Page 44 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“Of course he’s dead, but perhaps there’s some clue here as to how it happened.”
“The giant glaring hole in his abdomen isn’t clue enough?” he asked me, growing sharper than I’d ever heard him.
“Well, have you any better ideas?”
He didn’t answer.
“Besides, we need someone from outside. Someone not bound to be swayed by all this curse business.”
Ruan gave me a troubled look. “I’ll see what I can do. I don’t know that they can wait. The people here… they believe in this. And I know you don’t and that’s fine and well. You are entitled to your beliefs, but—” He took a step closer to me. “To some of them the old ways are as real as the air they breathe. I can try to see if they will wait, but I’m not about to discount their feelings on account of yours.”
“This isn’t about feelings, Ruan. There’s a dead man on this table and you know as well as I do whatever killed him is of this world, not some other.”
He didn’t answer. His gaze cloudy.
“Ruan.” I hesitated. “You do still believe that, don’t you?”
But instead of assuaging that nibbling worry of mine, he turned for the door. “We should go.” Which was infinitely worse.
CHAPTERNINETEENDoubts and More Doubts
ITwas well past midnight when we finally escaped the grounds of Penryth Hall. The moon was full and bright overhead, and I remained shaken from our conversation. The shock of seeing Sir Edward, the victory of having convinced Ruan to allow a real physician to come to Lothlel Green, all now paled next to the slow realization that the very same man walking beside me was able to hear my thoughts. And it wasn’t the intimacy that bothered me, but the dreadful knowledge that if such an impossible thing could be true—what else could be?
Somewhere in the distance a cock crowed and I shivered in the cool of the evening. “Do you think it could have been an animal after all?” I asked at last. That option was certainly better than the alternative. Any of them. “If you don’thearanything, or whatever it is you were trying to do—maybe that means it wasn’t a murder after all? Maybe it was something…”else?
He didn’t answer at first, his long strides making it hard for me to keep up.
My heart thundered in my ears as I hurried to match his pace. “Ruan,couldit have been an animal?”
He stopped abruptly, spinning around to face me, the muscles in his jaw tight. “I don’t know. Everybody expects me to know—” His fingers clenched into fists. “—every bloody thing. And I. Do. Not. Know.” He turned back around with an annoyed grunt and continued walking across the dirt path that led to the cliffs and back to the crossroads leading into the village.
“Ruan, I need to know something.”
“What?”
“Are you or aren’t you a witch?”
He whipped around with the strangest expression in his eyes. “Must you always ask so many infernal questions?”
Yes. Yes, I must.
He must have heard that, as he let out a low growl and resumed walking. “You’re the one who says I’m not. Always questioning. Always wondering what I am. Always doubting so loud it makes me question it myself.”
His words gave me pause and settled uncomfortably in my chest, but it wasn’t as if I intended him to hear my doubts. It wasn’t my fault he was mucking around in there. Ever since coming here I’d been upended and lost. Not knowing which way to turn. I sighed and reached out for his elbow. “I don’t know what you are, but I need to know if you’re just the seventh son of a miner with a penchant for parlor tricks or if there really is something to this Pellar business.”
That crease between his brows returned. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know!” he said in a harsh whisper. “Mind if you say it a bit louder. I suspect the folks in London haven’t heard you yet. People ascribe miracles to me. They think I candosomething but all I can manage is to mix up herbs and have a head that feels like Charing Cross station. So no, Ruby. I do not know what I am. And I don’t know what killed Sir Edward.”
I snapped my mouth shut. “How can you not know what you are? Besides the obvious fact that you are mucking around in my head—people come to you. They pay you to solve their problems.”
“They come for poultices and medicines. Why do you think I have all those plants? I don’t do charmwork—never have. Don’t you think that if I could control any of this, I’d have donesomethingworthwhile with it all?”
“What about those marriages? Mrs. Penrose was very eager to tell me about all the young couples you made love charms for.”
He waved me off and continued on through the deep mud, which made an unpleasant sucking sound with his steps. “That wasn’t magic.”
