Page 20 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“Yes. Yes. Quite,” I lied, shaking the worries away. I would have to go make my own inquiries first, before I told anyone of what I’d seen that night. That was the best course. The only one as I was beginning to doubt my own eyes. Doubt what I might or might not have done. That thought sat heavier with me than it ought.
I managed to make it through the remainder of tea with Mrs. Penrose without learning anything else of measure. Unless you counted the seven minor miracles of Saint Ruan of Kivell. As I’d taken to thinking of him now. Three of said miracles were love charms that resulted in blissful marriages with passels of rosy-cheeked children each. The others more inexplicable, though each could easily be chalked up to chance. After all, there were plenty of reasons for the village to have been spared the influenza. And mine accidents happened all the time. You’d hear of them, with the workers somehow trapped in a bubble of air. A pocket in stone. It was luck. Nothing more.
Yet as I left Mrs. Penrose in the morning room, I began towonder if there might be more to Ruan Kivell than met the eye. But if I were to allow the existence of Pellars in this world, who was to say that curses were not also just as real—a thought I refused to countenance.
CHAPTERELEVENUnlikely Bedfellows
HEADswimming with thoughts of Pellars, curses, and a healthy amount of gin, I hurried up the stairs to my room in dire need of a nap. The door was wide open. I didn’t recall leaving it in such a state, but the morning in the orchard had been so chaotic, I was lucky to have put my blouse on properly after my bath. Fiachna lay curled up asleep on the top of the muddied nightdress I’d shed this morning. I tossed my empty flask on the mattress with a thump. The cat lifted his head lazily in greeting, then set it back down again.
I sat at the dressing table and began unbuttoning my blouse so as not to wrinkle it, when a loud thunk came from behind me. Along with the sound of masculine swearing.
Glancing into the mirror, I spotted a pair of legs sticking out from the far side of the behemoth of a bed.
Ruan Kivell.Of course it was.
“Well, this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.” I stood, leaning against the dressing table lazily. “I must confess, I’ve had quite a few young gentlemen try to finagle their way into my bed over the years, but this may be the first time one has actually worked his way beneath it—” I grew unable to containmy amusement at the situation. I ought to be angry for the intrusion, but all I could do was laugh. This day had truly done me in. “Though I suppose it has potential…”
His face turned a peculiar shade of red, his lips pressed into a thin line as he slithered out from underneath said bed.
He was unamused.
Pity, as I’d rather liked him when we first met. However, his ill mood today damped that sentiment quick enough. What was that word Mrs. Penrose had used downstairs? Teasy, that was it! A teasy bull… yes, that’s precisely what he was.
If anything, he was glowering even more.
“Oh, good God, has anyone told you that you look rather like a cross frog when you do that? Besides, whatareyou doing lurking down there anyway?”
He grumbled something that wasnotsuitable for delicate ears, before withdrawing what appeared to be a bottle from beneath the bed. In a quick and catlike movement he was on his feet prowling across the floor to me.
“What are you playing at?” He shook the bottle at me. The contents made a sickening sloshing sound as I struggled to focus on the object he waved in my face. It was ordinary—clear green glass—but inside was some sort of yellowish liquid with a desiccatedthingfloating in it.
“Whatisthat?”
“I thought you might tell me what you are doing with it and why you’re meddling in charmwork?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not mine. I assure you of that. I would never dabble in… whatever that is.”
“What it is, is an… an abomination.”
“You’ll get no argument from me there.”
He sniffed angrily, raking his hair back from his brow with his left hand. “What I don’t understand is why you are playing at black magic.”
I let out a startled laugh. “Black magic? Indeed, Mr. Kivell, I’m beginning to wonder which one of us dipped into the gin today. I assure you, I know nothing about black magic, unless it’s a cocktail and in that case…” I tapped my chin just to irritate him. “I think I’ve had it once or twice.”
His nostrils flared. “This isn’t amusing.”
“Agreed. What are you doing in here anyway?” I folded my arms across my chest.
“Trying to understand what you are doing here.”
I let out a sigh and rolled my eyes. “I brought you a box of books if you recall.”
He shook his head angrily and took a step closer to me. “And yet you didn’t just deliver them. You remained here, in a house no one visits, where a man has been murdered, and then I find this under your bed.” He gave the bottle in his hand another shake. “Do you know what this looks like?”
“Like the great Pellar of Lothlel Green is skulking around grasping at straws? Come now, the only reason I’m in this wretched little town is because of you and your books. You can’t truly believe that I somehow orchestrated the whole thing to kill Edward? Or that I’d be naive enough to keep the evidence of my crimes in my bedchamber?”
He folded his arms firmly across his chest in challenge. The two of us like a matched pair of bookends bullishly staring at each other.
