The Hourglass (37 page)

Genie told everyone to leave, then she held her arms up to him. “Fix it, Coryn, fix it.”

He held her. That was all he could do. “I cannot, Genie. I wish I could, but I cannot.”

She pounded on his chest. “You can, I know you can. You saved those men.”

“They needed stitching. You saw that. Anyone could have done it, with time enough.”

“You saved Peter after you said you could not cure his illness.”

“That was sheer luck. This is different.”

“No, it is not, and luck had nothing to do with Peter’s recovery, no, nor taking the feathers out of his room. I saw him. He was going to die, but he did not.”

He took her fists in his hands. “Genie, be reasonable.
I am no magician, no master of life and death. I do not even have what powers I used to. I had to give them up to be here, to be a man.”

“‘To be a man’?” she repeated. “What were you before, then, a boy? I do not believe you. I know you can do things other men cannot. Perhaps you pray to other gods who listen better. Then pray, damn you, pray!”

“My prayers will not help, Genie.”

“They will,” she insisted. “Or your esoteric education. You knew the baby was a boy—you told me so. So you must know how to save him, please!”

“I do not, Genie. I cannot!” For all his experience, Ardeth had none with this. “It is too late, my dear. No one can help.”

“No,” she wailed. “If cannot be.”

“I am so sorry.”

Her pleading turned to anger. She pushed him away. “It is because he is not your son, isn’t it?”

Ardeth was shaken. “How could you think that? I told you I would claim the child as mine. I have been moving heaven and earth to make it legal. I was going to sign over half of my other holdings to the Spotfords so they do not challenge the birth, so he could be the next earl.”

“No, you wanted a son of your own. Every man does.”

“I wanted your son.”

She was too distraught to listen. “So you killed him because he was not yours, only another scandal. What the arsenic did not accomplish, you did with your potions!”

“I thought only about saving your life, the only way I could. And everyone knows how many conceptions do not succeed, without arsenic or its antidote. No one knows why. Oh God, Genie, I would not have harmed the infant. How could you think I would do such a thing?”

“I do not know how you do anything! I do not understand you and I never have.” She took the ruby ring off and threw it at him. “I never asked you for diamonds and rubies. I married you for the sake of my child. Now I ask you one thing and you tell me no. Get out. Leave me alone. You are leaving soon enough anyway. Go now. I hate you!”

He knew she did not mean that. Her grief was talking, not the woman he married. “Please listen.”

She turned her head into the pillow, sobbing.

He spoke quietly, but loudly enough that she could hear if she wanted to. “It was my child, too, Genie. He was not of my blood, but he was my future. I know you will not believe me now, in your sorrow, but I am so very, very sorry.”

Her muffled cries were like that lance to his heart, bringing pain and helplessness, bringing tears to his own eyes. He slowly left her bedside, hoping she would stop him. When she did not, he went, because that was what she wanted. At least he could do that much for her.

*

While the countess recuperated, the earl stayed out of her sight. Marie told Ardeth she had orders to bar the door, anyway, so he did not waste his time or try to confront Genie, upsetting her further. She never left her rooms, but Miss Hadley reported she was not ill, only in a decline.

He rode the property with Richard and studied the books with Spotty. He played billiards with Fernell to keep him from the pub, and he played his flute in long, haunting laments, sweet and sad enough to have every woman in the Keep—every woman except Genie—wiping her eyes. A few of the men reached for handkerchiefs,
too, when they heard his plaintive tunes coming from the ruins of the old fortress.

He also visited Miss Frieda Spotford in her rooms in the isolated far tower of the modern castle.

Her maid admitted him after he had sent a note asking for an interview with both women. The maid denied knowing aught about Snell, other than that he would do anything for money. She did not admit to any familiarity beyond working in the same household, but her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. She brought Ardeth to her mistress’s sitting room door and left as soon as he was announced.

Miss Spotford was older than her brother, and white-haired like him. Her hair was thin where he was bald, pale skin showing where a yellowed lace cap did not cover her head. Ardeth had expected an invalid in a bath chair; Miss Spotford could walk well enough, although she dragged her leg when she stood to examine her caller more closely. One of her eyes was cloudy, but the other was a piercing blue. Her face was scarred down one cheek and through the corner of her mouth, and her neck was held at an awkward angle, as though it had frozen there after whatever accident had befallen the woman.

“I am sorry to intrude, madam,” he began.

“I know you,” she interrupted. Her voice was a hoarse rasp, likely from damage to her throat.

“That is impossible,” he said. “I have not been here before this week and I understand you have not left the Keep in decades.”

“I know you,” she insisted, fixing him with her stare that was half-blue and half seeing something else altogether. “When I was buried under those rocks, you came. I begged to die; the pain was so great. I begged, and you would not help.”

No, it could not be. The system did not work that way. No Reaper arrived if the name was not on his list; no Reaper left without what he came for. Ardeth ignored Effe and the boy, Peter, as a once-in-a-lifetime—or Death’s-time—occurrence. That meant the woman was not ailing; she was insane. No wonder Spotford kept her in this tower. “I assure you, no one ever saw me,” he said. “That is, I have not been in England before.”

“And now you think I tried to kill your countess.”

Her bluntness was as shocking as her claims to have been denied by a Final Ferryman. “No, I merely come to you for information.”

“I have none. I know nothing about poisons or I would have taken some years ago to end this hell of my life.”

Ardeth looked around. The rooms were airy and comfortable, with a beautiful view, if one accepted the ruins as picturesque rather than a sign of time’s passage. Beneath the window was a private terrace that led down to a walled garden. “I cannot know what pain you suffer, but your surroundings are pleasant.”

“What do you know? I cannot go to the village, not even to church.”

“I do not see why not.” A keeper could follow her about to make sure she did not wander off.

“What, let people see me like this?” She rubbed at the scar that pulled her mouth down on one side. “Sometimes I drool. Should I have them say I am the local freak, knocked in the cradle?”

“You could wear a veil.”

“The pain is too much.”

Others suffered and went on with their lives, but he did not say so. “Laudanum might help.”

“Bah. Then I have terrible dreams. Of you.”

“No. That is only your imagination and dread.”

She pointed one trembling finger at him. “I know you, I say. You came back, didn’t you, to torture me more?”

“I came back to England, yes. For my soul.”

Her finger touched his chest, right where he had been killed the first time. “You. Have. No. Soul.”

He would get no answers out of the woman, and nothing else he wished to hear, so he left her presence to find Miss Spotford’s brother.

Spotty did not think the woman was a danger to anyone. She was full of talk, he said, weird, rambling speeches everyone ignored. She hardly left her tower, so how could she care who owned or ran the Keep? Frieda might be missing a few cogs in her cogitations, but she played a decent hand of piquet when her mood was right.

“It was the accident that did it.” He pointed in the direction of the old Keep. “No one’s fault, because she wasn’t supposed to play there, but she lay trapped under a pile of rubble for hours before someone found her. Never been the same since.”

Ardeth found a woman to act as companion to Miss Spotford. One of his tenants had left his widow with nothing but debts and no way to pay the rent. She was strong and willing to do anything rather than face the poorhouse. Live at the Keep with nothing to do but watch a batty old woman and her sneaky maid? And get paid for it, to boot? She moved in that afternoon.

Ardeth left it to Spotford to explain to his sister. “Say it is for her health, to help her get out more. But she must not be alone, like a spider in her web, nursing imaginary grievances. I do not know if she hired Snell or if someone else did. He might have acted on his own, then stolen the money. I will find out, believe me.”

Spotford was relieved Ardeth did not appear to suspect Fernell any longer.

“Your son says he was out shooting by day and passed-out drunk by night. And he thinks he spent half of one week at a bordello he cannot recall, leaving Snell to his own devices. I will find that out, also, if it is true.”

“The boy lives a wild life, that is all. No harm in him, I swear.”

“Your boy is a man, full-grown, and will act like one. If he is behind the attack, I will send him to India. If not, I will find him a post somewhere. I will not have a man drink himself to death on my land, on my wine, or litter my neighborhood with his bastards. I already had to threaten him with the antipodes for taking one of the Misses Newberry into the gardens.”

They both knew Ardeth had threatened far worse than that, having to do with Spotford’s hopes for grandsons.

“Fernell did not mean anything by it. He was just flirting.”

“And the young ladies are too young to understand that. I consider them my wards now. I will not have their reputations ruined for a rakehell’s pleasure.”

“I thought he was partial to the eldest girl. I was hoping he might marry her and settle down. The chits have comfortable dowries now, and pleasing ways.”

“He will have to prove himself worthy of her before I let your scapegrace son play suitor.”

Ardeth wanted to talk to Genie, to ask her opinion. He wanted to discuss the plans for the new school, too, and see if she approved the site and the architect he was thinking of hiring. They were supposed to be partners and he missed her intelligent questions, her ways of looking at things from different angles than he saw.

She refused to see him. She did not come to meals with the family and she did not accept visitors, claiming her indisposition.

Ardeth could have forced her to see him. There was not a door on earth that could have kept him out, lost powers or not, but that would only make her hate him more, he feared. She needed time. Which was running out, with less than three months left.

He decided to go back to London to trace Snell’s whereabouts, taking Fernell with him to help. None of them would be truly safe until the details of the duel were uncovered, nor would Fernell’s name be cleared of involvement. Despite himself, Ardeth actually liked the younger man, when Fernell was not foxed. He was not stupid, and had a cheerful personality and a fine tenor voice. The earl thought he might interest Fernell in politics or finance in London, anything besides gaming and whoring. At the least, he would see him patronize a better tailor. Besides, he would not dare leave him here, not with the Newberry chits batting their eyelashes at him.

If Snell had acted alone, Ardeth considered that he was safe with Fernell. If he discovered otherwise, his mood was so foul he might just reconsider his vow not to take another life.

Genie was safe. While she kept to her rooms, what could happen to her? Maybe she would go out once he was gone. She needed walks and fresh air to recover her strength and her spirits. Perhaps she would visit with the cottagers, take interest in the school again, make friends with the women of the neighborhood, or plan renovations to the Keep. Anything, he hoped. He also hoped she would become her own woman, find the independence she would need when she was on her own, instead of
turning into a hermit like Miss Spotford. He prayed she learned her own worth. He prayed she learned not to hate him.

*

He was gone. Better sooner than later, Genie tried to tell herself, and good riddance. Coryn, Lord Ardeth, had not intended to stay. He’d warned her, but she had not truly believed him. She believed him now. He never meant to see her child, the son who would never see the sunlight. She had the drapes kept pulled and took laudanum to let her sleep and help her forget.

No one would let her.

Miss Hadley read Genie a letter from her mother. According to Mrs. Hopewell, Genie’s loss was for the best. No one needed more scandal broth served up if the child were born far too soon to be Ardeth’s. And what was Imogene thinking, letting such a handsome, rich gentleman go off to London on his own? Hadn’t she learned anything about men from Elgin and his wandering ways?

Genie’s sister wrote that since Genie had conceived once, she should have no difficulty becoming pregnant again, despite Lorraine’s own failure to do so. As if that would make Genie feel better now.