by Eve Silver
The words were innocuous, but his tone was low and rough and intimate. Her skin tingled and sparked, as though he had touched her. Drawing a shaky breath, she rubbed her palms along her upper arms.
With a flourish, he offered her ecru bag. She murmured her thanks as she took it from him, then snatched her hand back as their fingers brushed. Even through her glove she felt the heat of that touch.
“I really must be on my way,” she whispered, confused by the strong emotions he engendered. And he knew that he flustered her. She could sense that.
Determined to gather her wayward emotions, Beth spun away and began to walk. Mr. Fairfax fell into step beside her, close enough that on one occasion his shoulder brushed her own. She swallowed, thoroughly unsettled, not so much by the contact, but by her peculiar, disconcerted reaction to it.
She actually ached to reach out and touch him, to know the soft feel of the cloth of his coat over the hard bulge of muscle that defined his arms and shoulders. She wanted to rub the thick strands of his hair between her fingers, to relish the texture, to lean close and know again the lush smell of him.
What lunacy had overtaken her?
Girlish whimsy had never been her natural inclination. Her nature was solemn and—for the most part—calm. Because she willed it so, made it so by sheer obstinacy and resolve. She liked everything neat and tidy, everything ordered, but the way Griffin Fairfax made her heart pound and her skin tingle was not tidy or ordered or even sane.
It was... it was... absurd!
Keeping her gaze locked on the ground before her and her fingers curled tight in the cloth of her bag, she walked on. She longed for him to leave her, to let her walk on alone, and in the same contrary instant, she hoped he stayed exactly where he was, by her side, matching each step to her own.
She cut him a glance through her lashes. Looked away.
Then lured by the hard, clean line of his profile, and the curl at the ends of his dark, dark hair, and the rather disreputable stubble that darkened his cheek and jaw, she wet her lips and looked again.
Was it soft, his beard? Rough?
What would it feel like under her fingers if she reached out right now and touched him?
Her mouth felt dry as sand, and her thoughts were an unwieldy and frightening mélange, so out of character.
“I have met your daughter, sir,” she said. His expression grew closed and hard at her words, drawing forth memories of Isobel’s haunted gaze.
He made no answer, and the silence stretched, seeming longer than minutes. Seeming like hours.
Well, that had certainly squelched her untoward fascination, Beth thought with a modicum of self-directed humor.
At length, Mr. Fairfax huffed a sigh and observed, “You prefer a brisk pace, Miss Canham.”
“I do,” she replied, and walked a little faster.
“Why?”
Such a simple question. Such a difficult answer.
Almost did she manage to hold her tongue and say nothing, but in the end she said far too much.
“When I was a child, Mrs. Arthur, the woman who lived next door, lost her husband. She ran screaming down the street when they told her. They dragged her back, and all the while she moaned and cried for them to let her run.”
She glanced at him again, at the harsh and lovely profile of his nose, his cheek, his jaw, and then lower to where his hands were loose and relaxed at his sides. Strong hands, with squared fingers. She raised her eyes to find him watching her with quiet expectation, waiting for her to go on.
“My mother and I went to the widow’s home every day for months to offer what help and comfort we could.” She paused. “Mrs. Arthur never ran like that again. Instead, she took drops from a brown bottle until she could barely walk, or even sit. She would only lie on the chaise for hours, stroking the old, worn coat of a dead man and talking softly to his ghost.”
Mr. Fairfax stopped cold, and Beth turned to look at him, her heart racing as their gazes collided and locked.
Her words had set loose something inside him, or if not set it loose, at least prodded it to life. His eyes, grown dark as a moonless night, reflected heartbreak and pain.
Or perhaps she saw only a mirror of her own torments.
“That is precisely the point of the brown bottle,” he said, his voice a hard-edged rasp. “To drain away the restlessness, leaving a hollow-eyed shell behind.”
Beth nodded. “In the end, Mrs. Arthur drank too many drops. They called it an accident and buried her next to her husband, but sometimes I do wonder...”
His expression chilled, and she fumbled for words, wondering what it was she had said that had brought such desolation to his eyes.
“I think it better to feel even dreadful things,” she rushed on, the words tumbling free. “To feel even fear and pain, than to feel nothing at all.”
His lips twisted in a cynic’s smile, and a deep crease formed in his cheek.
“Do you? And what do you know of fear and pain, Miss Canham? What do you know of dreadful things?” he asked, his words almost a whisper. Intimate. Inviting her confidences. She thought he might charm souls from the devil if he had a mind to.
She shivered. The way he asked about dreadful things make her think again of Alice and her terrible intimations and accusations.
“Nothing,” she mumbled when the silence had grown heavier than she could bear. “I know nothing at all.” She spun away and began to walk, her blood rushing through her veins at a dizzying rate.
Oh, she knew far too much of fear, and quite enough about all manner of horrors. And she was wise enough not to say so.
Her fingers closed convulsively around the linen embroidery bag as she walked on, doubling her pace. She thought he would leave her, but instead, he matched his stride to her own.
Faster, dear heart. Walk until you are free of the terrors that chase you. Her mother’s words came to her. So many times had her mother seen Beth’s agitation, sensed her restless soul and bid her walk, walk until her heart pounded not with edginess, but with exertion, until finally she ran to exhaustion the secret fiends that gnawed at her.
There were days that to be still was a torment. Less often now. She had been far worse as a child.
Now she could pass weeks, even months, calm, serene, but eventually, from nowhere would come the memories, the terror, and she would feel the choking sludge closing her throat.
Her mother had understood, had found a way to channel off the fear.
Walk, dear heart. Walk faster.
Beth glanced at Mr. Fairfax. With a look in her direction that made her blood heat and a thousand questions race through her mind, he cast her a quiet, knowing smile. Then he quickened his pace and walked faster by her side.
Chapter Seven
Northallerton, Yorkshire, September 5, 1828
Cold. She was so cold.
Sarah Ashton lay in the dark, shivering, her belly twisted in hunger, her fear near to driving her mad. There was nothing left now of the girl she had been, nothing left of hopes and dreams and fancies. There was only a fate she could never have imagined, not in her nightmares. Not ever.
She was soaked through, her clothes damp and frigid against her skin, her joints aching. Her arms were wrenched tight behind her, her wrists bound, her hands gone numb long ago. A fetid rag filled her mouth.
Hours had passed since he had left her here. Hours? No, longer than that... days? She could not say. There was only the endless cold and the desperation and the jagged edge of terror. She was beyond tears, cast in a pit of fierce misery, vast and overwhelming.
She could see nothing of her surroundings, and now that the pounding rhythm of the rain had stopped, she could hear nothing save the steady thud of her own heart. She had taken to counting the beats to stave off the memories and the terrible suppositions that slunk from the darkest shadows of her soul. Then she lost count and the panic clawed at her, terror creeping to the fore.
With perfect clarity she recalled the length of h
is crop tap-tap-tapping his thigh as he stood, impatient, in the clearing. She remembered her eager steps, her girlish dreams, the scent of rain in the air and, finally, the metallic tang of fear burning her tongue.
He had overpowered her with ease, tied her wrists and her feet, muzzled her with a cloth tied so tightly that the sensitive skin at the corners of her mouth tore open. Her struggles had been pitiful in the face of his strength, and he had relished that. Somehow, she sensed that he had enjoyed her helplessness.
Then he had tied a rag over her eyes, and she had known only shock and dread as he hefted her like a sack of grain and moved her to a carriage. Bile had churned in her gut and up her throat, and she had fought it back, terrified that if she retched she would choke on her own vomit behind the press of the gag. The carriage had rocked and swayed and brought her here... wherever here was.
He had dragged her from the conveyance, his grasp bruisingly tight, and hefted her once more to carry her a short distance before dumping her on the ground. Yanking off the blindfold, he had shoved her against something hard and unyielding. She had been too terrified to notice her surroundings. She remembered screaming into the gag, struggling as he touched her hair, a gentle stroke of his hand, then screaming again, more desperate as she heard the heavy slam of wood against wood.
Everything had gone dark, so dark.
Fighting her panic, she had struggled and squirmed and felt her shoulders bump against walls mere inches away on all sides. No matter how she turned and twisted, there was only the smell of damp wood and earth and the feel of unfinished planks close about her. Splinters pricked her fingers as she maneuvered her body to allow her bound hands to drag across the wood, searching for escape.
Dear heaven, a wooden box, long and narrow, smelling of earth and rot.
Sick with dread, she had bucked and jerked, slamming herself against the hard walls with whatever force she could muster, nearly driven mad with the fear that he had buried her alive.
Why... why... why...?
After a time she had slumped in exhaustion and lost awareness of the passage of the hours, rousing at times to cry and wriggle and struggle, to rage and sob and plead with stifled cries, only to fall quiet once more when her efforts came to naught.
Now, she shivered and shook and waited in the choking miasma of her ever-present horror.
That was the worst part. The waiting.
How long had she been here? How long until she died?
She stiffened as the sound of horses reached her, the crunch of carriage wheels drawing nigh. She thought it a conjured notion, a dream, and then the horses nickered and she cried out, a muffled sound escaping her gagged mouth.
Every muscle and bone in her body protested in a riot of pain as she struggled anew, desperate to be free, torn between hope and horror.
There came a soft, scraping noise, booted feet against the ground, closer and closer still. Narrow optimism unfurled in her breast, then congealed into a glutinous mass that choked her breath and hung leaden in her lungs.
Likely this was no savior come to free her, but her captor, come to harm her, come to—
The lid of the box lifted away, and Sarah blinked against the flare of light. She saw nothing but spots dancing before her eyes, glowing and bright. The light hurt.
“So, miss,” he said quietly, his tone even, chillingly void of inflection. “You’ve soiled yourself.”
She had, and now she was glad of it. Perhaps the stink would keep him away, perhaps...
He reached into the box, her coffin, and dragged her out as though she were a doll, then let her fall to the ground at his feet. Frantic, she looked about, the earthen floor cold and damp beneath her cheek, her eyes at last growing accustomed to the light.
Morning light. She could hear the birds.
Turning her head, she saw that she was in a small building with wooden sides and a wooden roof, and in the center was the simple wooden coffin set in a shallow trench. A terrible shuddering took her, to see it so, with only the top exposed that he might set the lid, and the remainder in the ground.
Buried alive.
She jerked and twisted and wriggled along the ground, digging her bound and numbed fingers into the hard earth, dragging herself away inch by inch.
He stood staring down at her, his expression perfectly benign, but something in his face made her stop her struggles, made her freeze in place and pray. Moaning, she flinched as he hunkered down beside her. Not even daring to breathe, she quivered, held in place, an insect pinned and studied.
“Yes, that’s a good girl,” he whispered, his voice a low caress that made her skin prickle and her heart slam against her ribs. “Be still. No tempests, now. No tantrums.”
He never said what he would do if she was not still, but she knew. With brutal, lancing certainty, she knew.
Reaching out, he stroked the backs of his fingers along her cheek, and she lay rigid, frozen by the horror of it and the fear. She could not breathe. Her chest was tight, so tight, and the edges of her vision blurred and wavered. She thought she would fall into the blackness, the lovely, unknowing blackness.
“No,” he murmured, and trailed his fingers along her cheek, her neck, the swell of her breast where he pinched her sharply. The pain chased away the promise of oblivion, reviving her.
And then she saw the gleam of the blade.
Leaning close, he spoke against her ear. “Be still.” A lover’s whisper, so soft.
She shuddered and squeaked as she felt a tugging on her scalp, a sting. He was cutting her hair, she thought, sawing at the length with his knife, gathering the golden tresses in a tail. His fingers stroked the pale strands of hair as he made low sounds of pleasure that chilled her to her core.
He was pulling too hard. It hurt. It burned. She cried out at a sharp pull, the sound swallowed by the gag.
Memories bubbled like a viscous brew, fevered recollections of two women found dead in the woods, mauled and bloody, their bodies gouged and slashed by some unnamed beast’s claws.
Sarah began to struggle, despite his whispered urgings that she be still. Fresh horror chewed at her, and she knew then that he had killed them, Helen Bodie Stuart and Katherine Anne Stillwell, the two young teachers from Burndale Academy.
Everyone had thought them mauled by some wild beast, but shivering here on the cold ground, with her tormentor crouched overtop her, his knees pinning her shoulders flat and the feel of his blade scraping against her scalp, Sarah knew.
He had killed them, and now he would kill her.
“Not yet,” he whispered, his voice hard with excitement as he leaned close to let his breath touch her ear. “Not yet. First, we have things to enjoy together, you and I.”
o0o
The afternoon was miserable. A fog had settled, obliterating the morning sun, leaving the air clammy and cold. Griffin trudged along the road to the Red Bull Inn, one of four coaching inns on Northallerton’s main road. His business of the morning had been less than satisfying in its conclusion. The exertion had stoked his appetite; the unfulfilling outcome had fouled his temper. He was of a mind to find a meal and a drink before setting out for Burndale.
The town bell struck the hour. The sound was muffled, as though the clapper was shrouded and dampened by the fog.
On the far side of the thoroughfare, out of the cloying mist, loomed the rambling, dark outline of the Red Bull Inn. Out front was an entrance porch, and just inside the front door was a parlor where Griffin had warmed his hands before a glowing fire more than one night when he had chosen to stay in Northallerton rather than take the road to Wickham Hall.
An ill-preferred highway that was, even in the sunshine.
For the road to London always beckoned, or the road to the coast, or the to anywhere that was not Wickham Hall.
Griffin scrubbed his hand along his jaw. There were days, like this one, where he had a wish to choose a different path, one that led to a new and heretofore untraveled place, one that would see him unburdene
d by responsibility and regret. On those days he wished to be the ne’er-do-well lad he had been a decade past.
But there was Isobel to consider. The lad he had once been was no fit parent.
The thought brought a dark twist to his lips. The man he had grown into was no better.
He had miserly success at fathering her, though he loved her with all he was. He ought to hire a nurse and a governess and leave her to more capable hands. That thought both appealed and repelled. Ought to was a far distance from would.
Having been so thoroughly abandoned himself, he found he could not do the same to her.
Interestingly, she had no similar qualms, choosing to abandon him at will, to stay at Burndale Academy for lengths of time that varied as to her disposition. A week, a day, a month. In the beginning, he had been baffled as to why she chose to stay there. But she had only stared at him when he asked, with her great, dark eyes and her body stiff and still. He had quickly come to understand that she would not leave there. Too, he had come to understand that she chose to stay there because it was away from him.
At first, he had visited her daily, the two of them facing each other, awkward and silent before the mullioned window in Miss Percy’s office. Isobel would sit, unmoving, her gaze locked on the floor, her body rigid. After a time, he realized that his visits only made it worse, and so they became less frequent and he and his daughter fell into a pattern where he would fetch her once a week to come home for dinner to Wickham Hall.
Sometimes Isobel refused to come at all. Usually when the weather was foul, reminiscent of the night—
No, he would not let his thoughts wander that path.
Isobel. She was the sole fine thing in his blackguard’s existence, and he knew not how to reach her.
What did he expect? She bore witness to his crimes, dark deeds that they were, her memories reflected in her too-wise and haunted eyes.
With a whispered oath, Griffin returned his attention to the Red Bull and strode forward. Off to the side of the porch was a separate entrance to the bar, and it was toward that doorway he headed, wanting a meal and a drink and a moment to gather his thoughts.