Page 33 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
It didn’t take long to spot her in the orchard, not far from where we’d discovered Sir Edward’s body. She was seated on a bit of broken stone wall just to the left of the blackberry brambles, her legs swinging aimlessly, so preoccupied with her own thoughts she didn’t hear me approach. The dappled light came down through the canopy, casting a kaleidoscope of shadows on the meadow floor. Brown shrikes hidden in the hedge beside her made my presence known.
“I saw you coming up the lane.”
I settled myself alongside her on the broken stone wall. Little bits of lichen and moss grew in the cracks and nooks there. I plucked at a dried bit with my thumbnail rather than answer.
“Where were you all day?” She still hadn’t bothered turning to face me. Instead keeping her gaze unfocused at some unknown spot in the distance. An odd space had sprung up between us, and I couldn’t shake the sensation that I’d done something to offend her. Yet the fogginess in my brain kept me two steps behind.
“Sassing the vicar, it seems. Lucky you to avoid him.” I tasted a bit of blood on my tongue from where my lip must have split back open.
She let out a slight laugh and shook her head, fiddling with a piece of long grass. “Mercifully so. I heard he had intentions to call upon me this afternoon to pray with me, so I decided to make myself scarce. For some reason I ended up here.”
Tamsyn turned. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a breath as she saw the full measure of my injuries. I’d managed to avoid looking at myself thus far, but it must have been far worse than I imagined—as everyone else I’d come across felt compelled to comment upon it.
She ran her fingers gently over the cut along my eyebrow and the half-dozen stitches that Ruan Kivell had so smartly secured there.
“Did he do this? It looks like his handiwork.”
There was no sense in using names. We both knew of whom we spoke. “He patched me up as best he could. It seems there was a bit of confusion in town.”
“I’d say a bit more than confusion. Ruby, you could have been killed.” She frowned deeper, lines forming at the edges of her mouth as she traced the bruise already forming on my cheekbone. “Does it hurt terribly?”
I swallowed hard and shook my head. Liar that I was. It hurt like the very devil, and I hoped that she couldn’t see it in my expression. I didn’t need to add to her troubles.
“I feel so guilty, Ruby. If I’d known I…”
“—I’ve had worse. Besides, Ruan was there to frighten them off. It was all a misunderstanding.”
“Leave it to you to consider this a simple misunderstanding.” Her expression fell. “Oh, Ruby, had I not invited you to come, then none of this would have happened. It seems I’m always causing you trouble.”
I reached up, taking her hand from my cheek and placing it firmly in her lap. The very last thing I needed today was to have Tamsyn muddling my already cloudy emotions. My tether was frayed as it was.
“I had to deliver books for Mr. Owen. If anyone here deserves the blame for my face it’s him for sending me. Or Mr. Kivell’s unusual reading habits.”
She set her jaw and slid closer. “But you could have died. I don’t know how I would have borne losing you too.”
You gave me up quick enough in France.The thought came so hard and unexpected it took me by surprise. Apparently, I wasn’t quite as numb to her as I supposed. Bitterness snaked up inside me and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask the question. To rend open the old wound once and for all. As it was the one thing that never made sense, the part I nevercould puzzle out. Why she had left me a handful of miles west of the front lines with five meaningless words to ease my pain:Forgive me, I love you.She’d sworn to me the night before she left that she’d go anywhere with me. We’d open that bookshop with my inheritance and live with abandon. But those were the naive dreams of a girl. And I hadn’t been that girl in a very long time. So I let the moment pass with Tamsyn none the wiser.
“It’s strange to have you here again. There are times with you being back at Penryth I can almost forget the things that came before. And then others, like now, it’s as if a great wall has appeared between us.” She reached out, taking my hand in her own. “But I wanted to thank you regardless—for staying. You didn’t have to. Not after what I did. How things ended. It was poorly done. I know that now.”
The bushes rustled lightly, and from the corner of my eye I caught a brown hare darting from one to another. I wished desperately she’d change the subject.
“Where were you today anyway? I went to see if you wanted to have a picnic down by the water this morning with Jori, but Mrs. Penrose said you’d gone into town—and then I see you’ve…” Her voice sounded almost sharp at the question and I froze, uncertain how to answer as I wasn’t ready to tell her about my fruitless inquiries. Though they’d undoubtedly make their way back to her in time.
“I needed a walk and thought to pick up a few bits and bobs for Mrs. Penrose in town. Her head was bothering her.”Because I gave her far too much gin.
“That’s what she said as well. It’s not like her to be under the weather.” Tamsyn traced the bone on the back of my hand with her thumb. “Who did you go see?”
Her voice took on a strangely jealous tone. One I hadn’tnoticed before, but didn’t much like. She’d lost her opportunity to claim that emotion long ago.
“I told you, I went to pick up some items. Who would you think I’d have gone to see?” A prickle of something ran up my neck. Warning? Probably. But I was so off kilter with Tamsyn, always had been.
Perhaps it was being out here in the copse, in the very spot where Edward was killed, but I was growing ever more sure that our killer was a woman. A certainty, deep in my subconscious, even though I had no evidence for it. The crime was exceptionally violent, gruesome enough that it would have taken a man—and not an inconsiderable one—to overpower Sir Edward. Someone like the Pellar. A deep vee formed between my brows, tugging the stitches painfully with the movement. I couldn’t imagine him killing anyone, except the vicar perhaps. But the man was so odious, who could blame him?
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
She hesitated for a moment before replying. “You’re not afraid of anything. Not the curse. Not—” She pointed at the bruises on my face with a brittle laugh. “Your poor face. You don’t give a whit about your own safety. Even during the war, when all hope was lost you were never afraid. I envied you that then.”
