The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (69 page)

He regarded her, filtering her words through some inner judgmental sieve. After a long pause, he spoke in a lower voice, as if to himself. “You were a virgin.”

Her hands balled into fists. “Why do you want me to feel shame over that day? You don’t. What man ever feels shame over the things he does?” She laughed. “Were
you
a virgin?”

He blinked. “I’m sorry. I’ve a… damnable jealousy of you.” He paced again, like he couldn’t contain his energy. “They’re trying to steal you right out from under me. Even Aodhàn, my friend these last ten years. I thought we respected each other.”

“You’re wrong about him.” She strained any emotion but resentment from her voice. “I told you, I went outside with him on Michaelmas to make you jealous.” She gave him a one-sided smile. “Damn thorough job I did of it, too. I wish I could undo it, but I can’t.”

“Did you ever stop to think what that would do to him? You say you wanted to make me jealous. But you’ve started something, Morrigan. You’ve made him think you have feelings for him. Now he wants you for himself. Every man here does. I’ve seen Malcolm’s face light up at a glimpse of you. And Seaghan. Maybe I should put you in rags, smear dirt on your face.”

“You’re daft.”

“You may be right about that.” He shrugged into his coat.

“Where are you going?”

“To find Patrick Hawley.”

“I’m afraid of him.” She rose, working her napkin in one fist. “He’ll kill you, Curran. He has no guilt. No mercy. He’s inhuman.”

He shrugged. “Well, then….”

“Curran!”

In two strides he reached her, pulling her against him fiercely, holding her face at his throat. “Morrigan, Morrigan.” She felt the tremors running through him, and clung, understanding now that fear had birthed the words of anger.

He spoke into her hair. “What might have happened… what he might have done. I thought you were safe here, in my Glenelg. I thought you were safe in this place I love.”

“I’m not hurt. He didn’t hurt me. I swear it. I had a knife. I cut him. It was only a small cut in the arm, but it hurt him, and he ran away.”

His eyes were so dark. She sensed the murderous rage filling his body in great, overwhelming waves. “You’re wrong to think I didn’t feel shame over what I did that day,” he said, low. “But I would have married you, pregnant or not. I would have married you if I’d never touched you. From the moment I saw you, at the train station, I knew. You’re the only woman for me. I don’t know why, but it’s true. The only one.”

He turned then and strode out of the dining room, not pausing as she cried, “Curran!” She heard the heavy front portal slam behind him.

* * * *

Morrigan’s anxiety increased as the hours passed. She finally ordered Logan to go and find Curran, but he refused, saying he was not the master’s warden and could be banished if he did what she wanted.

She tried to read. She paced. She avoided Diorbhail’s questioning worry while she nursed Olivia, who seemed to sense Morrigan’s fear and cried inconsolably.

The sun lowered, and still he did not return. Fionna brought a tea tray filled with tempting refreshments, but Morrigan’s nerves had stolen any hunger and she left it untouched.

She went to their bedroom and attempted Eleanor’s hypnotism. She lay on the bed, staring at the flourishes on the mirror, but her thoughts went right on whirling, woven through with guilt. Violet came and helped her with her nightgown, then went away for the night. Morrigan took one of Curran’s shirts from his wardrobe and lay on the bed, holding it against her cheek, breathing the scent of him.

The mantel clock ticked quietly. She listened with all her might for the sound of the door downstairs, but finally drifted off.

The night had grown old when he slipped into bed, still chilled from being outdoors, and slid his arms around her. She murmured, “Where have you been?” only half-waking, and returned to sleep at his, “Don’t worry,
a ghaoil
. Everything will be all right.”

* * * *

Early morning birdsong brought Morrigan out of sleep. Curran was gone, and Violet hadn’t yet come to help her dress. She lay in a place between slumber and waking, not thinking or fretting, just remembering Curran’s embrace and his promise, and allowing herself to believe him.

But the quiet of the morning and the melancholy bird drew her down again, and another voice floated through her head.

I’ll build you a summer house here, since you love it so much
.

Aodhàn Mackinnon reached for her hand. Morrigan heard the breakers far below. The air was thick with the screeching of birds.

Gradually, the busy sounds of Mallaig’s harbor intruded. Men shouting, boat whistles, women laughing, raucous birds foraging.

Mallaig’s pier.

Morrigan bolted upright, staring into her dim bedroom. She was not in Mallaig. She was in Glenelg, at Kilgarry.

Shall we force his hand?

You will marry me, Lilith.

She tried to discredit the revelation, but the more she examined it, the surer she grew. She had dreamed of walking along a high black cliff with a young Aodhàn Mackinnon.

Before she’d ever taken any witch’s cap, before the hypnotism, before she came to Glenelg. She’d dreamed it while living in Ibby’s small quarters above her shop in Mallaig, mashed into a narrow bed with Beatrice.

It wasn’t surprising that she’d forgotten, not when she considered all the strange dreams that invaded her sleep, but it had waited, tucked away in her memories, for this moment of quiet reflection.

How could it be? How could she have dreamed of him before she became Curran’s wife? Before she looked, for the first time, into his face at her wedding cèilidh?

It was… impossible,
impossible
to dream of a real person before meeting him or knowing he existed.

She jumped out of bed, rang the bell, and paced until Violet entered, and hardly heard her chatter as the maid helped her dress and arranged her hair. Impatience thrummed through her body, or was it fear?

She had to speak to someone. It couldn’t be Curran, not with everything else that had happened. Nor could it be Diorbhail, with her animosity. Perhaps Eleanor. But no. Eleanor saw too much, sometimes.

Who could she turn to? Who would listen without judgment?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

FATHER DRUMMOND PERFORMED
Mass and listened with grave attention in the confessional, though he had heard it all many times. Later, after his parishioners had gone off to their dinners, he knelt before the crucifix on the altar and gazed upon his savior.

Shouldn’t he try, at least try, to emulate such pure humility?

But my life has been wasted.

“Forgive me.” He crossed himself. The old unwelcome complaint often intruded, even after these many years. What did he think he could do, at sixty-one, to make a difference in this world? Though he scoffed at his fancies, the yearning remained, like a gnawed-out hole in the heart.

When he’d taken his vows, he’d expected his superiors to send him to a foreign land, maybe to India or heathen Persia. He’d prepared himself for adversity and hostility.

His corner of the West Highlands could almost be compared to a foreign land. It was cut off from the rest of Scotland by those lofty mountains affectionately dubbed the Five Sisters of Kintail. From the east, it remained nearly unassailable. Horses labored with the ascent from Loch Duich, especially if pulling any sort of load. Then there was the steep descent to accomplish. To the west roiled the Kyle Rhea, that treacherous stretch of water between the mainland and the Isle of Skye, where currents collected and intensified, to spill free farther south into the Sound of Sleat.

Time here was almost suspended, ruled by primitive superstition. These folk would be shocked, horrified, by London’s favored pastime of adultery, by the romantic scandals that hounded Prince Edward like a gadfly. Many in those circles believed even stuffy Queen Victoria was having an affair with her rough Scots servant, John Brown.
Punch,
the satirical city magazine, had caricatured Prime Minister Gladstone’s Christian charity when he invited prostitutes into his home, ostensibly to help them find other ways of feeding themselves.

Some things did make a body wonder, but the masses, in Hugh’s experience, were too eager to embrace the worst about their fellow human beings. What if Victoria was having a liaison? She’d been in mourning for many years. Would the people expect a king to live without female companionship so long? Women and men were different, of course. No sense comparing kings with queens. God-fearing Christians expected more decorum in a female and that was that.

Glenelg’s villagers could never comprehend the subtle complexities of human nature, the passions that drove some against reason and upbringing. The worst sins he heard in the confessional were vexations with a spouse, impatience with a wayward child, or perhaps envy at a neighbor’s richer catch or crop. These contemporary times couldn’t compare with the late forties and early fifties. Hugh had never questioned his role during those terrible years, with blight on the potato, children starving, and landlords exiling tenants in favor of sheep.

But would God never ask anything else of him? For the last twenty years he’d done little more than perform Mass in a half-empty church.

Lethargy sapped his strength. He rested his forehead on his folded hands. “Breathe into me, Holy Spirit, attract my heart, Holy Spirit, that I may love only what is holy—”

Hesitant footsteps and the swish of a woman’s skirts interrupted his gloomy thoughts.

Although he knew the voices and sins of every one of his parishioners, he didn’t move, in case some penitent wished to enter the confessional in anonymity. Someone no doubt felt compelled to confess gluttony because she’d enjoyed an extra helping of fish or had indulged in unkind gossip.

Whoever it was, she stopped and waited. Hugh bowed his head, crossed himself, and stood.

A shocked breath escaped him. His sight degenerated into leaping spots and his eardrums hummed. Hannah Stewart Lawton stood before him, washed in varied color from the stained glass window. A dead woman.

“Father?” Her timid voice broke the spell. No, Hannah hadn’t returned from death. This was Morrigan, Hannah’s daughter.

“Father Drummond?” she repeated.

He smiled. “You gave me a start, my dear. For a moment I thought your mother was standing before me! You are so like her.”

“I’m sorry.” She held her hands clasped together in a tightly clenched manner that alarmed him.

“Don’t apologize, you have no control over it. I’ve been hoping you would visit. Come away to my rectory. How is our wee Olivia?”

Before he could arm himself against it, the part of his brain he’d muzzled these last forty years thought,
Her mouth is formed for kissing.

“She’s well. Could I speak to you, Father?”

He thrust away his disgusting fancies and led her to his sitting room without another word, gesturing her over to the comfortable old armchair by the fire.

“Tea, m’lady?”

“No, thank you.”

She stared into the corner for such a long while he wondered if she ever would speak.

“I’m not of your faith,” she said at last. “I hope I’m not breaking some rule in coming here like this.”

“Is something troubling you?”

“I’ve been reading your… the Bible.” She glanced at her hands, encased in black leather gloves that looked as soft as butter. “Trying to learn what’s expected of us.”

“You could choose worse literature.”

“I’ve broken your… the commandments. I feel I’ve sinned. I don’t want my child to suffer because of anything I have done.”

He curbed the urge to smile. “And what have you done?” Some small transgression must have migrated wildly out of proportion.

“I got myself with child when I should not have, didn’t I, and trapped Curran, giving him no choice but to marry me, and me an innkeeper’s daughter.”

He shoved away another unwelcome thought about how tempted Curran must have been. “Fornication is a sin, but all too common. If you feel true penance, I can absolve you—”

“I hated my father,” she said as though he hadn’t spoken. “And never thought about what my hate did to him, not until after he was dead and I had a child of my own.” Lower, she added, “I would die to protect Olivia. I would kill.” Her hands fisted in her lap. “Such fear comes over me; I fear she’ll get sick. I fear her dying. If she did I swear I’d kill myself so I can hold her hand when she goes wherever it is folk go when they die. Even if I have to stop at the entrance into Heaven, at least I’ll have gone with her that far. And if the dead don’t go anywhere, we can be buried together.”

A surprising rush of tears raked the back of his eyelids. “Through the years I’ve learned there is no love on earth comparable to a mother’s. Do you believe this love is a sin? It isn’t. Killing yourself, aye, that is. But loving? God created that love in you, and it moves my heart mightily.” Gently, he said, “I want to help.”

Light from the fire glinted in her eyes. “I should be alone, but Curran, Curran should be happy.” She rubbed at a fine set of worry-lines in her forehead. “I suspect he’ll come to hate me in the end, and I don’t blame him. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining his life, and Olivia’s.”

Why did she believe she should be alone? Hugh shook his head, confused. He had always prided himself on his instinctive wisdom of folk, yet he’d not guessed at the pain this lass was hiding. At her wedding cèilidh she’d looked a little frightened, aye, but happy, no different from any other bride.

Everyone thought Douglas had won. He’d found a way to steal Hannah from Seaghan and make off with her. Hugh had never considered the idea that Douglas’s triumph might end in a curse.

“D’you believe in ghosts, Father?”

Hugh scratched his jaw, considering. “I’ve seen things, gods and goddesses floating among these clouds. The rules, the laws of the outside, don’t work, not here, where Time has never quite advanced. I’ve often thought our corner of Scotland is enchanted.”

Memories of those long-gone days sharpened. Everyone eagerly gossiping about that unhappy love triangle, wondering how surly Douglas Lawton managed to win the heart of Hannah Stewart, when they all thought her so loyal and in love with joyous Seaghan. In this mediaeval spot, almost anything could happen— even impossible things. “There are ghosts,” he said. “Faeries too, no doubt, though my superiors wouldn’t approve me saying so.”