Midnight Secrets (31 page)

“Who needs flight when I can sweep from sea to sea with my tide?” scoffs the sea.

“And who needs might when I’m free to circle the world wide!” cries the wind.
 

Before I could say more, the sound of approaching horses thundering over the dunes intruded.

Rebecca cried out, blindly searching for me as if panicked.

Sitting up, I pulled her to me. “What is it, poppet? What’s wrong?”

“M-m-mary,” she cried. “H-h-he t-t-took Mary. H-horse man h-h-hurt Mary.”

Bridget gasped. My heart pounded painfully. Sean and Stuart appeared from around the corner of the castle on two huge stallions. The closer they came, the louder Rebecca screamed.

“Tell them what she said,” I told Bridget. Gathering Rebecca tighter, I ran for the castle. “Can you tell me more, poppet?”

Rebecca was too hysterical to hear my soft spoken question, but she’d said enough. In a blink of an eye, she’d changed my world. Circumventing Nurse Tolley, I took Rebecca right to her mother and told her what had happened. Wrapping Rebecca in her arms, she settled into a nearby rocking chair, and hummed sweetly to the child, soon easing her screams to small cries.

I turned to leave.

“Don’t tell anyone what she said,” Prudence whispered, shocking me even more.

“Why not?” I asked.

“She is just starting to recover. We are not well liked here, and a hounding of questions about Mary will only traumatize her more.”

Though I understood her concern, now that I had a reason to support my suspicions, I thought the dangers of there being an unknown murderer lurking in the shadows more harmful. “It’s too late,” I said. “Bridget, Stuart and the Killdaren already know.”

“There’s no worry then. They’ll do anything to protect Rebecca.”

“Doesn’t it bother you at all that something bad may have happened to Mary?” I’d started to believe my suspicions of Mary’s death false, and now knew more than ever that they weren’t. Someone had killed Mary, and I wanted to shout my suspicions aloud at everyone in the castle.
 

Prudence frowned. “Yes, but I can’t help her. You have to understand. My daughter is all I have. She is more important than anything else.”

“I understand, but sometimes the best thing we can do for the people we love is to find the truth.”

Dinner at the servants’ table was unnaturally silent, with those present barely touching the rich stew Mrs. Murphy and the new scullery maid had prepared. Stuart kept his gaze on Bridget. Bridget kept her gaze on her stew, separating the vegetables into piles on her plate. Janet and Adele kept whispering, looking at Stuart with fearful faces. I was more interested in observing what changes had been brought about by Rebecca’s cry about Mary. The word had spread to everyone.

“Enough.” Mrs. Murphy stood up from the table. “This silence isn’t going to send my hard day’s work to the slop pile.”

“Then maybe we should all talk about what is happening. What did happen to Mary. And where Jamie might be,” I said.

“We know where he is,” Stuart said, surprising me and everyone. “He’s in the forest, hiding. I’m sure after another night alone, he’ll come back, or let the Killdaren and me find him tomorrow.”

Mrs. Murphy drew a deep breath. “The lass is right. We need to speak of Mary’s death, and Rebecca. Mrs. Frye thinks we’re taking what Rebecca said too seriously, and I happen to agree with her.”

I blinked. I had expected Mrs. Murphy to believe in Rebecca.

“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d been the one to hear her,” Bridget said.

“She’s a delicate lass with a wild imagination. How can we know for sure that a man on horseback took Mary just because the horses frightened Rebecca today?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

“Wouldn’t it be better to ask how and who might have harmed Mary first, before discounting the child’s fear?” I asked, fighting to keep the emotion out of my voice.

Stuart sent me a hard and knowing look that I chose to ignore. From everyone else’s stares, my interest must have hit them as unusual.

“Let’s humor the lass,” Mr. Murphy said. “Once we talk about all of those who’d be on horseback, we’ll see how little truth there can be in the wee one’s cry. Who rides on Killdaren land?”

“The Killdaren. The viscount and me,” Stuart said harshly.

Not Sean, my heart cried.

Bridget gasped, sounding the way I felt. “That’s not all. There are…there are others.”

Mr. Murphy agreed. “Right you are, lass. Ya might add the earl and Sir Warwick, on occasion.”

Bridget shook her head. “There are more. There are those friends of the Killdaren’s who come every summer. They’d arrived before Mary disappeared. Maybe someone from the village, and the constable, now and again, while looking for smugglers in the caves.”

“I think we should tell the constable what Rebecca said,” I added, now that he’d been mentioned.

“No,” Stuart shouted, unnecessarily loud. “We are absolutely not bringing Constable Poole into this matter. Not on a blind child’s hearsay, who is so frightened she can barely speak. He’d laugh in our faces.”

That was a statement I could readily believe.

“Add Jamie to the list of riders too,” Bridget whispered.

Stuart sat back in disgust. “He never chooses to ride anywhere.”

“Not always,” Bridget said. “He rode up and down the beach looking for Mary for days, and he rode like a man who could handle a horse.”

Mrs. Murphy cleared her throat. “Well, there haven’t been any strangers around. And everyone else we know wouldn’t have harmed Mary. So there’s no sense in believing what Rebecca said. She’s blind and delicate and must be confusing the sound of the sea with that of the horses.”

Bridget and Stuart glared at each other. Everyone added their agreement, and I swallowed my denial. Nothing more would be accomplished by arguing tonight. Part of me wanted to accuse Stuart or the viscount or the earl or Sir Warwick or even a stranger, just so I could remove any doubt that shadowed Sean from other people’s minds. For I knew with my whole heart he was innocent. His kindnesses didn’t stem from any guilt, but from a pure heart.

But then I found a tiny burr under the smoothness of that thought. I found myself wondering, why? Why did Sean want me, a mere maid? Mary had called him a special friend, and they’d obviously shared more than a conversation or two for Mary to paint the sea for him. Was he attracted to me because I reminded him of Mary? Did people ever really know each other? And could the person who harmed Mary be sitting here at the table? I had to answer yes to that. No one could ever really truly know another. I’d lived among these people for over a month, but none of them really knew me. I’d learned that I didn’t even know myself.

Exhausted, Bridget and I skipped reading the end of “Forbidden Fruit” and went to bed early, but neither of us could sleep.

There was no note from Sean. I looked everywhere before going to bed. On the floor, under the bed, in my pillowcase and under it. But there had been nothing. I listened for the screeching sound of him hoisting his telescope into place, but only heard the sea and wind. His silence this night told me as deeply as his words that he meant what he’d said about the Dragon’s Curse and fate.

He’d made a pact with his brother that there’d be no future generations of Killdarens to suffer the curse.

I huffed and tossed and turned myself, fighting the urge to go to him.

“Cassie,” Bridget whispered.

“Yes.”

“Do you think Flora is all right?”

I hesitated. It seemed to me that Bridget’s sister would have surely been able to write or send a telegram by now. But could I tell Bridget that yet? It was still possible that a post was delayed. The red scarf wasn’t necessarily Bridget’s sister’s. “If she went to Paris, I daresay it might take a bit longer for her to send a regular post, especially if she had any difficulty getting there or settling in. I wouldn’t worry just yet,” I said, though I felt the niggling worry within me. I think that had more to do with my concerns about Mary’s disappearance, though.

Bridget sighed. “You’re right. Perhaps by the time I hear from her, the doctor will know exactly what ailment my mother has and I’ll know what I need to do.”

“Yes, don’t worry. Whatever needs to be done, we’ll make it happen.”

“Blimey, but I believe you, Cassie. You give me hope.” She paused. “What do you think about what Rebecca said? That a man on a horse took Mary?”

“I think she’s telling what she knows. I think there was a man on a horse.”

“Blimey,” Bridget said. “Almost makes you wonder if you should go to sleep at night.”

Bridget didn’t say more and I soon heard her soft snore.

I felt as if I would explode from the thoughts of Mary and Sean swirling around inside, building my frustration and my hopelessness to the point that I wanted to scream. I fervently wished that I could find hope for myself.

Unable to sleep, I finally rose and pulled out the box of Mary’s letters to read.
 

They all started with Mary’s thoughts of her mother and my sisters and me, wrenching me with the care and hopes that she had for us. In them she told about everyone in Killdaren’s castle. Her care for Rebecca and Prudence and Flora and Bridget and Stuart and Jamie and Mrs. Frye and, finally, Sean.

I’d almost reached the end of the letters, my eyes drooping, when I read a passage that gave me pause.

Our secret is out, my training Flora to sing. He found us in the music room today, upset that a mere maid was making use of the beautiful room with so many tragic and horrible stories. I fear I wasn’t the lady you raised me to be, Mother, for when he insisted that we leave, I quite rudely told him what I thought of his highhandedness. I find I have little use for the injustices social classes impose on one another.
 

Who was he?

I read the letter twice more, but didn’t find the mention of a name. In her haste or upset, she’d forgotten to name the man.

After perusing the last four letters and learning nothing new, I set them in the box and pushed it beneath my bed, then found the pheasant shell on the desk. I’d neglected to carry it with me lately. Holding it, I thought about Mary, of her life here, and of the sea, and what must have happened to her. Tears filled my eyes and fell unheeded. I cried for her, for myself and for Sean.

Mary had been harmed in some terrible way. I hurt for her. Sean believed he could never be free from the shadow of a curse and would live his life alone in darkness. I ached for him. And I was bound by…propriety? The thought of allowing such a thing as society’s dictates to keep me from following my heart struck me deeply as being very wrong. But I had my sisters to think of, and I could not bring such a scandal upon them. I was bound and torn by my love.

I must have drifted off to sleep hearing Bridget’s soft breathing and the sound of the waves relentlessly crashing ashore, because I heard Mary calling to me again.

“Cass. Cass, wake up. I must talk to you.”

“Mary? Where are you? It’s so dark. I can’t see you.”

“No one can see me. I’m in a dark, dark place. Nothing but stone now.”

“What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is what is happening now. Come with me. Hurry. It’s almost too late.”

“Where?”

Mary didn’t answer. I scrambled around in the dark, searching desperately. “Mary! Answer me!” I saw a light in the far distance and ran toward it as hard as I could. My breath rasped, my legs and chest hurt with the effort to reach the light before it disappeared. Just before stepping into the room, the light blinded me. I moved forward anyway and found myself falling, as if I had stepped off a cliff. Suddenly, I could see. I saw Killdaren’s Castle from above, as if I were a gull swooping down. Moonlight and mist bathed its stone walls an eerie blue, deepening its shadows. A keen sense of evil reached out to me, tried to grab hold of me. I escaped by flying higher. I would have flown away, but on a ripple of wind passing me I heard a tiny cry and looked back.

Rebecca clung to the roof. I dove back toward the castle, fighting the sense of evil trying to stop me. Before I could reach the child, I saw her slipping, screaming, calling for help.

No! I tried to scream as I woke from the dream, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe either. A gloved hand had covered my mouth.

Chapter Sixteen

I realized two things simultaneously. I’d been dreaming about Rebecca falling to her death, and I wasn’t dreaming about the hand over my mouth. Before I could fight or try and really scream, a voice whispered in my ear.

“Cassie, don’t scream. I’m sorry to frighten you. I need to speak to you, please.” Sean’s voice sounded tight with pain.

I nodded and he slid his gloved hand from my mouth. “I’ll wait outside your door.”

Scrambling up, I rose, but felt as if my stomach fell into a bottomless pit. Rebecca. The same sense of dread that had haunted me after my first dream of Mary, and those of my grandparents, sat coldly in my chest. Grabbing my robe and slippers, I rushed to the door then turned back and shook Bridget awake. “Get Stuart and go to the roof, now. Don’t ask why. Hurry.”

Sean stood in the hall with a small lantern. “I had to see you. I have—”

“There’s something wrong. We can’t talk now. It’s Rebecca. We have to hurry.” I pulled him down the corridor.

He grabbed my shoulder, stopping me. “What are you talking about?”

“I can’t explain. We must get to the roof. Rebecca is on the roof somewhere.”

He shook me. “Good God, woman. Have you lost your mind?”
 

“I pray so. But please, just take me to the roof. There’s no time. It may already be too late. It always has been before.” My voice broke as wrenching pain tore through me. “Please,” I whispered, desperately.

My panic got through to him. “Follow me.” He turned, but instead of going to the stairs, he went the opposite way, his cane-aided stride so fast that I had to run. At the end of the corridor was a tiny, padlocked door.