Chapter Fifteen. A Coerced Admission

C HAPTER F IFTEEN

A Coerced Admission

WE need to talk.

Were there any four words in the English language that inspired more dread in a person’s heart? Probably not. I allowed myself twenty extra minutes to soak in the tub in avoidance of said conversation, but I knew I couldn’t put it off forever. Besides, the water had grown tepid. Fully thawed, dry and dressed in a fresh nightgown, I wrapped a plaid blanket around myself and entered Mr. Owen’s room. Ruan had recently poured a kettle into the teapot sitting on the table, filling the room with an unusual herbal scent. Must be another of Ruan’s teas. I suppose there are some benefits to having a witch around.

“You said she walks in her sleep?” Mr. Owen asked Ruan, eyeing me carefully across the table, as if I might turn into a newt if he looked away. “And she’s no recollection at all…”

Ruan shook his head, his back to me, as he tended the fire. I had the distinct impression he was making himself busy to not think about what almost happened tonight.

“How very extraordinary…” Mr. Owen murmured.

“The sleepwalking isn’t what bothers me. I’ve done it since I was a child.” Ruan poured me a cup of tea and placed it in my hands. “I’m more concerned about who else was out there by the lake? I know why I was there—” Well, actually I didn’t, but that was yet another problem for another day.

Ruan snorted and I shot him an irritated look. It seemed he heard me well enough tonight.

“Ruby…” Mr. Owen said, snapping my attention away from Ruan.

I cleared my throat and took a sip of the tea, scalding my tongue in the process. “Let’s not quibble about me for a moment, I am simply saying that I am more concerned that there were two other people at the lake tonight searching for something.”

“Others?” Mr. Owen’s brows rose as he turned to Ruan with a frown. “Why didn’t you tell me that, lad?”

“I was less interested in them than I was that she”—he pointed at me with his own teacup, sloshing the tea over the rim onto the saucer below—“nearly drowned herself.”

“I’m perfectly fine.” I turned back to Mr. Owen. “There were two men on the bridge tonight. I think they were looking for something. Do you have any idea what?”

“Do you think it was the inspector?” Mr. Owen’s skin grew pale. “Ruby, you must stay away from him, you must give him no reason to suspect you further!”

“A fine thing for you to say, since your prevarications are the reason he suspects me in the first place.” I turned to Ruan, half expecting him to agree with me, but instead he was studying the depths of his teacup in a determined attempt to avoid looking at me. I drew in a sharp breath. “You’re keeping something else from me, aren’t you? Something you haven’t told me yet.”

Ruan muttered to himself in Cornish before finally looking up at Mr. Owen, his eyes flashing with the faintest hint of silver. I’d never seen him so angry. Not even when we were in Cornwall. “I won’t have secrets between us. I gave you my word to hold my tongue years ago, but things are different now. She deserves to know the truth of it all. And as you know I cannot break my word, you had better do it yourself.”

“I was going to tell her. You don’t have to threaten me, Pellar.” Mr. Owen grumbled, hand trembling as he poured me a glass of whisky, and slid it across his table. I could only recall one other time when Mr. Owen had offered me a drink unbidden, and that was when he’d finally managed to get me released from Holloway Prison where I’d been detained after transporting illegal books for him. And frankly we both needed it after that adventure, it was his way of making amends—which did not bode well for whatever was coming next.

“Ruby, there is one other small thing I have not told you…”

My nostrils flared as I tugged my blanket tighter around my shoulders. “You told me there were no more secrets.”

He looked up at Ruan before turning to me, his dark brown eyes glassy. “Aye, lass. I know I did and I am sorry for it.”

“And Ruan knows…” A second betrayal.

“Do not be angry with the lad. He doesn’t know what it means… but he knows what I sent for. I didn’t want you any more involved in this matter. What with the inspector already braying for your blood and Malachi all too willing to rub my nose in it. I wish we’d never come, but it’s too late for that.” Mr. Owen rubbed his eyes before gesturing to Ruan with his forefinger. “Go on and show her, lad.”

Ruan grumbled something in Cornish again, casting a mutinous look to Mr. Owen as he unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt and withdrew the silver chain I’d seen earlier tonight and removed it, laying the strange ring on the table before us.

I ran my finger over the warm metal. Golden and thick, with enamel banding in red and black with little iridescent bits of abalone made to look like tears. It was a very unusual piece. Lovely, yes, but unusual. I picked it up in two fingers.

“Be careful!” Mr. Owen hissed, snatching the ring away.

Ruan laid his hand over Mr. Owen’s, gently unfurling the old man’s fingers. “She’s safe—whatever you think it to be—I won’t let it harm her.” He plucked it from Mr. Owen’s palm and set it in my own.

Mr. Owen winced, eyes wide, but did not argue.

Another benefit to having a Pellar. I held the ring up to the light, turning it this way and that.

“After all the death it’s brought. How can you know it won’t take her too?” Mr. Owen snapped at Ruan, his eyes wet with tears.

“It’s only a ring—” I began softly.

Ruan took it from my palm and placed it in his own. “Would it make you feel better if I held it?”

“Aye, lad… that it would.” Mr. Owen wiped at his tears and touched my cheek with the back of his hand. “I can’t lose you, Ruby. I won’t let them take you. I’ve lost too much. I won’t lose you too.”

My heart tugged at his words. “You’re not going to lose me. I’m cross with you for keeping your secrets—but I’m not going anywhere.”

Mr. Owen winced. “You cannot promise that. You may not intend to go, but that does not mean that someone cannot take you from me.”

My eyes dropped back to the ring. His secrecy suddenly made a great deal more sense. The great misguided fool thought he was protecting me. “That’s why you brought Ruan. You think this ring has something sinister about it…”

“Aye, my lamb. Anyone who has had it in their keeping has died. Everyone except him.”

I furrowed my brow, not understanding. “And it can’t hurt Ruan…”

“He’s a Pellar. Curses and the devil are powerless over him.”

I doubted this tiny chunk of metal was capable of killing anyone, but Mr. Owen was unraveling before my eyes. I could not hold his secrets against him now. Not truly.

“It was his son Ben’s,” Ruan said softly at my ear. His breath lifting my damp hair. “He gave it to me the very night he died on that hospital ship. Made me swear I’d tell no one I had it and to take the thing home to his father. He was delirious with fever at the time.”

“Is that how you met Mr. Owen?”

Mr. Owen let out a cynical laugh. “Gods no.”

Ruan let out a noncommittal grunt. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

My mind raced trying to catch up with this newfound information. “And Andrew Lennox was there too… on the ship.”

Ruan nodded again. No wonder he believed Andrew had a hand in his cousin’s death. Why else would Ben have trusted a family heirloom to a stranger rather than one’s own flesh and blood?

I ran my forefinger over the ring, which rested innocently in Ruan’s open palm. His expression remained stone except for those extraordinary eyes of his that burnt with something I didn’t recognize.

“There’s a hinge here.”

“Aye. It’s a mourning piece. Show her how it works, Kivell. See what sense you can make of it that I cannot.”

Ruan placed his thumbnail beneath the enamel lip and popped open the top design of the ring to reveal a braided piece of golden hair.

“Who had it before your son?”

Mr. Owen frowned. “Mariah. It was hers. Lucy asked me to bring the ring to her. Said it would bring her closer to Ben’s spirit as he’d had it in his dying days. But now… Now I cannot help but wonder if it holds some other answer.”

First Mariah, then Ben. No wonder Mr. Owen was beginning to question the ring.

“Was she wearing it when she died?”

Mr. Owen shook his head. “No. For here is the most peculiar part of losing my Mariah. She disappeared one night and I awoke with the ring on my finger and my wife gone.”

“Gone… which means you cannot be certain she is dead.” I breathed out. “What if she’s alive?”

“And how could she be? Ruby, I might have been a terrible husband but Mariah would not have left me. Not like that.”

I gnawed on my lower lip in thought. “Ruan, did Ben tell you anything else when he gave you the ring? Any indication why?”

He snapped the ring shut. “He did not say. Only that it had to be me. And I had to return it to his father.” Ruan fastened the strange little piece of jewelry against his neck, tucking it back into his shirt. “We were on the same ship home. He wasn’t doing well.” Ruan gestured to his own thigh. “A shrapnel wound that wasn’t healing properly. It had started to turn gangrenous. Some of my lads thought I could help him so I went to him against orders.”

“You tried to help?” My chest warmed at the thought, that even miles from home Ruan could not fight his nature. His need to heal people.

“I might have done, had I not been thrown into the brig with my men by Lennox.”

Mr. Owen suddenly slammed his fist on the table, rocking his chair back. “Out, the both of you. And take that damned ring. Throw it in the lake for all I care.” The suddenness of his proclamation surprised the both of us. “I do not want to hear any more of this. Not tonight.”

“Are you all right?” I leaned across the table, taking him by the hand.

He rubbed the back of mine with his thumb and shook his head. “I have not been all right in forty years. But sleep. Let me sleep, lass, and we’ll speak again in the morning.”

I nodded, taken aback by his quick change of mood, and left the room, Ruan following along after. He pressed the heavy three-paneled wooden door shut and turned the key. “Has he been like this long?”

“I don’t know what’s come over him. He’s always so… composed… cynical. And now he’s like this. Drinking at all times, swinging from uncharacteristically sentimental to melancholy with these flashes of anger and I—I am afraid to press him. The more he tells me of his past, the more it seems he’s coming apart at the seams.”

Ruan reached out, running his thumb across my brow. “This place. I’ve begun to fear we’re all unraveling here. Tonight at the lake. When was the last time you’ve done that?”

“Not since I was a girl. You don’t think there’s something about Manhurst itself making us this way?”

“I don’t know what I think. But I don’t like it here. And if I could, I would take both of you back to Cornwall on the next train.”

And I would go in a heartbeat. I leaned back against the door, closing my eyes. Mr. Owen had become the one curmudgeonly constant in my life since the death of my family, and Tamsyn’s betrayal of me during the war. When my family died, I thought Tamsyn and I would be able to make a life together. I loved her once, beyond all reason, and yet she too left me behind. When I found Mr. Owen I was a heartbroken, scarred, and angry young woman and he took me in regardless. And now… now after he’d revealed the extent of all his secrets, I scarcely knew who he was. He spoke of love and wanting to protect me, and yet for more than three years he’d hidden who he was from me.

“How long have you known him anyway?” I asked softly.

“I officially met him after the war when I brought the news of Ben’s death to him. And the ring.”

“But why did he leave it with you? If he believes the thing cursed or dangerous, why not destroy it?”

“Because I’m the Pellar, Ruby. If the item is cursed, as he believes, then it cannot touch me.” Ruan leaned against the dresser with a groan, crossing his left leg over his right.

“I’ve never believed in curses…”

“I never once thought you did. I might have met Owen after the war, but he knew of me long before. He knew of what I am from shortly after I was born.”

“ Knew of you? You mean he’d been watching you?”

“More or less, yes. Not the most pleasant thought, mmm? I told you that I’d been sent to Oxford by a wealthy benefactor. I failed to mention that it was him. Owen took a keen interest in my well-being. My potential. He misguidedly believed that he could mold me. Take a country boy with peculiar abilities and shape him into—honestly, Ruby, I’m not sure what he thought he could do with me.”

I reached out of habit for my cigarette case, which was buried deep in my traveling trunk. “That sounds familiar. Mr. Owen always has a plan of some sort.”

“How did you meet him? I realize I hadn’t even thought to ask.”

I ran my fingers along the edge of the blanket around my shoulders. “Nothing exciting. I was angry after the war.”

“You, angry? I am shocked.”

I let out a little laugh and sighed, struggling to remember the girl I’d been once. The one who came back from France with a fortune to my name, and no one to share it with. My family dead, Tamsyn having abandoned me in France so she could marry Sir Edward. It was all quite the blow to my jaded little heart. “I answered an advertisement in the newspaper.”

Ruan arched an eyebrow. “I can only imagine how it was worded to intrigue you.”

It felt good to laugh. “If it had told me I’d be up to my knees in witches, curses, and murder, I might have reconsidered answering. I actually thought it would be a quiet life. A place to heal from my past.”

Ruan smiled at me, warming me to my core. “Come now, we witches aren’t that bad, are we?”

“No. I suppose some of you are tolerable.”

Lies. He was more than tolerable. He was downright dangerous—and while the White Witch had warned that I would destroy him, I had a growing fear that it went the other way. For as wild as I was, as headstrong and independent, my heart was brittle. I’d been broken by love, and the idea of actually coming to care for someone else again—to allow myself that small indulgence, was a risk I wasn’t quite ready for. And after the spectacular way both of my previous romances ended, I worried I never would be.

My stomach knotted as memories of those final days in New York returned. “Ruan, did you hear anything back from Hari?”

“Your solicitor?” He shook his head. “Nothing yet, it’s only been a few hours since I wrote him.”

“You don’t know Hari. Promise me you’ll get me as soon as you hear from him. He has saved my neck more times than I dare count since my exile from America. I need him to reassure me that Mr. Sharpe cannot be Elijah.”

“You make this island sound like you were transported to Botany Bay.”

“For a spoiled little debutante who’d never lived outside of New York, being sent to Cornwall with Tamsyn might as well have been.”

Ruan again touched my brow, running his thumb along my temple, sending a cool rush of sensation through me, and I realized how truly tired I was.

“Get some sleep, Ruby. It’s late.”

The first hints of dawn began to show its face outside the window. “Early. It’s early.”

“You are the most argumentative woman I’ve ever known.”

I yawned again into my fist, lids growing heavy. “Do you think the ring and the glass plate negatives are connected in some way? Mr. Owen said Lucy requested he bring the ring. I should look at the negatives again. Perhaps I’ll see it there? There’ll be a link or someth—”

“Bed, Ruby.” Ruan took me by the shoulders and walked me backward to the mattress. “You need sleep. You’re no good to anyone worn to the bone.” He looked down into my eyes and I leaned a hair’s breadth closer to him. His fingers traced the scar at my brow and he sighed. “I cannot bring myself to leave you tonight… all I can think about is what would have happened if I hadn’t heard you calling for me. I scarcely did as it was—I almost ignored your voice, thinking it was just—” He cut himself off before he revealed too much of his feelings, but he’d said plenty. I wasn’t the only one affected by this connection between us. The thought should have reassured me, but it only unsettled me more.

“Do you recall any of your dreams? Why you were calling for me?”

I shook my head. “I never do. I never remember the walking dreams.”

The deep divot returned to his brow. “What do you suppose you saw?”

I shook my head with a tired smile. “I’ll be fine, Ruan. We’ll figure things out in the morning, mmm?”

He gave me a worried nod and moved to the door, lingering there with his fingers on the latch.

“And Ruan?”

He turned to look at me, the dark circles visible beneath his eyes.

“Thank you for having him tell me.”

“He would have in his own time. I just nudged him to be sure he did at this time. He’d made me vow I would not speak of the ring. I cannot… I cannot go against my word as other men do.”

“You cannot break a promise?”

He shook his head. “Owen—he does not mean to hide things, I don’t think—but when a man spends a lifetime running from his own shadow, it is difficult sometimes to bring light into such a dark place.”

“Et tu, Brute?”

Fine lines formed at the creases of his eyes. “It’s the truth. Owen isn’t used to being honest with anyone—least of all himself. We must be patient with him.”

“You are the kindest person I’ve ever met, Ruan Kivell.” I pulled my legs up onto the mattress, settling against the headboard.

“Do not mistake my understanding human nature for kindness. They are vastly different things.” He hesitated. “We must be cautious here and trust no one but each other in this—and the sooner we solve this mystery the sooner we can leave this wretched place and go home.”

We.

Ruan’s words had a strange finality to them— we could go home—and I found I liked that idea a great deal. Not separately, but together. A small part of me wanted that more than anything else—someone to trust, to rely upon. I’d been alone long enough that I had forgotten what that must be like.

“Good night, Ruan.”

And without a word he left me to another restless night.