Twenty-three

The following morning, Evan left the manor house early. The sooner he searched Loughmoe Castle, pried open a box floating along the river behind Mary O’Dowd’s cottage, shook a few answers free from Finnian Driscoll and anyone else who put a block in his path, the sooner he’d be done. He’d have settled every question to do with the Whelans. He’d be done with Ireland, and on to…somewhere.

Where to start? He considered this as he saddled the chestnut gelding again. The sliced-off cinch was heavy in his pocket. So was the pistol beside it—his own, for even a serious lecturer must have a way to defend himself while traveling.

He’d visit Loughmoe Castle first. Why not? All castles hereabouts were gray. The sky was gray too, a dimness that didn’t even hint at the color it would become.

Before turning the gelding onto the road northward to the castle, he made the brief jaunt to the churchyard. From over the low wall, he easily picked out Con’s stone, large and sharp, drawing the eye. Over its velvety green grass lay a bundle of softening hothouse flowers and a twist of weeds that looked to have been knotted by a small hand.

He removed his hat, putting it to his heart.

“You were always a lucky devil, Con,” he said. “Not least because of my friendship.”

As he settled his hat back into place, he could almost imagine the inevitable wry humor of his friend’s reply. One could never forget a friend of such long-standing—especially a friend like Con, swift and joyful as a wink.

Maybe he’d been good for Con, a little ballast for all the young earl’s buoyancy. He knew Con had been good for him. Despite Kate. Because of Kate. Curse Kate, and bless her, and—and enough now. Enough.

He turned the chestnut away, nudging the horse into a trot when they reached the road. Edged by autumn-brown trees, it followed the course of the River Suir, which ran brown-gray and placid and open. No crates drifted down its length this morning. It looked innocent, as if nothing had ever been placed in it that was not right, and it lapped with a soothing intensity at its banks. From somewhere in the trees, a robin gave its delicate peep, a sound almost too high and quiet for the ear to pick out.

The ride to Loughmoe Castle, set outside the village of Loughmore, was not a long one on the back of a smooth-trotting gelding. Soon enough, as the gray sky lightened, the road had taken him within sight of the great ruin.

The castle was set in an open space, around the edge of which trees crowded like eager spectators. Many were now bare-branched, though a few still held to their leaves and to the memory of green.

Loughmoe Castle was, at the first distant glance, a wrecked and ruined old structure. A square tower house onto which had been added a stretch, and another great tower over time. The castle was shaped like a squashed H. How the pediments had once been shaped, no one could guess, for the high walls looked nibbled at the top. It was difficult to remember that each nibble was the absence of huge blocks of trimmed stone.

But there was something off, and Evan halted the horse at the edge of the wood until he could place a finger on what that something was. “Someone is here.” He knew, just as he knew when he saw a new statue made to look old. Now, what was it nagging at him?

The walls were overgrown with climbing plants above and below. Bushy and verdant, as though they’d drained life from the trees around, the leaves spilled over the top of the ragged wall. Amidst the tangle of green, the tower windows blinked like sleepy eyes.

“The windows.” Yes. That was it. The windows had been cleared of cover.

This was no abandoned structure. What it was instead, he couldn’t be sure—yet.

He tied the chestnut to a tree back from the wooded edge, out of sight of the castle. Then—feeling slightly ridiculous, but wanting to use caution—he crept and crawled and peeked his way from the wood to a crumbling wall about the castle. No more than waist-high, and more gravel and grass than stone, it made a fine barrier behind which to hide. Look about. Move on.

Within the bound, the castle yawned above him.

The older tower was far more crumbled at the top than the other parts of the building, with rounded corners to its slab-like walls. Windows had once peered from stone frames. Now the frames themselves were broken, only pieces of the lattice remaining. It was all open now, roofless, the upper floors fallen. Underbrush grew within, as if the forest had leapt the intervening grass and taken up residence in here.

“I knew a great hole in the roof would brighten a space,” Evan murmured. For a flash, he wanted to tell Kate, to make her laugh. Then he remembered there was no purpose to telling Kate anything anymore.

When Evan stepped into the space, careful to set his boots quietly, he caught the unmistakable earthy scent of burning peat. The space was being used, that was clear—and used right now. He kept to the brush-shadowed walls, eyes searching for some clue. There the worn old stone had been moved aside, revealing paler, smoother stone beneath. There were the scratch marks of tools that had pried them free.

“Unwise,” he said below his breath. The stone walls were vertical mosaics, and undermining them could cause a disastrous fall.

What had he thought he might learn? Now that he was here, poked by dry ivy and surrounded by more gray than he had imagined, he couldn’t say. Yes, there were signs that stone had been taken from the castle. Yes, it matched the stone of the false carvings. But there were so many missing links, from the carver to the purpose of the hollows to the boxes floated past Mary’s cottage—probably full of crated carvings or the smuggled goods that would be pieced out inside.

What did it matter, if it didn’t lead to Con? If Evan couldn’t find the answer to the sliced-off cinch that had dumped his friend to the turf, who gave a damn about the rest? He did. He knew he did, in a time that was less gray, because it was right to care about honesty.

So he held fast to that knowledge, threadbare though it now seemed, and pressed onward through the tangle within the castle walls. He followed the scent of peat, wishing for the nose of a hound. Now it seemed stronger, now fainter. When he found the source of the fire, he’d find the people tending it. He’d see what they were doing.

Ah, he must be getting closer—he heard footsteps now, ringing echoes in the hollow stone tower. Voices speaking, a tongue he did not understand. Those sounds, too, echoed and distorted, but the flip and play of the language sounded like Gaelic.

Overhead, a horrid heavy grating sound signaled the shift of a rock. Evan had just time to look up for its source, then fling himself back against the wall, before everything went dark.

* * *

Kate was supposed to be reviewing the household accounts. She was supposed to be checking rent rolls. She was supposed to be directing the governess as to what Nora and Declan should be studying. She wasn’t. She was sitting at the study desk with all her supposed-to’s spread out before her, seeing nothing but a blur.

Evan was gone. He had left that morning before anyone awoke but the servants. Oh, he had left his belongings, and he’d be back—but he’d told Kate his intention to act and leave, and he was already all but departed. Her tea had grown cold. She’d been unable to eat this morning. She couldn’t think, couldn’t settle.

The frantic knocking at the front door, overwrought even for Good Old Gwyn, was almost a relief. “She probably forgot something here last night,” muttered Kate.

When she had returned to the house after their fight, hands full of pistols, Evan was nowhere to be found, the children had hidden themselves upstairs, and Gwyn was prostrate on her favorite drawing room sofa after being abandoned by everyone. This as two maids fanned her and loosened her slippers.

Good Old Gwyn.

As Kate dutifully stood now, prepared to greet her mother-in-law, the butler opened the door—not to Gwyn’s quaver, but to a spill of hurried male voices. Something was wrong. The children were inside—so the horses? It must be the horses.

She took the corridor at a trot, then pulled up sharply at the sight of the knot of rough men and the worried-looking butler. And the blood, a slow drip onto the marble floor of the entry hall. “What has happened? Is someone hurt—oh, my God! Mr. Rhys! What has happened to him?”

The paunchy figure of Finnian Driscoll pushed forward to sweep a bow. “Terrible thing, isn’t it? Mr. Rhys was found like this by the Suir. He was set upon by footpads, looks like. Hit on the head, pockets all turned out. Terrible, terrible thing.”

Kate craned her neck, standing on her toes to get a better look at Evan. So much blood! “Is he all right? Will he be all right?”

“He’s out right and proper, my lady. I saw the doctor as I hurried over with these gentlemen.” The villagers supporting Evan’s weight shuffled awkwardly. “He’s on his way to have a look.”

“Thank you.” Kate felt shaky, breathless. “Fibbs, please direct these men to Mr. Rhys’s chamber. He must be settled at once.” As soon as the butler guided the rest of the men off, Kate sank against the wall.

“There, now, Lady Whelan, you mustn’t fret.” Driscoll laced his hands over his belly, bouncing on his heels. “You’ll be safe enough in your fine house. Getting to be so you wouldn’t know who was traveling through your own village. Best to keep your distance from the Suir, or take a companion with you.”

Kate was not of a mood to play the agreement game. She summoned all her will, shoved herself upright, and lifted her chin. “This, Mr. Driscoll, is not fretting. Fretting is what a little girl does if she loses her favorite ribbon. I am a grown woman, and you have brought my houseguest back bloodied and unconscious. I am, shall we say, displeased.”

“Well, now.” The magistrate lifted his hands, supplicating. “I wasn’t one of them who found him.”

“And who did? The men who carried him upstairs?”

The hound dog eyes reproached her. “I can’t say, I’m sure. Now, don’t worry your head about what or who. It’s my job to worry about that. And don’t you worry about Mr. Rhys, for the physician’s on his way.”

Enough of this nonsense. She needed him out of her house.

She blew out a breath, willing herself to remain calm. “What do you advise I worry about, then?”

Driscoll’s brows knit. “Well, there’s your debt.” He chucked her under the chin, and she recoiled. “But you shouldn’t worry about that either, my lady. I’ll take care of everything. Say the word. We’ll trade land for debt and speak no more about it.”

“No. Thank you,” Kate said as demurely as one could with a clenched jaw. “I’ll continue to worry for a bit longer.”

As the villagers filed out, having settled Evan upstairs, she watched them leave, trying to memorize faces. It was no good. They all blended together in homespun and floppy hats and beards, and her eyes threatened to well over at any second.

Once alone in the entrance hall, she looked about for something to throw. “Pier glass. Candlesticks. Table with foolish little gilt legs. I can’t afford to break anything in my own house.” She settled for kicking the front door.

An answering knock sounded on the outside. “The doctor.” She hauled open the door. If the physician were surprised to be greeted by the lady of the house, he did not betray such a feeling. Kate directed him to the patient, then shut the door, tried not to look at the blood on the floor, and followed the man to Evan’s room.

His examination was short, consisting primarily of wrapping the patient’s head in a bandage. “The laceration,” he pronounced to Kate, “is not severe. Head wounds offer a ghastly appearance, but they heal quickly. Now that pressure has been placed on the length of the wound, the bleeding will stop.”

This ought to have been reassuring, but there was a far greater concern. “He is unconscious, Doctor. When will he wake?”

The courtly old man’s face looked like crumpled paper. “I am sorry to tell you, Lady Whelan, that I do not know. A blow to the head has unpredictable effects. He might wake in an hour, or a day, and be fine. He might be forever altered in personality. Or he might simply fade away.”

“Right,” Kate said faintly. She dismissed the physician, who promised to return to check Evan’s progress the following day. “Give him water and beef broth,” were the final instructions. “If you can get it into him in his current state.”

“If it will help him, he will have some. I will make sure of that.”

As soon as the man was gone, Kate sank into a chair beside Evan’s bed.

“This is unkind of you, Evan.” She worked to keep her tone firm. “I am particularly sensitive when it comes to men leaving for a ride with all their possessions still here at the house, then returning with their heads crushed. Oh, that’s not funny, is it? But if I don’t laugh, I shall cry, and if I cry, then I won’t know how to stop.”

The laugh was ragged, at the edge of tears. She swallowed it down, adding, “You wouldn’t let me into your bedchamber, but you see I got here all the same. Did you not once tell me I would be invincible? And so I am, Evan.”

No response, of course, but shallow breathing.

She must be the rogue housekeeper—that was all. She couldn’t manage more right now, raw and worried as she was, and more wouldn’t help him. Efficiently, she removed his boots, laid a spare sheet over him and tucked it about his chest, then rang for an order of beef broth.

“You’re going to wake up. Your countess has ordered it so.”