Page 60 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
I bit my lip, watching the stormy darkness out his window. “I have to go. Tonight. Let Heinrich take my automobile.”
Mr. Owen let out a cynical laugh. “You’re letting that Hun drive your Crow Elkhart?”
I pressed a kiss to his brow. “You had said you were growing bored of Exeter. Perhaps this is what you need. A vacation to clear your head.” My voice lighter than my heart as his hand covered mine. “Come with him.”I need you there.I didn’t want to voice the fact. But I did. There are times a girl wants her father. And despite my protestations to the contrary earlier, Mr. Owen was the closest thing I had to one.
“Be safe, lass. Promise me that.”
“I’ll see you in a few hours. All right?” I didn’t wait for his response, just turned and hurried back to Ruan and the long road to Lothlel Green.
The way was treacherous and slick as Benedict navigated the darkened path in his farm truck, a carryover from army days redone to serve less violent purposes. If I’d thought the roads bad earlier, they were doubly so now in the height of the storm. Visions of the three of us drowning in an overswollen stream flicked through my mind as I sat in the darkness.
I closed my eyes. “Tell me.”
Ruan nodded as we hit a large rut, throwing us both against the edge of the truck, the back of my head narrowly missing the side paneling. A small mercy. “Jago and another lad were attacked in the woods behind the churchyard.”
“Jago… wasn’t he the one—”who’d tried to get me killed?
“Mmm. The same. No one knows what they were doing out there, but lads do what they do. Charles has been very tight-lipped about it. He ran into the village to get help. By the time the others came, they found Jago lying in his own blood.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Is he…”
Ruan shook his head, laying a hand over my own, warm and reassuring. “He’s alive. He hasn’t woken yet. It’ll be good to have a real physician in the morning to tend to him. Make sure I haven’t missed anything.”
“Ruan, you know you’re as good as many a properly trained doctor. I’ve seen plenty of them during the war, and what you did for me… it was remarkable.”
He might have flushed under my praise, but it was too dark to tell in the back of the truck. He cleared his throat. “Yes, but this is the bit that worries me.”
“Worrying a Pellar? That doesn’t sound good.”
“A wraith attacked them. That’s what Charles said. That a wraith did it. He’s nonsensical. It’s all he would say.The wraith, the wraith.And then he wouldn’t speak another word. I thought that maybe—maybe he’d talk to you.”
“Me?” The faceless being from my dream flickered to my mind. I swallowed hard, hands shaking in the darkness. What if the killer was athingafter all? I wet my lips, not quite ready to voice the concern. “What do you think I can do?”
“I mended them up as best I could, but I…” He paused and I heard him shift in the darkness. There was something he wasn’t telling me. “I have a feeling about you. And I can’t say whether I hope or fear that I’m right.”
“About me?”
Ruan sighed and leaned his head against the side of the truck. His body visibly exhausted. “Ignore me. I’m nattering on. See if you can get him to speak, Ruby. I don’t know what else I can do.”
I gave him an unsteady nod as his large hand covered my own and the trembling ceased at once. Wraith or man or curse come to life, we had to find this killer and stop it once and for all.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SIXA Professional Perspective
DR.Heinrich was an eccentric older gentleman. German, as his name betrayed, but his family had been in Britain for at least a century. He had no hair remaining atop his head, and silver eyebrows, but his beard was black as jet. He wore a stern dark suit, with the only flash on him being a silver pocket-watch chain that dangled, catching my eye where it swung jauntily before him. He and Mr. Owen arrived at Ruan’s cottage approximately three hours after we did, and we immediately brought him to the injured boy’s bedside.
Dr. Heinrich leaned over young Jago, who slept steadily. He looked nothing like the angry boy from the Hind and Hare; he was smaller now and appeared a handful of years younger than his age. Despite the harm he’d caused me, a deep anger rose in my chest that someone—something—would harm him, a child. Perhaps there was a mote of Christian charity left in my blackened heart after all.
A deep cut sliced through the side of his face but had been stitched up neatly. Ruan’s hand, I suspected. Jago’s stricken mother watched from the corner, her fists knotted in her skirt,frustrated agitation visible. She couldn’t be much older than I was, if that, but she looked a dozen years more.
“This is deft work, whoever did it,” Dr. Heinrich mumbled to himself as he held the boy’s wrist in his hand. His lips moved as he counted to himself. “I don’t think I’ve seen such clean stitching in years. I certainly couldn’t have done a finer job.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Ruan, who shifted uncomfortably at the doctor’s words.
“Ah, that’d be our Pellar,” Jago’s mother said with a note of pride in her voice.
Dr. Heinrich began to question, his brows drawn up and mouth opened, but I caught his eye and shook my head.
He nodded in understanding. We’d discuss this later. He placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He’s well enough. I suspect he’ll wake no worse for wear. I see no reason for him not to.”
