The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (64 page)

Patrick Hawley bit her earlobe, at first gently, then hard enough to hurt, to let her know that if she made him angry, he would inflict real pain— maybe rip it clear off. The way he tongued her flesh implied he was contemplating it.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll keep the secret from your oblivious husband, unless you think he’d like to watch. Remember Lycus? He watched, though he didn’t seem to enjoy it.” He rubbed his cheek against her bodice. “Keep your mouth shut and please me, if you want me to leave your husband alone.” He fumbled at her buttons.

“
No
.” She wasn’t sure why she wasn’t screaming. Part of her didn’t want to draw the attention of whoever might hear, for fear of what they’d think of her. She was also terrified that if she did scream, he would hurt her grievously, and enjoy doing it. Some inner sense warned that he might want her to fight more than he wanted her to succumb.

He merely laughed and trapped her hand in his again. “I swear you’re a comely bitch. The way you turn a man hard as rock hasn’t changed.” His tongue trailed over her jaw. “I like how you make a bustle swing. You know what it does. A man can’t think of anything but having you. That’s why you do it. Will you beg for mercy? Beg me, my slave-queen.”

Rage formed, shifted to terror, and reformed again.
Foisting bastards on innocent men, driving us daft with your shameless ways. You deserve what you get….

What could she expect from other men if her own father believed such things? “I’ve done nothing,” she cried. “Let me go. Now!
Let me go!
”

He forced her mouth open with his. Pushed his tongue so deep she gagged. Splinters from her brother’s toy boat wormed into her palm, stinging like an insistent messenger. She thought she heard Nicky, shouting.
Fight for yourself
.

She bit down as hard as she could, though her instincts warned that it would only enrage him. He gave a muffled scream and released her, leaving her free to spit out his blood.

“You bitch!” He pressed his hand over his mouth. “I’ll make you pay for that.” His words slurred. “I’ll break every bone in your body and send you to Kilgarry naked and bleeding. Ramsay will be a laughingstock, and yes, I’ll make certain this tale is heard everywhere.”

“Will you?”

He paused, frowning. He scanned the surrounding hills, his sandy lashes descending to protect his eyes from the glare. “All at once you sound quite brave.” He picked up the handkerchief Morrigan had dropped, spit, and wiped his lips. “I remember how you used to lead the prince and his bastard brother around by their noses. Now look at you, pretending to be respectable. You won’t be so proud when I’m done with you.”

Heat radiated against her thigh.

The knife.

“You’ll cry for mercy,” Hawley said, “or for more. Depends on you.”

He grasped the front of her bodice. His grip tightened then flexed, but the fabric was well made and resisted his attempts to tear it. While his attention was focused on that, she dropped Nicky’s boat and slipped her hand into her pocket, bringing out the blade.

Sunlight reflected off it, drawing his eye. His face turned sickly grey and he staggered. His arm rose in a defensive gesture.

She sliced swiftly through his coat and into his forearm. The wool darkened as blood saturated it. He tripped over one of the stones and fell, groaning, his face contorted.

Should she stab him again? With her attacker on the ground, moaning, she hesitated.

He scrabbled to his feet, his good hand pressing against the wound, his mouth open, waves of color washing through his cheeks.

“Come away,
Patrick
,” she said. “Weren’t you going to make me beg for mercy?” She had to fight a strong urge to stab him in the throat.
You’re not a murderer,
she told herself grimly. But she lifted the blade.

Hawley stumbled. He dragged himself to his horse and mounted, wheeling the animal, and galloped away as though all of Hell had come out of the ground to chase him.

Morrigan walked to the burn. She knelt on the wet rocks and rinsed her mouth until she no longer tasted Patrick Hawley’s blood, then washed the knife. She stood and returned to the ruin of her father’s blackhouse.

Douglas Lawton had been obstinate, unforgiving, often cruel, but he’d never shown fear. She’d learned instinctively, by his example, that to show fear was dangerous. Fear stole power. She’d kept her power today. She felt it resound through her.

Her earlier despair evaporated, like smoke rising into the clear spring air. She would keep this knife with its fearsome blade of glass. Never again would she be without it. And if another man proved daft enough to menace her or her child…

… she’d make him regret it.

* * * *

Curran searched for Morrigan when he’d finished updating his ledgers. Perhaps she’d returned from her ride. Nightfall might find her well, ready for love. He’d missed their intimacy, and God; it’d been so long, three months since Olivia was born, and how long before that? Months and months, if he didn’t count that one night of weakness when he’d defied Eleanor’s command and nearly caused the death of his wife and child.

Morrigan the mother was as enticing as the virgin on Stranraer’s moor. She tempted him with every unconscious movement she made. But she had naturally been occupied with her sickly infant, and he wouldn’t let himself intrude. Twice in the last three days he’d had to leave the room as she’d nursed their daughter, such was the strength of his need battling determination to be patient.

With the repulsive Patrick Hawley off seeking land and out of the way, the setting was perfect for uninterrupted seduction.

Diorbhail had thrown open the casements in the nursery. The room smelled of warm earth, sea, and pine.

“Have you seen my wife?” he asked as he entered.

“Not since breakfast. Olivia’s hungry. I hope she’ll soon come home.” Diorbhail cooed to the wean and tickled one miniature ear.

Curran was pleased at how their daughter’s nanny had blossomed. She was pretty now, with the weight she’d gained, and the color in her cheeks. Being Olivia’s caregiver had helped, he could tell. He crossed to a deep-set window and gazed over the wooded countryside. “Did she say where they were going?”

“No, Master Curran. ‘Out for a ride’ was all I heard.”

As he turned, he glimpsed something in her eyes. She lowered her face, but it was too late. He hoped he’d mistaken that look, and that her gratitude wasn’t shifting into infatuation.

“If she comes in, would you send word?”

“Of course.”

Though always courteous, Diorbhail’s manner made him a bit uncomfortable. When he saw her walking outside with Morrigan, he couldn’t help wondering what they talked about. Sometimes they appeared to be grimly serious, and other times were laughing uproariously. It gave him a strong inner satisfaction to improve Diorbhail’s lot, yet at the same time a part of him wanted to avoid her.

He rambled through Kilgarry’s corridors and rooms, studying the priceless paintings his father had collected and his mother had so lovingly hung. Janet, who’d started the midday meal, asked if Lady Eilginn would join them.

“I don’t know. I hope so.” The house seemed too quiet. Empty. Somehow, without its mistress, not right.

An obviously irritated Fionna caught up to him outside the bedroom. “Master, d’you see what one of those dogs has done? I found it beneath your bed, up against the wall.” She held out a doll he’d bought for Olivia. The poor thing was a mess, its head almost severed from its body. Stuffing billowed from its mangled torso.

“This is the end,” Fionna cried. “That doll was the bonniest thing. Why, a few months ago one of those worthless beasts tore up a pillow. I still find feathers when I dust. If ever I catch which one is doing it, I’ll have its tail under the butcher knife, so help me.”

“What could interest them about pillows and dolls?”

“I suspect it’s Antiope. She’ll chew on anything. Sometimes I do think she wasn’t worth the good sterling you spent on her.” She sighed her disgust. “Give it to me, and I’ll throw it out.”

“No,” Curran said, though he wasn’t sure why. “I wager Mrs. Ramsay’s aunt could fix it.” He entered the bedroom and laid the doll on Morrigan’s dressing table.

Bored and restless, he flung himself onto the bed. Speckled light through the stained glass window in the sitting room threw variegated colors over the doll’s face. A shadow marred the cheek like a bloodstain. The glass eyes regarded him, unblinking. He found his gaze returning to it again and again. At last he jumped up and knocked the doll into the chair where he could no longer see it.

As it fell, something dropped out of its torn chest. He picked it up. It was a bit of metal, black filigree patterning one edge. The fragment seemed familiar. Bothersome, that he couldn’t place it. He left it on the table and went into the sitting room where his book lay.

He read the same page of
The Talisman
three times, distracted by the thumps and bangs of a big, busy house. He stared at the freshly swept fireplace, and next to it, on the stones, his wife’s untidy sewing basket. Typical of her impatience with the ladylike art, it was an explosion of tangled thread and crushed material.

Her talents lay in less tangible directions— in her ability to interact wholly, unashamedly, with their daughter. There was wariness in her love for him, but Olivia received all of her without reservation. Then there was the unconscious way she had of absorbing and reflecting the quiet throb of life, making him intensely aware of his own heartbeat. He’d always sensed an inner turmoil within her, which somehow deepened her beyond other women he’d known, and filled him with a desperate need to give her peace.

He relived the vivid images that had overpowered him while Morrigan gave birth. He saw himself running up an endless set of stairs to save the child. She was bleeding profusely, but she watched his face with an expression of such transfixed awe it left him confident he could work miracles.

Sighing wearily, Curran forced his attention back to the book.

He’d never considered himself particularly imaginative or visionary, though he had recurring dreams so vivid they seemed like real experiences. Last night he’d dreamed of a child named Rosabel. He was the girl’s father, or brother, or guardian. They were picking raspberries in an alpine setting, and she was eating more than she was putting in her basket. He had to warn her about making herself sick. Later, when he put her to bed, he knew she would ask for another story about her dead mother.

A black filigree pattern….

Oh, aye. The sewing basket. Morrigan had a pair of scissors with a black filigree pattern, and a little wood figure dangling from the handle on an emerald green ribbon. Curran dropped his book and picked up the basket, digging through the fabric, pins, and thread. Shock jolted through him at what he saw buried at the bottom. The scissors were bent, broken. One point was missing. Fetching the piece from the bedroom, he fit it against the jagged edge and sat on his heels.

I lose control
, she’d told him after Michaelmas.
My temper consumes me
.

Certainty gripped him. The dogs hadn’t destroyed the doll.

Morrigan had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

MORRIGAN DIDN’T KNOW
what caused such gratifying exhilaration— warmth and sunlight, the scent of spring, or Patrick Hawley’s subjugation. She didn’t care. Stoirmeil caught her mood and danced from one narrow rut to the other, arching her neck and flinging her black mane from side to side like a flirtatious debutante enjoying the attention of ten different swains.

The sun climbed almost to the center of the sky. She would ride home, carry Olivia into the garden, and nurse her beneath the oak.

As Stoirmeil clambered onto Glenelg’s main track, Morrigan saw Kilgarry’s gig pulled off to the side next to the kirk’s dry stone fence. Agnes stood next to it, conversing with a seated Diorbhail. Morrigan kicked her mare to a gallop, her heart thudding. “Diorbhail?” she said, bringing Stoirmeil to a snorting halt.

“No need to fret.” Diorbhail lifted a blanket-clad bundle out of a basket beside her. “Your daughter’s hungry. I thought fresh air and a ride would distract her, and also we might find you.”

Morrigan took the child. Olivia, who lately had discovered the sound of her own voice, was chattering and waving her hands. At the sight of her mam she gurgled and grinned, but soon her mouth curled into a sulky frown and the gurgle switched to vexed hiccups.

“Master Curran was looking for you as well,” Diorbhail said. “Why not tie your mare to the gig and we’ll go home together?”

“Aye, that’s what I was thinking,” Morrigan said, but as she glanced towards the kirk, a movement distracted her. She squinted.

Someone was walking along the track. She was sure by the height and leanness that it was Mackinnon, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets and his face turned down as though refusing to give the bonny day any credence.

“But I confess I’d like to stay out awhile longer,” she said impulsively, giving silent thanks to Aunt Ibby for the specially made nursing corset she’d purchased for her niece. “It’s such a braw day. Here.” She returned Olivia to Diorbhail, dismounted, and tied Stoirmeil’s reins to the rear of the gig, keeping her face averted from her perceptive friend, who had made her distrust of Mackinnon clear, and who would not hesitate to voice many protests if she discerned what Morrigan was contemplating. “I’ve been locked up so long.” She was careful not to glance Mackinnon’s way again as she came around, holding out her arms for the babe. “I think I’d like to take her for a walk. Will you tell Curran? I promise to be back for tea.”

Diorbhail snapped the reins. Somehow, fortune had conspired and she hadn’t noticed Mackinnon, or if she had, failed to recognize him. The glare off the water was almost unbearably bright, casting the figure into silhouette. “I understand,” she said. “I’d feel the same if I were you. But mind, the wean’s hungry.”

“I’ll feed her beneath the yews by the kirk.”

Diorbhail nodded and looked pleased. She turned the gig and headed towards Kilgarry, Stoirmeil trotting along behind.