Now she was here. Yet still not here.
The fire crackled and burned, filling the silence as the stars shifted in the sky through the window. The muscles in his body had finally relaxed. He’d been awake for days, knowing the time of her rescue was near. Sleep finally overtook him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
He jerked awake, reaching for his sword, daylight streaming into Katherine’s room. She stood at the window, dressed in the sage-green dress she had worn her first day at Thornton. He’d never forget the sight of her stepping from the carriage and walking into his home for the first time. She’d apparently explored the modern bathroom, where he’d left a brush and grooming items. Her hair was combed and wound into one long braid over one shoulder.
Without turning toward him, she said, “I want to see Jane.”
The lack of any emotion in her voice disturbed him. She was cold and more distant than the night before, walling him out. He must be patient.
“She is long dead, Katherine.”
“I want to see her.”
Though a cemetery was the last place she should be right now, he wouldn’t argue. Her every move had been controlled for a century by a self-serving piece of filth. She needed to make her own decisions. And he needed to let her.
He walked across the room but didn’t push too far into her space. He stopped and waited, holding out his hand. Turning from the window, she stared at his hand for a moment, then met his gaze. Her green eyes were bright, ringed with dark circles. Her pale cheeks, sunken and stark, revealed how little she’d eaten in that place. George clenched his jaw, refusing to tell her she must eat or anything foolish he knew she’d refuse, but his instincts to care for her overwhelmed him. She needed space. She needed time.
He’d prepared for what he would find when he finally did make it into Damas’s domain, and he’d found precisely what he’d expected. Still, the horror of what she’d endured there, and being thrust back into a world she didn’t know anymore, must be unbearable. He was lost himself—wondering, worrying, hoping. The only thing he could do was honor her every request and let her come to him in her own time.
“I’ll take you,” he said.
She seemed to be contemplating whether to trust him, or perhaps she didn’t want to sift. Either way, she finally lifted her trembling hand and placed it in his. He released a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as he squeezed her hand and sifted to the gates of the Kensal Green Cemetery. Letting her hand go, he marched up the gravel path and veered left, knowing his way by instinct. Past tall stone crosses and angelic sculptures, he led them toward the end of the row where an elm tree shaded three graves, its gold leaves rustling in the autumn breeze. Mossy lichen grew on the unadorned headstones along this section of older graves.
George stopped in front of Jane’s tombstone, the epitaph simple but true. Jane Anne Langley, April 7, 1809—Oct. 10, 1881—Beloved Wife and Mother. Katherine knelt, then sat, reaching out her fingers to touch the engraved name of her dearest and deceased friend. A fresh bouquet of white lilies sat in a vase at the base.
“She married Henry.”
“Yes. They married the year you…the year they met at Thornton.”
“Was she happy?”
“Wonderfully so.”
“I’m so glad,” she said, both sorrow and joy thick in her voice. She clutched at her chest as if the thought overwhelmed her.
“I checked in on them from time to time, just to make sure.”
“To make sure of what?”
George shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. “To be sure she and her family were safe.”
Katherine turned her gaze on him, rimmed with unshed tears. “She had a family.”
“Three sons.”
She laughed, though there was more heartbreak than happiness in the sound.
“I’ll bet they kept her busy.”
“They seemed to.”
“My sweet Jane.” The wind lifted wisps of Katherine’s blonde hair. Skimming her fingers over the stone, she said, “And I missed it all.” Lifting her hand, she touched the petal of one white lily. “Someone still cares for her.”
“Yes. The anniversary of her death just passed. I try to come once a year, on the anniversary of her passing. I don’t want to rouse suspicion since one of her great-grandchildren comes on her birthday.”
“The flowers are from you?”
He nodded, clenching his hands at his sides, still at unease with the distance between them when all he wanted to do was hold her.
“I came because you couldn’t,” he answered honestly.
She dropped her hand to her side. “I see.” Rising to her feet, she wrapped her arms around herself. She’d dressed in her thin day dress of old— entirely inappropriate for both the era and the weather.
“I also…” He started hesitantly since he wasn’t sure she would be pleased at what he’d done. “I wrote her letters addressed from you.”
Katherine turned her head sharply, furrowing her brow, but did not speak. George went on.
“I wrote correspondence twice a year, expressing that you were well and that you were happy but unable to return to London for obvious reasons. Clyde’s severed body was found in the woods that night. And while officials declared that he was ravaged by wild animals, his death remained in suspicion, especially with your disappearance. So I created a fiction for you, for Jane’s sake, letting her believe you were well. That you were happy.”
Katherine remained still, staring back across the cemetery in silence.
“I hope you’re not offended by this.”
“Jane knows my hand. She wouldn’t believe your writing was mine.”
“I cast illusion. It works in many ways.”
She gave a nod but remained aloof.
“Did I do wrong in this?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she replied steadily, shivering again against the chill.
“Will you take my coat?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Take me back to Thornton, please.”
She’d been so civil, so quiet, so demure, yet he could feel the anger, rage, torment and bitterness boiling below the surface.
“Whatever you wish.”
He did, sweeping them through the dark Void, happy to bring her back to his safe haven. Once back in her bedroom, she took up her position at the window, watching the slate-gray sky skim overhead. He could tell by her stance that she wanted to be alone, but the thought of leaving her for even one moment was torture.
“I don’t belong here,” she said so low he almost didn’t hear her.
He took a step closer, but not too close. “I understand this must be difficult.”
She rounded on him, horror written into every line of her face. “You can’t possibly understand how I feel.”
He stiffened. “No. I don’t.”
“There is no place for me anymore.”
“This is your place.”
“At Thornton? What. As your wife?” she scoffed and shook her head. “I’m ruined, George.”
He stepped closer, needing to hold her desperately. She backed away. “You’re not ruined,” he said, furious that she would even think such a thing. “Katherine,” he started more gently. “I love you.”
Still shaking her head, she ground out, “Don’t love me. Don’t, George. I—what I’ve done—” She squeezed her eyes shut as if to cut off a memory and balled her fists at her sides.
“I don’t care what you’ve done.”
“I do,” she said, meeting his gaze, hers still full of the horror of the past century. “I’m no good for you. I’m no good for anything anymore.”
“Let me—”
“Don’t come any closer.” She held out a shaking hand. “Please.”
The way she begged, trembling before him, as if he�
��d disregard her wishes and force himself on her, cut him straight to the heart. He stopped where he was, and for the first time in his entire centuries-old life, he had no idea what to do or how to help this woman he loved more than the breath in his own lungs.
She swallowed hard and turned toward the bathroom. “I’d like to take a bath.”
“Do you need some help with the—”
“I can figure it out.”
Before she’d crossed through the door, George couldn’t help but finally lay his own sins at her feet.
“I tried. I tried so hard. It took too long. I’m so—so bloody sorry.”
Her delicate hand rested on the doorframe as she looked over her shoulder. “No. I was lost the moment I took the carriage back to Harron House. The moment I left Thornton, my fate was sealed.”
“Forgive me, Katherine. Please.” He heard the words of a defeated man spilling from his own mouth.
She smiled, a tear streaming down her pale cheek. “I can’t,” she said, softly and gently. “I can’t forgive either of us.”
What little bit of heart he had left cracked and shattered to the floor as she closed the door.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Listening to the water fill up in the tub from the next room, George stood in the place where his world had ended. He’d never thought he’d have to let her go after he saved her from Hell. She was lost to him.
He stormed from the room and stalked down the long corridor, down the stairs and into his study. Not giving a damn that he’d used alcohol for decades as a coping mechanism to soften his hard reality, he grabbed the half-empty bottle of whisky usually reserved for Jude and drank straight from the bottle, relishing the burn down his throat and into his belly. He took a breath, then upended the last of it.
She wouldn’t forgive him. He knew that now. He never really expected her to, but—
“Damn!” he yelled and threw the bottle at the fireplace, unable to contain his fury anymore.
The bottle broke with a satisfying crash, splintering shards onto the carpet. George paced, combing his hands into his hair in dire earnest, anxiety filling him to the brim.
“It just can’t be,” he mumbled.
What did she need forgiving for? Giving in to the temptation of a cunning demon prince? She hadn’t stood a chance against him, especially after it took George so fucking long to free her. He’d known what would happen. Every night that he was able to actually sleep, he’d dreamed of her in the bed of Damas, doing his bidding. He’d known that was a fact, especially when he’d started receiving gifts from the villain.
The first package arrived at the gate of Thornton ten years after Katherine had disappeared. Duncan had found the parcel and brought it to George in his study. No note, nothing. Only a package wrapped in brown paper. He unwrapped the box and opened the lid to find the white dress Katherine had worn the night she disappeared. The bottom hem was torn but otherwise the gown was intact. George had fallen into his chair, pulled the dress into his lap and simply stared at the remnant of her, the woman he’d not seen for so many years.
Ten years later, he received a second package. He found it himself, sitting at the gate, precisely where the wards would’ve stopped a demon intruder. He leaped from his horse and tore the package open on the spot. Lifting her transparent shift from the box, the one she’d worn on their night together, he crumbled to his knees on the gravel drive, inhaling her scent from the soft fabric and falling into dark despair. Just as Damas had wanted. George was unable to leave his bedroom for a month, barring even Jude from his presence.
When he emerged, Jude had brought news of Bamal being spotted in Eastern Europe, near his brother Vladek’s territory. Civil war was ravishing the American colonies, bleeding as far south as New Orleans, which had apparently put a damper on the party Bamal had been having on his plantation for decades. He’d left Dommiel in charge while he roamed the globe for a more palatable environment.
George finally revived from receiving the suggestive gift from Damas, knowing that if the demon thought to send him torturous gifts, then Katherine was alive and whole, even in the bowels of Hell. That was something to hold on to.
His former stable boy, Daniel, now steward of the estate, was a man fully grown, with a wife, and living in a house rebuilt where the old caretaker’s cottage had been. George had hesitated when Daniel asked permission to tear down the cottage, as memories of Katherine still lingered there. But as he watched the final boards fall and the structure of a new home built up around the original stone fireplace, a fresh spark of determination lit him inside. A hope that he could find her, that he would, and he could rebuild their life together as they’d planned before Damas had taken it all away from them.
He and Jude set out for Russia to find Bamal. Their chase began, which would last until the second decade of the twentieth century, when they’d finally captured him in New Orleans, where it had all begun.
He’d received only one more gift in all that time. George had stopped returning to Thornton, knowing his lack of aging would terrify the villagers and even his own servants. Only Duncan and Daniel ever knew that he was not wholly human, but served a higher power for good. He returned for Duncan’s funeral but only watched from afar, visiting Daniel when he was alone.
Sometimes, he would sift to Thornton at night and walk the land he longed to return to, specifically retracing steps he’d taken with Katherine to remember the love they’d shared for a few short days.
One day in 1888, George had received a letter as well as a still-sealed envelope from Daniel, now in his seventies, delivered to his home in Paris, which he used as a base between the missions he and Jude set out on. Daniel’s handwriting was shakier than it had been in the last letter, and George noted he’d need to have a conversation with Daniel’s son, Edward, before long about becoming the new steward of Thornton. He’d vowed not to return to his beloved home until he found Katherine and brought her home with him.
The letter told of the news of Thornton, that all was well with the estate, and that Daniel’s own son and grandson worked the estate alongside him. He’d ended with a postscript that this envelope addressed to him had been found by his grandson, John, while he was playing near the front gate. George tore open the envelope sealed with black wax, stamped in the shape of a D.
Within the envelope was one photograph. One was enough. He’d seen the staged portraits of serious posers for this new invention. But he’d not seen a photograph like this. In shades of black, white, and gray was the nude form of his love, asleep on top of a massive bed, her limbs akimbo, her long blonde hair spilling down the pillow onto the bed, her face in profile and serene. He stared at the photograph for hours, memorizing every line of her until he thought he’d fall into madness. When the first rays of sunlight broke through the window, he lit the candle at his bedside and burned the photograph, dropping the paper onto a salver and watching the corners curl and burn inward until the image of what Damas held in his tight grasp was gone.
All these memories of his past pain flooded back, burning through his gut like a train on fire. Yes, she had a right to be angry and hurt, but he refused to let her live with a shame that he shared as much as she did. And he’d be damned before he let her wander away from him as if nothing had ever happened, as if what they felt for each other wasn’t real and true and good.
He threw open the door to his study, half sifting, half running back to her bedroom. She was still in the bath with the door closed when he rushed into the room. Rapping on the bathroom door, he called out. “Katherine. I must speak to you.”
He knocked again. “Katherine? Answer me. I know that you’re angry at me and at the whole goddamn world, but we must talk.”
Knock, knock, knock.
No answer.
Deep terror gripped him around the throat. She’d locked the door. He sifted to the other side and found her in the
bath, both arms spread wide like wings, her lifeblood draining away from slit wrists, the mirror broken in the sink, a sharp shard, her weapon of suicide, fallen to the tile.
“No!”
He pulled her from the tub, dead weight, sloshing bloodstained water on himself and the floor.
“No, damn you! I won’t let you go.”
He sifted directly to the gathering stones on Dartmoor, still whispering to her, his warm cheek pressed to her cold one. “I won’t let you die. You can’t leave me, my love.”
He sat back on his haunches, cradling her wet, bleeding, lifeless body in his arms and screamed to the heavens, “Uriel!”
He couldn’t keep his own tears back as he watched more blood spill from her veins into the cold earth and onto him.
The archangel sifted from the sky and landed with a great flap of his mighty wings. He said nothing, just took in the obvious.
“Save her, Uriel,” he pleaded, choking on the panic welling up his throat.
“She’s dead already.”
“No, she’s not. She has a faint pulse.”
Uriel, always a being of control and power, knelt before George and placed a hand on Katherine’s crown, an expression of deep sorrow on his face. “She doesn’t want to live, my friend.”
“You don’t know that. Make her—make her one of us.”
“You know the rules. She must have committed a mortal sin for which she needs redemption.”
“She has. She’s taken her own life.”
“She must give consent to the penance one pays as a Dominus Daemonum.”
“I give consent for her.”
“That is not how it’s done, George.”
“Goddamn you, archangel. If you do not save her right now before her pulse slips away, I will destroy myself and join her in Hell and leave this godforsaken human world for you to defend on your own.”
George knew Uriel could probably depend on Jude to command the hunters, though the darkness in Jude often led him from the more righteous path. Still, this threat wasn’t about who would command. George’s threat meant he’d damn himself to some lower level of Hell, Erebus, the darkest realm of all, if he should take his own life. Just as the woman in his arms would wander there should she succeed in her attempted suicide. And no matter how distant the archangel appeared, his bond with George was one of true friendship and loyalty.
The Deepest Well Page 24