The Reckless One (27 page)

Muira swung, all her rage invested in the blow that caught Favor across the temple and sent her tumbling down the stairs. The world was gone before she reached the bottom.

“Where’s Muira?” Favor asked faintly. Her head throbbed and a burning pain drove through her back to her shoulder blades. Blackness skirted about her consciousness, beckoning her toward oblivion.

“She’s gone too far,” she heard Jamie mutter. “No piece of land is worth the price of yer soul.”

The darkness swallowed her. When it released her again she grew slowly aware that someone held her, pressing a cool, moist cloth against her forehead. “Raine,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, Favor McClairen,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry fer all we done to ye. The boy was no rapist. Ye saved us from the sin of murdering an innocent lad. And that’s all ye did. Carr would have found another way to rid us from his land. Ye were just convenient.”

“Please,” she said trying to turn. She had to stop Muira. Raine. Dear God, why hadn’t she stayed with him? Listened? The swirling darkness beckoned her once more; she fought against it, concentrating on Jamie’s soft litany.

“Ye were convenient for Muira, too. Fer us. I’ll not deny it. We shouldn’t have used ye so. It’s just that we owed Muira. Please, try and understand.

“We were scattered after the massacre. She found us. She gave us a goal, a purpose, something besides scrabbling from one day to the next without pride or future or past. But she got lost somewhere. I knew it and I didna stop her and that’s somethin’ I’ll have to live with fer the rest of me days.”

The blackness receded enough for her to struggle upright in Jamie’s great arms. She didn’t care about his guilt. She’d had a bellyful of guilt. She only wanted Raine. “Where is she?”

“I dunno. Back to the castle I’d guess. She whipped those horses something fierce.” He shook his great shaggy head sadly. “Best rest, Miss Favor. It’s all over now.”

“No. It’s not.” She pulled away from him, wincing as she rose. A sea of darkness lapped at her vision. She fought and won the battle against drowning in it. “I have to get to Raine, Jamie. You have to take me to Wanton’s Blush.”

“Now, Miss Favor. What good will that do?” Jamie said mournfully.

She reached out her hand and braced it on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. She could not lose him to Muira’s mad obsession. Nor to anything else.

“Didn’t you hear her, Jamie? And you, who know her so well, didn’t you realize what she plans?”

He reached up to steady her by the elbow. She shook off his hand. “What’s that, Miss Favor?”

“She plans to kill all three—the valet, priest, and Raine—and by doing so clear the way for my marriage to Carr.”

Jamie stared at her, his muteness testifying to his agreement. “But ye’ll never agree to it. She must know that.”

“It doesn’t matter. She’s mad!” Favor said, seizing Jamie’s hand and tugging. “Now drive me to Wanton’s Blush, Jamie Craigg. Drive like the devil himself is chasing you.”

Wanton’s Blush stood preternaturally dark in the deepening dusk. Few lights brightened the narrow embrasures of her central façade; and her two ells, completely dark, seemed to fold in toward the gloomy courtyard like the wings of some huge, sentient night bird. Jamie drew the lathered horses up before the enormous front doors. Favor jumped from the carriage before the poor beasts had stopped.

“Miss Favor!” Jamie called. “I’ll wait without for ye!”

She didn’t reply. She wrenched one massive door open, darting past the flummoxed footman and up the central stairs, heading for the abandoned east rooms.

At the top she turned and flew down the corridor to a small passageway leading to the sea-facing rooms. Raine’s lair was near the north tower. If he was here that was the place she’d most likely find him.
If
he was, indeed, still here. The thought that he’d left eased a small part of Favor’s panic.

Still, Muira would be hunting—a mad, obsessed woman thwarted in her designs—and as knowledgeable about Wanton’s Blush as Muira was, she would soon figure out Raine’s whereabouts.

Favor slowed her pace, adjusting her eyes to the gloom. Near the center of the hallway she saw a sliver of light from under a door. It was the chapel where most of Janet McClairen’s things had been abandoned.

The thought invoked an image of Raine looking at the detritus that had once been his mother’s treasured items. She hadn’t understood his pensive mood when she’d come upon him there. He’d accepted her intrusion with relief. Raine, too, had dealt with his share of ghosts.

She opened the door and stepped inside, looking about. An ornate silver candelabra stood on the floor, the lights from a dozen tapers glinting from its polished surface. Otherwise, the room looked empty. She frowned, moved forward, and heard the door bang shut behind her.

She swung around. Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, stood behind her. He was dressed like a prince, gleaming from head to foot. At his side he wore a sword in a jewel-encrusted scabbard, on his head a snowy bagwig secured with a diamond clasp. The deep cuffs and buttons of his coat shimmered with crystals and metallic threads. Even the buckles of his shoes glittered.

“You’ve done something to your hair,” he said mildly. “Begad, I rather like it. Pretty.”

She didn’t know what to say, how to respond. His eyes were odd though his face was composed.

“I knew you’d come, Janet. You always liked your pretty things, though”—he cast a sad look around—“they’re not very pretty anymore.”

“I’m not Janet, sir.”

“Of course you’re not. You’re Favor Donne, or should I say McClairen? Did you think I didn’t know? Of course I knew. Although, I will admit, I only recently found out. Rankle told me, just before he succumbed. Chicken bone, I believe.”

Dear God, he’d killed that little valet.

“Don’t worry, m’dear, though I will probably have to have a little talk with your brother when …
if
he returns. But that has naught to do with you and me. I don’t care if you are a McClairen. It doesn’t matter who you are because …”—he moved toward her—“… because I also know that you carry the spirit of my dear Janet.”

She released her breath slowly, holding very still as he picked up a strand of her hair and coiled it nonchalantly around his finger. “Really quite lovely. I declare myself utterly taken with the hue.”

Her smile was tremulous.

“It really is too bad you have to die.”

She jerked back, unprepared for the sudden death sentence and he smiled, clucking softly as one would to a frightened mare. “There now, Janet. You are somewhere in there listening, aren’t you, Janet? Because everything I have to say would, I’m afraid, simply be wasted on Miss Donne.”

He was going to kill her anyway. It made no sense. “Why?” she pleaded in a hoarse little voice.

“Because I can’t have you hounding me through London. You’re a Scottish nobody, both in this body and in your last. You aren’t”—he twirled his hand, searching for the right words—“rich enough, or well-connected enough, or
special
enough to be my wife. And Janet, you were ever too proud to be anything less.

“Perhaps Miss Donne, too, suffers from this elevated sense of herself because I certainly gave her—you?—every chance to become my mistress, but she—you?—tiresomely insisted on matrimony.”

“I’m not Janet,” she protested weakly, uncertain whether she should reveal Muira’s plot, fearful that doing so would incite him to a murderous rage.

“Of course not.” He patted her cheek as one would a child, his gaze slowly warming as he studied her features. “Do you know, Janet, I actually considered for a moment acquiescing to your wishes? I’d almost decided to marry you with—of course—the caveat that I could rid myself of you when I found it expedient to do so.

“But then old farmer George died and the ban on my matrimonial aspirations lifted. There are countless heiresses in London, m’dear. Countless rich,
well-connected
heiresses. You, I’m afraid, never stood a chance.”

“Why did you propose to me, then?” she asked. “Why did you send for the priest?”

“I didn’t. I simply told your aunt I did.” He
tched
softly. “I thought if I proposed, the old hag that guards you would finally allow us a moment alone. So I proposed. In fact, I believe dear Fia even overheard me. Then I told your aunt I’d sent for the priest. I even had a few servants look for a carriage.

“It would have worked, too. I would have insisted we spend an hour or so alone. But then I took sick. I can’t begin to describe to you my frustration,” he said confidingly. “Happily all has come to rights, however, for here we are.”

Her eyes darted about the room, looking for a likely weapon, finding nothing. “I’ll just come back,” she whispered desperately. “As many times as you kill me, I’ll come back.”

“Ho-ho!” he chuckled, bussing her under the chin. “I knew I could draw you out. Threats now, Janet? I would have thought you’d learned the error of that particular behavior on those cliffs.” He opened his palm in the direction of the windows and she saw that in spite of his jocular tone, she had, indeed, enraged him.

His pupils were pinpoints of black in his dazzling blue eyes. A tiny tic twitched at the corner of his mouth. “Do your damnedest, Janet. Come back as many times as you like, I’ll simply kill you again.”

She’d made a grave error. She backed up until she banged into a wall of boxes and crates. She edged along the mass, hands behind her, groping for some weapon. Carr advanced.

“But you know something, Janet? I’ve been reading about haunts and ghoulies and such. It’s fascinating. You ghosts seem a peculiarly hearth-loving mob. Unless you find a human vessel to house you, and that little endeavor took you how long this time? A dozen years?”

He was only a few feet away and she’d worked her way into a corner with nothing to show for it. “The point I’m trying to make, Janet”—he spoke through his teeth now, the soft, urbane tones coming from the choleric face frightening her far more than his words—“is that I don’t think you—or your clan—
can
leave here. Let’s find out, shall we?”

He seized her around the throat. She flailed frantically in his grip but her heavy skirts smothered her struggles. She clawed at his wrists, tearing violently but his fingers dug deep.

“You would kill your own son’s wife?” she choked out.

He laughed, entertained by what he clearly imagined was a paltry diversionary tactic, his grip loosening just enough for her to gulp another lungful of air.

“I swear ’tis true!” she gasped, working at his implacable hold on her throat. “I am married to your son Raine.”

“Raine?” He chuckled, his handsome face made even handsomer by his amusement. But his clasp on her throat did not tighten. Instead, it loosened slightly.

He didn’t seem to care how deeply she scored his arms and hands with her nails. Like a cat with a mouse, he was playing with her, curious to see what she would say next.

“Yes. He’s here. And he’ll kill you if you hurt me,” she said, and as she spoke she realized it was the truth. She did not for one minute doubt Raine would avenge her with all the formidable power he possessed. Because he loved her.

Stunned at learning his identity, bewildered and uncomprehending, she’d ascribed to him fantastic and horrendous motives. Now she saw that everything he’d done he’d done to protect her. Including marrying her. If only she’d listened to her heart.

Carr had tired of his play. His hands were tightening incrementally, torturously, slowly squeezing the life from her. Light-spattered darkness careened about the perimeter of her vision. Her limbs felt weightless. Her lungs burned.

“So Raine will kill me if I hurt you?” he said, chuckling as he studied her face.

“Yes, I will.”

She had to be imagining Raine’s voice. But Carr’s body had gone as still as a hound on point, his head snapping up. His hands dropped from her throat and she crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath as he wheeled to face his son.

Raine strode from the shadowed doorway. In his hand he held a primed pistol, pointed at Carr. His shirt was open, his long hair in disarray, his boots splattered with mud. Compared to Carr’s exquisite figure he looked coarse, rough, and incredibly beautiful. Gabriel come to challenge Lucifer.

“Well, blast me if it isn’t my large middle child,” Carr murmured, his eyes hooded. “And tell me, is the rest true, also? Are you wed to her?” He flung his hand down toward Favor. She skittered back. He did not notice.

“Yes,” Raine said. His gaze was watchful, his jaw tense with barely contained fury.

“Rather incestuous, or did you not know she also carries your mother’s soul?”

Raine snickered. “You’ve grown foolish, old man. We duped you, made you believe my mother had returned in order to keep you occupied while I searched the castle for McClairen’s Trust.”

We?
Dear God, he must have heard her talking and deduced Muira’s plan. Now he was drawing Carr’s attention away from her. Carr stared, fury born of shock simmering in his expression. His lips twitched, his eyes flickered. A palsy began in his right hand.

“No,” Carr said. “I don’t believe it.” He jerked his head around, impaled Favor with a killing glare. “You’re Janet. You knew about the Part of No—” His voice trailed off, his gaze flew back, returned to Raine. “You told her what to say.”