The Lady of Secrets (33 page)

“My beauteous Amelia, do you not understand that I will die if you send—”

“What do you think you are doing here?”

The angry demand startled Amy out of her dreams. She spun about with a hiss, her fingers raised like a cat’s claws,
preparing to defend herself against one of the household servants.

But it was not the gardener or even that horrid valet Alexander with his thick Scots tongue. It was
him,
Sir Patrick himself. The rays of the setting sun picked out the highlights of his hair, turning it to a burnished gold. Even his eyes appeared to blaze a fiercer blue in the dying light.

Amy’s hands fell limp to her sides. “Oh,” she sighed.

“Answer me,” he snapped.

She couldn’t. Couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, could hardly breathe.

“What are you doing lurking in my garden? How dare you come here!”

Never had she heard his soft, genteel voice sound so harsh. He glanced about him almost as though he were ashamed to be seen with her.

No, not ashamed, she assured herself. Afraid. They shared so many secrets, no doubt he feared discovery.

“Don’t worry. I was most discreet. No one saw me. No one knows that I am here.”

“What do you want?”

Amy summoned her most beguiling smile. “Why, I only wanted to see—”

She raked him with her eyes, imagined stripping away his doublet, his shirt, and his trunk hose. He shuddered beneath her gaze. From desire? She could certainly feel the heat. Suddenly the oncoming night no longer seemed so cold.

Except for his eyes. They had grown hard as shards of ice.

“You were wanting to see Mistress Wolfe? You are too late. She is gone.”

Amy stared up at him, wondering if she dared to trace her finger over the stern line of his mouth. She half-raised her
hand when the sense of his words penetrated the warm haze enveloping her.

“Gone? W-what do you mean,
gone
? Where did she go?”

“I care not so long as she does not reside beneath my roof. So there is no reason for you to come here again.”

“B-but you just allowed her to leave? To disappear? And after you promised—”

“You would speak to me of promises, witch? After you pledged your word that you would cease tormenting the king if I fetched the Lady of Faire Isle to England?”

“And we have!”

“So it was someone else who nailed that dead cat to the palace wall and left a threatening message in blood?”

“Oh,” Amy said in a small voice. “That.”

“Yes,
that.
”

She hated the sneer that marred his features. It made his handsome face look almost ugly.

“The cat was my sister’s idea.” Amy spread her hands in a placating gesture. “You know what Beatrice is like, so impatient to have our revenge upon the king.”

“And dropping deadly silver roses into my garden? Was that also part of her schemes?”

Guilt flooded her cheeks. Amy gave him a nervous smile. “Roses? What roses? They are usually white or red, are they not? I have never heard tell of such a one as you described. Silver, did you say?”

“Aye, exactly like the one that poisoned my friend Armagil.” Sir Patrick stepped closer, and for the first time, Amy noted the shadows that pooled beneath his eyes. He must have scarce slept at all last night, poor lamb, no doubt fretting over the ailing Blackwood.

Armagil Blackwood was a spineless, useless excuse for a
man who deserved whatever evil befell him, but she had forgotten that he was Sir Patrick’s friend, even though Blackwood was far from worthy of that honor.

“I am so sorry if Dr. Blackwood is dying, but …”

“He’s not. Mistress Wolfe cured him.”

“… I am sure that—” Amy blinked. “She what? No, she couldn’t. That’s impossible unless—”

Margaret Wolfe truly was Megaera.

I knew it,
Amy thought, barely able to restrain her dance of joy. Just wait until she told Bea. But Amy’s surge of triumph was brief as Sir Patrick stalked closer and she realized how she had just betrayed herself. His eyes blazed with anger and accusation.

“I don’t know what hellish game you witches are playing at or why you wanted Margaret Wolfe fetched from her island. But whatever your foul plans are, they end now, do you understand?”

His voice was hard, threatening. Amy didn’t like it. One of the things that she loved best about Sir Patrick was his gentle courtesy. She stumbled away from him, but she raised her chin in defiance.

“You needn’t act so superior. You have foul plans of your own. You didn’t fetch the Lady of Faire Isle because we demanded it. You brought her here for sniveling James so he would not go into hiding and cancel your precious parliament. You needed Mistress Wolfe because you thought she could end his fear of the curse.”

“Which she has done.”

Amy’s mouth fell open. Megaera had cured Dr. Blackwood? She had lifted the curse from the king? No, this could not be right. These were not at all the actions of the dark sorceress Granddam had taught Amy to revere.

“Margaret Wolfe has played her part,” Sir Patrick continued. “I have no more use for her and I never had any for you or your sister. If you possess any wisdom at all, you will disappear and never let me see or hear of you again.”

Never see him again? The thought was unbearable to Amy.

“But we both want the same thing,” she pleaded. “The destruction of James Stuart. Your plot to blow him up is very clever, but his death will come so fast. Bea and I just wanted him to suffer more, to know why he must die. But we’ll stop tormenting him from now on, I swear it.” Amy rested her hand upon his sleeve with a coaxing smile. “There is no need for such enmity between us. We are allies.”

“Allies?” He shook her off savagely. “Do you think that I have ever wanted my holy cause tainted by your filthy witchcraft? You should perish in the same way your wretched grandmother did. But I am offering you a gift of mercy you don’t deserve. Leave here now. If you are not out of my sight in the next minute, I’ll summon a constable.”

Amy’s lip quivered with a mingling of hurt and outrage. “You just try it and … and I’ll tell. Everything I know about you and your friends and your nasty—”

She gasped as he shoved her up against the oak tree, one hand closing about her neck. He did not squeeze hard enough to cut off her air, just enough to bruise her throat. Amy’s pulse thudded, torn between fear and the dark thrill of having goaded him into touching her.

“If you ever breathe so much as a word, I’ll snap your neck.”

“Go ahead. Do it,” she rasped. “How holy will you be then? Just remember I have a sister, many sisters to avenge me. So you dare not hurt me. It is a hollow threat.”

“As hollow as yours to reveal our plot. Do you actually
think anyone would believe the word of a nothing like you?” he ground out between clenched teeth.

“Mayhap not, but they’d investigate and your plan would come to nothing. You’d die a traitor’s death, your guts ripped out, your head stuck up on a pike.”

“Not before I accused you of witchery and you end up like your evil grandmother, the flames licking the flesh from your bones.”

“And then we’d all be dead and King James could do a merry jig on our graves.”

Her taunt appeared to penetrate the haze of his anger. He kept her pinned up against the tree, although his hand eased away from her throat.

“You see, we do still have need of each other,” Amy whispered. “I have power, more than you can imagine, just like my granddam. I can curse and cast spells, even love spells.” She wriggled suggestively against him.

He sprang back, his revulsion unmistakable. “It would take far more than magic to make a man ever want to touch something as loathsome as you.”

He glared at her, his contempt like a cold hard mirror that reflected not the comely seductive lass of her imagination, but a scrawny woman with matted hair, her tawdry dress and cloak stinking of the filth of the streets.

Sir Patrick shuffled his heel as though scraping dung from his boots. He turned and strode toward the house without looking back. Amy rubbed her neck, furious tears spilling down her cheeks.

Oh, he was cruel. He was horrid. She could have loved him forever, but now she hated him. Groping beneath her cloak, she clenched the hilt of her knife.

THE CANDLE BURNED LOW, ITS FEEBLE LIGHT FLICKERING OVER
the red-stained water in the basin. Amy huddled in the corner of her lodging, staring at her hands through the flood of her tears. She had managed to cleanse them, but her knife was still encrusted. The bright shiny blade looked as if it was turning to rust.

She needed to finish washing up, but she could not seem to rouse herself, her entire body trembling. Oh, what had she done? What had she done?

“C-couldn’t help it. All h-his fault. He made me do it.” Amy rocked herself back and forth. She froze at the sound of the door opening.

She heard Beatrice stumble inside and curse. “Amy! God curse you. You have tumbled your clothes all about the room again. You nearly made me slip and break my neck. When are you ever going to learn to stop being such a slattern?”

Amy drew her knees in tight to her chest, but she was unable to muffle a sob.

“Amy?” Beatrice picked up the candle and raised it aloft so that the light spilled over the corner where Amy crouched. “Oh, lord, what the devil is wrong with you now?”

Her sister never had any patience with tears and Amy realized how pathetic she must look, her eyes swollen from crying, snot dribbling from her nose. But she had already borne enough for one day. She could not endure any more of Bea’s scorn.

Amy wiped her nose on her sleeve. “N-nothing’s wrong. Leeb me ’lone.”

Beatrice set the candle back down on the table. She must
have noticed the red-stained water for she muttered another oath. “What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

Her throat clogged with tears, Amy shook her head.

“Your knife is all bloody. Did you do for someone? Who’d you stab?”

Amy gulped and managed to get out, “H-his fault. All his fault.”

“I daresay it was, whoever
he
might be. Was it just some varlet accosting you in the street or did you know him?”

Amy responded by burying her face against her knees and giving way to another storm of weeping. Her misery must have appeared great enough to melt even her sister’s hard heart.

Beatrice surprised her by plunking down beside Amy in her corner. She gathered Amy in her arms, pulling her close. “There, there, Amy, love. Tell me what happened. If some bastard has hurt my little sister, he’d best be dead or I vow I will gut him myself.”

Beatrice reeked of strong spirits and the musky scent of whatever men she had lain with tonight. No doubt she had earned a great deal of coin and was mellowed with drink, which accounted for this rare display of compassion, but Amy hungered for whatever comfort she could find.

She burrowed her face against her sister’s shoulder. “Oh, B-bea. I have had the most t-terrible day, the w-worst of my life.”

For once Beatrice did not scold her for being melodramatic as she was wont to do. “Shh, stop your caterwauling and tell me all about it. Your Bea will make everything all better.”

Between hiccups and sobs, Amy struggled to get out her story. Her head throbbed from crying, leaving her thoughts as
scattered as her words and somehow she jumbled it all together, her near capture for thieving the purse, Sir Patrick’s harsh rejection of her, the confusing behavior of Margaret Wolfe.

“Oh, he was so cruel to me, Bea.”

“There, there.” Bea patted Amy’s shoulder. “So Margaret Wolfe cured Dr. Blackwood?”

“Aye, that is what Sir Patrick said before he seized me by the throat and all but spat on me.”

“That means Mistress Wolfe knew the antidote for the poison.”

“Did I tell you Sir Patrick called me loathsome?”

“And she was able to lift the curse from the king.”

Amy lifted her head from Bea’s shoulder and squinted reproachfully at her sister. “I declare you seem far more concerned with the doings of Mistress Wolfe than you are about the way Sir Patrick wounded and humiliated me.”

“Oh, the devil take your precious Sir Patrick. Of course, I am more interested in Mistress Wolfe. Don’t you see what this means, you little fool? We need test no further. Margaret Wolfe is Megaera.”

Clearly Bea’s compassion had reached its end. Amy wrenched away from her. “Of course she is Megaera. Haven’t I said so all along?”

“And she is obviously possessed of great knowledge and power, just as Granddam always said.”

“Much good it does us.” Amy sniffed and wiped her eyes. “So far all she has accomplished with her power is to undo everything we did.”

“Because we have not yet revealed ourselves to her. The Silver Rose does not know she still has devoted followers.”

“I don’t think that will matter a jot,” Amy said. Usually
she tried to be the optimistic one, but never had she felt so low, so completely without faith. “I don’t think Mistress Wolfe cares about being the Silver Rose. Nor will she ever help us with our ritual.”

“Oh, yes she will. Trust me for that,” Bea began, only to break off. Amy realized the moment when her sister spied her handiwork, for Beatrice’s jaw dropped. She scrambled to her feet. Snatching up the candle, she strode across the room to examine the pentagram Amy had painted on the wall. The blood glistened, some of it still appearing wet.