Chapter Thirty-Four. The Bitter End

C HAPTER T HIRTY-FOUR

The Bitter End

WITH Hecate left at Manhurst to sort out the dead inspector, Ruan and I set off on foot. The fewer people who knew we had left the castle grounds the better. It was an eight-mile walk into the nearest town, but mercifully after two of them, Ruan flagged down a farmer who agreed to let us ride in the back of his truck alongside his produce—a mean trick considering I was covered in soot with a revolver strapped to my chest and Ruan didn’t fare much better.

“We need to think this through, carefully…” Ruan began, tracing circles on his thigh with his thumb.

I leaned my back against a sack full of turnips, drawing in greedy lungfuls of clean country air. My throat was raw. “None of it makes sense. Why would she come back after all this time? It’s been over forty years.” After what I discovered in Genevieve’s room, I had a growing suspicion that Mariah had not died that night on the bridge at all. That she’d simply run away. But why come back and kill her own sister? No. Lucy’s death did not fit neatly into any scenario I could concoct and I’d grown tired of guessing. Tired of the what-ifs and wrong turns and dead ends. Grumbling, I picked up a lopsided turnip that had rolled free of its sack and tilted it to the sun. “I detest turnips.”

Ruan arched his eyebrow, far more amused at our current predicament than I.

“If I never saw another I’d be content. They taste like dirt.”

“And you’ve eaten much dirt to compare?”

Cursing him beneath my breath, I shook my head.

Ruan chuckled and brushed a filthy strand of hair from my brow, his warm fingertips lingering on my skin a half second too long. “You know, Ruby Vaughn. I wonder sometimes how you get yourself in the troubles you do. In the month since we met—”

“Seven weeks…” The truck hit another rut, throwing us against one another.

He took in a sharp breath at the impact. “In the last seven weeks… I’ve had to quell angry mobs, am now solving my second murder, and have gotten myself shot. I think I’ve seen more action with you than I did during all four years of the war.”

“Blame Mr. Owen. I’d have never set foot in Cornwall if left to my own devices. Besides, your old life sounded boring.”

“It was.” He gave me a half smile before turning away and watching the miles tick away. I was glad he didn’t try to discuss what happened last night. No matter how muddied my feelings were for him, there could be no future for Ruan and me. Not in the stark light of day. He belonged in his old life—that boring one delivering babies, making teas, and tending the sick. Not here with me risking his life day after day. I was a magnet for danger—it just saunters up and falls in my lap like an overcurious kitten, begging me to stroke its ears.

Ruan laid his hand over mine, interrupting my thoughts and grounding me squarely in the present. Damn him. I grunted, snatching my hand back and folding my arms across my chest. The farmer would only take us as far as Glenrothes. From there we’d have to hire a car to get to the ferry out in Anstruther.

This was taking too long.

Mr. Owen could be dead before we got there.

The truck groaned to a stop as we neared the edge of town and I struggled to shove that cheerful thought from my head. I hopped out, stumbling as I landed—and patted my pockets, taking inventory of what I had on me. We needed money to hire a car from here and I had only the clothes on my back.

My hand went to my throat and I started to unfasten my locket. There was no choice but to pawn it and come back later to retrieve the thing once we’d sorted matters on the Isle of May. If we managed to sort them.

I’d unfastened the clasp when Ruan covered my hands with his own. “No. I won’t allow you to do that.”

My nostrils flared. “ Allow me? While I might have let you into my bed last night, you are not my keeper.”

“My bed,” he corrected, his hand lingering over my locket. “I allowed you into my bed.”

I had to give him that. “Just look at us! We look like we’ve escaped from Hell’s operating theater. No one is going to help us out of the kindness of their hearts. We need money to get to the Isle of May. While I’m perfectly good at picking locks, I am not a thief, and my locket is the only thing we have of value between us.”

Ruan groused in Cornish, and shoved his hand into his own pocket, pulling out a fine silver-cased half hunter that he thrust into my hand. “Use this instead.”

“Where did you get a thing like that?” I gave him a bemused look. That was the watch of a dandy, not at all the sort of thing for my country Pellar. Mine. The thought flittered there at the edge of my mind and I swatted it back away.

“Perhaps I didn’t eschew all the things Owen gave me when I left Oxford.”

I choked back a laugh.

“I’ll let you buy it back, mmm? You cannot lose that locket. You are your mother’s only living daughter.” He pressed the warm watch into my palm, closing my fingers over it.

“My… my mother?” Now that was a peculiar thing to say. I hastily fastened my necklace, hurrying to keep up with him. “Ruan… what do you know of my mother?”

He quickened his step.

“You know something, don’t you?” I called after him, hurrying along the road. He shook his head, eyes downcast. The fiend. I hardly knew anything of her. Only that she’d been in an orphanage, taken in by a childless farmer and his wife when she was three. We’d been told she was born to a poor Irish couple on their way to America, the sole survivor when their ship was broken apart by rough seas off the New York coast. My mother had been scooped from the wreckage and placed in a New York orphanage as a darling little thing. My grandparents had been charmed at once by a three-year-old girl with messy black curls and fathomless brown eyes. Always dreamy and distant—as if nothing in the whole world could touch her.

“Ruan…” I started again. “What do you know of my mother?”

“It’s nothing.” He kept his eyes trained on the shopkeeper’s sign in the distance, not daring to look back at me. The wind whistled through the narrow street.

“What do you know?” I struggled to keep up with him, gasping for breath. My lungs not fully recovered from all the smoke.

“Nothing. It’s only something Hecate said.”

“And what did she say?”

He paused, turning to me with a weary look. “You are your mother’s daughter, Ruby. You are Morvoren born.” He said the word as if he was telling me everything I could possibly need to know. Except it was meaningless to me.

“Yes, but what does it mean ? I’ve searched for it in every book I can find—?”

“Perhaps you are not meant to know yet.” He pointed at a green painted sign across the street. “The pawnbroker is ahead.”

Fine. As we were in the middle of catching a killer, I supposed it could wait. But once this was sorted out, Ruan and I had yet another thing to discuss.

T HE F IRTH OF Forth was angry by the time we reached the ferry landing. Wind sang eerily through the rigging of the docked ships like the trapped souls of lost seabirds. Sharp droplets of rain pelted my skin, making it hard to keep my eyes open. I walked to the ferryman’s hut and knocked on the door. He answered, recognizing me at once from my trip earlier this week. His weathered face grew more and more incredulous as I explained the situation and asked if he could take us across in his skiff.

His eyebrows rose as he looked from me to the angry waters swirling in every possible direction. “To the Isle of May… in this storm? Are ye mad, lass? One wrong swell and we’d all be drowned.”

I could see he wasn’t about to be swayed. Five miles. It was five miles across the mouth of the Firth of Forth to the Isle of May. Nearly to the North Sea, if I recalled my Scottish geography.

“It’s imperative we get across…” I wiped at the rain, which pelted the side of my face.

“I don’t know what trouble you’re in, lass…” The warmth coming from his little hut was tempting. “But you can rest here until it passes, then I’ll take you both across.”

“It’s trouble we’re trying to stop—” Ruan interrupted.

The ferryman did not understand.

“A murder. There’s been a murder at Manhurst Castle and I have every reason to believe that there is about to be another if you don’t help us get to the Isle of May,” I spluttered out.

He straightened, looking far more imposing than he had moments before. “Are you threatening me?”

I held up my hands in a gesture of peace. “We’re trying to prevent one. I believe that the killer from Manhurst is headed to Rivenly.” Something in my voice must have reached him as his expression softened.

“No one is getting to the isle in this weather. No one. The last ferry went across perhaps two hours ago with an American lad, but that was before the winds picked up. I wish that I could help you, lass. I do. But until the storm passes, it’s not safe for anyone to go out.”

Two hours? Gracious! Elijah must have driven himself straight from Manhurst at breakneck speed to beat us here. I reached for my locket yet again, clumsily unfastening it with numb, half-frozen fingers. They moved too slow, but I found the clasp and pulled it from my neck and gave it a good final look—something I had not done in quite some time. I ran my thumb over the seed pearls which surrounded the stylized compass rose inset. The whole piece was crafted from both platinum and gold. In the very center of the compass was a deep green cat’s-eye emerald. The stone alone was worth a small fortune. I squeezed my eyes shut as I remembered my father’s parting words to me as he gave me the locket.

“You’ve always been an unbiddable thing, my darling girl. As is your mother. You are like her.” He’d tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. The ruby on his signet ring winked in the sunlight as I waited on the dock to board the ship to England. I’d known he would send me away—I only hadn’t known quite how far. My parents had moved quickly to remove me from the newspapermen and their cameras, far away from the scandal where my na?ve heart could heal in private. Confused tears stung my eyes as he leaned close and whispered softly in my ear. “Do you know what we do with the most unbiddable of things, my love?”

I shook my head, wiping at the wetness on my cheeks.

“We let them go.” He brushed a kiss to the top of my head, his face soaked from his own silent tears. “You cannot tame wild creatures unless they wish to be tamed, remember that.” Then he pressed the small package into my palm.

I wasn’t ready to leave them. I didn’t want to go. It didn’t matter to me if I had an illegitimate child, I simply wanted to stay with my family—with my mother and little sister. But he didn’t care what I wanted—intent on sending me away for my own sake. I didn’t bother to look at what he’d handed me until I arrived in London weeks later. I hadn’t understood his parting words, not until I realized what he’d gifted me. He’d given me a compass—a means to find my way home.

I placed the locket in the ferryman’s hand, closing his fingers over it. “If I don’t return, sell it. You will have more than enough to replace the boat.”

“Ruby—this is madness,” Ruan said in hushed tones.

Undoubtedly, he was right, but I had already lost too many people I cared for in this world—if there was the remotest possibility that Mr. Owen was alive, I could not take any chances.

The ferryman quietly calculated the cost of replacing his skiff against the treasure he held. He couldn’t possibly know that it was worth more to me than my own life.

“It’s your heads,” he said in defeat and gestured to the skiff, docked nearby. This was by far the most dangerous thing I’d ever considered doing, but there was no other way to get there in time. I should have known Elijah was duplicitous. He’d shown me who he was back in New York, but once again I’d been too trusting. Too na?ve.

Ruan gave me an apprehensive glance. “Are you certain this is what you want to do? We could wait on the storm…”

I looked up into his pale green eyes. Oddly brighter than before as he looked out onto the surging water.

“Do you trust me?”

The edge of his mouth twisted upward in answer, and he followed me into the howling winds and out onto the angry sea.

T HIS WAS A mistake.

Even without the rapidly healing wound in my chest, this would have been a fool’s errand. My entire body ached from steering the small craft, and we were barely halfway to the isle. I could just make out the lighthouse perched high up in the distance through the sea spray. This far out, the waves were higher than I’d anticipated, and it took every bit of my strength to keep us to the flats.

The boat lurched, lifting high in the air on a particularly rough swell before crashing back down. The wooden hull made a sickening crack that reverberated beneath my feet. Icy seawater slammed over the sides, filling the boat and soaking me from the waist down.

We were going to die.

I dared a glance back to the severely reefed mainsail. It was holding at least. A small mercy granted by the storm. This little skiff would not survive a second wave like the last without cracking in two. Though I wasn’t sure which would be worse—to be swallowed up by a wave, or to have the tiny vessel be torn apart, timber by timber, beneath us.

I lost my footing a time or two but by the grace of Ruan’s old gods, we kept speed, steady and straight toward the island.

Somewhere from the darkest recesses of my memory my mother’s voice came to me, bringing back the lessons she’d taught me during those summer months we’d spend sailing together through the Great Lakes. We’d been surprised a time or two by a dangerous squall, but never before did I get the distinct sense that the seas wanted me dead.

Stay to the flats, my darling. Stay to the flats and you’ll see this through.

That’s my girl.

You’re almost there.

Over and over her voice echoed in my mind as my body moved of its own accord. Weathering a storm that we had no hope to survive.

They will not take either of you today.

I kept my eye on the rocky inlet where the ferryman had docked earlier this week. The distance between us and it quickly disappearing. We were close enough to the pier, I could make out the waves crashing against the rocks on either side. I spat out the salty water and remained focused on the shore, on the last steady thing in the world.

“Ruan, can you tie a line?” I shouted into the wind.

He growled something in response that did not sound reassuring, but I took it as agreement all the same. I pointed out the rope lying wet by my feet. “You take the bitter end in your good hand, when we get near, loop it over the piling and then—” But before I could finish my rudimentary sailing lesson, a large wave tossed the skiff onto the shore.

It seemed the sea did the job for us.

The force of the impact threw the both of us into the shallows. A sharp pain shot through my knee, where it struck the rocks below. I stood, reaching back for Ruan, jerking him to his feet as another wave struck us.

Only sheer stubbornness kept us upright. I grabbed the bowline from the little skiff, tugging it toward the dock before climbing up and securing the craft as best I could.

I turned back to dry land to see Ruan there, left palm on the ground, retching up the contents of his stomach. He crouched on the ground, before looking up at me, his coloring as gray as the stormy seas.

“I swear to the gods, never again, Ruby Vaughn.” He spat out more bile as he drew himself to standing, and shook his head, water droplets flying from his hair.

I grabbed ahold of a spare bit of line someone had carelessly left wrapped around a nearby piling, and tossed it to Ruan, who caught it in his free hand and slung it over his uninjured shoulder.

As I turned to walk away, down the path to the house, he started to mutter to himself in Cornish, and I distinctly heard the word Morvoren followed by what I’d come to understand as a term of frustration. Perhaps I didn’t want to learn Cornish after all.