Chapter Thirty-Five. And into the Fire

C HAPTER T HIRTY- F IVE

And into the Fire

WHEN I last left the Isle of May, I’d not expected to return this soon. Nor had the jagged stones jutting out of the sea seemed as ominous. I’d foolishly believed the killer would be at Manhurst and that Mr. Owen would be safe here with the duke and the thousands of seabirds. But the more I unraveled the secret held by the Three Fates, the clearer it became that Mr. Owen was somehow at the center of it all. Mr. Owen and these Eurydiceans. He’d disavowed the secretive club before, but I had seen the negative. A negative bearing the likeness of someone who looked an awful lot like him disturbing the goings-on.

I blew out a breath. It couldn’t be him. It just couldn’t. Why scratch out the faces of everyone but himself? Mr. Owen was meticulous and calculating. If he were going to be involved in nefarious dealings he’d certainly not leave incriminating evidence behind.

Ruan touched my elbow, and I spun to face him. “What?”

“Are you well?”

“You were the one vomiting up your breakfast and you ask if I am well?” I choked back a laugh, gesturing widely at the stormy seas behind us. “Ruan, in the last week we’ve both been shot, I’ve nearly drowned us, and now we’re trying to keep Mr. Owen from getting killed—so no, Ruan, I’m not well. But I am doing my best.” I turned back around and continued storming up the muddy path toward the house. The trail forked, one way rutted and leading to the cliffs, the other to the house and the old lighthouse that still served as a beacon after all these years. Ruan stopped me again.

“This is not the time for your overprotective tenden—”

“Look.” He pointed with two fingers at the mud. It had been recently churned up, with clear evidence of struggle. There were at least three different sets of footprints there.

I stooped down to get a better look and spied a thin gold chain nearly swallowed by the muck. I lifted it from the filth with my fingers and looked over my shoulder to where Ruan towered behind me. “What do you make of it?”

He sniffed, wiping the rain from his face with his uninjured arm. “Shall we see where the tracks lead?”

I nodded, pocketing the chain, and continued, following the single heavier pair of tracks up onto the cliffs. The storm showed no signs of abating as we moved higher up the slope against the icy rain. Teeth chattering, I withdrew Mr. Owen’s revolver from the holster.

Ruan made a sharp sound, and I stopped, noticing a familiar shepherd’s crook laying in the mud beside us, half covered by wet leaves—likely kicked off the path and into the windswept underbrush before the storm set in. There was a distinct reddish streak down one side. Blood, and recent too.

“Andrew was here.”

“ Is here…” Ruan tilted his head farther up the rocky incline to the outside of a tumbledown croft near the top. I squinted, struggling to keep my eyes open against the frigid rain. Half the croft’s roof was missing—ravaged by the intemperate weather along this part of the world. The other half nearly consumed by low-growing brush and vegetation.

Andrew Lennox lay partially propped against the side of the building, barely sheltered from the rain by the decaying eaves. I tore off up the hill after him, Ruan at my heels.

“Andrew…” I sank down beside him in the tall grass. His breath was ragged as he laid his hand on his blood-splattered satchel. His blood . A pair of surgical scissors lay on his thigh atop the gory makeshift bandage. “What happened?”

Andrew didn’t answer immediately, weak from loss of blood.

“Ruan, can you help him?”

I saw the hesitation there—brief though it was—before he grunted what I took to be a yes.

Andrew reached out, grasping Ruan’s left hand. His dark brown eyes were frenzied. “My cousin. I tried to stop her… followed her here.”

I continued scanning over his body, looking for other wounds for Ruan to tend to. It seemed Andrew had only been shot the once. A strange mercy.

He grabbed on to my hand. “You need to see to my cousin… she…”

“Who else is here? You’re the first soul we’ve seen on this island,” Ruan grumbled, reaching for Andrew’s bloodied medical kit.

Andrew jerked his head angrily toward the other side of the stone wall behind him. “Can’t… can’t get to her. Was trying… trying to stop her. Too… too… dangerous. He knows… he knows she knows…”

Hair rose on the back of my neck. “Andrew, who knows… who did this to you?”

He clenched his jaw and groaned as Ruan shifted Andrew’s weight in order to slip the medical kit off of him. “I wouldn’t b-blame you if y-you let me d-die…”

“The old man would never let me hear the end of it. Now hush and let me take care of things.” Ruan continued rummaging through Andrew’s medical supplies. While his words were gruff, there was an edge of tenderness in his voice. I pulled the Webley revolver from the holster and handed it to Ruan.

His eyes widened and he shook his head. “No, you keep it.”

“You have a fractured shoulder and a wounded man. Get him stable and take him to the skiff. Find shelter in the rocks by the shore. I’ll come back to you. I promise.”

Ruan stiffened. I could see he wanted to argue, but thought better of it. He grabbed me by the hand and tugged me down, pressing a hard kiss to my lips before letting me go. “Don’t die.”

I nodded before ducking around the corner into the croft, peering into the darkness. A part of me wished I had taken Andrew’s surgical scissors with me, at least then I’d have something to protect myself with beyond my wits and sheer luck—but Ruan had far greater need of them, gauging from the amount of blood seeping through Andrew’s trousers. We’d be lucky if he didn’t bleed out before Ruan could stop the flow of it.

The overgrowth provided little shelter from the storm raging outside. Wiping the water from my face, I looked around. The room was mostly empty with broken shelves long since abandoned by whoever once lived here. In the corner, beneath what remained of the roof, was a filthy boy, and a lumpy blanket covering a pile of debris beside him.

I stepped closer, and my mouth grew dry as I realized it wasn’t a boy at all—it was Genevieve. She’d cut her hair short and was dressed as a young man. Her cap was slung low on her head as she looked up at me, her cheeks streaked with blood and mud. Her wrists were bound with iron shackles, affixed to the wall by a thick chain.

Her eyes grew wide. “You should not be here…”

The lump beside her moved.

Elijah.

His face was swollen beyond recognition but I knew to the very marrow of my bones it was him. Whoever had captured her had taken their venom out on him. “He’s alive?”

She wet her cracked lips and nodded. “For now. But you should go before he comes back. He’ll do to you as he did to him. He will not harm me. But you… you he will kill…”

I hurried to the windowsill, looking for a key or something to free her from the barbaric chains binding her. “Who are you?” I spat the wet hair from my mouth and continued searching through the broken and rusty tools scattered around. “If I’m risking my neck to save yours, the least you could tell me is who it is I’m saving?”

Genevieve looked again to the opening behind me. “There isn’t time. I’ve told you. You need to go—the inspector betrayed us. You must save yourself.”

“Inspector Burnett?” I asked, resting my hand on the nearby table.

“He must be in his pocket. He stole the only proof we had.”

“In whose pocket? Who is he ? What proof?” My voice grew increasingly panicked with each question. I needed names and needed them now.

Her chains rattled as she tugged against them, the rough fabric of her coat stretching with the movement. “My father will kill you.”

Her father.

If Mariah was her mother then who was her father? My stomach knotted. No. Mr. Owen would not harm anyone. My treacherous gaze drifted down to Elijah’s beaten body. No. He certainly wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t. The man I knew was incapable of such brutality. He was kind and gentle and…

The earth shifted under my feet as my knees threatened to give out. “Who is your father?”

Genevieve’s face grew pale as she looked past me, over my shoulder to that same damned opening she’d kept searching the entire time I’d been there. Straightening my spine, I turned to see what she’d been awaiting.

The duke .

He stood in the doorway to the croft, his feet shoulder-width apart, and he held a hunting rifle in his hands. His tweed cap sat low on his brow as the rain spluttered down.

“I’m surprised you hadn’t pieced it together yet, Miss Vaughn. Hawick told me you were a clever little thing. But it seems he was wrong about you too.”

A short-lived wave of relief surged over me at the realization that Mr. Owen was not a killer, followed by growing panic as the duke was aiming his rifle directly at my chest.

“ You killed them.” The last piece of the puzzle finally snapped into place. The duke had also been at that initial séance. Mariah had told us as much. He’s here.

“Tell her, Duke.” Genevieve snarled, tugging against her binds. “Tell her what you did to my mother.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. I have told you all this before but you did not listen. Going on with your baseless accusations against me. Mariah would come to Rivenly to photograph seabirds. That is all.”

“Seabirds didn’t leave her with a baby in her belly,” Genevieve snapped, showing far more backbone than I was feeling in our present circumstance. I searched for something—anything—to protect myself with before spying a rusty pair of shears on a table a few feet to my left.

“What happened to Mariah…” I asked quickly, drawing his attention back to me and away from his two captives.

The duke shrugged, facing me with that casual grace I’d noted several days before. “Hawick was too busy. Spending all his time in London. She would grow wan and listless when he was away. Women are feeling beings, not thinking ones—surely you recognize that truth about your own sex. I saw no harm, at the time, in letting her come to the island to take her photographs.”

Bile rose in my throat. Not thinking, indeed. My fingers tightened into a fist. Useless against a rifle. I needed to get to the shears without catching his attention, but even those gave me little advantage over him.

“If she later chose to join me in my bed, it was no one’s business but ours. Things simply got a little out of hand.”

Out of hand? My pulse rioted in my veins.

“She did not choose your bed,” Genevieve shouted. I winced, willing her to lower her voice—it would not help either of us to draw attention. The last thing I needed was to have one of the duke’s men join us here. “My mother never chose you. She told me what you did to her!”

The duke’s eyes flashed as the monster behind the man revealed himself and he turned to her. I sent up a silent thanks to Genevieve for catching his attention, and quickly grabbed the shears, burying them in the filthy folds of my skirt.

He prowled closer, the gun no longer aimed at me. “Mariah never said no. I don’t know what twisted lies she told you but she came to Rivenly of her own accord. Why else would she have come if she was not willing?”

Poor Mariah. I could take no more. I’d known far too many men like him. Manipulating and cajoling for their own aims, then denying the truth when it was right there before them. My fingers tightened on the cold metal of the shears. “Not saying no does not mean yes.” Rage surged through me like a hot tide.

“It’s lies. All lies…” the duke protested with a wave of his hand. But the truth was written all over his face. This was a man intoxicated upon his own privilege. His own power. “I cared for her… I did. Mariah was a lonely woman, as I told you. Hawick was always too busy in London. Besides, what woman wouldn’t prefer a duke?”

I am going to kill him. That is, if he doesn’t kill me first.

Genevieve tugged against the chains again. “You insinuated yourself into her confidence, preying upon her insecurities… you are a monster. And a monster’s blood runs through my veins—but I will fix it. I will expose you and I vow to you—”

The duke smacked Genevieve hard across the face with the back of his hand. “Silence, you little bitch. It’s only for your mother’s sake you still live.”

Genevieve did not make a sound, not giving him the pleasure of her pain. My palm grew damp around the shears as I edged closer to the wall, glancing out the open window to make certain Ruan had taken Andrew to the skiff before the duke arrived.

My chest loosened as I saw only grass where they had once been. While I might not survive this, they’d at least have a chance.

The clouds overhead broke, the rain letting up at last. I had to keep his attention focused on me.

Think, Ruby, think.

“You were the one arguing with her on the bridge the night she disappeared, weren’t you?”

The duke turned with a serpentine smile. “Ah, Malachi did see us that night. I wondered. He always was sniffing around her skirts to the point he even came to one of the Eurydicean meetings looking for her. Now that was entertaining, Malachi Lennox full to burst with fire and brimstone, thinking himself so morally superior to the rest of us… Owen was the better of the two brothers. More interesting, more intelligent. Malachi had been a jealous zealot his whole life, just like his mother before him. The man was sick with lust for his brother’s wife. A far greater sin, I’d wager, than any of mine.”

My stomach roiled at the dismissive way he spoke of Mariah. I could hear the clanking of Genevieve’s restraints behind me. His words affecting her as well.

“How could you betray them like that? Mr. Owen took you under his wing, he was kind to you. You said yourself you could never repay the debt you owed him and yet you harmed his wife!”

The duke shrugged with the ease of a man who had never faced a single consequence for his actions in all his days. There was rustling of an animal from the bushes behind the croft, drawing my attention for a half second before the duke spoke again. “What is a woman, to a man? He should be grateful that I rid him of her.”

“You killed her…”

He turned the rifle toward me and took a step closer, the ground wet beneath his feet. “I did what had to be done. I’d not meant to do it at all—but she wouldn’t stop talking. Idiotic woman nattering on about how she would expose me for what happened that night if I did not confess. It wasn’t my fault she slipped from the cliff.” He rubbed his temple, his signet ring catching the light breaking through the clouds. “It was a relief after all that time to be done with it. At least she ceased endlessly going on about what happened with that girl.”

Girl? My mind reeled as the duke kept unfurling more and more of this twisted tale.

“She would have brought down all of the Eurydiceans with the scandal. Of course none of it would have mattered had I not allowed her to bring her camera to the island. It would have been her words against ours.”

And who would believe a woman against the might of a duke…

Genevieve’s attention moved to Elijah. He was waking up. Good God, this was bad. I had to keep the duke looking at me. Especially as I doubted Elijah was restrained.

“And what did Mariah know?” I took a step closer to the duke in challenge. “What did she see that she wasn’t supposed to?”

Now what, Ruby? What are you going to do when the man has a rifle aimed at you?

He started to deny it, I could see it on his face before he flashed me another of those sickening smiles. “I suppose it doesn’t matter as you won’t be leaving the island. Pity the inspector was such a poor shot. I gave explicit instructions to deal with you, but he couldn’t even accomplish that task. It would have been a great deal easier to clear Hawick’s name after his foolish confession without you nosing about.”

He told me nothing I had not already guessed. I was not leaving this island alive, but I could buy Ruan and Andrew a little more time. I wet my lips. “I ask again. What did Mariah know?”

The duke took a step closer, cutting the distance between the end of his rifle and me, a ghost of a memory crossing his expression. “There was a particular girl there at that final meeting of the Eurydiceans. Lord Morton brought her as a gift for me. I got carried away… as one will…” That oily self-satisfied smile spread across his face and I longed to rip the expression from him. To drive the shears into his face and ruin it forever, damn the consequences. “Needless to say, she did not wake up the next morning. All the world was told she caught a fever while visiting the island. No one wanted the truth of it brought out in the open. Scandal would be the least of our problems. For a wellborn girl to have died during one of the rites? Unthinkable. We would all be ruined. Morton. Myself. I could not allow it to happen.”

“Does Lady Morton know what a monster her husband was?” I asked softly.

The duke shrugged. “Why should I care? The foolish woman only cares for her laces and ribbons. Do you think she would mind what her husband was up to?”

“How many girls have you killed?”

“That was an accident. I’d have never intentionally killed one of our kind.”

“How many girls…” I gritted out, not giving a damn about his misguided moral relativity.

The duke drew nearer, jamming the muzzle into my chest.

My pulse thundered in my veins. The bastard would kill me, kill me and get away with all of it. My grip slipped on the shears from sweat and rain, but I pressed myself harder into the stone wall behind me.

Suddenly I recalled the photographs from Lucy’s room. The one of the girl in the middle of what I’d thought to be some sort of ritual. I could only see her back in that image but I was certain that was the poor murdered girl he spoke of. “And Mariah had photographs of her on the island. She had photographs of all of you,” I breathed out. I was either foolish or brave, but had to keep him talking, because if he was talking, he wasn’t shooting.

He nodded and took a step back, the muzzle now gently resting on my breast. “At first, I did not know that Mariah had witnessed what happened—let alone had captured images of the ritual—but when she fled the island that very night, I knew that she had to be kept quiet one way or the other.”

“Mariah was running away from the Eurydiceans…”

The duke yawned. “This is growing tedious. I have never understood the appeal of stubborn women. Owen seems downright captivated by your kind, but you’re all too much trouble if you ask me.” He gave me a considering look.

“No… you never did understand anything, did you, James?” I turned to the sound of Mr. Owen’s rich voice, echoing in the roofless walls of the croft. I’d never seen him this angry and for the first time since the duke arrived, a brief bubble of hope for myself rose in my chest. A hope that drowned the instant I spotted Ruan, coming up the hill behind him.

Stubborn, foolish man. Why can’t he let me get killed on my own?

“Hawick, go back to the house with my wife—you don’t need to bother yourself with this bit of baggage.”

“I daresay this bit of baggage is entirely my business.” Mr. Owen’s violent gaze shifted to Genevieve, drinking in her features, and his expression softened. “Gods, she is Mariah’s girl. How did I not see it before…” He started to take a step toward Genevieve before recalling that the duke still had a rifle aimed at me. Torn between his wife’s daughter and me, he turned again to the duke. “James, put the bloody gun down before you kill someone else.”

A sound came from beside Genevieve, and we all turned to it. Elijah shifted and groaned in the pile of old hay. And I saw… I saw in that fraction of a second exactly how it would all unfurl, moment by moment. The duke would realize Elijah was alive and shoot him, his dark life’s blood pooling out over the hay and Genevieve. Ruan would respond a heartbeat too slow, and would be struck down by the second round.

Without a thought, I lunged for the rifle, putting my good shoulder into the duke’s belly, in hopes of disarming him. He anticipated my move, spinning back around, knocking me hard in the temple with the butt of the gun. My vision went black, and I stumbled, reaching out to steady myself with my left hand—forgetting entirely that I had the shears, and drove them hard into the duke’s groin, pulling as I fell to the ground. The duke let out an agonized scream, tumbling down atop of me.

The foul man would not stop screaming in my ear, as his impossibly hot blood soaked through the front of my skirt, coating my own legs.

The bastard was dying.

Good.

Death was the only thought in my head as I stared up at the sky, struggling to breathe, but my lungs could not draw in air with the duke’s weight pressing me into the wet ground.

He was crushing me.

Ruan rushed to my side, shoving the duke off me. I clutched the shears tightly as they came out of the duke’s thigh, blood gushing out in rhythm to his pulse.

It would not be long now.

I could not regret it. Not after hearing what he’d done to Mariah. To that poor nameless girl. To Lucy. To countless women over the years. I may hang for killing a duke but I would not regret a single one of my actions this day.

I hugged my legs to my chest. Ruan was close now, I caught the familiar green scent of his skin, of his sweat—but could not bring myself to look at him. Could not bear to be reminded of what might have been that can never be. I’d killed a duke, and would face the consequences of my actions.