Page 11 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
Another rustle came from the path, and I turned to the sound to see the very last person I ever expected to see in these woods.
Ruan Kivell.
Except this wasn’t the charming man I’d seen only yesterday at the seashore. No. He had thunder on his face, and there was something different about him. Something untamed, uncivilized, and entirely terrifying.
And worse, he was staring directly at me.
CHAPTERSEVENThe Pellar Returns
“MISSVaughn?” Mr. Kivell slowly took inventory of me, stem to stern. A sensation I didn’t much enjoy. “What are you doing here?”
“Me? What are you doing here?” I shot back.
He grumbled a response, his steady gaze giving me the uncanny impression he was looking straight through me. Into me. Which was impossible. I set my jaw and stared back at him and into those unusual eyes, which shone brighter in the shade of the copse than I recalled from the day before.
He certainly hadn’t been so fierce looking yesterday with his trousers rolled to his knees and smelling of salt and sun and water. Then again, yesterday I wasn’t standing with a shotgun over a dead body. I worried my lower lip to the point it began to bleed.
The constable cleared his throat, breaking the moment—such that it was. Mr. Kivell turned his back to me and moved silently across the copse to join the constable by the body. He slipped his old British Expeditionary Force haversack from his shoulder and set it on the grass before dropping himself down on the ground beside the body. The two men whispered together, shoulder to shoulder, and I got a sense this wasn’t thefirst time they’d been thus. An image of two war-weary soldiers flitted to my mind. A gesture here. A point there.
I leaned closer, curious despite the frisson of fear that snaked its way up my spine. Would they be so intent if it had been an animal that killed him? I picked at something dark brown beneath my thumbnail.
Mrs. Penrose took me by the arm, tugging me back to her. “Let them work, maid. It does no good to hover.”
“What… what is he doing?”
“Pellar business. He’s to tell us if it’s the curse or no.” She made a strange gesture with her hand, then shook her head.
“The curse?” The word settled rather uncomfortably on my thoughts. I didn’t believe in curses. Nor Pellars. But Ihaddreamed of Sir Edward last night. Drove a knife into his belly, and then here he was… carved up like a Christmas goose. I swallowed hard. No.Somethingdid this. Of that I was certain.
Mr. Kivell glanced up from where he worked, his brows drawn up, and gave me the queerest look before returning to his work. He shucked off his neat rust-colored field jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He then rummaged around in his bag and pulled out a small brown cloth-bound parcel. Unwrapping some cuts of meat, he threw them one by one into the underbrush, where they landed with a swish of foliage. The crows above immediately set off after them, abandoning their predatory vigil. Mr. Kivell folded the cloth back, tucked it into his pocket, and pulled out a small bottle, pouring it over his hands, then rinsing and drying them.
The story he’d told me at the seashore came back to me in a rush. I’d thought at the time it was little more than a folktale, but apparently it was something more.Hewas something more. Mr. Kivell dropped down on the ground beside the body and laid his hands along Sir Edward’s still form. All three of us stared at him transfixed. My breath tight in my chest.
It’s just a dead body, Ruby. You’ve seen them before.Yet I was unsettled all the same. Any remaining thoughts of Tamsyn’s betrayal and my tangle of emotions had long since fled, and my mind was fixed upon one thing and one thing only—the curious shape of Mr. Kivell and what he wasdoingto Sir Edward’s body.
The cursed man was now kneeling over him. Not examining as the constable had. Not at all. Instead he was… I took a step closer, as if drawn on an invisible tie, pulling myself free of Mrs. Penrose’s outreached grasp.
Another step closer.
The air in the copse suddenly took on the strange, almost electric smell that occurred after a lightning strike as Mr. Kivell placed his hands gently on top of Sir Edward’s rent-open chest.
“How are you?”
The constable spoke from just behind my elbow. He’d moved across the grass, quiet as a hare, and I’d not even noticed his approach.
“I didn’t mean to startle you, Miss…?”
“Vaughn. Ruby Vaughn,” I managed to whisper, my attention fixed upon Mr. Kivell’s back.
“Miss Vaughn.” His voice held a hint of a smile, and at last whatever spell had been cast over me broke. I turned to him at last and ran a hand over my jaw.
“I suppose it’s rather par for the course today, don’t you think? Startling things.”
The constable looked over my shoulder to where Mr. Kivell worked and sighed. “I’m afraid it is. I’m Fredrick Enys. You’re a friend of Lady Chenowyth, I come to understand. Mrs. Penrose said you’d been here a few years ago for the wedding.”
I wet my lips and nodded, glancing back to where Mr. Kivell continued his…ministrations… for lack of a better word. “What is he?”
Constable Enys huffed out a breath, resting his hands on his narrow hips. “I suppose some might say he’s a sort of a healer.”
