair was so blond it was nearly white, and worn long and often in a queue, in the fashion of twenty and more years past, an odd style for a young man closer to twenty than thirty. At first glance one could be excused for thinking he powdered his hair, which no young buck of fashion did these days, but at second glance one discovered the pale color was all Greyleigh's own. Yet, if that warlock's mane were trimmed away, the man would appear normal enough—except for his eyes.
The man's eyes were penetratingly clear; they were colorless ... but, no, that wasn't true. In bright summer's light they were seen to be a very pale blue. However, in any other light they were the palest of greys, making the pupil stand out— some said like a black well that swallowed all light. In candlelight, all hint of softer color was gone from the irises, and one felt as if one stared at a kind of silver sheen, a hint of color that made one think of steel just below a layer of water. They were ghostly eyes—there was no better way to describe them. And there was no denying that when Lord Greyleigh leveled his gaze upon a person, it made that person want to look away in discomfort, as if the man held up a looking glass to one's very soul. Others less kind said it was like looking into a bottomless well, one that led straight to Hades, and who could blame them for turning away from such a view?
Yet, despite the townspeople's inclination otherwise, it was not Lord Greyleigh's appearance that took the steel from Talbot Wallace's spine at the thought of asking Greyleigh to pay expenses. It was that the last few times Talbot had approached their village's grandest resident, Lord Greyleigh had icily denied his simple request. There had been something like frosty rage just underlying the calm tone Lord Greyleigh was usually so adept at maintaining, some boiling pot of emotion barely held in check that Talbot was loathe to disturb further. That rage had been out of all proportion to Talbot's request that Greyleigh cease employing itinerants for completing his pet tasks about the village and his own property.
The request had been hardly unreasonable, given that two murders had occurred this year, and both of them had been suspected—if not proven—to have been executed by one of the wanderers whom Lord Greyleigh employed. A hiatus from the constant influx of strangers to their community, that was all the council had wanted—but Greyleigh had coldly replied he would hire whom he liked, and when, and the devil take the council.
No one even dared to say aloud what all of them half feared—that the violence that had come into their little village was not from an outsider at all, but from within their own ranks. No one dared to voice the opinion that Lord Greyleigh, he of the white-blond mane of hair and the ghostly eyes, might have inherited a terrible sickness from his mama. Certainly there was no proof of such a thing—only fear and old rumors and an increasingly stern visage that Greyleigh displayed to the world. That is, when he bothered to be social at all.
And now there was this terrible affair of a fire, and all these bodies to be buried, and records to be found if they hadn't burnt up.
Greyleigh would certainly not lend one penny to rebuild the asylum, that was a certainty. He had long since made it clear that he wished the place closed and abandoned. It was well known that he had detested the structure ever since the tender age of eight or so, when he had visited his own poor deranged mama there. He would be glad, no doubt, to see the few remaining scorched walls torn down and never replaced, even though his mama was dead and buried these two months past.
The asylum burning was a shame, say what you would, for not even a quarter of the patients had been in the "difficult-to-manage" wing. Most of them had been mild enough, certainly harmless even if they needed to be confined to keep them from wandering away.
Truth is, the community would feel the loss of income the asylum had engendered, for there had been jobs to be had there, as warder, as keepers, as stable lads, and groundskeepers. Also, the asylum had provided custom, for the inmates had needed to be fed and clothed, however humbly. A lucky few had family who had called upon them occasionally, and those good people had brought coin to the local inns and taverns and craftspeople. Yes, the loss of the asylum would be felt, in one form or another, by the entire community.
So if Lord Greyleigh opposed the rebuilding of the asylum, could perhaps the place be rebuilt in another function? Not a hospital, with its attendant diseases and death—but a guild-house perhaps. The Needlemakers were said to desire a larger hall for their growing concerns....
"Mr. Wallace." Lord Greyleigh interrupted Talbot's municipal thoughts for the future.
"My lord?" Talbot answered at once, responding to the tone of authority.
Lord Greyleigh indicated the oval of grass upon which they stood. "I said, this is as good a place as any to bring all the bodies, that we might perhaps begin to determine who is who—" he said, only to suddenly go very still.
He did not move, except for his eyes, which cast about in the darkness, searching. Talbot turned to gaze in the same direction, until he saw what caused Greyleigh to make a small, angry sound from between his teeth.
There, through the gloom, was the outline of a man appearing oddly stooped, until Talbot realized that the man stood in a ditch. The man, his face lost to shadows, held an arm pinned between his knees. Obviously a body must lie at his feet in the ditch, only a portion of its arm visible over the grassy edge. The man worked frantically at something—Talbot realized the man struggled to remove a ring from an ungloved hand—but the stranger was not so intent that he forgot to glance suspiciously about.
When he did, Talbot did not know the man but recognized raw panic as it crossed the man's features, especially since the man gave a cry of alarm, dropped the inert hand he held, and turned and ran.
Lord Greyleigh growled again, the sound instantly catapulting Talbot into action, and both men sprang forward in pursuit.
It was too late, however, for the man plunged into the trees that surrounded the asylum property. Talbot thrashed into the woods after the man, as Lord Greyleigh did without evident consideration for his grey silk waistcoat or polished boots—but there was no light. Within five steps into the snagging brush it was impossible to make out any trail or obvious sign of the man's passing. The would-be thief was gone from sight, and within seconds from hearing as well, the sounds of his twig-snapping retreat swallowed by the night.
"He was raiding one of the bodies," Greyleigh declared, his tone incensed despite puffing a bit from his exertions.
"The scoundrel!" Talbot acknowledged with feeling. His own breathing was more labored, but then he did not cut so fine a figure as did Lord Greyleigh.
Both men worked their way free of the woods, brushing at their coats and trousers to remove leaves and debris.
"As soon as it's light, I'll have members of the Watch out after him," Talbot stated.
Lord Greyleigh nodded, even if he did not appear particularly hopeful that any lawmen would actually apprehend the villain. He moved back to the ditch, looking down at the body there. "A woman. We may as well move this body—" he began, but he was interrupted by a moan.
"Good gad," Lord Greyleigh cried, stepping down at once into the muck of the ditch. "This woman. She lives yet."
"She's alive?" Talbot echoed, moving to stare down at a pale white face half covered with a splattered dark pattern that even in the dim light looked omin
ous. He felt stunned, having given up any hope of finding any of the inmates alive.
Greyleigh pointed at the woman's head. "You take her shoulders, I will take her legs. We must get her out of this gutter."
The words galvanized Talbot into action. He reached down, as did Lord Greyleigh, and with hands under her arms and legs, they awkwardly brought her up from the ditch to gently lay her on the thin grass lane that ran between the dirt of the road and the ditch.
Lord Greyleigh went down on one knee and put a hand to her throat. "I feel a heartbeat, and it is fairly strong. And she is breathing. Wallace, fetch one of those lanterns."
Talbot did as he was told, quickly returning with lantern in hand, its golden glow making no difference in the coloration of the woman's hair, which was as inky a black in the light as it had been in shadow. "She's filthy," Talbot noted, meaning the mud from the ditch, but now also seeing that blood spotted her face, her cloak, her arm, the bodice of her gown. "Is she still bleeding?"
"No. I think the cuts look worse than they are. Look here, these wounds were not had from the fire," Lord Greyleigh pronounced. "See this bruise by her eye? And these cuts were made with some manner of blade, unless I miss my guess."
Greyleigh stood, removing his coat. His look was tight, even harsh, and Talbot thought, as he had more than once before, that this was not a man in whom one would seek to provoke ire. What was my lord thinking? He appeared angry—but, then, he often appeared angry, especially of late. "Hold my coat," he ordered now, giving no hint of what thoughts formed behind his strange, light eyes.
Talbot took the proffered coat, and then watched in some surprise as Lord Greyleigh stooped to take the woman up in his arms. "Put my coat over her, for warmth," Greyleigh instructed, his steady gaze brooking no questions or comments.
"Are you taking her to your home, my lord?" Talbot dared to ask anyway, because it was his duty as senior alderman to see to the well-being of those who resided within the confines of Severn's Well, including the inmates from the asylum as well.
"Of course," Lord Greyleigh replied, his jaw tight.
Talbot started to remind Lord Greyleigh that the council did not wish his lordship to take in any more strays, as people were wont to call the strangers and itinerants who seemed to gravitate to Greyleigh Manor. But the look on Greyleigh's stony visage forced Talbot to choke back the comment,
"Very good, sir. I'll have Mr. Clifton come to the manor immediately, to see to the woman," he said instead, naming the local surgeon.
Greyleigh replied merely with one firm nod, then turned in the direction of his home, calling loudly for a servant to run at once and fetch a horse.
Talbot stood and stared after Lord Greyleigh for a long moment. He watched as Greyleigh seemed to effortlessly carry the woman toward where several servants hurried to assist him. Talbot watched as another servant broke away, no doubt sent after a horse, up the long, graveled lane that inclined to where Greyleigh Manor resided upon a rise overlooking the village.
Greyleigh Manor was a rambling pile of an edifice that might more appropriately be named a castle by those who took a fanciful view of the world. It was built of bricks that had once been red, but now with age had taken on the color of an old bloodstain. Talbot looked to the large manor that Lord Greyleigh called home, and shivered, and wondered if to live in such a place was to be affected by its somber appearance. Certainly it was whispered by more than a few of the locals that Lord Greyleigh was not in his right head.
And there was no denying that Greyleigh's mama had been mad. Besides her time in the asylum, there were plenty of other village tales about the now deceased Lady Greyleigh's bizarre behavior. It would be easy to believe that Greyleigh Manor and its inhabitants were all cursed—even by a modern, moderately educated man like Talbot Wallace.
"God bless you," Talbot whispered toward the woman Lord Greyleigh carried away in his arms, and meant the words literally. Then he hurried to fetch the surgeon, the better to treat the injured woman ... and by the surgeon's attendance keep her as safe as possible within the walls of Greyleigh Manor.
Pain rippled through Elizabeth, and she tried to stir, only to find she could not move as she wished. Her right arm was pinned against something solid, and her legs were held as though in a vise. She felt a sense of motion, and she was only belatedly able to put all her impressions together and realize she was being carried in a pair of arms, by someone riding a horse.
She opened her eyes, and was for a moment too dizzy to make sense of anything. Then her befuddled sight was caught by the sight of a lock of pale hair. Grandfather? But Grandfather was dead these five years and more.
She blinked, and moaned, and then the face above her own turned downward to glance at her briefly. In that moment she recognized the man carrying her, even though the sight of him was as unexpected as would be Grandpapa. She did not know this man except by sight, having never been introduced to him, but it was impossible not to recognize Lord Greyleigh. It was a strand of his peculiarly light hair, far too long for fashion and escaping from a queue, that had puzzled her.
"A surgeon is coming to see to your injuries," Lord Greyleigh told her, not bothering to look down at her again. His words were clipped, no doubt from the effort of supporting her.
How had she come to be in his arms? Where did they ride to? Was she ill? Fevered? Her foot ached abominably with every stride the horse took.
The pale sunlight disappeared, and Elizabeth opened her eyes to find the newly rising sun had been blocked by a large, looming brick edifice, the imposing fagade of a weather-aged manor house.
"What is . .. this place?" she managed to whisper.
Lord Greyleigh glanced down at her again. "Greyleigh Manor."
She tilted her head to glance upward at the man who spoke, amazed that Greyleigh was not part of some dream she had been having, but real and warm and holding her steady between his arms.
"Not your house!" she said, the words pathetically small and thin.
"What? Afraid to enter the madman's house? I cannot say I blame you, my dear lady." His voice did not sound annoyed, as she might have expected—if anything, he sounded amused. Darkly amused, no doubt, even if she judged from only half of the rumors attached to his name—rumors that circulated every parlor, even so far away as London.
Even though Lord Greyleigh spent little time in London— preferring his rural estate near Bristol—rumors about him traveled into the City all the same. The kinder gossipmongers called him eccentric, and the less kind dubbed him lunatic.
She wanted to say any other circumstances would suit: a farmer's holding, or the local squire's home might provide her a temporary shelter, perhaps—anyplace other than the home of Lord Greyleigh the madman. She wanted to insist he release her, that she was well enough, that she did not wish to be any bother to him. ... But the shadows grew darker, and were inviting and far less horrible than reality, and Elizabeth gave in to their gentle summoning, until she knew nothing more of being cradled in Lord Greyleigh's arms.
Chapter 3
Elizabeth's heel ached dully, but in the end it was her inability to flex it that finally dragged her out of an already fitful slumber. She blinked her eyes open, finding the room inadequately lit by a single branch of candles. She was absolutely at a loss to explain how it had become night again, for the last moment she remembered was the faint grey of early morning showing just beyond the shoulder of a crazed man ... a man who struck her, who presumably took her horse.
Still, it was now clearly night again, as if time had been wound backward. How she could be so sure it was evening, she did not know, but there was a stillness around her that spoke of nighttime.
She was alive, and she was in an unfamiliar, white damask-covered bed with its curtains tied back. Her own bed at home sported neither posts nor white damask. Her next thought was to ponder how she'd come to this bed, one wholly foreign to her, and into a night rail she knew was not her own. She could not imagine how she had come to be
here.
The mystery was beyond the cloudy reasoning that seemed to have taken the place of rational thought, and so she allowed her attention to shift entirely to the condition of her right foot. She struggled up to a sitting position, and a flick of the light coverlet revealed a heavy bandage encasing her heel. It was secured by a length of torn linen cloth that looped several times over the bandage and around her ankle.
She knew at once that the damage her foot had suffered was not trivial, although a twinge in her shoulder revealed a less severe injury. There were other parts of her that stung, and then she remembered a horse coming at her. She recalled she had received cuts to her jawline, her arm, and where the horse's hoof had struck her head. She reached to feel for a sticking plaster on her forehead, and was not disappointed.
The clouds in her head dissipated rapidly, as though to keep pace with the return of sharp and painful sensation to her body. Feeling faint, she almost wished she had not looked at her foot, had not reminded herself of her injuries.
"My heel!" she said aloud, hearing the amazement in her own croaky words as she remembered the wound that had left her gasping in the premorning dark.
She was answered by nothing more than a nod, but the nod was enough movement to catch Elizabeth's eye. The hair stood up on her nape, although she had no reason to think why it should, other than the lateness of the hour. Her gaze slowly lifted from her injured foot to the space beyond the bed. Despite knowing someone was there, she was still a little shocked to discover the viewer was Lord Greyleigh, not a maid as one might have supposed. Unmoving and unblinking, he sat in a chair opposite the bed, watching her every movement.
Ah. Yes, she thought. Lord Greyleigh. There had been a horse, other than the one taken from her.... Lord Greyleigh's horse. This man had held her as he had ridden. He must have found her, must have brought her here. ... It all came flooding back at once, and she understood that she had to be within Greyleigh Manor.
The Misfit Marquess Page 2