Authors: Katharine Ashe
She was neither fortunate nor wise in love. Now affection must be enough.
“Make haste, Rory,” she said to the coachman and pulled her cloak from about her as the door closed. “It will have to be the duke,” she directed at her companion, tugging her hair out of its heavy coils.
“The duke who is an abductor of maidens?” Forty years Constance's senior, a widow, and an aficionado of fermented brews, Eliza tilted her frizzled head. “How adventuresome you are, dear girl.”
“That is all gossip and rumor.” Constance bound her hair into a tail at the nape of her neck. The countryside passed swiftly by. There were few miles from cloth mill to castle. She still had time to snatch a ride before dinner.
Eliza proffered a pile of soft velvet. “You are depending upon your memories of Loch Irvine when you were bairns.”
“I am.” She accepted the clothes eagerly. During her childhood at the castle she had worn skirts suited to riding astride and bodices and sleeves for shooting. Today, however, she had dressed demurely. A lady just up from London could not go ferreting out clues to a horrible mystery looking like a hoyden.
“Boys change when they become men,” Eliza said darkly.
“Not
that
much.” The boy she had known twenty years ago could not possibly have become a monster. “I must discover what happened to those girls.”
“Gossiping with mill workers will not accomplish that.” There was a
tut-tut
quality to her companion's voice.
“But it already has! A man of low appearance ordered a dozen white robes from the mill not a sennight ago, to be delivered to Sir Lorian Hughes at the house he has just let in Edinburgh.” Her fingers worked at the buttons of the gown she had worn to take tea with the villagers. “A
dozen
robes, Eliza. And here is the astonishing detail: half of them were to be suitable for men, the other half for women.”
Eliza's birdlike hands folded in her lap. “Sir Lorian Hughes needn't intend the robes for a devil-worshipping society at which they sacrifice maidens, child,” she said primly. “He might intend to throw a masquerade.”
“We shall see.” She lifted her hips to tug the gown down her legs. “I must find a husband. Quickly.”
“You should have remained in London. Candidates dropped from the trees when you walked through the park.”
“When I left London I did not yet know I needed a husband, of course.”
“I cannot believe that you actually intend to marry Loch Irvine in order to enter a secret society.”
“Well, I cannot enter it
un
married.”
“Your devotion to subterfuge is impressive,” Eliza said archly now. “I think you are enjoying this horrid mystery.”
“I do not find pleasure in tragedy.” A fortnight earlier she had held Cassandra Finn's mother in her arms and felt her heaving sobs against her breast, and she had recognized that grief. She had wept like that when she was fourteen and her mother disappeared. She had not been able to save her mother. But if Cassandra Finn and Maggie Poultney were still alive, she would save them. And if memories of her mother weren't sufficient, her own fresh scars would compel her to rescue innocent girls from danger at the hands of a villain who hid behind a polished veneer.
“I must remove to Edinburgh and begin investigating.” Only twelve miles distant from town, Castle Read might as well be twelve thousand.
Eliza's lips pursed. “The Edinburgh policeâ”
“Have not done enough. I can.” For five years in London she had performed her role as the reclusive Scottish duke's heiress with perfection: riding decorously, flirting subtly, gossiping cleverly, all for the sake of cozening information from others to help her fellow agents in the Falcon Club. She would do whatever she must now too, this time alone. Here, amidst rich green hills bathed in stripes of mist and sunshine, she was, after all, accustomed to solitude.
Shaking her head, Eliza assisted her into the wide skirt. “Your father expects you for tea. Dr. Shaw and Libby arrive today.”
“And I am eager to see them. I promise not to be long.”
Eliza lowered her chin. “You are going
there
again, aren't you?”
“Not all the way there.”
“This is not wise, Constance.”
“No one will see me, Eliza.”
“You should have at least brought a suitable shirt. This shift is insufficient to cover your bosom. You look a fright. An heiress should not go about the countryside as you do.”
Constance laughed. “It warms me, darling, that you take more care in my appearance than in my safety.”
“Impertinent girl.”
“And yet for all of these years you have stayed with me,” she said with a grin. “There must be hope for me yet.” Leaning forward, she bussed her companion on the cheek. Then she threw open the carriage door. Rory had brought them along the road directly to the stable block. But even at a distance the impressive mass of Castle Read dwarfed all else. A solid medieval keep of golden brown limestone topped with a dozen pointed turrets of gray slate and fronted by a low forecourt wall, it both beckoned and warned. “Walcome,” it seemed to say, “but anly if ye be allies.”
It was a heathen place. No gardeners cut the lawn. No one touched the rose vines that had gone feral about the forecourt gate. No industrious clippers tamed the ivy that snaked up the fortress's walls.
She adored it. It was solid and strong and wild all at once, and she had missed it.
The carriage continued to the forecourt where Eliza would disembark, and Constance entered the stable. Her skin was too hot, as though it had sucked all the heat within her and threw it to the surface to battle the late-winter air. But inside the stable fashioned of ancient stone, her mind quieted. At the sound of her footsteps, her horse turned its head.
“Good afternoon, Elfhame.” She stroked the mare's milky brow, then saddled and bridled her.
A short canter brought her to the river and another thirty
minutes to the apex of the hill from which she could glimpse the hulking pinkish tower of Haiknayes Castle, present home of Gabriel Hume, the Duke of Loch Irvine.
The Devil's Duke.
All over the countryside, at tea tables and in shops, gossip boiled: The enigmatic Duke of Loch Irvine was the head of a secret society. A selective society to which only rich and wellborn married couples received invitations. A society dedicated to the Dark Arts. And in this society's lair somewhere in Edinburgh, the practitioners of this evil religion sacrificed maidens.
The police had yet to solve the mysteries of the disappearances in September and December of Cassandra Finn and Maggie Poultney: unwed girls of marriageable age, only Maggie's bloodied cloak discovered upon the bank of the loch near the Duke of Loch Irvine's Edinburgh residence, and marked with a six-pointed star that bore three symbols: a flame, a wave, and a mountain peak. The same unique star was carved into the lintel over the main portal of Haiknayes Castle.
Some whispered that during his years sailing the seas as captain in the Royal Navy, the mysterious Duke of Loch Irvine had become a practitioner of native magicks, a worshipper of Satan, a fiend. The villagers that Constance had spoken with at the cloth mill that morning had called him
Christsondy
: the Devil.
But she would not find answers staring at his castle. She must meet the duke again and learn the truth of it from him.
Shadows cut swaths across the hills as she walked Elfhame home. She would tell her father that she intended to move to the house in Edinburgh for the spring. After allowing her to live with only Eliza in London for years, he would not deny her.
In the stable, she gave her mare into the stable hand's care.
“They be some fine animals visitin', my leddy. I'll gladly volunteer to put that bay through his paces.”
“Have Dr. Shaw and Miss Shaw arrived already, Fingal?” She whipped off her hat and gloves. “Am I that late?”
“No' the doctor, my leddy.” Fingal gestured along the stable. “These belong to the gentlemen visitors.”
“Gentlemen?” She moved toward the unfamiliar horses.
And her steps faltered.
The two animals in the stall did not belong to Dr. John Shaw or his daughter. Beside a pretty chestnut stood a bay with such a rich brown coat that in the shadows it looked nearly black. It was gorgeous, with long legs and a powerful neck, ears pointed forward, and intelligent eyes watching her. She recognized it. Its beauty and breeding made it unique. And she recognized its tack. Its bridle of supple leather was surmounted by a brow band imprinted with two black, crossed swords. The saddle was of finely tooled leather, with holsters for the scabbards of two swords sewn carefully onto either side so that the weapons would not disturb the animal's gait.
She knew this animal because eight months earlier she had spent three silent hours tucked into the corner of a public stable in London watching itâwatching, and waiting for its master to return and claim it. When he had, he had settled into that saddle with the ease and grace of a warrior.
Cheeks hot and hands unsteady, she swept the train of her riding skirt into the crook of her arm and left the stable. The castle forecourt was empty, but two dozen windows stared down at her like eyes that seemed as shocked as her frantic pulse. She crossed the threshold and pretended not to hold her breath.
In the hall, her father's voice came down from the balustrade, quiet and firm, stone wrapped in felt.
“Castle Read was built in the early fourteenth century as a fortress, with little concern for comfort. Each of my predecessors made additions to it. There are plenty of guest rooms now. I shall have my housekeeper make up the finest for you, my lord.”
“Terribly decent of you to take me in uninvited.” A man's voice, light, jaunty. “I'm much obliged.”
Not . . .
not him
.
Air seeped back into Constance's lungs.
Then deserted her entirely.
Upon the stairs beyond the chandelier descended two feet encased in knee-high boots the color of earth. Two legs clad in leather breeches that shaped the muscle like carved stone. Two hands, ungloved, strength apparent in the sinews. Two shoulders to which she had once clung like sunshine to a stained-glass window. And one long, steel blade upon which the remaining light of day seemed to gather.
Then his eyesâeyes that captured a hundred ancient incantations and turned them into magic, that had once thrust her world upside down. Now he turned them upon her. How the touch of a man's gaze could seize everything inside her and lock it into paralysis, she had never understood. Certainly not then. And not now.
She stared.
Behind him, her father and the other man appeared on the stairs.
“There is my daughter now. Constance, I required your presence here for tea. But I see you have been riding.”
“I have been to the ridge to see Haiknayes.” She hardly knew how she spoke.
“I see.” Displeasure sat upon his tongue like a cockerel. “Constance, I present to you Lord Michaels and Mr. Sterling. Perhaps you and his lordship have crossed paths in London.”
They had not. She had intentionally avoided him.
She curtsied. “My lord.”
A dimple dented Lord Michaels's cheek as he bent at the waist. He was an attractive man, nattily dressed in a nip-waist coat and shiny Hessians, as though he weren't now in the Scottish countryside but paying morning calls in London.
“Truly delighted, my lady. I hope you don't mind that I have imposed myself on your hospitality.”
“Of course not.”
“Do tell us,” he said, “how was your viewing of Haiknayes Castle?”
“From a distance only. Are you acquainted with it?”
“Rather, with the duke himself. In fact, I had reason to pay a call on him at the Christmas holidays only a few months ago, at Port Leith.”
During the Christmas holidays Maggie Poultney had gone missing.
“Did you?” she said.
“Yes, indeed. He's a capital fellow.” But his smile faded.
Then she must turn her gaze to
him
.
Hand resting on the guard of his sword, he bowed. “Good day, ma'am.”
Hot brandy.
The same. She had remembered it well. He had changed little. Six years ago his face had been perfect to her, the features strong and handsome. Now a slender scar ran the length of its right side, making a slash in his cheek along the line of short, neat whiskers, to his jaw.
She could not curtsy. The velvet train lodged in her elbow felt weighed in stone and her legs were foolishly unsteady. Quite acutely she felt now cool air upon the skin of her neck where she should have donned a shirt. But he did not look at her neck. He looked into her eyes, as he had all those years ago. She had never met a man before or since who looked at her like Frederick Evan Sterling did, as though he cared only for what he found in her gaze.
She dragged her attention to Lord Michaels. “What brings you to Scotland so soon again, my lord?”
“Truth be told, I am hanging on to my cousin's coattails.”
“I have engaged Mr. Sterling as a fencing instructor,” her father said.
“My cousin wields a dashed clever blade.” Lord Michaels pointed a smile at the man Constance had spent six years not trying very hard to forget.
“But you know how to fence, Father.” Every word crawled over the next with awkward haste.
“The lessons are not for me,” he said without pleasure in his eyes.
“Oh.” She felt foolish, her cheeks a flaming apple orchard and her tongue useless. Gone was the London belle who flirted with ease. Gone, the lady of fashion sought after by hostesses from Mayfair to Kensington. Two minutes beneath the gaze of Frederick Evan Sterling, and she was again an impetuous girl struggling to steady her frantic pulse. It didn't help that her father had not warned her of this. But he would have no reason to think she needed warning. No one but Eliza had ever knownâno one except Jack, and Jack was dead.