Corey McFadden (29 page)

Well, let her prance around all she wants, he thought, picking up the shielded lantern from his desk and following her silently into the hall. As long as she doesn’t mess things up. And now he knew how to keep her arrogance in check. After all, they were in this together—murderers both.

They made their way on the carpeted floor of the hallway, disappearing down the wooden back stairs. Thank God the stairs did not creak. He had deliberately gone up and down these stairs several times in the last few days to make sure their tread would not give them away. Not that he was so terribly worried about noise. The servants slept on the top floor. All their rooms faced the fells, the other side of the large attic being devoted to storage. And the only others in the house were Joanna in Sir Giles’s room and the brats up on the third floor. Joanna’s bedroom on the second floor faced the fells as well, so she would hear nothing, and he had long since dismissed the children from consideration. Children as a rule were heavy sleepers, and he had never heard any household complaint about Emma and Tom being up in the night.

They left through the garden door. The hinges, oiled this morning, were silent. They made their way down to the beach, where Hawton flashed his lantern twice. Then they waited in the dark. The light on the water had disappeared, as planned. The ship was to show a light only for a few minutes, which was why he and Eleanor had waited so long, watching upstairs so as not to miss it. They stood in silence on the beach, straining for a sight of the boat. The ship itself would moor out in the water, guided by a lantern placed earlier by Hawton up under the bluff, visible to the sea but not to the house. A skiff would bring the cargo onto the beach.

At last there was the flash of an oar in the water, then the rhythmic sound of rowing. Something loomed in the black water. Hawton and Eleanor made their way to the water’s edge as the shape of the skiff appeared from the dark. Hawton ran forward, and in silence the boat was beached.

Hawton motioned Eleanor to him. He could see a number of small forms huddled in the boat, covered by some sort of tarpaulin. Two large men, heavily swathed so nothing showed but their eyes, jumped over the sides of the boat. Speaking not a word, they began to pull the girls out, one by one, dumping them on the beach like the cargo they were. The girls appeared dazed and sleepy. They sat up, blinking, but it was clear they were confused. The lantern Hawton had set down gave only a seam of light from its shutters.

Five bundles now sat on the ground. One of the men passed an oilskin packet to Hawton who immediately stashed it under his shirt. Eleanor, he noted, was watching him like a hawk. Without a word exchanged, the two men pushed the boat back into the water and disappeared into the dark.

“Get them up carefully, Eleanor,” Hawton hissed in the blackness.

Eleanor began helping the huddled forms to stand. Several swayed on their feet but managed to stay upright, blinking in confusion. Hawton could make out little of their faces but he could see tangled, dirty hair and smell unwashed clothing and bodies.

“We’ll walk a little ways down the beach,” he whispered when the girls were all standing. “I want everyone to be silent. It wouldn’t do to wake up the neighborhood.” He bent down and picked up the lantern, lifting the shutter that faced toward his cottage, angling it away from the house. There was little of the stretch between here and the house that could be seen from the windows, but he was taking as few risks as he could get away with.

“I want me da!” came a shriek in the dark. “Me da said I could come home if I wanted to. I want to go home!” the little voice ended in a long wail.

“Shut her up!” hissed Hawton furiously as Eleanor bolted toward the sound. But the girl saw her coming. Sick to her stomach during most of the voyage, the child had kept little down and had not drunk the tea laced with laudanum. She had slept all day and had awakened full of the energy of fear and despair. With a scream, the little form turned and ran, shrieking, down the beach.

* * * *

Emma was restless. One of her back teeth was trying to come in, a large one that ached a bit as it pushed its way through the tender gum. Her curtains were drawn back the way she liked them. Her bed lay near the window, and she often contented herself with counting stars as she fell asleep. There were two that were particularly bright tonight, and she knew they were Mama and Papa, looking after her and Tom.

Things would be all right now. This house which had been so cold and dark when they had first come was now bright with love and laughter. Emma had walked beside Joanna in the wedding and Tom had carried the ring. And while there would never be Mama and Papa again, at least they would be a family now, where they would be loved and looked after. Aunt Joanna was the very next best thing to Mama, and even Uncle Giles, whom Emma had thought to be cold and distant when they first came, spent a great deal of time now playing with them. And Aunt Joanna had said they would not need to hire a governess. She said she enjoyed their company too much to turn over their teaching to anyone else.

Emma wiggled her toes against the sheets and smiled to herself in the dark. Aunt Joanna. It sounded so nice.

And that other aunt, the one who hated her and Tom so—Aunt Eleanor. She was going away, a long way away, and they wouldn’t have to see her anymore.

Suddenly she heard a scream, faint but unmistakable. It seemed to come from the beach. Emma froze. She was not a timid child, but she knew about the banshees that cried in the dark and lured small children to their dooms. There it was again!

In an instant, Emma’s feet hit the floor and she dashed to the door. Fumbling with the handle in the dark, she managed to get the door open. Aunt Joanna had moved downstairs to Uncle Giles’s room after the wedding, but with little feet pounding on the carpet and down the stairs, Emma made it to her door in no time. She did not bother to knock, throwing Joanna’s door open.

* * * *

Joanna came awake at the commotion at her door. “What is it?” she called softly, tamping down a flash of apprehension.

“Aunt Joanna,” came a sobbing whisper. “I heard banshees down on the beach.”

“Come here, darling,” Joanna called. She reached over and turned up the wick which she had trimmed on her lamp before going to bed. The lamp put out a faint glow and revealed Emma, white-faced, standing in the doorway in a nightgown and bare feet. Joanna sat up and patted the bed next to her. With a bound, Emma was beside her.

“Now, Emma, tell me what you heard,” said Joanna gently, pulling the covers up around them both. The house had taken on a chill in the middle of the night with the fires long-since banked. “You know there are no such things as banshees, don’t you, darling? It’s a tale made up to frighten children and keep them in their beds after dark.”

“But I heard two screams down on the beach, I really did,” Emma stated with absolute conviction. She was not going to allow herself to be lumped in with silly, frightened children, and she knew what she had heard.

“Shall we go up to your room and listen, sweetheart? Perhaps it was just the gulls fighting over some bit of food.” Joanna pulled the covers back and stepped from the bed. Actually, she was fairly certain that gulls did not forage at night, but then she hadn’t made much of a study of the creatures’ nocturnal habits. She quickly wrapped her dressing gown about her and stepped into her slippers. “Come on, sweetheart, I don’t want you to catch cold with no slippers on.” Joanna put her arm around the little shoulders and shepherded the child from the room. She must have had a bad dream, and if Joanna could show her there was nothing to be frightened of, she would likely go right back to sleep.

Once in Emma’s room, Joanna found the child’s dressing gown and slippers and helped her put them on. Then they went to stand in front of the window. Joanna opened it a bit so any sounds would be more easily heard. She wanted Emma to hear the silence of the night, broken only by the dull sound of the sea.

“Let’s be very quiet, Emma,” said Joanna in a whisper. “We mustn’t wake up Tom.” She had glanced at the open door that connected the children’s rooms, but had decided against shutting it. She knew from experience it had a dreadful squeak.

For a moment all was silence. The night was pitch dark, all the better to see a million stars winking bright.

“There, Emma,” said Joanna, pointing. “Do you see the Pleiades, that small group nearly overhead? That means it’s just after midnight. They are called the Seven Sisters, although you can only see six of them. That’s because one is so little she must go to bed when it gets dark, like all good little girls.”

Emma giggled and buried her face in the soft cotton of Joanna’s dressing gown. “Let’s go back to bed, shall we? Everything is quiet and there is nothing to be frightened of, darling.” Joanna turned to lead Emma gently back to her bed.

Suddenly a shriek rent the dark. Clutching Emma to her, Joanna turned back to the window and peered out in confusion, but could see nothing in the blackness. She could feel Emma trembling beneath her grasp.

“You see, Aunt Joanna, I did hear a scream,” Emma could not resist saying. “It does sound like a banshee, doesn’t it?”

“No, precious, it sounds like someone is hurt or frightened. You get in bed and I’ll go outside and check, all right? Then I’ll come back and tell you what it was, as soon as I’ve solved the mystery.”

“Can’t I go with you?” came the anxious little voice.

“Heavens, no, child. The beach is no place for you to be at this hour of the night. I’ll come back in a few minutes, I promise.” Joanna lifted the girl into the bed, aware that she would not get in of her own accord. She was troubled by the scream. Queen’s Hall was too remote to attract any local traffic. Perhaps one of the servants had gone out in the night, but if that were so, she had found something that terrified her, from the sound of that scream.

Joanna dropped a quick kiss on Emma’s brow, then hurried back to her own room where she donned shoes and threw a cape over her dressing gown.

She made her way as quickly as she could down the hallway and to the kitchen, where she took an outdoor lamp from the sideboard and lit it from the embers of the fire that still smoldered in the large kitchen hearth. She let herself out the kitchen door and stood staring into the dark.

* * * *

“Emma!” a fierce little voice whispered in the dark of the girl’s bedroom. “Emma!” it insisted.

“I’m here, Tom. Is that you?” came another voice from the direction of the bed.

“Tom,” answered the voice from the door.

“Come here, Tom!” called Emma, glad of an ally. “Look out the window with me and see if you can see Aunt Joanna.” Emma crept again from her bed and ushered her brother over to the window which Joanna, in her haste, had left cracked open.

“Auntie outside?” asked Tom.

“Yes. Did you hear those screams? Aunt Joanna went to see who was screaming.”

As they watched they saw Joanna’s form, lit by the lantern she carried, cross the bluff and disappear down the path to the beach. Still they stood in the window, each child remembering what fate could do to those they loved.

* * * *

All was quiet. Joanna walked down the path that would take her to the beach, stopping once when she thought she heard a scrabbling sound near her. But when she searched with the lamp in the tall grass around her she could see nothing. She reached the foot of the path, well below the house. Ahead of her stretched the white of the beach, barely glimmering in the faint light of the distant stars. The sea was black. The earth could have ended right there, for all she could see. Lifting the lamp high, she peered left and right down the beach. There was nothing.

Then she heard a noise and looked up. A figure was trudging toward her, carrying a heavy burden from the looks of it. As he came closer, her eyes found his in the white blur of his face. Hawton! They held for a second, eyes locked. Then she looked at what he carried. It was a girl, a child it seemed, bleeding from a great gash on her forehead. He continued toward her, breathing heavily with his burden. He smiled, then bent over to put the child down, and Joanna relaxed, starting forward to see if she could help. A split second later a shriek tore from her throat as his powerful arms wrapped about her. A large hand clapped itself over her mouth. She struggled, but to no avail. As the hand was lifted, a cloth was pulled across her mouth. Within seconds, something dark and woolen had been thrown over her head and she could feel herself being bound tightly. Her legs were left free, but she was pushed to the ground where she lay stunned, barely able to breathe through the heavy cloth that covered her face.

* * * *

Emma and Tom turned stricken eyes on each other as they heard the high, bitten-off cry. It had to be Aunt Joanna, coming as it did from a place close to where they had seen her descend to the beach.

“Get shoes on and a coat!” hissed Emma. Tom nodded and ran for his room. In seconds he was back, his little feet stuffed into sturdy boots, his coat on but not buttoned. Emma, too, had donned her boots and had put her small cloak about her.

“Let’s go out the kitchen door, Tom. Don’t make any noise and stay with me. We won’t take a light, so it’ll be dark. Are you all right?”

“Help Auntie. Let’s go!” whispered Tom urgently. He grabbed Emma’s hand and they ran for the door.

Once outside, Emma pulled him close and held his hand as they ran for the path that led away from the house. Crouching low, making hardly a sound, the children crept down through the long grass to the beach. They could see nothing in the dark. When they got to the bottom, Emma put out her hand and halted Tom, listening. When she was sure she could hear nothing, she motioned him forward again.

They had not gone far when Emma stumbled over something large in the dark, emitting a slight cry as she fell. A low moan came from the object, and both children started up in horror, scrambling away. The object was all blackness, just a large bulk, but Emma could see legs at one end and as her eyes peered in the darkness, she could see shoes. Shoes she recognized.