Page 56 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
“You’d be with him now,” I finished. The words stung a little less than I’d expected.
“I love him. Even still. I know you can’t understand, considering what I’ve done, and you think me fickle and foolish, but I… I wouldn’t have harmed him for the world. We understood each other, George and I.”
“Where was he before he disappeared? Tell me, Tamsyn.”
“I sent him away and told him there was no future for us.” She choked down a sob. “He’d been drinking and was going on about how he had found it. The answer to our problem. He wasn’t making any sense at all.”
A trickle of tension rose at the back of my throat. “Was Edward home when this happened?”
She shook her head. “He came home the next day, he’d been called away to London for business.”
But I couldn’t help but wonder if that was truly the case. There was a connection between the two deaths, I was convinced of it. I just hadn’t pieced it together. Tamsyn was at the center of it all. But how? And why?
RUAN WAS ATthe gate where I’d left him when we arrived an hour before. Lost in thought—or whatever it was that went on inside that frightening mind of his. His head was bowed down as he fumbled with something held between his hands. It was a vulnerable position, that of a man at prayer. He didn’t see me nearing him, or if he did, he didn’t respond. His head tilted low as he leaned against the old bronzework. Its ornate metal scrolls reaching high, catching in the sunlight that was finally peeking through the clouds.
“You knew George was Jori’s father.” It was an accusation and statement of fact rolled into one.
He didn’t lift his head. “They’d been sweethearts off and on. I’d assumed so but it wasn’t any of my affair.”
“None of your affair? You, who make love charms, say this is none of your affair?”
He glanced up briefly with a slight tug at the side of his mouth. He lifted a finger. “Ah, but I don’t make un-love charms. I couldn’t mend Sir Edward’s marriage any more than I can change the tides. It’s none of my concern who is tupping who. I can neither control nor contain a soul’s passions. What’s the point in interfering?”
I arched a brow, the stitches there stinging with the movement. Blast it. “I could argue it’s hypocritical of you to aid in one and not intervene in the other when one is having anaffair.”
“As you say.”
“As I say?”
“Why do you care who the lad’s father is?”
Good God, save me from hapless men. I took in a long breath. “Because her son isn’t Edward’s and Edward knew it. This could have some bearing on why there are two dead men in this charming little murder hamlet of yours.”
That caught his attention. Ruan shifted slightly from where he leaned and glanced up. “Does anyone else know?”
I shook my head. “Besides Dr. Quick? I have no idea. I seriously doubt Tamsyn would bandy the fact about.”
He wet his lips. “No. No. You’re right. Edward doted on the boy as well. If he knew it wasn’t his, he at least wasn’t holding it against the child.”
“There was no talk of the baby? Honestly I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. He looks nothing like Tamsyn or Sir Edward.”
He shook his head slowly. “None that I’d heard. Just myguessing from the way George spoke of her when we came back from France. I truly think he loved her.”
Infuriating man. I frowned, half afraid to put the thoughts I had to voice. “What if the first victim of this murder isn’t Edward at all? What if it’s George? Or…” I trailed off before saying the part that I didn’t want to admit. Not even to myself.
“What if it’s the curse?”
I narrowed my gaze at him. It was unfair that he could do that.
“Try to not think so loudly, mmm?” Ruan frowned. The humor disappeared as he considered the idea. A faint dusting of silver stubble had sprung up on his cheek sometime between yesterday and today, giving him a wilder look than before—Ruan Kivell, when I first met him, looked only partly civilized. But now, disheveled as he was, his dark hair tangled and loose about his shoulders and whiskers forming on his jaw, he was a feral creature from my darkest imaginings. An image of him striding through the ancient Briton woods flickered to mind. More pagan priest than anything else.
He groaned as if in pain—interrupting my overly distracted imaginings. Good. He’d heard that too. That’s what he got for eavesdropping. “Well, we’d best be off then.”
I looked at him again in the clear light of day. No. He wasn’t some sort of mythical thing. No matter what folks around here said. No matter what I saw, or thought I saw in the Martins’ field that night. He was a man. No more and no less.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVEVisitors in the Night
THEroad back to Exeter was treacherous thanks to the recent flooding, causing the journey to take twice as long as it normally would. But I had my thoughts to keep me company, especially as Fiachna was sleeping off his adventures on the seat beside me. My body ached, my heart was sore, and my mind confused. I didn’t begrudge Tamsyn her choices, at least not rationally. I suppose they made sense in a way. She longed for a past that was dead, and I longed for a future that had not yet been born. We were hopeless then, more so now.
