Shivers Box Set: Darkening Around Me\Legacy of Darkness\The Devil's Eye\Black Rose (14 page)

The sun was setting and a rolling mist brought darkened silence in its wake. I paused to survey the rusty horizon, my thoughts taking flight and seeking solace once again in memories of my father. The stone walls behind me, cold as death, guarded the dreams of long-dead Jagos and the secrets of those still living.

“Cousin!” Tynan’s urgent whisper made me jump and I turned to remonstrate with him. He hushed me by putting a finger to his lips and jerking his head for me to follow him. He seemed excited and edgy. He held aloft a lantern and his eyes shone in the half-light it cast. Beyond its circle, the dim twilight revealed shadowy shapes.

“This is the best place to see it,” he said, leading me to a secluded bower at the far edge of the formal garden. He pointed to the east tower which stood proud and dark against the lowering sky. Placing the lantern on the ground, he removed his coat and placed it over the light, plunging us both into darkness. Seeming unaware of his actions, he draped a companionable arm about my shoulders, drawing me close and murmuring into my hair, “Watch!”

At first, it sounded like children’s footsteps running through brittle autumn leaves. Within seconds it had become a wild crescendo of noise. Hundreds of high-pitched squeaks filled the air as a mass of small, hungry bats surged forth from the tower. Serrated wings beat a wild tattoo in the pale moonlight as they swooped in crazy figures. I watched in amazement and delight, Tynan’s warm breath caressing my cheek, as a thousand sightless eyes sought out their prey with devastating accuracy. Gradually the tumult faded as the swarm swirled and looped away.

I turned to look at Tynan, starting to thank him for bringing me to witness this incredible sight, and he laughed. Dropping a light, inconsequential kiss on my cheek, he released me and bent to retrieve his coat. As the lantern was uncovered, it illuminated the bower and my eyes fell on a horrible spectacle just a few feet away.

“Tynan!” I gripped his arm and he followed the direction of my horrified gaze. It was the corpse of a dead rabbit, the ground all around glistening with the dark red of its spilled blood. The head, torn from its body in the vilest manner with the narrow skull crushed and broken, lay nearby.

“Ugh. It must have been foxes.”

“No fox did that!” I said shakily. “A fox kills for food! Whatever it was that did
that
, did it for sport.”

“Must have been a cat, then,” he remarked calmly. “Let’s go back before Demelza scolds us for keeping dinner waiting. I’ll get one of the lads to come and move it.”

“Dinner? How can you speak of eating and remain so unmoved?” I demanded, pointing a shaking finger at the rabbit. “And what sort of cat can rip the head off a full-grown rabbit?”

“A big one,” he said cheerfully, and then laughed at my outraged expression. “Sorry,
hweg!
I will be suitably disgusted and outraged from now on.”

“Tynan! Lucy!” Uther’s voice wiped the smile off Tynan’s face in a way the mutilated rabbit had not. “I’ve had the devil’s own job… What the…?” His eyes lighted on the rabbit and he hurried forward to me. “Are you all right, Lucy, my dear?” He scanned my face in concern. His eyes flickered over to Tynan.

“I am, but it is no thanks to my cousin here!” I announced crossly, giving that gentleman a furious stare. “
He
finds the whole matter hugely entertaining!”

Tynan muttered something incomprehensible and, leaving the lantern behind, sloped off toward the castle. Uther drew me into a warm embrace, running his strong hands up and down my back until the quivering in my limbs ceased. It was enough to make me almost—but not quite—forget the hideous sight I had just beheld. I must admit, I may have tarried there in his arms, beneath the stars, a little longer than was strictly necessary.

“Did you see what happened?” His hands moved now so that one held me lightly about the waist while the other gently tilted my chin up to look at him.

“No, I met Tynan in the garden and he brought me to see the bats swarming. He covered the lantern so that we could see better. When he uncovered it, I noticed…” I bit my lip. “It is fresh,” I said, and I could hear the shudder in my own voice. “It has happened very recently. And I do
not
believe Tynan’s theory that a cat or a fox did it.”

“Nor do I.” Uther picked up the lantern, and, drawing my hand into the crook of his arm, began to walk along the path. “Where did you meet Tynan?” he asked. I frowned in confusion and he added, “You said you met him, and then he took you to see the bat swarm. Where was he when you met him?”

“Oh, not far from the bower,” I said.

“And where did he come from? Was it the house?”

I stopped in my tracks and turned to look up at him again. “No,” I spoke very slowly, “Tynan didn’t come from the house. He came from the direction of the bower.”

* * *

“Aunt, would you mind very much if I asked you about Tynan’s parents?” We were alone in the drawing room. The room was long, with four windows looking over the moat and drawbridge towards the ocean beyond. It was comfortably furnished in old oak, with large carved cabinets and chairs cushioned with crimson velvet. The walls were tapestry-hung, the figures therein large as life in ancient garb and engaged in hunting, hawking and archery. Unlike the great hall, it was not too stately to be comfortable. It was to this room that we generally retired after dinner to take tea, coffee or chocolate according to our various tastes.

Demelza sighed. “It all seems so long ago,” she said a trifle petulantly. Her restless fingers crumbled a sweet biscuit, stirred her tea and folded, then refolded, her napkin. Behind her, through the long windows, the colours of evening lent a daffodil tint to the watercolour landscape. I waited patiently, relying on her inability to remain silent. With a little sigh, she continued, “Ruan adored her. Eleanor was a dear, sweet girl. But, we discovered later, she was emotionally very fragile. Tenebris did not suit her feeble constitution. You need to be made of stern stuff to withstand its demands.” I thought that was an odd way of expressing herself. As though Tenebris was a living entity. “She was nervous and sickly whenever they stayed here, and she began to make excuses to remain in London. Ruan, however, wanted their child to be born here, and for Tynan to spend as much of his childhood as possible at Tenebris.” Her beautiful eyes were distant, as though she stared through an imaginary window to the past. “After Tynan was born, when he was just a few months old, Eleanor became obsessed with a desire to spend the summer at her parents’ home in Kent. But Ruan would not hear of it. They argued about it one day and she ran off. Ruan went after her. When night began to fall and neither had returned, Uther formed the servants into a search party. They found Eleanor in Athal Cove. A bloodied rock lay nearby…. Her skull had been caved in.” I gasped and her eyes flickered over me as if recalling my presence. “Oh, I am sorry to be so brutal with you, child! I have lived with the horror of it these many years, so I suppose it is almost commonplace to me now.” She reached for my hand and I clasped hers. We sat like that for several minutes while the lowering gloom of evening began to invade the room. A footman tiptoed unobtrusively in to draw the damask drapes and light several branches of candles.

“What of Ruan?” I prompted. Having lost my own father to violent death, I had some inkling of the awfulness of that night some twenty years ago.

“They pulled his body out of the sea two weeks later. I believe he could not live with the horror of what he’d done, and I know he would not choose to go on living without his darling Eleanor.”

“But he had a son! Tynan was a mere baby,” I exclaimed. “No matter what else, whatever his anger toward her, or anguish at their unhappiness, he should have thought of his child first.” She gave me a long, measured look, and I was uncomfortably aware that I had spoken rather too hotly in defence of Tynan, who, after all, I scarcely knew.

“I do not believe Ruan was in his right mind when he killed her,” she said quietly. “Uther assumed guardianship of Tynan, and I, of course, helped him. It was not an easy task. As a boy, he diced with death on many, many occasions.”

“Yet he seems healthy now, apart, of course, from the shocking migraines he falls victim to. Was there a particular problem when he was a child?”

She fluttered her hands in a vague manner. “No, there was nothing specific. He just seemed to succumb to every germ and he was quite horribly accident-prone as well. My poor nerves were in shreds with worry about him.” I did not believe her. I could not imagine Demelza allowing a child to interfere with her sybaritic existence. As indebted as I was to her, I was not blind to the fact that a deeply selfish individual resided just beneath her decorative veneer.

“What do the doctors say about his migraines? Is there no cure?” I asked. The candlelight cast dancing flickers onto the walls, and applewood logs burned bright in the hearth. It should have been a cosy scene, but Demelza’s matter-of-fact recount of the brutality of a love gone sour had tainted my mood.

“Well, you know we are very remote and…” She was fluttering again, and I had a lowering presentiment.

“Aunt Demelza. Tynan
has
seen doctors, has he not?”

Her tinkling laugh rang out for rather longer than was necessary. “Well, of course he has! Foolish child! Did you really think he had not? Dr Arthur in Wadebridge sees him regularly, but he tells us that there is very little that
can
be done.” She sighed. “Only, of course, to make him comfortable when he is in the throes of an attack.”

“I know nothing of Dr Arthur, and I am sure he is a very worthy man, but surely, Aunt Demelza, you should be consulting the finest physicians available? Tynan is an earl, after all, and money can be no object. Were he to travel to London, even perhaps abroad—”

“It is not to be thought of.” Her voice held a flinty and unusual finality that brooked no further discussion. We lapsed into silence and were joined shortly by both Uther and Tynan. The latter drew me aside with an invitation to play chess. I obliged, but my mind was distracted. I felt there was much more to the story of Tynan’s illness than Demelza was prepared to share with me.

* * *

To me, the library at Tenebris was as enticing as a feast to a glutton. It was there that I was able to gorge to excess on my love of reading. Bookshelves lined three walls from floor to ceiling and every imaginable delight was contained within those orderly ledges. Just before dinner one evening, I dashed in to change my book so that I had a new source of bedtime reading. The room was unlit and the book I wanted was out of my reach. I was in a hurry. Impatiently, I clambered onto a chair to take a closer look.

“Whatever
are
you doing?” Uther’s voice was mildly amused and, as I looked over my shoulder, I wobbled slightly on my unsteady perch. He hurried forward and clasped his hands to my waist, swinging me down from the chair as easily as if I had been a child. “Nonsensical girl,” he said, the laughter in his eyes deepening as he observed my confusion. “Might I request that, in future, should you need a book that is out of your reach, rather than risk your neck, you ask for help from one of the footmen?”

He retained his grip on my waist and I nodded, quite unable to speak. My eyes were level with the top button of his waistcoat and I kept them stubbornly fixed there. I drank him in like a fine wine, wistful hope fighting desperate arousal. As always, I sensed him reading my thoughts and being greatly entertained by them.

I suppose I had always hoped that love would find me one day. But to fall like this, so fast and so hard, made me question if my feelings could be real. And was that what I was doing? Falling in love with Uther? But it didn’t feel like falling. It felt like floating and flying and rising far above the me I once knew. My body was undergoing some strange, chemical metamorphosis that began and ended with him. My senses were heightened. Colour more vivid, sound more musical, scent more powerful. When I was with him I was stingingly alive. When I was not, I was restless, my ears listening for the sound of his voice, my eyes searching for a glimpse of him. I was utterly, hopelessly captivated, and there was nothing graceful or hidden about it. But there was also a sense of guilt attached to my feelings. I had no right to aspire so far above me. No right to expect anything in return.

For the first time, I imagined there must be more to love than the feeling itself. I did not know what “more” was, only that it was dangerous to want it, and that Uther knew of and smiled at my longing. But there was a constant, nagging emptiness deep inside me that ached for him to fill it. If I had been told then I could have one night in his arms followed by a life without any other love, I confess without shame that I would have taken that bitter bargain.

So when he bent his head to kiss me as we stood in the dimly lit library, it didn’t come as a surprise. It was what I had been waiting for from the moment we met. And I just sank into his arms. It was as if my own body could no longer hold me upright and I had to delegate that responsibility to him. As his lips moved against mine, probing my mouth with infinite gentleness, I wanted to sob. Slowly and timidly, I copied his movements. But I didn’t feel slow or timid. I felt wanton. In that instant I finally knew what my woman’s body was made for. Uther gave an appreciative moan at my reaction and slid a hand behind my head, drawing me deeper into the kiss. My stomach plummeted and my heartbeat slowed. The heat that spread through me was the most wonderful, perfect, maddening sensation I had ever known. When he drew away, I felt, rather than heard, my own murmured protest.

“Well, well.” The note of laughter was back in his voice, and I opened my eyes reluctantly. “Who would have thought, little Lucia, that there could be so much pent-up passion in that neat, prim body of yours?” His use of my given name made my heart sing. I gazed at the lips which had just devastated mine with mute longing. “Do you know what I would like to do now? I would like to take you—right here, on Demelza’s elegant new carpet—until you beg me for mercy, until you are spent.” I swayed toward him, willing him to match actions to his words, even though, in my innocence, I only dimly understood his meaning. The smile in his eyes deepened. “But we really mustn’t keep dinner waiting any longer, must we?”