Renegade (29 page)

“I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was terribly shocked, beyond belief, to hear him say it. I pulled out my revolver.” Simon turned his gaze away from me. “And I shot him in the head.

“The mistress ran into the hut, wailing. She dropped to her knees. I took my guides around the village; we took account of all the huts and found that there were even fewer people there than I’d thought. Only twenty. I thought they might kill me for murdering their god, but they seemed too weary, too starved. The boy was the only living child. I took him with me when I left with my guides. I left a murderer.”

I couldn’t speak, yet I knew that I had to say something. I knew the anguish he felt, and I knew the powerlessness of words to comfort in such a situation. I had so little to offer him.

“You had no choice, Simon. He was killing, torturing people. That boy would have lost more limbs. Died.”

Simon’s face darkened. “I couldn’t even save him. An infection had started in his leg. He died before we even reached Port Francqui.”

Dawn was just breaking over the cliffs outside the window. I remembered that odd conversation we’d had on my first visit to the Conclave’s home, as we stared at those cases of weaponry, of human hair. Simon had enigmatically mentioned his “search for God”—an odd comment for a theologian, I’d thought, but now I wondered if Simon believed in God at all.

“As you suspected, I have never told anyone what I just told you. Not even Rosamund. Upon returning, I simply told my mother that her brother-in-law had died from a fever—that he’d died before I arrived. She has no idea that I killed him. It has haunted me over the years. He did terrible things … ”

“He was a madman,” I said.

“But he might have been institutionalized, perhaps.” Simon rubbed his temples as if he had a headache.

I knew Simon was back in that terrible place, that he saw the faces of the dead, that he remembered vividly as in a photograph what he had done to his uncle. I remembered losing Roddy; I hadn’t been able to save him, and, like Simon, I knew what it was to have killed. Our shared feelings of guilt, vinelike and strong, bound us together, and I felt them swell between us like a terrible energy as we prepared to face whatever was before us now. Tears fell down my cheeks, and I leaned forward across Hugo’s enormous body to take Simon’s hand.

“Simon.”

I waited until he focused upon me, surfaced from his haunting memories. “Simon, I too share this albatross.”

He said nothing, but I knew he heard my words, for I saw a ripple in his expression. As we finished the ride in silence, I felt a powerful connection with this man who had previously been so enigmatic. Simon knew the terrible weight of having to kill someone—even a heinous, murderous person. And now I understood more of his nature. He was haunted by his past, by what he had seen and by what he had done. And while William, Simon, and Christina shared my horrific experience of the Conclave and knew what I had done, Simon, thus far, had shouldered his burden alone.

Early morning light broke through cracks in the clouds outside the windows. I peered out, staring at the craggy beauty of the Highlands. I had never been north of Edinburgh before. Light fog stretched along the green pastures and rocky plains like an unyielding blanket. As the landscapes came into my view, their rose and periwinkle hues were resplendent in the morning mist.

I felt Simon’s eyes on me, and I turned my head to meet his gaze. His expression no longer seemed veiled, but kind and open, which gave him an even more startling resemblance to a character in a Blake painting. I felt arrested and could not look away.

“Thank you, Abbie.”

Twenty-four

W
hen we stepped off the coach in Caithness, in the northernmost town of the county, we discovered that we would have to wait for several hours for our ferry. I groaned at this; William was just over the waters, and we were so close. Apparently a northern storm had blown in, and the ferry had been delayed for several hours as the waters were unusually choppy.

Simon and I took lunch at a local tavern. I had no appetite—I felt an unbearable anxiety to reach William. But Simon reminded me that eating, like sleeping, was necessary to keep my strength up.

“We’re husband and wife,” Simon said.

“What?” I said, almost choking on my overcooked mutton.

“The towns in this region are quite small. We cannot be seen traveling about unmarried. As I’ve already mentioned, we’ll be outsiders. If we are to gather information, we must appear as benign, as ordinary as possible.”

I couldn’t believe that I had not considered this. I remembered all the times Mother and I had moved, how we sometimes had difficulty fitting into communities even larger than these.

“So, then, what am I to be called? Abbie St. John? Or are you to be Simon Sharp?” I asked wryly. I found that I was stabbing at my meat particularly hard. I couldn’t wait for the storm clouds to roll away so that we could continue our journey. I hated this stall.

Simon smiled and took a sip of water. As he did, his eyes glinted and he stared out the window behind me. Then he froze.

“Abbie.” He spoke quietly, but I heard him even above the noise of the loud tavern crowd. “We are being followed.”

“Is it the same blond man who was following us in London?” I asked quickly. “I thought I saw him in Edinburgh, at the train platform. But I wasn’t certain. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, after that experience with Ellen at the London station.”

Simon’s eyes now turned to me. “He was walking down the street in front of this tavern, and he glanced through the window at us as he passed by. Of that I am certain. If you look quickly, I think you can still see him.”

I turned and saw, just disappearing at the end of the street, the same straight ash-blond hair I’d seen before.

“I think that’s him,” I said.

“He must have followed us from London,” Simon said thoughtfully, his eyes still on the street. He took a long sip of water.

“What could he want?”

“I don’t know. We need to go about our business, but we must be watchful.”

“I agree,” I said in what I hoped was a confident tone, but I felt as if I stood at the base of a mountain—a mountain far too large to climb.

She hadn’t meant to nearly kill him. She didn’t want him dead. But she had forgotten how weak humans could be, and, well … he was barely breathing now. His face was pale, far too pale. It had been flushed with fever the past few days as the wounds oozed pus. The pus still seeped a bit, but the wounds were mostly dried and scabby. His body was wearying; he would not be able to fight the infection much longer. Seraphina surveyed all the dried blood on the mat surrounding him.

She sighed.

He had lost too much blood.

“You must keep him alive,” Max had told her. “I need him.”

That evening, almost three weeks ago, when she’d returned from devouring the young couple in the meadow near Bromwell, she’d felt her spirits rise at the sight of Max’s boat, at seeing that he had returned to her.

“She turned us down,” he had said, simply, informatively, as he dumped the unconscious body of the young man onto the floor of the great hall. Seraphina had knelt over the body. She’d only just transformed back to her human form, and she felt water still sliding from her wet hair down her naked body. The boy her keeper had brought her was young and strikingly handsome, with dark wet curls on his head and flushed, vibrant skin. His breathing was even but shallow. Undoubtedly Max had drugged him.

“You’ve wanted more responsibility in our Conclave, so we are offering you the task of killing her,” Max had said. “This is our bait, our lure.” He stared at the young man in the puddle of water on the floor and then shook his head vigorously, flinging the rain out of his curls. “Arabella Sharp deserves a cruel death.” Max’s eyes lingered upon Seraphina. “And I think that my lovely Effie will be up to the task.”

Seraphina had felt herself blush at the compliment.

“Who is he to her?” she asked. “Her brother?”

“Unfortunately, her paramour,” Max said quietly, his lip crinkled upwards in a cruel grin. He looked down at the body, disdain in his voice. “He’s a hot-headed prig, daft and foolish, still … try not to kill him.”

Seraphina felt a cruel pain. It was a stab of empathy for the young man, as he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Furthermore, although he was more attractive than her fiancé had been, his face shared some physical similarities with her own paramour.

“I brought feed for the animals, and then I have to leave.”

“Tonight?” Seraphina asked, her hopes dashed. She’d wished that Max would stay longer, particularly since he had been away for so long.

“Yes, I have important business in London. Miss Sharp will soon be on her way here. Once everyone is certain that William here has not eloped and that he is not traveling abroad, they will suspect I have taken him. When Miss Sharp arrives here, kill her.” His eyes glinted and became distant. “And kill anyone who might come with her. She might have a friend, a pale-faced young man. He should be an easy kill—but be careful, my Effie. He’s smart. Very intelligent.”

“And this one—William—I mean, what happens to him after I’ve finished with her?” Seraphina looked down at the young man’s body. She tasted the venom in her mouth and felt her stomach growl for human flesh. Odd. She was in her human form, and that had never happened before. The transformation seemed to haunt even her human form now.

“No.” Max looked at her seriously, his eyes bright in the darkness. “As I said, keep William alive, and I’ll return later for him. He needs to know what I can do—he needs to see you kill Miss Sharp, to know what lovely monsters I have to do my bidding. I need him. I have a bit of a large project I am working on back in London, and it turns out that this young man, Dr. William Siddal, is rather important to me.”

William had stirred a bit, the drugs wearing off. “And whatever you do, don’t let him escape. We shall secure him now.”

After moving William to a mat on the floor of her bedroom, they locked shackles around his wrists and one around his neck. He was then secured to a column between her bed and the fireplace. Seraphina had wondered, then, what it was that Max needed from this young man, other than to serve as a lure for Arabella Sharp. She remembered the Conclave’s many experiments, their many projects, and bit her lip thinking of how she had been the unintended result of one of those projects. But she had learned not to ask too many questions; Max already shared so much with her, probably more than the Conclave ever intended. She always hoped that at some point her distracted lover would come around, would see how valuable she could be to him. That night, she’d hoped his disappointment with Arabella’s decision would prompt him to realize her own worth.

Seraphina had thought of the young woman who was coming to save William.
Arabella.
She’d spoken the girl’s name quietly to herself, in the shadows of her bedroom, as Max left to ready his boat for the journey back to the mainland. He had to leave quickly, as a storm was blowing in.
Arabella.
Foolish girl—she could have the world at her fingertips. She could have everything that Seraphina had longed for, and yet this Arabella Sharp had turned down all of that.

On that night, Seraphina had walked outside with Max to watch him leave. She’d felt an emptiness, a loss of their old intimacy, and tried to push away darker thoughts—suspicions that her bond with him had never truly existed. Shivering, she’d clutched her arms about her body in the cold wind. She’d donned a robe, her favorite gauzy lavender robe that Max had brought to her from Venice a few years back. He’d also brought her the pearl-colored slippers she wore. But these were no protection against the elements, and she shivered again, violently. Although the rain at this point was light, featherlike, the wind swept in from the ocean in great blasts.

“I hear you have been straying from your typical meals,” Max had said before stepping into his small boat.

Seraphina had blushed, remembering how angry he’d been when she had tried to attack him back in November. She had not wanted to make him angry. She felt her lip tremble.

“I am sorry,” she said. “I had not heard from you in so long. I did not know if you would return, and … I was hungry.”

He held her to his shoulder, patted her head. “There, there … do not cry.” He tightened his embrace, kissed her temple.