Page 55 of The Secret of the Three Fates
The sun crept over the horizon, illuminating the lighthouse with morning sun. The damp sea air whipped around me from the west, pulling my hair from my scarf as I paid the ferryman at the dock and tipped him extra to await my return. It wouldn’t take long. No matter how desperately I needed to speak with Mr. Owen, I also needed to get back to Manhurst before anything else went wrong.
THE YOUNG BUTLERled me through the elegant center hall into the library where Mr. Owen was waiting. It was dreadfully early, but he often had trouble sleeping even at home in Exeter. I’d notexpected how much it would hurt to see him taking his morning tea, now that the weight of what he had done finally settled into my mind.
“You should not be here.” He frowned, setting the delicate china cup into the saucer on the table beside him.
“I shouldn’t do a lot of things,” I grumbled, closing the library door and walking over to him. The air in here was crisp with a hint of citrus. “Mr. Owen, what were you thinking?”
He inhaled slowly and let it out again. “I could not allow it to happen again. It was the only thing I could do to keep you safe.”
I leaned forward, touching his brow with the back of my hand. He felt fine. “But you didn’t kill her, now it’s twice as bad. Not only do I have to figure out who did kill her, but also proveyoudidn’t.”
With his forefinger, he gestured for me to take the seat across from him. I did, wincing as the movement jostled my injury.
His eyes widened. “Andrew said you were not injured. He said it was only Kivell that was shot.”
“No, I’m fine, just grazed,” I lied, grateful that Andrew had spared Mr. Owen the details of the extent of my injury.
“And how are you being treated at Hawick House? I trust that my staff there is allowing you all the freedoms you’d have at home?”
Strange. This was the first we’d spoken of it since he told me who he was. Who hetrulywas. We’d left things unsatisfactorily that evening, with me walking away from him after he’d given me his truth. I owed him something—and while I wasn’t sorry for being upset, I regretted hurting him in the process.
“What… what should I call you?” It wasn’t elegant, but it was a start to a conversation that we should have had a long time ago.
“Owen is fine. It is my name after all.”
“Is it?” The words might have been bitter if said with any force, but there was none there.
“Owen Alexander Lennox. That was my name, but I put it away—put all of it away after Mariah disappeared.”
I reached out, covering his hand with my own. “What happened to her? You told me a little of it but I still don’t understand entirely—I am convinced there is a connection between her death and Lucy’s. There almost has to be.”
Mr. Owen slumped back into the chair and looked at the ceiling. “The truth of it is that I do not know. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I killed her myself, like they all say.”
“That’s absurd, you wouldn’t kill anyone!”
Mr. Owen arched a white brow at me. “But I don’t remember. I don’t know Ididn’t.Who is to say what truly happened the night she disappeared?” He let out a strangled laugh. “I love her still. Isn’t it strange how that is? More than forty years have passed since last I saw her face and I still recall the exact shade of her hair, the scent of her warm skin, the sound of her laughter in the parlor on a rainy day. And it kills me that I still do not know what happened to her. For nearly half my life that same question has dogged my every step. I have my suspicions, but in order to know what happened that night you must know something about Mariah first—she wasextraordinary.Cleverer than anyone I’d ever met.”
“You told me about that night at the ball and how she showed you her photography book.”
He smiled faintly, growing lost in his own memories. “There was strange symmetry to our love affair, I suppose. I’d only just returned from London the night she disappeared. Mariah was not herself that evening. I likely told you this already, but we’d been unable to have a child and she’d wanted one desperately. It didn’t matter to me—and I told her as much—she was all I ever wanted and goodness knew I didn’t need an heir when I had my brother Malachi to carry on the Lennox name. He was a far better steward of the estates than I. But Mariah had fallen down this rabbit hole,fascinated by the spirit world. Convinced that perhaps the answer to our worldly problems could be found in theotherworld. That somehow she would find something to help her to conceive our child.”
“Is that how you became interested in the occult?”
Mr. Owen nodded.
“I take it things are about to take a tragic turn?”
He squeezed my hand. “I’d been in London for weeks. Mariah hadn’t been feeling well and asked to stay behind in Scotland until she’d recovered. I’d hoped that perhaps the reason for her illness was that she was with child, not for my own hopes but hers. She felt things keenly. The judgment from peers, the expectant looks every time she appeared in society without a thickening waist. I didn’t give a damn what the world thought of me—but I cared about Mariah. She wanted that child and I wanted it for her sake. I’d have done anything, Ruby. Anything for that woman.”
It ached to see how similar we were.
He sighed, finishing off his tea, and rubbed his hands over his bristly white beard. “I’d only returned home because she’d written this curious note that said we had important matters to discuss. Mariah would have told me at once had she been with child—but a small part of me hoped that she simply could not find the words after hoping for so many years. I’d been home at Hawick House twenty minutes at most when Mariah asked me to join her at her sister’s séance that very evening. She said there was something at the castle she needed to show me, something important and she knew I would be angry when I saw it—”
“Angry? What would you be angry about?”
He lifted a shoulder.
“You didn’t go…” I whispered.
