Chapter Thirty-One. Ghosts

C HAPTER T HIRTY-ONE

Ghosts

I do not know why I did not immediately run for help. Nor do I know why I paused, sitting at a table in the empty courtyard waiting… I do not even recall what I waited for, only that I couldn’t bear to be amongst the living until I’d rid myself of the dead.

Once I managed to compose myself enough to return to my room, I headed inside, determined to find Ruan and then contact the inspector. My hands still trembled, but I could do that much for the poor dead woman. The inspector would likely try to accuse me of killing Abigail as well, but I had no choice in the matter.

Ruan found me before I found him, catching me by the arm as I started up the stairs. “Where have you been?”

He was dressed in only shirtsleeves and a herringbone waistcoat, his right arm and shoulder bound tight to his chest with a white cloth sling.

I opened my mouth but snapped it back shut, the words not coming.

He touched my temple with his forefinger. “Please talk to me, Ruby.”

Again, I opened my mouth, wanting to tell him about the poor dead woman in the ruins and yet the words would not come. My eyes burnt and silence surrounded us. The clock on the hall struck twelve.

How long had I been outside?

Ruan laid a hand on my cheek. “Gods, you are frozen. I have been looking all over the castle for you—where have you been?” He looked down at my hands. “You’re shaking…”

I looked down to my filthy hands and clenched my fist to stop the trembling, finally finding my voice. “There’s a body… in the ruins. The missing medium.”

Ruan shifted his weight, taking me in fully. What a sight I must be with my knotted hair, my stained dress, and mud-caked shoes. As the meaning behind my words sank in, he pulled me against his warm chest—heedless of his own injury or the state of my clothes.

“You need a bath,” he murmured, his lips pressed against my hair as he inhaled deeply.

I let out a startled sound. Yes. I did. But there was no time for it. Tears pricked my eyes. Stupid. Stupid tears. “I must go to her, I must help…”

“Help who?”

“The dead medium.”

Ruan muttered something beneath his breath in Cornish before stepping back and tilting my chin up to look him in the eye. “She’s dead. There is nothing you can do for her that can’t wait until morning.”

His words soaked through the frozen expanse of my thoughts. He was right. The poor woman had lain there in that shallow grave for a week. Surely another few hours wouldn’t hurt. But leaving her alone seemed cruel. Someone had killed her and left her like carrion. Forgotten.

He frowned and met me with that irritating stare of his. The one that reminded me why he held such respect in Cornwall. “You will do no one any good like this. Let me help you—you can hardly stand on your own feet.”

I wriggled away from his kindness. “No. No, I’m fine. I promise. I’ll be all right.” A lie. I hadn’t been fine in a very long time, but I was a Vaughn, and Vaughns always managed to get by.

He stood there, perhaps six inches away from me, his eyes bright. He swore again beneath his breath, muttering in Cornish before pressing a gentle kiss to my brow.

A girl could grow accustomed to this sort of thing. “What did you say?”

The edge of his mouth curved up and he shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Good night, Ruby.”

Good night, indeed.

I started up the stairs, leaving him behind. Just as I turned the corner, I heard a pair of voices coming from behind a cracked door at the near end of the corridor. I ought not have stopped—not paid it any mind at all—had I not recognized Elijah’s voice. The other speaker, I could not identify. My fingers rested lightly on the gilt wallpaper as I leaned closer to the opening.

“—it will be fine. Believe me. I won’t let them harm you—”

“—it’s too late, Elijah… the plan will never work now,” the other person replied. An Englishwoman, though she had a strange accent I could not quite pinpoint. Perhaps it was the woman Ruan saw outside the window earlier tonight? Whoever she was, she also knew his true name—an unsettling revelation.

“I was frightened for you. When you fainted I—”

Fainted? My stomach knotted as I strained to listen harder at the door. Suddenly I recalled the ease with which Genevieve had mutated herself on the bridge. Her change in posture, her thickening accent upon the appearance of Andrew, Malachi, and the duke. At the time I thought she was afraid of Elijah, but what if her reason for being here was something else entirely?

I’ve always been good at reading people. That was what she said to me on the bridge.

Perhaps Ruan and Andrew Lennox had seen her before. I swallowed down the bile in my throat as images of the dead woman in the ruins came back to mind. Genevieve herself had told me that Abigail—the other medium—had been afraid before she disappeared, that she was running away. I struggled to remember fragments of the conversation but they were ephemeral.

“I will protect you, Gen. Please. Forget this place. I can keep you safe from them. You must listen to reason. People like that… They will not give up. They will not forgive this offense.”

Them? A soft sob. She was crying. Could she be afraid of the Eurydiceans? Or did she mean me? I pressed closer to the wall, trying to make sense of this new thread. Genevieve and Elijah were in league, that was for certain—but was she in danger as the other two mediums had been or was she the killer and simply afraid of facing the consequences of her own actions?

Footsteps came up the hall behind me. There went my eavesdropping. Besides, I’d learned far more tonight than I’d bargained for. I was getting close now—I felt it in my bones—if only I knew what I was close to. I started down the hall in hopes of making it to my room before whoever it was found me.

“Ruby? What are you doing awake?”

I groaned, coming face-to-face with Andrew Lennox.

“I could ask you the same,” I shot back, far sharper than I’d intended. I wrapped my fist tight, out of fear my trembling would return before I reached the safety of my room.

“Couldn’t sleep. I confess I find it harder and harder these days.”

An unwelcome thought struck me—Andrew had been in the ruins with me too that day. Surely a physician would have noticed the scent of death, far quicker than I. “Why are you still here…”

The shiny white horn of his crook glinted in the electric lights as he shifted his weight. “My father and I do not see eye to eye these days. I find myself needing to apologize for the way he treated you. It was abominable—for that reason I came to the séance. I didn’t expect—” He waved his hand in defeat and sighed. “I do not know what happened earlier this evening, but I certainly did not anticipate that . You have blood—” He gestured to my neck with his forefinger.

I shrugged him away. “It is nothing.”

His nose twitched in that same way Mr. Owen’s did when he was biting his tongue. “I fear if I stay at Manhurst much longer, I might be returning to medicine as a full-time occupation.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll see you to your room. You should not wander the halls alone. It is ahead, is it not?”

I arched a brow. “Do you think I’m in danger here?”

He let out a strangled laugh as we paused outside the door to my room. “Miss Vaughn, you have been shot and nearly killed, and the person who broke poor Lucy’s neck still walks free. Not to count that other missing medium. If I were you, I’d keep your head down and go home. My uncle has made his bed with his lies and no matter how much I love him, you are far too young to get tied up in his trouble.”

I bristled at his words, but it wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought the same thing. A wiser woman would have gone home and let Mr. Owen handle the chaos he’d created—and yet I remained loyal to a fault.

“Good night, Captain Lennox.” I reached into my pocket and withdrew the key to my room and placed it into the lock, hand trembling.

He looked at my hand, brows drawn up in concern. “Are you certain you are well?”

I twisted the key and pushed the door open. “Perfectly.” I locked the door behind me, hoping it would keep the ghosts of Manhurst at bay for at least one night.