Chapter 13

THIRTEEN

It was near sunrise. Reverend Lynden Stalker was closeted in the small study at the vicarage. On his desk, next to a candle that was more than half burned, lay a half written sermon and several open books. One of those books was his bible. The other was a translation of Malleus Maleficarum. The Hammer of the Witches.

He knew her wickedness. After all, he had seen it before. Such a woman had destroyed his family. She had seduced his father in to abandoning his family in favor of living in sin with her. His mother had told him the truth and only him. His siblings had been told that their father had been killed, for she had believed that to be kinder to them than to know they had been abandoned. But he had been the eldest and she had entrusted him with the truth. Piece by piece over the years, she had revealed all to him. That the woman whom his father had taken up with was a witch who had respelled him, a woman who was in league with the devil and had taken it upon herself to turn a Godly man from his service to the Lord and make him a slave of the wicked master she served.

"I will not have it," he said. "Not again. Her presence here is a blight that must be stamped out—without room for mercy."

Walking back to his desk, he opened the largest of the drawers and retrieved a black leather case. Opening it, he perused the contents. Holy water. Manacles. Thumb screws. A scold's bridal. There were numerous other items, each of them intended to inflict pain. That is where her salvation lay, in making her regret her association with evil, in making her turn from her wickedness and seek the only mercy that would be granted her in this life, the mercy of death.

Replacing the leather case in the drawer, it settled upon a coiled length of rope. A noose already tied for her. All he lacked was opportunity. The people of Highgate were not yet ready to face the truth of what must be done to eliminate the evil in their midst. So he would protect them from it as his mother had protected his younger siblings. As always, the burden was on his shoulders and he would bear it alone.

It was not yet dawn when Belladonna rose from her far too comfortable bed in Genie's house. It was not the first time that she had stayed there, though each time she had done so, it had been in secret. And she knew that it was not the softness of the bed, so different from her own, that prompted her sleeplessness. It was worry. In a few short hours, Desmond would arrive in his carriage to take them into Nottingham where they would be married. She would no longer be a Goodwynne, assuming that nothing happened in the interim.

How many of the Goodwynne women had stood, just as she did, contemplating the likelihood of succumbing to the tragedy of their family's curse? Or losing their love.

But she didn't love him. Not yet. She certainly cared for him. She was attracted to him. But it was not love. And perhaps that was what would spare him. So long as she did not give in to her feelings and fall in love with him, he might remain protected from the tragedy that always befell any man foolish in enough to entangle himself with the Goodwynne's.

Perhaps, she thought, Amarantha had been correct and she would be the one to break the curse. By marrying for convenience and the protection of her already tenuous reputation, she was diverging from all that gone before her.

"That is the answer," she whispered. "That is how he will be spared. I will simply not love him. And I will not let him love me. Help me, Amarantha, help me to be strong when I am tempted to give in to such tender feelings. Help me."

After a long moment, staring out her window at the still darkened sky, she turned away and found Eugenie standing in the doorway. Over her arm, she had draped a far too fashionable gown in claret silk. "No. Absolutely not. I will not take your charity."

"It isn't charity," she said. "It's your something borrowed. You will wear it for your wedding, you will return it when you can. And you will be the most beautiful of brides."

She wanted that. She wanted to look beautiful and to feel, at least for that moment, that she was just like any other bride, even if the marriage to come was far from traditional. "Thank you, Genie. Thank you for being such a dear, dear friend despite the risk it poses to you."

"And what risk does your relationship with Mr. Crane pose? Because his injury was not the result of an accident… What happened?"

"I cannot tell you. It's all still a bit murky for him, his memory of the event is not entirely clear… but it is clear enough to know that Reverend Stalker was behind it. I fear that his contempt for me has progressed into true hatred. Dangerous hatred. And now violence."

"You think the vicar attacked him?"

"We were together," Bella explained. "He had asked me to take a walk with him. Instead, I invited him to walk with me. My plan had been to extinguish his interest in me by making him pick stinkhorn mushrooms."

Eugenie's eyes widened, then she burst out laughing. "You are quite devious, Belladonna! Heavens, that was a clever bit of strategy. Although it appears to have been a doomed effort."

Bella grinned ruefully. "So it was. He's very determined and very persuasive."

"I imagine he would be. Handsome men typically are, and he is a rather exceptional specimen."

"Genie!"

"I do miss my husband, Bella, but that doesn't mean I'm blind. As to that, I'm hardly a maternal figure, but if you have questions about what will happen on your wedding night, I will muddle through my mortification to answer them."

Bella crossed the room and took Genie's hands in hers. "No. I do not have any questions. I've had a much more complete and likely scandalous education than most young ladies… Amarantha did not believe that ignorance was a necessity for virtue."

Genie breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank heavens for that. Let me help you into this dress then we'll do something with your hair. I'd like for him to be completely stunned when he sees you today. Not that he wasn't stunned the first moment he saw you."

Suspicion reared its head again. "You planned this."

"No. I hoped," she said. "I created an opportunity and I hoped that the pair of you would act accordingly. And you have. Matchmaking isn't always being meddlesome. Sometimes it's just standing back and allowing people to find their way."