Chapter Thirty-Seven. Ablutions and Absolution

C HAPTER T HIRTY-SEVEN

Ablutions and Absolution

I sat in the bathing tub in the kitchen at Rivenly, washing the duke’s blood from my skin. We’d already filled and refilled one big copper tub, and I was on my second round of rapidly cooling water. I’d killed a man. I drew in a breath and let it out again, allowing that realization sink into my bones. It wasn’t the first time—I’d done it once during the war too—but each time took its toll. And in truth, I worried it took a bit of my soul along with it.

I heard the door to the kitchen and turned, half expecting it to be the young serving girl who had been helping me bathe—or, more likely, making sure I didn’t faint in the tub. Mr. Owen and Ruan had both been giving me wide berth after what happened in the croft, and I couldn’t blame them. My breath caught when I saw Lady Morton enter with the Duchess of Biddlesford at her side. Lady Morton had a towel in her hands and her eyes… God. Her eyes were full of pity.

I was going to vomit.

“Hush, child,” she said as she drew nearer. “You have done what needed to be done. There’s no need to punish yourself for it. Heaven knows someone had to do it.”

The duchess sucked in a breath. “Caroline, you mustn’t—”

Lady Morton turned to the duchess with a raised brow. “She finished what we’d begun and we owe her our thanks.” She opened the towel and gestured for me to stand. I struggled to balance the disapproving Lady Morton from Manhurst with this new woman before me. I stood, water trailing over my body, and stepped out of the copper tub, my feet on the cold flags of the floor. Lady Morton wrapped the towel around my body and guided me to a wooden chair near the fire.

“What do you mean by what you’d begun, Lady Morton?” I asked, toweling off my hair as the duchess laid what appeared to be a plain cotton dress and underthings on the chair beside me.

Lady Morton didn’t answer, but the duchess did. She lifted a small enamel box from the table beside her and placed it in my hands. “Open it. I think you will understand.”

What madhouse had I entered? Too tired to care, I lifted the lid and looked down, my breath leaving my lungs in a whoosh. I couldn’t make sense of it. “More negatives?”

Lady Morton nodded. “Yes. I found them in Lucy Campbell’s things the night of the first séance. Unfortunately none of them were enough to implicate His Grace, but I believe now… considering all… that it will be enough.”

The duchess let out a shaky breath as she looked to her friend in disbelief. “Is it truly over, Caroline? Truly?”

Lady Morton wrapped her arms around the duchess and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Yes, darling. You’re free of him as I promised you would be.” She made an odd expression. “Though perhaps not precisely how I intended.”

I could not believe it. I looked from Lady Morton to the duchess. “You’ve been…”

“Conspiring?” Lady Morton asked with a raised brow. “I have a daughter, Miss Vaughn. I must do what I can to protect her and others like her in this world from men like that.”

“But… how…?” I furrowed my brow, struggling to make sense of what they were telling me.

Lady Morton took the duchess’s hand in her own. “The world sees what it wishes, Miss Vaughn, though it never has the whole of us. An overbearing mother foisting her daughter upon society. A nervous wife who spends more and more time in Bath.” She paused and raised her brows knowingly. “Even perhaps a scandalous heiress?”

I let out a startled sound, looking at the two women in disbelief. I too had seen only what they wanted me to—the superficial masks they wore. Not so very different from my own. Lady Morton and the duchess quickly filled me in on the rest of the sordid tale. Of the girls who disappeared after coming to Rivenly. Usually serving girls who came seeking summer work or to make a delivery and were never seen again. Suspicious, yes, but never enough evidence against the might of the Duke of Biddlesford. The duchess had begun to suspect not long after her husband brought her to Rivenly, and at long last she wrote to her oldest friend—Lady Morton—to seek assistance.

Between the negatives that Lady Morton had stolen and the fact that the duke had shot Andrew Lennox, it was more than enough to clear my name.

Self-defense.

S EVERAL HOURS LATER , I sat on the dock in Anstruther staring across the Firth of Forth in the direction of the Isle of May. I could not see the island, but it was just as well. I hoped to never lay eyes upon it again. My legs swung aimlessly off the edge as I threw a bit of bread to the greedy seabirds. Ruan had brought Andrew and Elijah back to the mainland earlier and settled them into a nearby inn to rest.

Genevieve, Mr. Owen, and I came several hours later aboard the constabulary’s vessel. Mr. Owen and Genevieve had gone off for a walk as soon as we docked, but I was not fit company for anyone but the birds. In the distance, I could barely make out the shape of Mr. Owen and Genevieve ambling along the shore, slowly getting to know one another. She was so like Andrew it was surprising that no one realized it sooner. It must have been why both Ruan and Andrew thought they recognized her.

I heard the door of the ferryman’s hut close behind me as Ruan lowered himself down to the dock alongside me. His long thigh pressed against my own.

“He commended you on your mastery of his boat. Though I think he was a bit disappointed we returned it in one piece.” He held out his hand, dropping my locket into my palm by the chain. The warmth of his skin transferred to mine as he cupped the necklace there between our palms.

This was the second time he’d returned it to me, though this time was more portentous than the last. Ruan withdrew his hand and raked it through his tangled dark hair. The silver strands caught in the sun that stubbornly broke through the clouds. A greedy gull hopped closer, nudging at my skirt and I handed him the piece of bread which he gobbled up with gusto.

“You shouldn’t feed them, they’ll get spoiled.”

I shrugged, staring down at the metal locket in my palm before affixing it to my neck and resting my hand over the compass.

Ruan cleared his throat. “I hear you.”

I looked up at him, not understanding his words—those pale green eyes of his full of emotion.

“Ever since that night of the second séance… I thought I heard you when I was on the ramparts. Then on the skiff as we were crossing the firth it grew louder. Ruby, it was the strangest thing. I heard a second voice. I heard a woman who was speaking to you.”

My skin pricked. “You heard what ?”

He furrowed his brow then turned back out toward the water, taking a bit of my bread and throwing a chunk to the birds. “I don’t know what it was. It wasn’t you—but she sounded the same. Who was she?”

My mouth grew dry as his words sank in. “It was my mother.”

His breath hitched. “That’s not possible. You said she was dead . I barely hear the living that loud—I can assure you the dead have never been that clear.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I do not know what it means. But I need to go. I cannot breathe here. I cannot think.” I scrambled to my feet, not wanting to think of her—of him—of what had happened across the firth, but Ruan wouldn’t let me go.

He stood and took me by the hand, his fingers twining with mine and for a moment I almost gave in and closed my hand around his, allowing him to lead me anywhere. God knew I’d go with him.

But coward that I was, I snatched my hand away and started to walk back to the inn.

“Ruby, wait. We don’t have to speak on it. We don’t have to ever speak on what happened on that boat. It’s only—” He hesitated and I unconsciously took a step closer to him.

“It’s only what…” I gritted out.

He raked his hand again through his hair, tugging on the ends. The man was as unmoored as I. “Come with me, Ruby. Come with me to Cornwall—it’s quiet there. Peaceful and I don’t know how we’ll manage, but I am worried for you. I—”

I put my fingers to his lips, cutting him off, and shook my head. “Please don’t ask it of me.”

A wounded look crossed his face. “I’m not asking you to give up your life in Exeter or the bookshop. I’m not even asking you to care for me—I’m asking you to let me take care of you. For a few days, for a week… for as long as you like… It does not have to be more than that. Sleep and read and bring your bloody cat and the old man. I do not care as long as you are happy and safe. You’re not well—”

I winced at his words. He was right. I wasn’t well, and there was nothing more that I longed for than the peaceful salt air of the Cornish coast, but I was afraid. Afraid of him. Of my feelings. Of whatever it was that lived between us.

The man had heard my mother .

He swore in Cornish and raked his hand through his hair. “I’m making a mess of this. What I’m trying to say is that I love—”

“—you’re confusing lust with love. Besides, love is the problem”—I waved a hand in the direction of the island behind us—“Mariah and Mr. Owen loved one another and see where that got them.”

“You are afraid… of this,” he whispered. The damn man saw right through me.

“I am not—I am simply saying that I cannot see a future for us that ends in anything but heartache.” And I do not have the strength to suffer that again. “Go back to Cornwall. Find some pleasant, well-mannered girl to marry—have seven sons—lead your boring life.” The very notion made me ill.

“Fuck boring and fuck my old life.” He growled. “I don’t want a pleasant, well-mannered girl. And the gods know we don’t need any more Pellars in this world. If you must know, I want you .”

“ What did you say?”

“I want you . Every impetuous and clever and maddening inch of you. Gods know I wouldn’t be laying myself bare if I didn’t. But I will not beg and I will not ask again.”

I shook my head—unable to summon the words to send him away, nor could I bring myself to ask him to stay. Feelings were not to be trusted—least of all mine.

At first, I thought he’d continue to quarrel. Or worse—perhaps he’d come closer and take my hand as he had earlier. I knew if he did such a thing I would never be able to let him go. But he did neither of those things.

He simply gave up and walked away. I heard his footsteps on the wooden planks, each one a nail into my own heart. This was the right decision—for both of us. I was greedy and selfish and headstrong and irreparably broken. Ruan deserved more than that. More than me.

Ruan paused perhaps twenty feet from me and called back across the distance. “My offer stands, whenever you stop being so bloody afraid of what we are.” He rubbed his hand roughly over his jaw, watching me with the strangest expression. “I love you, Ruby Vaughn, and whenever you decide what you want, you know where to find me.” Then he turned and left me there—standing alone in the cool mist blowing off the Firth of Forth, regretting every single word that had escaped my lips.

“ W HERE ’ S R UAN GONE off to now?” Mr. Owen asked with a groan as he climbed the steps back up the dock alone.

“Home, I suppose.”

“Ah. I see.” Mr. Owen sighed.

Unlikely. But I wasn’t about to argue. “Where is Genevieve? Did she agree to come back with us to Exeter? At least until she decides what to do with herself?”

“No. She said she needs to think. I gave her what money I had on me. Told her to write if she needs more. But I doubt she will—the lass is a Lennox through and through.” He shrugged off his heavy woolen overcoat and slid it around my shoulders. “You’re half-frozen. What good will you be to me in the bookshop if your fingers fall off, mmm?”

I’d not even noticed, but he was correct on that score. My hands were ice. I blew into them, rubbing them together for warmth. “Do you think she’ll come back?”

Mr. Owen gave me a peculiar look. “She doesn’t have much choice with the title to inherit—and how pleased will Andy be when he finally recovers enough to realize that fact? He can set up a house with that lover of his and finally get my brother to leave off with all that marriage nonsense.”

I paused, whipping around to face him. “What do you mean, a title to inherit? She’s a woman.”

“It’s Scotland, my love—the laws around my title are not the same. My daughter can be viscountess in her own right once I am dead and then the inheritance issue is her problem—not mine.”

Well that certainly put a different end to things.

“Does it bother you?”

I blinked, looking up into his warm brown eyes. “What do you mean?”

He gestured at his broad chest. “Do I need to make a list of all my shortcomings? I do not apologize lightly, lass, but I am afraid I owe you a long one.”

I let out a soft laugh and shook my head. “I cannot change any of those things.”

He took me by the hand, turning me back to face him. “It does not matter if you can change them, I ought to have trusted you with the truth of who I was. You do not often speak of your past, but you have never before lied to me. If I enter the world again as Hawick, then things will be different for you and me. We can go along as we have been—I do not mind the wagging tongues of gossips—but you cannot hide from society like you have.”

“The gossips are what you worry about? You?” I arched a brow, almost amused at his sudden prudishness.

He exhaled. “Ruby, I don’t give a damn about them. It’s the fact that now that people realize that I am Hawick, you will be subjected to…” He hesitated, unable to meet my gaze. “Scrutiny. I would not blame you if you left my house and did not come back. I would deserve it after all that I’ve done.”

“Do you truly want me to go?” The thought stung more than I’d anticipated.

“Gods, no, child. I want you to stay as long as you please, but I have caused you no end of misery. I was simply wondering if you might not be better off without me.”

I arched a brow in surprise. “This sudden sentimentality is very unlike you.”

He snorted, his mustache twitching. “ That man did not have the week that this man had. I nearly lost you, Ruby—and all because I did not tell you the truth sooner. Had I done that, perhaps none of this would have happened.”

“And if you had, then the duke would have found some other girl to hurt. No. I do not regret that you brought me here. I only regret I wasn’t able to stop him sooner.”

Mr. Owen harrumphed. “Well. As long as you know what you’re in for. Let’s go home before the cold and damp finishes what the duke began.”

Now that sounded more like Mr. Owen. “Come now, it’s not even that cold out. It’s well above freezing.” I linked my arm into his and rested my head on his shoulder.

“Says the lass wearing my overcoat.”

“Shall we go home, then? For your delicate sensibilities?”

He nodded sadly as we began to walk down the pier. “Mrs. Penrose will never forgive me for allowing you to get shot.”

“You know, we don’t have to tell her that part.”

He scoffed as we followed the path into town and back to our old life. “As if you can hide the scar. Besides, you know as good as I, that woman is clairvoyant. Why don’t we skip Exeter? Go to the continent… or beyond? You know I’ve never been to America…”

“Mr. Owen, it would take nothing short of the second coming of Christ to get me on a boat again.”

The old man laughed, knowledge deep in his dark eyes, and I dreaded what that laugh meant.