Chapter Twenty-Four. Forti Nihil Difficile

C HAPTER T WENTY-FOUR

Forti Nihil Difficile

FOR as bright as it had been on the Isle of May this morning, by the time I returned to Hawick House a thick fog had settled upon the mainland, shrouding the house from view. Hugh, the Lennoxes’ driver, had grown slower and slower with each mile back to the estate. It was a wonder he could even see the road before us. I shifted in the seat, unable to calm my body, nerves increasing to near crescendo. Thoughts of a shadowy group of powerful men plagued me. Could it be as simple as Mariah threatening to expose the Eurydiceans’ hypocrisy? No. There had to be more to it—powerful men were exposed for bad behavior all the time and always walked away unscathed. Unless she’d seen something… witnessed something truly terrible and had proof of it. Now that would be reason for them to harm her.

I blew out a breath, reaching for my locket, and found the chain horribly tangled with the one that bore Mariah’s ring. I’d nearly forgotten that I’d placed it around my own throat before leaving Hawick House. I unfastened them both, making quick work of the knotted chains and replaced the locket around my neck.

Could the ring be the key? I examined the enamel band in the dull afternoon light and flicked open the hinge, revealing the intricately braided hair. Tilting it into the dim light, my pulse began to speed up. There was something inscribed there beneath the small braid. I could only make out the ghost of a shape, but I could have sworn there was something obscured by the hair.

“Hugh…” I squinted at it. “Do you have a light—a torch or something?”

“Aye, miss.” He rummaged around in a haversack of tools in the front floorboards beside him, stashed for the occasional roadside repair that inevitably occurred, before handing a flashlight over his shoulder to me.

I flicked it on, shining the light on the small plait. Yes. I could make it out clearly, an edge of a letter just beneath the hair. Now that was intriguing, indeed. I snapped the ring shut. “Thank you, Hugh.”

“Did you find what you were looking for back there?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the misty road before him.

“I rather think I have.”

I RAN THROUGH Hawick House, past the disapproving butler and the curious underbutler. Past young Bridget, with her basket of soiled linens and straight into Ruan’s sickroom where I found him sitting upright in bed. He was reading with a book propped against his knee—right arm bound to his chest. His color was vastly better than it had been when last I saw him and my heart squeezed at the sight.

Now’s not the time for sentiment, Ruby.

I hurried over to the bed and climbed in beside him, fully intending to tell him all about what I’d discovered. The mattress gave a perturbed squeak at the addition of my weight. He shifted over to make more room for me and winced. Suddenly my reckless heart remembered just how close I’d come to losing him.

“You know this is rather novel.…” I said, mustering a carelessness that I did not feel.

He closed his book, thumb marking his page.

I could not bring myself to look at him—too afraid he’d see how deep my growing sentiment for him ran. “Last time we were chasing a murderer, it was me who kept trying to die. This time, it’s you!”

“I’m pleased that I can amuse you from my sickbed.” He tilted his chin toward my pocket. “What do you have there?”

I glanced down to where my hand was unconsciously covering the ring. Usually Ruan and I didn’t need to speak so plainly. His peculiar ability to hear my thoughts made our working together easy. Whatever was giving him trouble at Manhurst must still be causing him difficulties.

I reached in my pocket, pulling out the ring and sidled closer to his left side, mindful of his bandages. “See here?” I pointed to the edge of the etching.

Ruan made a sound in the back of his throat, taking the ring and holding it up to the light. “There is something beneath the hair.”

“Do you happen to have a penknife?”

“I’m a witch, not a barrister, in case you’ve forgotten.”

I hadn’t. But he must be feeling better if he’s grousing again. I folded his fingers around the ring and patted his fist. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”

I climbed out of bed and scurried off to the library, which was blissfully empty. A desk sat at the far side and I began rummaging through drawers in search of something sharp and thin enough to pry the hair out from the channel of the ring. The first drawer was empty. I started to open the second when I heard voices coming from the hall. Every muscle in my body went rigid.

“Do you think they know?” The first was clearly Malachi Lennox. I’d gotten rather accustomed to hearing him grumbling through closed doors.

“No. I don’t think they do. I’ve only now discovered it,” Andrew replied. He was trying to keep his voice down but I heard him clear as day. “I am duty bound to tell them. After all, Uncle’s life is on the line. This is more important than any petty squabbles between you.”

Tell us what?

“He deserves his fate after what befell Mariah.”

“But you know he didn’t kill Lucy,” Andrew argued. “Why let him suffer for a crime he did not commit?”

Malachi made an unpleasant sound in his throat. “He may as well have done. Look at what trouble my brother has already brought with him. That strange man in the laundry and that harridan of an American. Andrew, this is an untenable situation. You must send them away at once before anyone else learns what you’ve discovered. My brother made his bed long ago, and now he must live with the repercussions of his intemperate actions.”

My hand toyed with the brass knob of the drawer. I quickly took stock of the room for potential escapes—only one way in and we were on the second floor. The footsteps grew closer. Oh, blast it, I was trapped. Without a second thought, I dropped down below the large desk and tucked myself deep into the shadows as the door to the library creaked open.

I closed my eyes, slowing my breath, and awaited discovery. Hiding beneath the desk was an ill-conceived notion. I could have perused the shelves and pretended I’d been looking for a book, but no. No. I had to choose the most suspicious option.

However, if I hadn’t hidden, they would have certainly known I’d overheard them, and that would have been doubly bad. Who knew what Malachi was capable of? The man’s irrational hatred for Mr. Owen made my skin crawl. I could not fathom willingly partaking in a decades-long estrangement from my little sister. Good God, I’d have given anything to have one more argument over ribbons or frocks, and no matter how I tried, I simply could not con ceive of a world in which a stolen bride was worth forty-odd years of bitterness between brothers. Family was everything . But then again, perhaps I only felt that way because I no longer had one. I bit my lower lip trying not to think overmuch on that notion.

The heavy footsteps made their way farther from the desk, followed by the telltale clink of crystal and a slosh of liquid. A chair groaned.

Damnation.

There was nothing to do but wait. So, I sat there, curled beneath the desk until my unwitting companion tired of drinking.

It was approximately half an hour before the door snicked shut again. With a sigh of relief, I crawled out from my hiding spot and continued my search for a penknife. As I opened the third drawer, I found a travel writing box tucked inside. Within it was a lovely silver folding knife. I tucked it in my pocket and fled.

“ W HAT TOOK YOU so long?” Ruan had grown downright irritable in my absence, but who wouldn’t be after having a bullet taken from one’s shoulder. He’d be even more cross if he knew what I’d overheard upstairs. I hoped he couldn’t hear my thoughts at the moment. He already mistrusted Andrew Lennox, and there was no need to fuel that particular fire, at least not until I’d parsed out what exactly that conversation meant.

“Shall I?”

Ruan gestured at the penknife. “I’m useless at the moment.” The deep divot between his brows returned as he looked at me.

I reached up, smoothing it with my thumb out of habit. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

He hesitated, struggling for the words.

“Ruan, what’s happened? You’re starting to frighten me…”

“I can’t… I can’t hear you at all. I thought it was just—the distance. You went off to see Owen, but now…”

“You can’t…”

“I can’t hear you . I can’t hear anything . It’s silence.” He tapped his temple.

My guilty hand went on its own to the fresh scar on my chest.

“It’s not your fault…” He must have guessed my turn of thoughts.

But it was . If he hadn’t been with me on the bridge, then none of this would have happened.

“It will be fine. We’ll be fine.” He touched my arm gently before opening the hinge on the ring. Even days ago, when he’d touch me that way, I’d feel the cool rush of his power washing away the tension in my mind—but now the only sensation was that of his skin against mine. I could have wept.

And there was that damned word again. We. I brushed it away like a hoverfly, wetting my lips and tugged the knife from my pocket. “Hold the ring still, will you?”

I flicked open the knife and gently pried the hair from the channel.

There was something beneath it. Neither of us breathed as I carefully extracted the small braid and placed it alongside the ring in Ruan’s scarred palm.

My throat constricted as I struggled to focus on the task at hand and not on the fact that the White Witch had been right in her warning. I might not have killed him but I most certainly destroyed Ruan Kivell.

I struggled to shove those thoughts from my mind, and focus on the ring. On what it meant. I had to find what the mediums were hunting, and this ring and those glass negatives were the only clues we had. I studied the now-empty inner channel filled with decades’ worth of debris and dirt. And there, beneath it all, was a very faint engraving.

“You clever, clever girl,” Ruan murmured, his voice humming with approval.

Warm with praise, I shot up from the bed and went to the worktable on the other side. The white sheets drying from the rafters billowed in the fragrant evening breeze. I picked up an old pewter ewer and poured some water into a basin before submerging the ring, taking a small bit of clean bandage in my nail and running it along the channel. The water grew cloudy as decades of dirt dissolved.

I withdrew it from the water and rubbed a dry corner of the bandage through the channel, repeating the process until I could read the words.

Forti Nihil Difficile

“‘For the brave nothing is difficult,’” Ruan murmured over my shoulder.

I jumped at the sound of his voice, not noticing that he’d left the bed and come to my side. “I didn’t realize you read Latin.”

The edge of his mouth curved up into a small smile. “Oxford had its uses.”

I looked at him curiously, tucking a dark brown strand of hair behind my ear. “What other languages do you speak?”

“Speak? None but English and Cornish. But I can read Latin and ancient Greek. I knew a chap at school who was fascinated by languages, but I never had the knack for them as he did.”

This Pellar of mine was full of surprises.

He’s not yours, Ruby, that wicked voice reminded me. And he never would be if I knew what was good for him.

“What do you suppose it means?” he asked.

I didn’t know. Perhaps the ring was not a clue at all and Mariah had left it with Mr. Owen for some entirely unrelated reason. A token to say she loved him and wanted him to be brave. My throat constricted. It was all utterly hopeless. Mr. Owen would be convicted and Lucy’s killer would be free and I—

“Miss Vaughn?”

Andrew Lennox was standing in the doorway looking grimmer than I’d ever seen him. I had no idea how long he’d been there, or how much he’d overheard of our conversation.

“May I speak with you in the hall?”

I nodded, tucking the ring into my pocket and followed him out. He pulled the door closed behind me.

“I must apologize in advance for what I am about to do, and I want to make abundantly clear that if this were my home, and at all within in my power, I would not do this thing, but my father is most adamant on the matter.”

His expression was pained and earnest and yet I did not quite believe his words. I’d known Mr. Owen too long to judge a book on the basis of its cover, no matter how fine the lettering.

“My father… he’s set in his ways and he has… a certain way of doing things…” Andrew hemmed, leaning against the wall, waiting until a pair of maids passed by and were out of earshot.

“Spit it out, Andrew.”

“My father wishes you and Mr. Kivell to return to Manhurst at once. He believes that… that you are a danger to us.”

“He’s not the first to think that,” I grumbled.

Andrew furrowed his brow.

“It’s quite all right. We’ll go. But first, I want to speak with your father. There are quite a few questions I have for him.”

Some questions more pointed than others—but I had a sense he wouldn’t answer them. At least not to my satisfaction.