Witch Hunt (Witch Finder 2) (27 page)

‘Let him go.’ She spoke to Sebastian, not Leadingham. ‘Let him go, and I’ll come with you.’

‘Do you swear?’

‘Yes.’

He released the spell and Luke fell to the wet ground, his head lolling painfully. Rosa ran to him, kneeling in the muck and silt of the alley by his side, but before she could do more than smooth his rain-drenched hair back from his forehead she heard Sebastian’s voice, hard and sharp as a gunshot.

‘Touch him again and he dies. Now, get back here.’

Slowly, she stood. But she had seen what she wanted to know – Luke was breathing. His colour was fading to normal. He was alive.

‘Come here.’

She went, hating herself for her obedience, but knowing that fine gestures could achieve nothing now.

With an elaborate flourish, Sebastian held open the door of the carriage and bowed.

‘Your carriage awaits, milady.’

Hating him, hating herself, Rosa put one foot on the step. Then she turned back, to Leadingham, still standing implacable at the far end of the alley, his arms crossed in the dim, shifting lamplight.

‘If you kill him,’ she spoke very low, but somehow she was sure her words would reach him, ‘if you kill him, I
will
find you. No matter if it takes me a year, five years or twenty. You will never hear a door bang, but wonder if it’s me, coming for you. You will never hear a creak in the night, or a branch tap on your window, without thinking of my promise. I
will
come for you. And you will suffer ten times whatever you inflict on him.’

‘For Gawd’s sake,’ Leadingham’s voice was full of a biting sarcasm, ‘shut her up, Knyvet. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a crowing hen.’

Sebastian gave a short laugh, and Rosa let herself be pulled into the carriage, and Sebastian slammed the door closed.

The last thing she saw as the carriage pulled away was Luke’s body, lying in the muddy, rain-soaked alley, and Leadingham standing over him, his arms folded, like his murderer.

Rosa stayed at the carriage window as long as possible, until the rain closed behind them. And as the coachman touched his whip to the horses and they picked up their pace along Brick Lane, she could think of only one thing: she had not told Luke that she loved him. And now perhaps he would never know.

I
t was growing light as the carriage swung into the drive at Southing and wound down between the frost-rimed trees to the great house. The rain had turned to snow on their journey down and the carriage wheels made a soft shirring on the freshly fallen flakes that lay undisturbed on the drive.

The horses were tired, their breath rising white in the cold dawn air, but at last they came round the last curve, into sight of Southing itself, still and silent in the white landscape. Last time Rosa had seen it, it was ablaze with light and life, the doors flung wide, footmen lining the drive in serried ranks to receive their visitors. Now the windows were dark and shuttered inside.

Sebastian helped her from the carriage and she walked, in a kind of waking dream, or perhaps a nightmare, across the soft carpet of snow and into that tall pillared porch where just a few weeks before Sebastian had given her a rose made of ice.

She remembered the entrance hall as it had been then, full of footmen and maidservants, the butler standing by, a fire roaring in the grate. It was silent now, the furniture shrouded in white dust sheets, the grate dark. Only a single oil lamp burnt, high in the rafters.

‘Welcome home, my darling,’ Sebastian said as the door closed behind them, and he kissed her left hand, dirty and bloodied as it was. His lips curved in a thin, wry smile. ‘I suppose you thought you were very clever, chopping off your finger?’

‘Not clever, no,’ she whispered. ‘Stupid, for not realizing the truth before.’

‘Alexis found the ring, you know, when he came round after your trick with the bottle. I had it reset.’

‘He’s alive then?’

‘Oh, yes.’ A voice came from behind her. She turned, and there was Alexis, his hands in his pockets, standing in the doorway to the drawing room. His red hair was dishevelled and he was white and sweating. Rosa realized he was drunk, though the sun had barely come up. ‘Were you worried?’

‘Yes! Of course I was!’

‘Touching solicitude, considering you left me for dead in a pool of – what
was
that stuff? It knocked out my magic for a good couple of weeks.’

Rosa shook her head.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what it was. Luke had it . . . Alexis,
please
.’ She stepped close to him, lowering her voice, although there was no hope of Sebastian not overhearing. ‘Please. Think of what you’re doing.
Think
of what this will mean to me. Is it really worth selling your own sister for a post at the Ealdwitan? For God’s sake . . .’ Her voice was pleading, though she hated herself for it. ‘Think – think of what Papa would say!’

‘Him!’ Alexis gave a laugh – not a pleasant one. ‘This whole situation is dear, precious Papa’s fault, if you must know.’

‘What?’

‘If he hadn’t tied up half the estate in your marriage portion . . .’

‘
What?
’

‘You heard me.’

‘B-but we’re penniless. He died and left us penniless.’

‘He left
us
penniless, yes,’ Alexis said. ‘He spent Mama’s dowry, mortgaged the house, sold my future up the river. About the only thing he didn’t touch was your damn marriage portion.’

‘Is that what this is about?’ she cried. ‘Some trust? I’ll sign it over! I’ll
give
it to you, for God’s sake, Alexis, please!’

‘You can’t,’ Alexis said dismissively. ‘Don’t think we didn’t look into that. Mama’s had the best lawyers in the Ealdwitan looking at the terms of that trust. It’s marriage or nothing.’

‘How can that be?’ Rosa said bewildered. ‘What if I’d died a spinster?’

‘Oh, it reverts to you on your thirtieth birthday if you’re still unmarried. But unfortunately we can’t keep afloat that long.’

‘But – but if I marry, it becomes
mine
. How can that benefit you?’

‘If you marry,’ he spelt it out, ‘it becomes your husband’s.’

‘And he has promised it to you.’ Her heart was sinking. She felt like the bottom had fallen from her world. Not just advancement. Not even friendship. But
money
. That was all it came down to. Money Alexis felt should have been his. Money he could not touch, except by betraying his sister.

‘I did not choose this,’ she said, her voice very low. ‘I didn’t ask for this. You’re punishing me for something I had no part in. How could Papa know, Alex? I’m sure he didn’t mean . . . he never meant . . .’

‘I really don’t care what he meant or what he thought.’’ Alexis looked at her and there was something close to disgust in his face, or perhaps it was hate. ‘Father was a fool and a drunk who fell under a carriage when he was soused without a care for his wife and son. And if you’d ever acted like you gave a damn about me, all these years—’

‘As if
I
gave a damn?’ Rosa gasped. She looked at him standing there in his stained britches and waistcoat, his freckled face damp and waxen with drink, and she shook with anger. ‘Alex, you had everything! You had Mama’s love, you had all the money there was, you had clothes and education – there was
nothing
left for me, nothing! Why should I be sorry for you? You condemn Papa for a drunkard – well, look at yourself. Perhaps he tied up that money because he looked at you and refused to throw good money after bad.’

‘He tied up that money,’ Alexis snarled, his spittle striking her face as he enunciated the words so that she could not mistake a single syllable, ‘because he didn’t
love me
. Because all the affection he had was sucked out him by you, you little leech. And you expect me to feel sorry for you because of that? Well, damn you, Rosa. Damn you to hell. Do you think I enjoy crawling to Seb for what should be rightfully mine?’

He turned on his heel and began to walk away, leaving Rosa speechless, almost winded by his vitriol. How long had he and Mama known this, known that she was sitting on the last asset the estate possessed? Since Papa’s death? Before, even?

‘Oh, and by the way,’ Alexis said carelessly as he caught the library door in his hand, ‘you owe me a new horse. Bye, Seb.’

The door slammed and he was gone.

Rosa stared at Sebastian, who gave a shrug and then held out his arm.

‘Shall we?’

‘He’s mad,’ Rosa whispered. ‘You’re mad. Don’t you care how people will see your actions? How can you go from loving me, to trying to kill me, and now to this? To a forced marriage?’

Sebastian smiled.

‘I have to
own
, Rosa. I have to control. My family have always been commanders of one kind and another: generals, judges, bishops, admirals, ministers of parliament – and yes, businessmen and factory owners too. We have fought and killed and subdued to our will – that is what it
means
to be a Knyvet, Rosa. It’s what I was bred to, from my cradle. And when I saw you – in the drawing room at Osborne House, with your eyes so wild and afraid, and your spirit so unquenched, your fire undimmed by the London fog – there was something about you, Rosa. You were so impossibly different from all the women in India, starched and sweating and damp with their ardour and their greed. Beside them you were a little vixen. You were that little wild girl running in the woods at Matchenham, with her hair loose and her skirts ripped. And I knew I had to have you. There are many kinds of possession, Rose. Many ways to tame and silence and control. They are all facets of the same thing.’

He came very close and put his fingers on her neck, where the pulse beat hard and fast beneath her ear and the skin was thin. She felt his breath on her face and smelt the sourness of old cigar smoke, but that was not what made her shudder.

‘Do you know what the French call the act of love?’ His fingers against her throat were hard and cold. She shook her head, trying not to show her fear. He whispered the answer and she felt his breath, cool against her cheek. ‘
Le petit mort
– the little death.’

He would never let her go. It came to her as she stood, rigid with fear, her magic a small, cowed thing deep within. He
could
not let her go, for she would tell the truth about everything. In truth this marriage was a death; a living death. She thought of Sebastian’s mother, a prisoner upstairs. Had this been her fate? Perhaps the madness had come later . . .

She swayed and almost fell, and Sebastian’s arm went around her, carefully, solicitously.

‘Darling, you are tired. Let me show you to your room.’

‘My cell.’

But she followed him up the stairs, her feet shushing on the thick carpet as he turned down corridor after corridor, until they came to a thick baize door, soundproofed with padding. He unlocked it with a key.

‘I thought you would like to get to know my mother. So I have put you in her wing. The rest of the house is shut up, in any case. She is asleep, I believe. But later I hope you will meet. This is your room.’

He opened a door to his right and Rosa looked at the tall windows with their iron bars, at the flowered yellow wallpaper, incongruously cheerful. At the bed. A double bed.

She walked to the window, her heart beating hard, and looked out over the parks and woodland. The bars were laced with spells, she could feel the magic. Oh, just a night or two of rest and her power would be back!

She shut her eyes.

‘Please, I’d like to rest,’ she said, her voice sounding hard in her attempt not to give way to the churning fear inside. ‘If you could leave now.’

‘Of course, my darling. You’re tired. All that travelling . . . Oh, just one more thing,’ Sebastian said, almost carelessly, as he turned to go. ‘Your wedding ring. As I said, I had it reset.’

He reached into his pocket and held up a necklace, a narrow band of filigree gold, shaped like a slender collar, with the ruby burning at its heart.

‘
Fríes-þu!
’ he snapped, and almost before Rosa had realized what was happening, she found herself rigid, her arms locked by her side, her feet fastened to the carpet as if made of stone.

Sebastian crossed the room behind her, his feet silent on the thick carpet, and she felt his shadow fall across her spine and his fingers, cold against the nape of her neck, as he tenderly fastened the collar around her throat.

There was a snap as the two halves clicked together and she felt the metal burn against the back of her neck, the catch fusing into one smooth unbroken line.

‘You’ll have a little more difficulty cutting off your head, I imagine,’ he said, and there was a smile in his voice. Then he turned and left, locking the door behind him.