He paced Gillian’s chambers after she was gone. Most of her things were still here; she’d only taken some clothes. How long until she sent for the rest? They’d all pretended it was a temporary visit to Glen Laire, but Nicholas thought she would not be coming back, not unless he allowed her to become the Witch of Kincreag.
He stood at her writing table, fingering the elaborate plume of her quill. She’d left all her writing implements. The parchment was his, but she’d brought a fancy quill and a shiny black stone. He moved it aside and turned over the parchment beneath. He stared down at it for a long time, vaguely disturbed. It was covered with scrawled writing, and the edges were charred, as if she’d rescued it from a fire. He couldn’t understand any words exceptnave.Was this about a church or a wheel? He scanned the page again. It was only five words, but they were written over and over again in increasingly frenzied handwriting. There was something familiar about the words, as if he knew them but couldn’t understand them.
And then suddenly it made sense. Not nave—Evan. The words were written backward. He’d known a man once who wrote all of his notes backward, as a sort of code. He quickly scanned the words now, understanding them.Be wary. Sir Evan. Nite.Notnite—butknight.
He set the paper down, as if it were hot. Why would she write such a thing? Did she think Evan was in danger? Then why not tell Nicholas? He sighed, a dark cloud weighing him down. He could make no sense of anything Gillian said or did anymore.
He left her chambers feeling worse than he had before. Soon he found himself in the west wing. He trailed his hand over the top of the dollhouse as he circled it. Looking at it now, he was reminded of nothing so much as Gillian. It seemed odd that the sight of it had once troubled him so. He didn’t care about any of that anymore. He just wanted his wife back.
He sat on the stool in the open part of the table and wondered what to do next. Again he considered going after her and bringing her home, but as neither of them was prepared to bend, it would be a pointless exercise. Maybe Alan would talk some sense into her.
He should get soused.
He stood, intent on searching out a good bottle of whisky, when he heard a crash. He turned back toward the darkened corridor that led into the bowels of the west wing. He heard nothing for a moment, then a rhythmic slamming. A shutter left open.
He considered sending someone else to find the miscreant shutter and secure it, but everyone except Gillian was afraid to venture into this part of the castle. She feared nothing. Thinking of her and her quiet courage hollowed out his chest, made him question his judgment. And that made him angry again.
He found the flint box and lit a candle. He followed the noise through the dark corridor, pausing when he spotted a candle flickering in a room to his right. The banging stopped abruptly.
He went into the room, heading straight for the windows. The shutters were all tightly secured. He frowned and turned to the candelabra. It held fivecandles, but only three burned. The candles were freshly lit, the wax hardly melted. He looked sharply around the room, wondering if someone was still here, hiding. It was clean, unlike the other rooms in the west wing, and devoid of the protective sheets that covered everything.
He opened the wardrobe. Women’s gowns hung from pegs. He crossed to the chest and flung the top back. Hose, shifts, and an arisaid lay folded within. On the cupboard, the ewer was half full of fresh water. Someone was living here.
He opened the cupboard and found an array of cosmetics, including a white lotion that smelled of sulfur. Women at court artificially whitened their skin, but no one here did. At least no one since Catriona had died. There was a pot of fucus for reddening the lips and kohl for the eyes. When he saw the small brown glass bottle, his heart tripped. When was the last time he’d seen such an array of cosmetics? He unstoppered the bottle and sniffed, smelling the bitter belladonna Catriona had used to make her pupils large and velvety black. He opened a bottle of perfume, and the scent of civet and musk drifted out, gagging him, bringing forth unwanted shades of his late wife.
He shoved the bottle away, looking wildly around the room, his stomach clenched tight. Was this some kind of sick jest? He dug through the cupboard in earnest, coming up with a small wooden box. It was locked, and after a cursory search for the key, Nicholas threw it on the ground until it cracked. Coins spilled out—French and Italian, as well as some English and Scots. He pried the lid off with a splintering crack.Several pieces of jewelry were within: pearl earrings, an amber bracelet, a sparkling purple brooch.
He gazed around the room again, unsettled by the sudden eerie quiet, by the strange events that had brought him here to discover this room. Maybe he’d been too hard on Gillian for believing Kincreag was haunted. Something odd had just occurred. He wasn’t quite ready to pin it on the supernatural, but he had no other explanation. Yet.
He replaced everything in the box and took it back to his chambers. He dropped it in the center of his desk and stared down at it. An uncomfortable knot formed in the pit of his stomach. Who the hell was living in his castle—obviously unbeknownst to him? He poured himself a cup of whisky and sat behind the desk, contemplating the box. Some of the jewelry was vaguely familiar. He set the whisky aside and dug out the pearl earrings. He’d given Catriona a pair of pearl earrings once that had looked very much like these.
From the corner of his eye he sensed movement and turned sharply. Nothing. He frowned, his gaze scanning every corner, but he was still alone. He lifted his cup only to find the doll bobbing on the surface of his whisky.
He set it down with a thump, amber liquid sloshing all over the desktop. His heart thundered, the skin all along his scalp and arms tightening. The doll had not been in the cup when he’d poured the whisky. Someone had placed it there in the short time since, and Nicholas was certain he was alone.
Or was he? He scanned the room cautiously, hismuscles tensed as if for flight. Someone didn’t want him to drink the whisky. Nicholas stood, cup in hand, and tossed the contents into the fire. What was it? Poison? He set the cup on the desktop and covered his mouth with both hands, eyes constantly searching the room, heart pounding erratically.
The first time this had happened, Gillian had said it was his son.
He dropped his hands and tried to force a swallow past his tight throat. “Malcolm?” It felt ludicrous to call out to his dead son, but Gillian had said . . .
And then he saw him, standing before the door to the bedchamber, wearing his nightshirt. Nicholas grasped the edge of the desk, his eyes burning. He couldn’t choke out a single word, could only stare. His son stared back, his dark eyes large and sad. Why was he so sad? Nicholas’s heart squeezed just to look upon his small face. His vision blurred, and he scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. When he dropped his arm, Malcolm was gone.
Nicholas’s heart beat twice into the frozen silence. He ran to the bedchamber door and flung it open. “Malcolm, wait!”
“Malcolm?”
“Jesus God.” Nicholas’s stomach hit bottom.
Catriona stood in his bedchamber. Golden hair flowed over her shoulders. She gazed back at him with wide, dark eyes. Her skin was white and bloodless, her lips unnaturally red. She wore a fine gown of periwinkle silk. Aquamarines dangled from her ears.
Another ghost, and this one talked. He took a steptoward her, and from the folds of her gown a dag appeared. She leveled it at him.
Why would a ghost need a gun? It hit him then like a fist to the gut. Catriona was not dead. She was living in the west wing of his castle and trying to kill both him and Gillian. He’d never guessed, not even when he’d found the damned room. Gillian was right; hewasblind.
“Go back into your privy chamber,” she said.
He did as she ordered. His mind scrambled, looking for a way out of this. Catriona’s gaze flicked from the whisky decanter to the cup on the desk. “Had a drink?” She motioned to it with the barrel of her gun.
