Lady Margery needed not much more than a servant and an audience, and Juliette performed those roles admirably. She had no difficulty handling the small carriage, and they arrived at the tiny village of Hampton Parva by midafternoon the next day. But all of Juliette’s hopes for assistance against a murderous madwoman were in vain.
The village was small, shabby, not much more than a settlement. A few ramshackle cottages, a straggly garden or two, and pigs and chickens roaming the narrow streets like vermin. There were less than two dozen people there, and they all regarded her with unfriendly curiosity. And they all looked vaguely familiar.
“Hannigans,” Lady Margery announced, answering her unasked question. The hovel they’d taken over was just as decrepit as the others, the thatched roof undoubtedly leaked, and Juliette could hear the rustle of rats as they nested in the corners. The vermin frightened her far less than Lady Margery. “Everyone in Hampton Parva is a Hannigan. They’ve inbred quite a bit, and it’s no wonder. Decent people won’t have them around.”
Juliette wanted to ask questions, but she kept silent, waiting, pounding on the pastry dough that simply seemed to get tougher. She couldn’t cook, but Lady Margery was too mad to notice. She ate what Juliette put in front of her, and Juliette found herself wondering if she might find some rat poison in this benighted town.
Hannigans. The suspicious-looking villagers were a far cry from the Hannigan she knew, with his protective mien and friendly nature, but there was a definite physical resemblance.
“They’ve been at Romney Hall for close to forty years now,” the old woman continued. “Not that they’re there now. No, Hannigan ran off with my son, and Dulcie went with them. And Barbe—I wonder where she is,” she said, her mind beginning to fade a bit. “She came with me to the inn.”
“Did you hurt her?” Juliette asked.
“Hurt Barbe? Why should I do that? She’s been with me since Phelan was born. Since Catherine died.”
“Catherine? Who was Catherine?”
“None of your business,” the old lady snapped, furious. “You concentrate on the cooking.” She smiled with sudden cunning. “I remember what happened to Barbe. I hit her.”
“Did you kill her?”
Lady Margery shrugged her thin shoulders. “I don’t know. I hardly think it matters—you never met her. There are enough Hannigans in this world, and doubtless no one would blame me. Not any more than they’ll blame me for killing your husband. A worthless bully.”
“Will they blame you if you kill me?” Juliette asked carefully, laying the thick, cracked dough in a pie tin.
“Certainly not,” she said with great dignity. “They’ll trust my judgment. After all, I’m Lady Romney of Romney Hall. I’m not a nameless little nobody like Catherine Morgan.”
“Who was Catherine?” Juliette asked again, no longer worrying how Lady Margery might react.
“Catherine doesn’t matter. She’s been dead for more than … thirty-four years.”
“If she doesn’t matter, why do you keep talking about her?”
“I don’t keep talking about her, you do,” the old lady shot back in a querulous voice.
Juliette kept silent for a moment, waiting for the woman’s garrulousness to get the better of her. It didn’t take long.
“She was very pretty, Catherine was,” she said in a dreamy voice. “Too pretty. Harry wanted her, of course, but he didn’t dare touch her. Not when she was married to his younger brother. Back then he had a few standards. Keeping faithful to me wouldn’t have entered into it, but he wouldn’t have taken his brother’s wife.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died.”
“How sad,” Juliette said gently.
“Not in the slightest,” Lady Margery snapped. “Her husband had been killed in a carriage wreck several months before, and she had nothing to live for. It was a blessing, even if Barbe and Hannigan didn’t see it that way.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“They were her servants, you see. Hannigans are a strange breed, wildly loyal to those they choose to serve, completely amoral where others are concerned.” She didn’t seem to think it the slightest bit odd that she pass strictures on someone else’s morality.
“But they transferred their loyalty to you, once she died,” Juliette said.
“They transferred their loyalty to my son. But I keep them under control. I know their secrets,” Lady Margery said craftily. “Just as they know mine. We cannot hurt each other, as long as we know so much.”
“Secrets?” Juliette asked idly, tossing chunks of onion into the pie crust. She hadn’t managed to get all the papery skin off them, but she didn’t think it would matter. “What secrets?”
“If I told, they wouldn’t be a secret anymore, now would they?”
“Who would I tell?”
The old lady smiled, exposing large, yellowed teeth. “True enough. You won’t have a chance to tell, will you? I won’t tell you my secrets. I’ll carry those to the grave. But I can tell you one thing about the Hannigans.”
Juliette couldn’t care less about the Hannigans, but she decided any information might come in handy if she was going to get out of this mess alive. “What about the Hannigans?”
“Don’t you wonder why they’re forced to live out here, far away from civilization? Why no one will have them around, why they’re considered the dregs of the earth?”
“I hadn’t realized they were,” Juliette said mildly.
“They’re murderers.”
Juliette thought of her husband’s body, lying lifeless in the bed next to her. “Really?” she said politely to his killer.
“That’s their family business, girl, for generations.”
“They don’t look particularly lethal to me,” she said. But then, neither did Lady Margery.
“Oh, they don’t ply their trade anymore. Most of their lot was hanged more than fifty years ago, and since then they’ve had to turn to more peaceful ways of earning a living. They’re terrible farmers, but they make good servants. They’re very loyal.”
Juliette glanced at Lady Margery, wondering if this was one more mad fantasy. It had the eerie ring of truth. “Why did they kill people?” she asked, pouring semi-congealed pig fat over the potatoes and onions and trying to keep from shuddering.
“Why do most people kill? For money. Have you ever been to a place called Dead Man’s Cove?”
“I’ve heard of it,” she said carefully, thinking of Phelan’s long, deft hands, and the sketch that she still managed to keep hidden from Lady Margery’s sharp, crazed eyes.
“The Hannigans were wreckers. They lured ships to their doom, and then they clubbed the survivors to death, leaving them in the water after they stripped them of their valuables. They thrived for hundreds of years, until the government sent in the militia to put a stop to, it, and they hanged every Hannigan they could find, be it man, woman, or child.”
“How horrible.”
Lady Margery shrugged, clearly unmoved by her gruesome tale. “The children were just as savage as their elders. A few of them ran into the woods to hide, and they stay here to this day. They leave people alone, and in return they’re not hunted like the monsters they are.”
“Why did you come here? Why did you bring me here?”
“It’s the best place to keep an eye on Phelan. Why do you suppose Hannigan talked them into coming here? So his family could make sure they were safe. He didn’t realize I would guess where they were hiding, or that I’d force Barbe to come with me. Where is Barbe?” she added in a fretful voice.
Early on, Juliette thought that querulous vagueness signaled an opportunity for escape. It hadn’t. Lady Margery grew even more dangerous when her confusion reined, and Juliette had a knife slash on her wrist to prove it.
“She’ll probably be here sooner or later,” Juliette said gently.
“I hope so. Once I take care of you, I’ll need someone to help me. I don’t like to be alone. T
oo many ghosts. Harry comes to me at night. Never did when he was alive,” she added with a cackle. “But he comes to me now. And Catherine. So reproachful. It’s not my fault. I’ve done my best, better than she ever would have. She was weak, weak-blooded, weak-minded. I was strong. It was only right what I did. Only right.”
“What did you do?”
Lady Margery gave a sly smile. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “just before I kill you.”
“A shame about your friends, dear,” Sophie’s mother said across the dinner table.
Sophie listlessly stabbed her sturgeon with a fork. Her mother’s conversation always tended to be arch, and Sophie had learned to ignore the majority of it.
“Which friends are those, Rosalind?” Percival de Quincey, Sophie’s kindly, slightly befuddled-looking father, asked dutifully.
“That odd Mrs. Ramsey and her husband. I must say I always found her a bit … dashing for my taste, but certainly there was no harm in her. Nevertheless, I’ll be happy when my precious concentrates on friends her own age. After all, it won’t be long before she’s a married woman, and these gay, happy summer days will be long gone.”
Sophie ignored her mother’s ridiculous phrase to concentrate on what mattered. “What has happened to the Ramseys?” she demanded, dropping her fork.
“Why, I assumed you would be the first to know,” said her mother, clearly assuming no such thing. “After all, you paid a courtesy call on the woman this morning.”
“We didn’t have much of a discussion,” Sophie said. “She was feeling unwell.”
“This climate doesn’t agree with her,” Mrs. de Quincey said archly. “If they’d asked me, I could have recommended an herbal concoction that would have made a new woman out of her.”
Sophie couldn’t help it, she found she could laugh. “I’m not certain it would have been appreciated.”
“Perhaps not,” her mother said in a judicious tone of voice. “Acts of Christian charity seldom are. Still, I imagine you’ll miss her.”
“Miss her?” Sudden, overwhelming dread filled Sophie’s heart.
“Her husband has booked passage on the Sea Horse for the next tide tomorrow. I don’t imagine you’ll see them again.”
“The next tide,” Sophie’s father announced, “is at eleven fifty-two in the morning.” He beamed, obviously pleased with himself.
“Yes, dear,” his wife said, dismissing him. “I’m certain Sophie doesn’t care when the tide is. She has more important things to consider.”
“On the contrary,” Sophie said breathlessly. “I’m fascinated by the tides.”
“That’s a new one,” her mother said critically. “At least you’re showing a trace of scientific interest, instead of being so abysmally concerned with household matters.”
“Nothing wrong with household matters, m’dear,” Mr. De Quincey dared to remark. “She’s a little earth mother, is our Sophie.”
“No daughter of mine,” said Rosalind de Quincey in a chilling voice, “is an earth mother.” She made it sound like something completely indecent. “She has an excellent mind, and I’m certain Captain Melbourne will give her ample opportunity to use it.”
It hit Sophie like a bolt of lightning, the sudden, joyous realization, and she laughed out loud, startling her father into dropping his soup spoon. “I’m not going to marry Captain Melbourne,” she announced firmly.
Her mother looked at her as if she’d suddenly grown horns. “Don’t be ridiculous, child,” she said flatly. “Of course you are. It’s a daughter’s duty to be guided by her parents in matters such as these, and your father and I decided—”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t decided,” her father said abruptly. “I don’t care for the fellow above half. Dashed dull stick, if you ask me.”
“Nobody asked you,” Mrs. de Quincey said in frosty tones.
“Yes, my love.” He subsided quickly.
Mrs. de Quincey turned her steely blue gaze back to her recalcitrant daughter. “As I was saying, you will—Where are you going?”
Sophie had already fled the table, racing toward the door on dancing feet. “I’m off to see Mrs. Ramsey,” she called back over her shoulder, her voice a bubble of laughter.
“Stop her, Percival,” Mrs. de Quincey demanded. “She can’t run off at this time of night.”
“I imagine she just wants to wish her Godspeed.” Sophie’s father, as always, was trying to be reasonable. “No harm in that, my love.”
Sophie paused at the door. “No,” she said. “I most definitely do not.” And she ran out of the room before her parents could come up with one more halfhearted protest.
She grabbed her dark blue cloak as she went, against the dampness of the night air, but she didn’t bother to change her slippers. A moment later she was out in the gathering darkness, walking swiftly down to the shore.
She had no intention of driving the trap. Buttercup was too slow, the road too narrow in the dark. She was going to take the shortcut through the woods, following the beach to Sutter’s Head. She would be there in no more than half an hour, less if she hurried, and indeed, it felt as if her feet were flying.
How could she have been so foolish? All she’d thought about were his lies, his deception. It had taken till now to realize the wondrous joy of it all. He was a man. A man who cared about her; she knew it as well as she knew her own name. A man who could give her love, babies, everything she had ever dreamed of and more. If she was brave enough to ask.
By the time her parents realized she’d gone on foot, it would be too late. With luck they wouldn’t notice—for all her mother’s prosing, she trusted dear Mrs. Ramsey completely.
As did Sophie. Whatever his reasons for lying, they had to be good ones. That was all she needed to know. She needed to see him, talk to him, touch him. Lord, she didn’t even know his name!
By the time she reached the other side of the woods, her slippers were soaked. She paused in the shadows, taking them off, pulling off her silk stockings as well, before she stepped out onto the sand. The moon had risen, a full, ghostly moon, and she shivered for a moment, remembering the old tales of wreckers, and dead men floating in the cove. But that was miles away from here. This stretch of beach had never known violent, ugly death. It was serene, beautiful, a place to dance in the moonlight …
She heard the sound of the horse from out of nowhere, and superstitious terror filled her. She saw the rider loom up on the edge of the strand, riding so quickly that he no sooner appeared than he was upon her, his huge dark horse from hell pounding down on her.
She stood mesmerized for a moment, unable to move as the horse bore down on her. And then at the last minute she threw herself to one side, just as the rider finally saw her.
She twisted her ankle as she fell, and she lay there in a heap, watching with remote horror as the monstrous animal reared from the force of the rider’s hands, and a moment later they went down with a flashing of hooves. The horse lay there, kicking, squealing in fright, and the rider was on his back in the sand, spread-eagled and motionless beneath the moonlight.
He was dead, she knew it. And then he moved, gingerly, and began to curse, loud and long, and she realized with tearful relief that it was the man she’d known as Mrs. Ramsey.
He surged to his feet and stalked over to his horse, kneeling down and checking the animal for injury. “Whoever the hell you are,” he said bitterly, “you should know better than to go flitting around like a ghost, scaring a poor animal. He could have taken a great injury.”
“So could I,” Sophie said.
He was in the midst of pulling his mount onto unsteady feet, but at the sound of her voice he whirled around. “Sophie?”
“Flitting around like a ghost,” she acknowledged wryly.
The horse scampered off down the beach, bored by human conversation and obviously unhurt, as the man crossed the sand slowly to stand over her.
The moon was behind him, leaving his face in shadows, and she felt suddenly,
miserably, shy. Perhaps she’d imagined too much. Perhaps all the feeling had been on her side.
And then he knelt down beside her, taking her hand in his, and said, “God, Sophie, don’t torment me.”
And she knew she was loved.
Sophie de Quincey was the last person Valerian expected to see that night as he took Hellfire out for a final, desperate ride along the strand. He’d accepted Phelan’s pronouncement with gratitude, more than ready to leave this miserable place. His only objection was that the ship left in broad daylight.
“I’m not putting skirts on again,” he’d thundered as he’d vaulted onto Hellfire’s back.
Phelan stood in the courtyard, watching him. “One last time, Valerian. We’ve come this far …”
“I’d rather hang,” he said mutinously.
“I’m certain you would. However, think how it would reflect on your precious Sophie.”
Valerian knew when he was beaten. “Once we leave the harbor,” he said in a dangerous voice, “I’m going to strip off those clothes and throw them overboard.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” Phelan drawled. “You know what they say about sailors. I’m afraid they’d find the spectacle far too fascinating.”
“I’m counting on you to protect me,” Val growled.
“Valerian,” Phelan said, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry. I know you cared about her.”
His brother smiled wryly. “Not as sorry as I am for you, old man. At least I can admit it.”
And he’d taken off into the night before Phelan could reply.
He might have killed her. She lay in the sand, looking up at him out of her beguiling blue eyes, and he realized she was no longer furious. His heart, which had just begun to calm after the spill, started speeding up again, and he felt the blood heat and pool in his veins.
“What are you doing here?” He tried to sound remote, but he was still holding her chilled hand, still kneeling over her in the moonlight, and his solicitude ruined the effect of his disgruntled words.
“They told me you were leaving.”
He didn’t deny it. “Tomorrow morning. It’s for the best.”
“Take me with you.”