A Cold Legacy (7 page)

The fire crackled more, as the hope slowly drained out of Lucy's face. Her bottom lip started to tremble.

“I can make his days as pleasant and comfortable as possible,” Elizabeth said softly. “That's all, I'm afraid. If he is to defeat the Beast, he will have to do it on his own.”

“But he isn't strong enough on his own!” Lucy cried. She pushed off from the sofa, tears streaking down her face, and ran out of the room. I stood to go after her but stopped. What could I possibly say to her to make things better?

Elizabeth picked up a sleepy Hensley in her arms. It was hard to reconcile the two sides of her—I had always
thought of her as a brilliant and cold surgeon, not unlike my father. Now I saw her as a mother, too.

I swallowed. “How do you do it?” I asked quietly. She cocked her head in question. I explained, “How do you ignore the voices in your head? The ones that won't let you just be happy. The ones that want more out of life. More like what men are free to do—study what they want, go where they want,
be
who they want.”

Her smile was rather tight. She held up the glass as Hensley fell asleep on her shoulder. “I drown them in gin, but I'd be no kind of guardian if I recommended
that
.”

D
AYS PASSED, AND
E
DWARD
'
S
fever still didn't break.

We moved about the manor like unquiet ghosts. McKenna tried to brighten our gloom with talk of the wedding. She sent the girls out to prune the flowering trees in the garden so the spring would be full of new growth, and prepared entrees for us to sample for the wedding feast, but it was increasingly impossible to ignore the feverish moans coming from Edward's room. Lucy attended to his bedside day and night.

“You're going to make yourself sick,” I told her one morning. “Take a break. Let me watch him.”

“Your bedside manner is deplorable.” She tried unsuccessfully to feed him broth. “You'd poke and prod him so much, he'd never want to get better.”

She tried to feed him more broth, but he turned his head, eyes glassy and unfocused, and mumbled something incomprehensible. Sometimes he seemed to be aware of
who we were, and in the next moment he'd push the bowl away and shudder.

“It's getting worse,” she muttered, mopping up the spilled broth. “No matter what Elizabeth said, I can't help but think . . .” Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of something over my shoulder. “Goodness, do you see that? It looks like the moors are on fire!”

I whirled toward the windows, where the blackness was broken by huge flames in the lower fields. I pressed my face against the glass.

“Montgomery!” I called. “Balthazar, hurry!”

They soon appeared, and I pointed beyond the window. “The fields are on fire,” I gasped. “Stay with Edward. I'll find Elizabeth and warn her.” I turned to go.

“Juliet, wait.” Montgomery's voice was steady and calm, almost light. “It's just a bonfire. Look.”

I squinted into the darkness. He was right—it was a controlled blaze in the lower field. I let out the tension in one long breath.

“It's the festival of Twelfth Night,” Montgomery explained. “It's a pagan holiday in this area. Carlyle told me about it while I was helping him chop firewood yesterday. The highlanders celebrate it out here, where no preachers are around to tell them not to.”

The flames rose higher, crackling with sparks. Now I could make out clusters of people around the bonfire, some of them dancing. My heart lurched. With Edward so ill, it had been a long time since we'd all laughed
and danced, that carefree.

“The whole household must be down there,” I said. “No wonder it's quiet as a church around here.”

Lucy
tsk
ed as she squinted toward the fire, exhaustion written in her features. “To think they didn't invite us.”

“They probably thought we wouldn't approve of a pagan festival,” I said. “We being such civilized city folk and all.”

Lucy rolled her eyes.

Balthazar turned to Montgomery, fingers knit together. “I've never seen a festival before.” He paused and sniffed the air. “Roast pig with honey. Oh, Sharkey loves roast pig. Might we go?”

Montgomery seemed amused. “Certainly you may go, Balthazar, and I've no doubt Sharkey would be welcome, too.”

Balthazar grinned and started to straighten his shirt, but his fingers were too clumsy. Lucy adjusted his collar and refastened his top button, dusting off his shoulders. “There now. All the ladies will want to dance with you.”

His face fell. “I don't know how to dance.”

“Can't dance!” she said. “Well, Montgomery, you'd best go and teach him. And you should go, too, Juliet, or else one of those girls is going to try to steal him from you.”

“Only if you come as well,” I said to her.

She jerked her head toward the bed. “I can't leave Edward.”

“McKenna can watch Edward—it's only for a few hours. Come on, we all need a bit of fun.”

She bit her lip in indecision, but then her stomach
grumbled. “Roast pig, did you say?”

I grinned and grabbed her hand, pulling her downstairs and into the night. A gust of cold bit at our legs and I shrieked and pulled her across the fields toward the warmth of the fire. For a few hundred feet we were caught between the house and the bonfire with the stars overhead, and a sudden bolt of joy seized me. After days closed up in such a stuffy manor, my soul yearned for a moment of life. For an instant I loved it here, far from the rest of the world, in a place so wild and free.

The field was full of people, most of them strangers and performers traveling the winter fair circuit, but I recognized the servant girls and a few familiar faces from Quick. The fiddler was the tavern owner. He tipped his hat to us as one of the girls, Lily, passed us a tankard of warm cider. A belch came from the direction of the performers. With a start, I realized it came from the same old woman from the inn on the road to Inverness. I looked more closely at her companions and recognized the thin leader of the carnival troupe, acting out a play that seemed to involve a donkey. There was no sign of the fortune-teller.

I shivered at the memory.
A child can never escape her father
.

Was it chance that brought them to this particular festival, out of all the Twelfth Night celebrations happening in the north? The coincidence left me uneasy, but then Montgomery and Balthazar caught up to us, legs damp from the dew, and Sharkey trotted up to the fire trying to catch flames in his teeth. I relaxed. They were festival performers, after
all, and this was a festival. Why should I be surprised to find them here?

I spotted Elizabeth through the flames. She wore a heavy fur stole out of the pages of a Viking history book, and with her hair down she looked like one of the fairy folk, strong and beautiful. No wonder she had left the city, when here she was queen.

“I didn't think you'd join us,” she said as she walked around the fire, “or else I'd have invited you myself.”

“Well, don't tell the vicar we're here,” I said. “He'd never agree to preside over the wedding of two heathens.”

She smiled. “He's over there.” She pointed her chin to a group of old men on the far side of the bonfire who were drinking in a very ungodly way. “He brought the ale.”

The night passed amid music and laughter, and I was able to let go of my worry over Edward, if only for a few stolen moments. Lucy disappeared for a while, playing games with the younger girls beneath the stars, and after some time I went looking for her. One of the servants pointed me in the direction of the carnival troupe's temporary camp at the edge of the field. I walked through the high grass, hugging my coat tight, and eventually found her by a wood-and-silk tent. A dark-skinned man was reading her palm, muttering words that made her eyes go wide.

It was the fortune-teller.

He kissed Lucy teasingly on the hand. She laughed just as her eyes met mine. “Juliet! I've just had my fortune read. I'm going to marry a count. Doesn't that sound divine?” She grabbed my hand, tugging me toward him. “It's your turn.”

The fortune-teller didn't flinch, nor show any sign of recognition, and my uneasy feeling returned.

“Your hands are freezing,” I said to Lucy. “Wait for me by the bonfire. I'll be along in a moment.”

She grinned and skipped back to the rest of the merriment, leaving us alone. The night was heavy around us.

“It's you,” I said. “From the inn.”

He reached out to take my hand in answer, his mouth curling in a mysterious smile. A shiver ran down the length of my back.

“You have the hands of a surgeon, pretty girl,” he said, laying out my palm atop his own. “Do you have the mind of one, too?”

I flinched at the mention of surgeons. “Lucy's been telling you about me, has she? Well, it's hardly fair that you know so much about me, yet you've never even told me your name.”

“Jack Serra,” he answered, giving a dramatic bow.

“It's rather odd that this is the second time our paths have crossed. Are you following me?”

He let out a burst of laughter. “We travel the winter fair circuit. It's the same path year after year.”

I glanced in the direction of the bonfire, whose music and laughter felt a million miles away. I could barely make out Montgomery by the fiddlers, trying to teach Balthazar to dance.

“I'd like to know the rest of my fortune. You started to tell me at the inn but never finished.”

He cocked his head. “Fortunes can't be rushed.”

My heart started pounding harder—why was he able to read so much about me in a single look? Was it foolish to be here, when I knew there was no science to fortunes? Soft voices came from the woods, where a man and woman—two of the carnival performers—came back to camp with their arms around each other. My face flushed to think about what they must have been doing in those woods.

Jack Serra traced a long finger down my palm.

“A child can never escape her father,” he said, repeating his words from before. “You told me your father is dead, and yet you follow me to a cold field away from your friends because he isn't dead to you at all, is he? His spirit lives on.”

“I don't believe in ghosts,” I said, though my voice shook.

He scoffed. “Ghosts? Neither do I. Far scarier to know we carry the ghosts of our parents within us. Every decision we make, every mistake we make, is them working through us. One's father is like the stream, from which comes the river. The river cannot set its own path. The stream runs downhill and so the river does, too. They both end in the same place—the ocean.”

Around his neck he wore at least twenty charms on twisted leather thongs. He removed one now and pressed it into my palm, a small iron charm in the shape of swirling lines like a river.

I stared at the charm, transfixed. “The ocean? Is that a symbol for madness?”

He smiled. “The ocean is merely the ocean. As far as symbols, it is what you yourself make of it.” He placed the
charm around my neck, letting it fall against my chest, where it glistened in the moonlight like real water.

“I don't understand. You're saying it's useless for me to try to change course?”

Amusement flickered in his eyes. He extended a hand toward the bonfire. “Your friends will miss you, pretty girl, if you do not join them soon.”

I had so many more questions to ask of him. A voice in the back of my head told me fortunes weren't real, yet I was desperate enough to believe anything. But Jack Serra only held his hand up, a clear direction that it was time for me to leave.

I left, hiding the charm beneath my dress, and returned to the bright lights of the bonfire. I took a few deep breaths, reminding myself that fortunes weren't real and that he was only a charlatan after a few coins—never mind that he hadn't asked for payment.

Across the fire, Lucy had taken over teaching Balthazar a dance step, with Montgomery following along to offer Balthazar tips. Balthazar stepped on his toe, but he just laughed and clapped him on the back. I couldn't help but smile. Such a good heart, and still the most handsome man I'd ever seen. I hoped more than anything that one day, after we were married, there would be no more secrets or tension between the two of us.

One of the older girls, Moira, approached him shyly and tugged on his sleeve to get his attention. He leaned down so she could whisper something in his ear.

“They want him to dance with them,” a voice said next to me.

Valentina stood at my side, wearing a dress with long sleeves, a Woodbine cigarette between her fingers. I stiffened, wondering if she hated me for being named heir. Her gloves were gone now, and I had a closer look at her pale hand. No one could naturally have skin such a different shade from the rest of her body. I surreptitiously looked for signs of bleaching, but there were no discolorations. Her fingers were delicate and petite—too petite, in fact, for someone of her stature.

Curiosity shivered up my spine.

She took a puff of the Woodbine. Her sleeve fell back, revealing a glimpse of puckered flesh. A scar. A terrible idea entered my head. Could her hand not be her own hand at all—but someone else's? Elizabeth said she had performed transplants. . . .

“After all, there aren't many young men out here,” Valentina continued, pointing to the girls dancing with Montgomery.

I cleared my throat, barely able to tear my eyes away from her wrist. “Why is that, exactly? The lack of male staff, I mean.”

“I doubt there's anything intentional to it. Elizabeth has a reputation for being able to cure ailments and illnesses, but only women are brave enough to come. The men think she's a witch. All except old Carlyle. He wouldn't believe in witches if one sat on his head.”

She tapped the ashes from her Woodbine cigarette, and my eyes lingered on her sleeve. “What type of ailments, exactly?” I pressed.

She smiled knowingly. “Rare illnesses. Even—sometimes—missing limbs.”

Curiosity blazed in me, and I forgot my distrust of her. My eyes were riveted to her hand, so small and white. I said hesitantly, “If you'll forgive me, I can't help but notice your hand is a peculiar color and shape compared to the rest of your arm.”

She laughed, deep and rich. “Miss Moreau, you're practically drooling. You must have the heart of a scientist. No wonder Elizabeth made you her
heir
.”

Her voice hardened around this last word, and uneasiness curled in my insides. Elizabeth had told me that she spoke to Valentina about the situation and that Valentina bore me no ill will, but her resentment now seemed as thick as smoke. Was I the only one who could see it? Perhaps she was different when she was around Elizabeth, trying to win her favor. She had no reason to win mine. Quite the opposite.

Valentina took another long puff on the cigarette. “When you first came here, I thought there must be something remarkable about you for Elizabeth to choose you, but for the life of me, I haven't seen it. You haven't expressed an ounce of interest in the management of the manor. You haven't visited the outer fields, nor sat in on my educational sessions with the younger girls, nor gone with Carlyle on one of his supply runs. So tell me, why do you even wish to be the mistress of Ballentyne?”