Epilogue

E PILOGUE

IT was late November. Nearly a month had passed since the tragedies at Manhurst, and I still had not written to Ruan. Nor had he written me, for that matter. He was right, of course—I was afraid. I had known that from the moment I sent him away. And no matter how much I tried to push those feelings away, the man remained stubbornly in my waking thoughts.

Of course, now the only trouble was I had to overcome my considerable pride to tell him as much. But there would be time for me to sort that out in the spring as Mr. Owen had plans for us to spend the entire month of December in Oxford while he attended some cabal of aging antiquarians.

Investigators still did not know what caused the blaze at Manhurst. They had checked all the wiring, the fireplaces, even the outside, tirelessly seeking a plausible explanation. But for all that, they came up short. Perhaps that was Mariah’s final act, destroying the castle that had caused her such pain in life. It would be a fitting end, but I had my suspicions that the inspector had a hand in the burning of the castle—even if such a thing could never be proven.

After all, there were no such things as coincidences.

I received a letter two weeks ago from the detectives investigating the duke’s affairs. They told me they’d found at least three bodies hidden on the Isle of May, high up in the cliffs overlooking the sea. All three tucked away into the stone, sheltered from the elements for all these years. At first, they believed they’d discovered an old ossuary tied to the abbey that had once been on the isle, but again it was Mariah that gave away the truth, as she’d tried desperately to do in life.

For on the day she died, Mariah had been wearing her wedding band. An innocuous gold ring that might have belonged to anyone, except inside bore the simple inscription:

NUNC SCIO QUID SIT AMOR—2ND OF M AY 1872

The very day that the Viscount of Hawick, one Owen Alexander Lennox married Miss Mariah Campbell.

Upon learning of the discovery, I immediately set about having her body moved back home to Hawick House, where she could rest in peace overlooking Manhurst in the grave that Mr. Owen had built for her decades before. It was a sad occasion to be sure, but Mr. Owen appeared oddly at peace with the fact.

We’d found Mariah at last.

Early snow drifted lazily from the clouds around us as we stood by the monument at Hawick House. Mr. Owen cleared his throat, a handful of hothouse blooms clutched in his hands, uncertain as a new suitor.

“We are not that different, you and I,” he said at last, his voice breaking.

“What do you mean?”

“For years I held on to the forlorn hope that she would return to me. Just as you did with your family. Clinging to that notion far past the time I ought to have given up. And hope. Oh, hope is a treacherous thing.”

“I don’t…”

He held up a hand, silencing me. “When someone is gone, and you know they will never return, there is no choice but to let them go. Oh, I certainly would have raged and blamed myself for her death. Drowned myself in drink and opium until inch by inch her memory hurt just a little bit less. Carrying on much as you did in that first year you spent with me in Exeter.”

I might have been offended were he not entirely correct.

He reached out, taking me by the hand, and kissed my knuckles, holding it against his heart which beat rapidly in his chest. “A cleanly cut wound will eventually scab over, and in time—even the most grievous ones will heal. It may scar and be tender, but in time the pain will pass… Hope, however, is a festering sore.” His eyes grew wet as he dropped the bouquet of crimson and purple blossoms onto the snow at the foot of the monument. “How can a wound heal when it is rent back open each time there is a knock at the door? Or the post arrives? Or you catch a familiar scent on a crowded street? Each time—” His voice caught in his throat.

I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight. “Oh, Mr. Owen. I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have brought you here. I shouldn’t have—”

“Hush, Ruby,” he said, stepping back and putting his finger under my chin, tilting my face up to look him in the eye.

“For the first time in forty years I know the truth. I know there is no hope that my Mariah will return. I can heal . Because of you. You cannot underestimate the importance of that to me.”

“You truly loved her all these years?” I could not fathom that sort of love. Or at least, I could not fathom someone loving me in such a way despite the disturbing confession Ruan had hurled at me on the dock.

He nodded. “Isn’t it strange? She was gone more years than she was here and yet I scarcely drew breath without wondering where she was, and if I might find her again.”

“And yet you married again.”

He nodded. “I tried to move on. That’s what they always say, isn’t it? That wounds get better with time and distance. Ben’s mother was a wonderful woman. She knew of Mariah… not the particulars… but she understood that I was not the man that I had been before. She had lost her first husband too.” Mr. Owen sighed and stepped closer to the marble obelisk, running his finger over the etching of Mariah’s profile.

“Nunc scio quid sit amor,” he whispered before pressing a kiss to the monument.

Now I know what love is.

I wiped away a tear with the back of my glove, unable to keep them from falling. What must it be like to have a love like that?

He turned to me, tilting my chin up with a finger. “You are brooding. It is making me bilious.”

I let out a startled laugh as I brushed the snow from my lashes. “Mr. Owen, this is a funeral, of sorts.”

“Yes, yes, but Mariah would detest all these tears for her sake. Yours and mine both. Besides, your brooding is giving me a headache. When are you going to write to Kivell and end my suffering?”

“That eager to get rid of me, are you? I thought you wanted me to stay with you in Exeter.”

“I do, my dear. I cannot imagine a day without you there rearranging my bookshelves and destroying my gardens and filling my parlors with the most frivolous of pompous peacocks trying to gain your affections. I would not have you any other way. I am simply growing weary of you being morose. It’s terrible for a girl’s constitution. Just ask my great-aunt Penitence.” He tried to make light of it—but it was the truth—I’d become a dreadful bore as of late.

“You’ve had some bad luck when it comes to love, I’ll give you that. But there’s no one to say that this affair with Kivell will end poorly as well.” He tucked my hair behind my ear. “I thought I taught you that. If not, I’ve been the worst of fools.”

I rolled my eyes, slipping away from his embrace. “You’ve told me a great many things, but I don’t think I’ve once heard you pontificate on the merits of love and second chances. In fact, I believe you just called hope a festering sore not five minutes ago. One could argue that these two things are contradictions.”

He harrumphed, his breath visible in the cold air. “Clearly, I have been remiss in my paternal duties. I should have taught you more in that vein, and less about binding glue and beetle larvae.”

“I did rather enjoy the demonstration on the difference between furniture beetles and deathwatch beetles.”

“I mean it, lass. You spend too much time with books and not enough with flesh-and-blood people.”

“Says the pot. The way I hear it, before I moved in with you, you didn’t see anyone besides your housekeeper and your library for months on end.”

“I find books better companions than most people,” he grumbled, before taking my hands in his own and giving them a squeeze to underscore the import of what he was about to say. “You have a chance, Ruby. A chance to be happy right here. Right now and you should seize it. Grab on with both hands and don’t bugger it up like I did.”

I settled down on the bench, gazing up at the gray sky. “Yes, well… It’s complicated.”

“All the best things in life are. Would be dreadfully boring otherwise. Oh, I know you aren’t the marrying sort—but I don’t believe Kivell minds. The lad has been alone for years. It’d probably be good for him. He’s far too set in his ways, it’s made him old before he’s earned the right to it. You’re a pair of lovesick pups—the both of you—go put the lad out of his misery. As my great-aunt Patagonia once said—”

“You don’t have a great-aunt Patagonia.”

He waved me off.

“Mr. Owen, you don’t understand—”

“—that he’s a Pellar? Believe me, girl, there are far more things in this world that we cannot explain than those we can. So what if the lad’s a witch? You aren’t exactly adhering to your copy of Emily Post now.”

I groaned at his reference to the daintily wrapped etiquette book that had been deposited anonymously on our doorstep not long before we set out for Scotland. The book had scarcely been published in the States when a copy arrived one morning addressed to me. “It wasn’t as if I sent for it. I couldn’t care less what some American socialite has to say about decorum.”

“You are an American socialite. And it was addressed to you. ”

Touché. “I still think it was that meddlesome lady down the street trying to make a subtle hint.”

“Or not subtle, as it may be.”

I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth for some sort of witty retort when I spotted Andrew Lennox’s driver running down the path and darting over the bridge—the scene of so much misery as of late.

“Lord Hawick.”

Oh, no. What now?

He panted, hands on his knees, a folded-up telegram in his hand. “Lord Hawick. There’s a”—another huff—“an important message.”

“I can see that.” Mr. Owen appeared rather amused, his dark brown eyes watching the driver. He gestured with his forefinger. “Do get it from the poor lad, Ruby. See what it is that’s important. Has there been a demonic possession in Devonshire? A haunting in Little Humby?”

I took the telegram from Hugh’s gloved hand while he caught his breath. “Not amusing, Mr. Owen. Thank you, Hugh. Please ignore him.”

The driver let out a breathless laugh and shook his head.

“I know!” The old man laughed at his own joke. Cheeks turning a jolly shade of red. “There’s been a selkie spotted in Skye.”

I furrowed my brow. “Are there selkies in Skye? And you shouldn’t make light. You’re the one who went and found yourself a Pellar of all things.”

I glanced down to the telegram to see who it was from.

Lord Carnarvon, the peer who had been financing Howard Carter’s numerous expeditions in the Valley of the Kings. There was only one reason that Lord Carnarvon would be writing to Mr. Owen, as the two had been corresponding furiously back and forth for at least a decade over antiquities and Egypt.

My hands began to shake.

Three words.

Three simple words.

Carter’s done it.

The edge of my mouth curved up slowly. I ought to have been jealous. Dreadfully so. Howard Carter must have found a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings while I’d been dabbling in the occult for the last three months.

“You owe me ten pounds.” I stuck out my hand.

Mr. Owen blinked. “What the devil is in that telegram to earn you ten pounds, lass?” He tilted his chin, straining to get a look at it. I handed it over and watched as the color drained from his face.

“Ten pounds, Mr. Owen. Or should I say Lord Hawick? As I recall, you were the one who said Howard Carter would find nothing new in the Valley of the Kings.”

“Wee besom,” he grumbled, reaching into his pocket for his money clip.

Viscount or not, he was still my Mr. Owen. And nothing in the world could change that. I snatched his entire money clip, dropping it into my own pocket.

He swore loudly, crumpling up the telegram and dropping it to the snowy ground. It seemed things were going to get very interesting when we returned to Exeter. Very interesting indeed. But first things first. I had a letter to write.

Now how precisely did one apologize to a Pellar? Now perhaps that was something Miss Post might know.