Page 16 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“My son.”
I stared at her, not comprehending.
“The curse will come for me. I don’t know how long. Perhaps days? Weeks? And then Jori will be next. I’m certain of it. It’s what happened before. It’ll happen again, and when it does—I need to know he will be safe. There’s no one in this world I trust more than you to make sure of that.”
Perhaps the maids were right and Tamsyn had lost her mind. Never before had she believed in the old stories—she knew them, of course she did, having been weaned on them at the knee of her nurse. And later on, she’d whispered them to me on those dark nights during the war. Tales of piskies and the hurlers, of giants and witches and merfolk. But they weren’treal. They couldn’t be.
I squeezed her hand again. A helpless gesture, but I did it nonetheless. “It’s the grief speaking. No one will harm you or your son. I swear it.”
She let out a brittle laugh, a sharp sound that froze me to my bone.
“You’re in shock. You must eat. Drink something. It’s all right to grieve your husband.”Even a dreadful one.
She shot off the bed and began pacing the floor of her chambers. The wooden boards creaking beneath her. Back and forth. Faster and faster.
“Tam—”
“Grieve him?” she choked out, her voice ever higher. “Grieve a monster? I’d as soon pluck my own eyes out as give him a moment of pain. No. I won’t give Edward that gift. But I will not allow the curse to take my son either. My misdeeds will not cost me my child! Edward was a snake, but my son is precious.”
My breath caught in my chest.Edward was a snake.Images of Tamsyn, the life smothered out of her, flickered in my head.Edward wasn’t the only one in my dream last night. I stared at her unblinking.A coincidence, Ruby. It was just a dream.I opened my mouth to speak, to break the sickening silence between us, when she laid a finger on my lips, silencing me.
“If your promises mean anything, promise me this.” She dropped to her knees before me, squeezing my hand painfully tight. “Promise me you’ll protect him. No matter what happens. You’ll take care of Jori. No matter what comes for him.”
I nodded, unable to formulate the words, to shape them out and put them in the air between us.
“I need to hear it from you. Say it. Swear upon your sister’s grave that you will not let the curse take my son.”
“I swear…” Two words, and my die was cast.
I didn’t believe in curses any more than I believed in the God who long ago abandoned me to my fate, but I was determined to get to the bottom of what happened here at Penryth Hall and to bring back the Tamsyn that I used to know. The one Sir Edward had destroyed stone by stone.
CHAPTERTENA Gin-Soaked Subterfuge
EDWARDChenowyth died for a reason.
A human one.
He had to have.
And my dream was just that, a dream that shared an uncanny coincidence with real life. Edward was smothering Tamsyn. A reasonable interpretation. And I’d imagined carving him up at the dinner table.That was all.
I repeated those facts to myself over and over until I found myself slowly beginning to believe it. Once my thoughts had settled, I went off in search of Mrs. Penrose—after all, a good housekeeper knows every secret in the house and Mrs. Penrose struck me as the very best of her kind.
I found her in the kitchen, elbow-deep in flour with the front of her apron smattered with crusty bits of dough that she’d inadvertently wiped there. The room redolent with yeast and pleasantly spiced fruit tarts. Several empty bottles and jars sat on the windowsill, catching the light. I straightened my spine and summoned my most devil-may-care smile, one I wasn’t at all feeling. “Care to join me for tea, Mrs. Penrose?”
The old woman looked up at me, flummoxed. Her browwas creased with worry, a weariness she’d been carrying since leaving the orchard this morning. From the sheer number of pasties scattered across the worktable, it appeared that Mrs. Penrose had been trying to bake away her troubles.
I pulled the silver flask from the pocket of my neatly tailored twill skirt and offered it to her. “Enhancedtea. Lord knows after the morning we’ve had, I suspect we both need a moment to recover ourselves, hmmm?”
Her eyes widened in unspoken acknowledgment and she dusted her hands on her apron. Mrs. Penrose glanced to the doorway, but we both knew good and well Tamsyn wasn’t coming back downstairs. If anything she was staring out the window again. The guilty part of me was glad to be away from her. Away from the sickening guilt that erupted whenever she was near.
Her shoulders relaxed. “I suspect I could use a cup myself. I’ll be a moment. Are you hungry, maid?”
I shook my head. After seeing Sir Edward’s stomach strewn across the lawn, the idea of putting anything else inside my own wretched organ remained highly unappealing, no matter how pleasant the kitchen smelled.
She didn’t pay me a bit of attention. “You go on to the morning room and I’ll bring a tray and some biscuits up, and you can tell me all about what the Pellar said after I left.”
Of course she’d want to talk abouthim. I, on the other hand, wanted to talk about anything else but Ruan Kivell. Even his name irritated me after this morning. How he’d looked at me with such suspicion in his eyes.Or a woman, the irritating man had said. His name consisted of two syllables—Rue Ahnor an elongatedruin. Fitting as he’d utterly ruined my afternoon—oh, that wasn’t true, Edward’s killer did that all on their own. It was unfair to be cross with the man, but his gaze bothered me. A mixture of suspicion and apprehension. I blew out a breath. But as I was here, there was nothing for it—I’dhave to talk about him, deal with him. Talktohim if I was to have any prayer of setting Tamsyn to rights and getting out of this godforsaken village. And in that case, it was best to know as much as I could to better prepare myself.Prepare yourself for what, Ruby Vaughn?This wasn’t a war, but what itwas, I didn’t yet know.
