Wicked at Heart (31 page)

It is too
late.

Gwyneth stared
at him for a moment, the awful truth breaking over her in crushing waves of
pain; then she bent her head to her hands and let the deep, racking sobs
consume her.

~~~~

Jack Clayton
roared and bashed his way through the howling mob that was bottlenecking
outside the captain's quarters in his desperation to get inside.  Blows fell on
his head and on his beefy shoulders, but he did not feel the pain, only a
blinding, crazed need to get to the marquess.  Trained to respect his betters,
unswerving in his loyalty to those he served, he gripped the stock of his
musket in both hands and used the weapon like a pike, driving it into a spine
here, the back of a skull there, making halting but steady progress toward the
cabin.  His face was grim, but the bodies that fell beneath his stabbing,
swinging blows were no longer individuals, no longer human, just part of a
surging, bloodthirsty mass of moving faces, writhing arms, screaming voices,
crazed eyes.  His friend Al Cavendish was back to back with him, and together
the two guards, now joined by their mates as they too barreled their way
through the fracas, fought their way toward the broken, open door.

Out of the
corner of his eye Clayton caught a glimpse of that sniveling coward Radley, his
face contorted not so much with terror but with crazed excitement as he ran
back from the rail where he'd thrown Lady Simms overboard.

"Watch it,
Jack!" yelled Cavendish, and Clayton hurled himself sideways, colliding
with an enraged prisoner who came at him with a bloody knife.  He jerked the
musket savagely up, clipping the wretch under the jaw and instantly breaking
his neck, and the fellow slid bonelessly to the deck, there to be trampled by
hundreds of running feet.

"Get back,
you bastards!" Clayton roared, driving the butt of his musket into the
shoulders of the men who blocked the door as he fought his way forward. 
"Get the hell back!"

Just off to his
right he saw the young marine Paul Mattson clinging to a nearby shroud and
aiming a blunderbuss at the knot of prisoners who pushed and shoved at the
cabin door as they cheered on whatever grisly horror was going on within. 
Flames shot from the weapon in one deafening explosion, and the prisoners fell
like a row of dominoes.

Howling in rage,
Clayton vaulted over their bodies and into the cabin.  Men stampeded toward and
past him in a wave of humanity gone mad, desperate now only to escape the
cabin, the ship.  Somewhere outside, the blunderbuss roared again, screams
filling the air.  Clayton chopped and clubbed his way through the advancing
mob, through which he could just see glimpses of Lord Morninghall's overturned
table and chairs, the rug, and there, on the deck, a hand, a shoe, a white
shirt soaked in blood —
oh, shit
— before the sight was blocked once
more by the massive exodus.

Almost there
,
he thought, and as the last of the prisoners tried to charge past him, he saw
that one of them was the troublemaker Armand Moret, his hands stained with
blood, his mouth an insane grin of triumph in his bony skull.  Without pity,
thought, or care, Clayton brought his musket to full cock, jerked the weapon
up, and aiming it point-blank at the Frenchman's chest, fired.

The explosion
rocked the cabin, obliterating the sickening thud of Moret's body hitting the
deck, the sound of china crashing from a nearby cupboard, the maelstrom just
outside.  For a brief, awful moment the cabin went as still as the tomb.  Then,
as the smoke cleared, Clayton, coughing, tossed down his musket and charged
forward, knowing he was already too late.

He saw the
upended legs of the table, the overturned swivel chair, a lost shoe, and there,
lying facedown in a widening pool of bright red blood —

Lord
Morninghall.

The marquess was
completely still, and there was a dagger sticking out of his back..

Clayton turned
away with a pent-up exhalation of defeat.  He passed a shaky hand over his
face, wiping away the sweat and the grime and the sight of the carnage before
him, and met Cavendish's horrified eyes.

"Oh,
shit
,"
he said again.

~~~~

The bedroom was
dark and quiet as a tomb, shadows reaching into the very corners.  Only the
window and the cushioned seat below were illuminated by the faint moonlight
sifting down through the heavy, fast-moving clouds that filed in from the sea. 
No candle burned on the bedside table; only embers glowed in the hearth.  A cool
breeze moved through the room, sighing in from the window like the breath of a
spirit, lifting the gossamer white curtains on an invisible hand then letting
them drift down over the bent head of the woman who sat huddled on the seat
below them.

An untouched cup
of tea had gone cold on the sill beside her, and her still-damp hair was caught
at the nape of her neck in a black velvet ribbon.  Her knees were drawn up
under her chin, her arms anchored about them.  Through tragic eyes Gwyneth
gazed out the window at the distant harbor, silent and still beneath the
clouds, where she could see the prison ship lit up in a blaze of light.

It hurt to look
at it, yet she could not look away.  Out there in the distance, beyond the dark
shapes of the hedges beneath her window, beyond the newly budding roses and the
crowded brick houses that fell away toward the black vista of the harbor, she
could see the lights of boats carrying various naval officials to and from the
prison hulk.

She wondered
which boat had carried Morninghall's body away from the carnage, and pressed
the damp handkerchief to her nose, the back of her throat aching with tears.

They came
anyhow, trickling silently down her cheeks.

Her rescuer —
his name escaped her, though she thought it was something like Kiernan or
Connor, something like that, something Irish, it didn't matter, really — had
landed her safely on shore, then promptly disappeared into the frantic press of
rushing naval officers and seamen, all running to and fro in their haste to
respond to the alarm out in the harbor.  No one had paid her any attention.  No
one could help her.  No one had answered her pleas to be taken out to the
prison ship, to Damon.  She had finally been escorted to some room in some
naval office, questioned, interviewed, and told to wait.  She had sat dazedly
on a bench for God knew how long before a gentle hand had touched her shoulder
and she had looked up to see the compassionate face of Maeve, Lady Falconer. 
Her friend had promptly ushered her out of the crowded building, into her own
private carriage, and, as the sun began to sink from the sky and the clouds to
sweep in from the sea, brought her home.

The rest of the
evening had passed in a dull haze of numbness.  Brief vignettes of it hung
suspended in her mind.  She remembered Maeve murmuring something to her sister
as they'd entered the little house; she remembered Rhiannon enfolding her in
her arms, leading her up the stairs and to the hot bath the maid was already
drawing; she remembered the hot tears slipping down her cheeks and pattering
softly upon the carpet as Rhiannon quietly stripped the wet clothes from her
trembling body.

"He was
worth saving, Rhiannon," she'd cried brokenly as she'd sat in the warm tub
and bent her head to her hands in grief.  Her little sister had said nothing,
only squeezing warm, peach-scented bubbles out of a sponge and over her back. 
"I saw the goodness in him, Rhiannon, the compassion, saw it at last, and
now it is too late and I can't see anything but his arm, his hand, falling
still, over and over and over again . . ."

"I
know," Rhiannon had whispered.  The water had sounded sad and lonely as it
trickled back into the tub.

"He didn't
even have a chance . . . no, he had only
one
chance, and he
gave it
to me
."

"Hush,
Gwyn.  It will be all right."

"He's dead,
Rhiannon.  It's not all right."

Rhiannon had retreated
into silence.  Nothing had remained but the broken trickle of the water,
sluicing back into the tub.

Dead.

Now, the
curtains lifted in the breeze once more, whispering over Gwyneth's face and the
back of her neck.  She wondered if Morninghall's spirit was in the wind, if
this was his way of coming to say good-bye.

Her eyes filled
once more, and she shut them on a great, trembling breath.  The tears leaked
silently from her eyes, ran brokenly down her cheeks.

Damon.

She wanted the
numbness back, all of it, not these flashes of agony.

She remembered
stepping out of the bath, Rhiannon placing a thick, plush wrapper around her
shuddering body and leading her toward the dull glow of the fire.  She
remembered sitting there on the stone hearth, staring into the embers as the
last light faded into gray beyond her window.  And as the day died, and the night
out there went black and one by one, the stars came out, Gwyneth told herself it
made no sense to be sitting here sobbing over the death of someone she didn't
love.  But, perhaps, she had indeed loved Morninghall, loved the man he'd been
on his way to becoming, and it was her deepest and most agonizing regret that
she had not had the chance to tell him so.  He would have laughed, of course,
he might have done something rude and impossible to try to convince her there
was nothing about him worth loving, but there would have been that brief flash
of vulnerability across his cold gaze, that sudden, fleeting proof that he was
indeed worthy of, and desperate for, that which he deserved no less than anyone
else.

Love.

And now it was
too late.

Dead.

Gwyneth sniffled
and rested her brow in her hands, her hair splaying around her fingertips. 
Outside, the stars made hard pinpricks of light in the gaps of moving cloud
cover, here one moment, gone the next.  Wind rustled through the lilac bushes,
through the tops of the nearby trees; a lonely, mournful, empty sound that tore
at her heart.  From downstairs came the low murmur of Maeve's and Rhiannon's
voices, the faint scents of cooking meat and freshly baked bread; from
somewhere out in the night came the distant, approaching clatter of a horse's hoofbeats. 
The fire popped in the hearth, dying, and again the wind came, keening through
the trees and making them bend and sigh and whisper.

Gwyneth sat
motionless, staring with empty eyes across the still and darkened harbor.

"Damon."

The wind pushed
harder, making the treetops scrape against the low clouds.

"Oh, my
magnificent, wonderful, Damon," she whispered, crumpling the damp
handkerchief in her hand.  "How hard you fought against the sunlight in
yourself, the goodness."  She leaned the side of her head against the
window sill, already damp with her tears.  "God will have seen that
goodness, Damon.  If I saw it, certainly He, who knows the secrets in all of
our hearts, will have seen it too.  You may believe otherwise, but I know He'll
take you into heaven.  I know He will keep you safe and sound, until someday —"
 A bitter, choking sob rose up in her throat and she pressed the handkerchief
to her face to contain it, unable to continue on.

The tears were
flowing freely now.  Out in the night, the lonely traveler was closer now, the
rattle and squeak of a carriage, the sound of shod hooves against cobblestone
passing by on the street outside the house.  The world went on as usual,
heedless of the life that had ended only hours before, a life that had been cut
short before it ever had had the chance to know itself, to realize its full and
powerful potential, to laugh and love and be loved in turn.

When she came up
for air, she couldn't hear the horse and carriage anymore.  She realized that
they must have stopped just outside her house, and as she raised her head and
brought the wet hankie from her face, she heard the rumble of a deep, male
voice downstairs.

Two male voices,
interspersed with Maeve's and her sister's.

They have
come to tell me he is dead.  I cannot go down there; I cannot face this.  Please,
God, give me strength as I pray you gave it to Damon during those last, awful
moments.

And the strength
did not fail her.  It never had, and it did not now.  With an almost mechanical
resolution, Gwyneth wiped the tears away, forced her chin up, and was just
changing into a simple, dark dress when she heard her sister's light tread
coming up the stairs.  There was a soft, hesitant knock on the door.

"Gwyn?"

"Come in."

The door opened
slowly, revealing first a blinding bar of light in the hall beyond, then
Rhiannon's willowy silhouette.  Gwyneth blinked against the sudden brightness
and turned away.  She bent her head so that her sister would not see she had
been crying.

Rhiannon came forward
quietly and took her sister's cold hands.

"Gwyn,
Admiral Sir Graham Falconer and the Reverend Peter Milford are downstairs. 
They wish to speak with you."

For a long
moment Gwyneth could not move.  The official confirmation was here at last.  An
admiral and a pastor, the pallbearers of death.  One the representative of the
navy, the other of God.  She took a deep, steadying breath, straightened her shoulders,
and nodding once, followed her sister down the stairs.

It was the
longest, and hardest, walk of her life.

Chapter
19

Blinking in the
light, Gwyneth composed herself and walked quietly into the parlor.

The heavy drapes
were drawn at the windows.  A fire flickered in the hearth, snapping and
crackling quietly.  She saw Mattie, sprawled on his side before it, and then, a
circle of people sitting in chairs, all engaged in sober conversation, their
tones low and respectful.