Chapter Twenty-Two. Rivenly

C HAPTER T WENTY-TWO

Rivenly

HOURS later, in fresh clothes and once again in possession of the stolen negatives, I finally reached the Isle of May. It was just before dawn, having taken several hours to traverse the country roads from Edinburgh to Anstruther where I was able to catch a ferry across the Firth of Forth. A maelstrom of seabirds cried out overhead, swooping down around the little flat-bottomed boat as we approached the great stone cliffs of the Isle of May rising from the swirling waters.

The sun crept over the horizon, illuminating the lighthouse with morning sun. The damp sea air whipped around me from the west, pulling my hair from my scarf as I paid the ferryman at the dock and tipped him extra to await my return. It wouldn’t take long. No matter how desperately I needed to speak with Mr. Owen, I also needed to get back to Manhurst before anything else went wrong.

T HE YOUNG BUTLER led me through the elegant center hall into the library where Mr. Owen was waiting. It was dreadfully early, but he often had trouble sleeping even at home in Exeter. I’d not expected how much it would hurt to see him taking his morning tea, now that the weight of what he had done finally settled into my mind.

“You should not be here.” He frowned, setting the delicate china cup into the saucer on the table beside him.

“I shouldn’t do a lot of things,” I grumbled, closing the library door and walking over to him. The air in here was crisp with a hint of citrus. “Mr. Owen, what were you thinking?”

He inhaled slowly and let it out again. “I could not allow it to happen again. It was the only thing I could do to keep you safe.”

I leaned forward, touching his brow with the back of my hand. He felt fine. “But you didn’t kill her, now it’s twice as bad. Not only do I have to figure out who did kill her, but also prove you didn’t.”

With his forefinger, he gestured for me to take the seat across from him. I did, wincing as the movement jostled my injury.

His eyes widened. “Andrew said you were not injured. He said it was only Kivell that was shot.”

“No, I’m fine, just grazed,” I lied, grateful that Andrew had spared Mr. Owen the details of the extent of my injury.

“And how are you being treated at Hawick House? I trust that my staff there is allowing you all the freedoms you’d have at home?”

Strange. This was the first we’d spoken of it since he told me who he was. Who he truly was. We’d left things unsatisfactorily that evening, with me walking away from him after he’d given me his truth. I owed him something—and while I wasn’t sorry for being upset, I regretted hurting him in the process.

“What… what should I call you?” It wasn’t elegant, but it was a start to a conversation that we should have had a long time ago.

“Owen is fine. It is my name after all.”

“Is it?” The words might have been bitter if said with any force, but there was none there.

“Owen Alexander Lennox. That was my name, but I put it away—put all of it away after Mariah disappeared.”

I reached out, covering his hand with my own. “What happened to her? You told me a little of it but I still don’t understand entirely—I am convinced there is a connection between her death and Lucy’s. There almost has to be.”

Mr. Owen slumped back into the chair and looked at the ceiling. “The truth of it is that I do not know. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I killed her myself, like they all say.”

“That’s absurd, you wouldn’t kill anyone!”

Mr. Owen arched a white brow at me. “But I don’t remember. I don’t know I didn’t. Who is to say what truly happened the night she disappeared?” He let out a strangled laugh. “I love her still. Isn’t it strange how that is? More than forty years have passed since last I saw her face and I still recall the exact shade of her hair, the scent of her warm skin, the sound of her laughter in the parlor on a rainy day. And it kills me that I still do not know what happened to her. For nearly half my life that same question has dogged my every step. I have my suspicions, but in order to know what happened that night you must know something about Mariah first—she was extraordinary. Cleverer than anyone I’d ever met.”

“You told me about that night at the ball and how she showed you her photography book.”

He smiled faintly, growing lost in his own memories. “There was strange symmetry to our love affair, I suppose. I’d only just returned from London the night she disappeared. Mariah was not herself that evening. I likely told you this already, but we’d been unable to have a child and she’d wanted one desperately. It didn’t matter to me—and I told her as much—she was all I ever wanted and goodness knew I didn’t need an heir when I had my brother Malachi to carry on the Lennox name. He was a far better steward of the estates than I. But Mariah had fallen down this rabbit hole, fascinated by the spirit world. Convinced that perhaps the answer to our worldly problems could be found in the other world. That somehow she would find something to help her to conceive our child.”

“Is that how you became interested in the occult?”

Mr. Owen nodded.

“I take it things are about to take a tragic turn?”

He squeezed my hand. “I’d been in London for weeks. Mariah hadn’t been feeling well and asked to stay behind in Scotland until she’d recovered. I’d hoped that perhaps the reason for her illness was that she was with child, not for my own hopes but hers. She felt things keenly. The judgment from peers, the expectant looks every time she appeared in society without a thickening waist. I didn’t give a damn what the world thought of me—but I cared about Mariah. She wanted that child and I wanted it for her sake. I’d have done anything, Ruby. Anything for that woman.”

It ached to see how similar we were.

He sighed, finishing off his tea, and rubbed his hands over his bristly white beard. “I’d only returned home because she’d written this curious note that said we had important matters to discuss. Mariah would have told me at once had she been with child—but a small part of me hoped that she simply could not find the words after hoping for so many years. I’d been home at Hawick House twenty minutes at most when Mariah asked me to join her at her sister’s séance that very evening. She said there was something at the castle she needed to show me, something important and she knew I would be angry when I saw it—”

“Angry? What would you be angry about?”

He lifted a shoulder.

“You didn’t go…” I whispered.

His voice cracked. “I told her I was tired, that she should go and I’d come fetch her in the morning and we could discuss whatever it was she wanted to then.” His brows raised at the memory. “I daresay she didn’t like that. She flew into a rage like I’d never seen her.”

“And then what?”

His expression flickered and he shook his head. “The next morning she was gone.” He snapped his fingers. “As if she’d never existed at all. There was blood on the bridge. At first—” His voice broke as he swallowed down a sob. “At first we thought she’d been set upon by—”

I laid my hand over his own, stomach knotted. “And they never found her body, did they?”

“Never. Malachi dredged the lake, but there was nothing there. For a while I held on to hope that she had left me—it would have served me right for failing her as I did. She asked one single thing, and I did not listen. I searched for years before finally giving up. People… people began to whisper that I’d killed her. My reputation being as it was—” He gave me a queer look. “I assume Andrew informed you about all that.”

I gave him a slight nod. “He might have mentioned it.”

“They concocted all sorts of fantastical tales of the wicked things I’d done. One more lurid than the last. The morning she left I tore the house apart looking for her. Went to her rooms and they were perfectly ordered. All the things precisely where she’d left them, and that was when I noticed that sometime in the night she must have slipped her ring on my finger. It was there, on my left hand.”

My mouth snapped shut. “The ring you had Ruan bring back?”

“She never took it off. She had to have wanted me to have it. I thought at the time it was a token of her love, a promise she would return, but what if it was not? What if there was a message in it, one I failed to heed?”

I rested my hand atop his on the table and he covered mine with his other.

“Now enough of that. Tell me how the lad is. I hear he was shot too,” Mr. Owen said, shutting the door on that conversation and locking it tight.

Ruan.

My face must have betrayed me, as he gave my hand yet another squeeze. “He’ll mend. Don’t worry on that. It’s keeping you safe that matters to me. I’m an old man who has lived and loved more than one could ever dream.” He cleared his throat with a crooked smile. “Besides, they haven’t hung a peer since the fourth Earl Ferrers. You need not concern yourself for my neck. And now yours is perfectly safe too.”

I rolled my eyes. Only Mr. Owen would shun his title, then rely upon it when it suited him. Perhaps it was the fact that I’d been shot two days before, or the fact that I was not a proper detective, but suddenly Mr. Owen’s words took on a new meaning. What if Mariah had left him the ring as a message? What if she was trying to tell him something then, and again at the séance? My blood chilled in my veins.

“Mr. Owen… the spirit said she left you the key… could the ring be the key her spirit mentioned?” I whispered half to myself.

He stared at me, open-mouthed. “What sort of medicine is Andy giving you? A ring is not a key, lass. It is a ring.”

I held up a finger, reaching into the pocket of my borrowed coat and withdrew the negatives I’d stolen. “I found these in Lucy’s room after she was killed. I’m fairly certain that the killer was also looking for them. I can’t help but think that these images… they somehow hold the answer to why Lucy was murdered.”

Mr. Owen leaned forward, looking at the negatives I’d spread on the table before him.

“Do they mean anything to you?”

Mr. Owen’s mouth curved into a slight O as he studied the photographs. A thousand memories flickered across his face as he went from one to the next.

“You know what they are, don’t you?”

He tilted his head toward the closed door behind me that led back to the public areas of the house. “Lock it, lass, if you would. It wouldn’t do for the servants to overhear what I’m about to say.”

I quickly turned the key in the lock and returned to my seat.

“I don’t know what to think.” He did not look up from the negatives in his fingers. “No wonder they shot you, lass. I suspect they’ll try again when they realize they didn’t manage the thing the first time.”

An unpleasant thought. “What is it, what is going on in them? Is this some sort of… ritual? Ruan and I couldn’t quite agree.”

“Of a sort, yes. I’d been to their gatherings a time or two with Mariah, but I didn’t approve of how they carried on.”

I blinked, not understanding, but his focus went unerringly back to the images between us.

“It’s Eurydice’s Fall.”

“Eurydice’s what?”

He waved his hand airily over the negatives. “Eurydice’s Fall. It was a gentlemen’s club.”

When Mr. Owen got this tone, things were starting to get very interesting. I leaned forward in my chair. “Were you a member?”

He looked affronted at the thought. “Heavens, no. While I was more open in sexual matters than other gentleman of my age, I wasn’t content with the tenets upon which the club operated.”

I let out a startled laugh. “Too avant-garde for you? Truly Mr. Owen, what exactly went on at Eurydice’s something-or-other, if it was too wild for you?”

“Fall…” he murmured, studying the negatives. “And it wasn’t wild, in many ways it was terribly restrained. You see, the club was founded upon a philosophy that sexuality was something one should be able to explore, regardless of marriage—regardless of status. Intellectually, I understood the underpinnings—agreed with them, even. After all, the sexual act itself is natural and when everyone understands and agrees to the rules I see no issue with the whos or wheres or whats of things. However, some of the most influential and staid men in Parliament were members of the club. They toiled tirelessly, passing laws to prohibit the very same behaviors they committed in private. Punishing those who did not have the means or will to live such a duplicitous life. I could not stomach hypocrisy. I didn’t need their permission to live as I pleased, and they well knew it.”

I could see why Captain Lennox admired him so. Mr. Owen lived bravely and honestly, in a time and world when that was not allowed. But not even he, with his title and privilege, could manage it unscathed. The rumors surrounding Mariah’s disappearance were a testament to that. But there was something else—something in Mr. Owen’s voice that gave me pause.

He tapped one of the masked figures. “I’ve been many things in my years, Ruby—a liar, a rake, and a roué—but I have never been a hypocrite.” He paused, his expression shifting as he held a negative up, catching the morning light. He slid his glasses higher up his nose and tilted his head back, inspecting it in detail. “This though… I know who took these photographs.” Mr. Owen squinted, his thoughts tens of years in the past, lost in a sea of his own memories. “Mariah always had a way with her art. She was captivated by doorways.” A sad little laugh escaped his lips as he pointed to the staging of the image in his hand. This was the same one I’d been stunned by in Lucy’s room—the participants posed with their backs to the camera. The image drew the viewer’s eye past the figures in motion, to the darkened doorway beyond, pulling one’s attention to the unseen and ephemeral. This was… art. Categorically so.

His expression grew wistful as he laid it down on the tabletop and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Would you mind if I kept this one?”

“May as well, it’s likely safer here than at Manhurst.”

“This is Mariah’s work. I’d stake my life on it.”

“Was she a member of the club?” I asked hesitantly, not wanting to reopen old wounds.

“Goodness, no. She found social organizations as tedious as I did—but she was curious about the club. It was the secretive nature of it that intrigued her. She always liked a puzzle. You are like her, Ruby.” He touched my cheek softly with the back of his hand.

“What else do you know about this Eurydice enthusiast club?” I asked, desperate to change the subject back to firmer ground.

“Nothing useful. I haven’t been openly in polite society since Mariah died. All the members I’d once known are likely long dead.” He sighed heavily. “I’m afraid I’m next to useless, my love.” He paused before turning quickly to me. “Wait… Lady Morton… she was at Manhurst, was she not?”

I gathered up the negatives, scooping them into a pile, and wrapped them back into a cloth. “Yes. She and her daughter, Lady Amelia. Why?”

“Her husband. He was one of them. An Eurydicean. Dead some ten years now, but he was a member of the club. Horrible man. Particularly fond of younger women. There were many a housemaid forced to leave their house quietly. He knew my opinions about his private dealings. Bloody git. I was glad when I heard he choked to death at supper.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I can’t say I disagree, but that must have been a terrible sight for poor Lady Amelia.”

Mr. Owen made a sound of displeasure. “What is his wife doing at Manhurst? That is peculiar, indeed.”

I nodded, thinking back to my conversation with Lady Amelia. “I think she was brought to Manhurst as we were. The daughter, Lady Amelia, was intent on talking to me earlier.”

Mr. Owen leaned forward in his chair. I hadn’t seen him this animated in weeks. “How very curious.”

“It really is. She said her mother had been all set to go to a hunting party, but she received a letter and did a complete about-face. They arrived at Manhurst practically the next day. Sound familiar?”

His warm brown eyes lit up. “That it does. I take it you inquired about the whereabouts of the letter already?”

“Burnt. But I can see what else I can find out. Do you think Lady Morton might have something to do with what happened to Lucy?”

Mr. Owen furrowed his brow and exhaled loudly. “It does seem that way if the Eurydiceans are involved.”

I bit the corner of my lip in thought. “If we assume Mariah left the ring for you when she disappeared.” I held up one finger. “And that the photographs are hers.” Another finger. “ And we assume that the spirit truly was Mariah.”

He raised his brows as I raised the third. “You believe in ghosts now, child?”

“Ghosts are irrelevant. We are hypothesizing .”

His mouth curved up into an indulgent smile. “That’s my lass. Hypothesize away.”

“ If we assume all that to be true. And we allow for the fact that Mariah was at Manhurst the night she died… that tells me that whatever Mariah wanted you to know—and whatever the mediums were after—must still be at Manhurst. Does it not?”

Mr. Owen paused, his fingers drumming on the table. “If that’s the case, then you’d best return and find what secrets that ring holds before anyone else gets hurt.”

My sentiments exactly.