Twenty-Three
“We’re late,” Cecelia scolded as they rushed up the steps of Robinsworth’s palatial home.
“If you hadn’t thrown me down on the bed and tried to have your way with me again, we wouldn’t be late.”
She blushed, but she was smiling. “I didn’t try to have my way with you. I did have my way with you.”
He remembered. He remembered it well. She’d rolled from on top of him and then bent her head to place it in his lap. Then it was all over within minutes. They’d only used magic the one time, and then they’d been so exhausted they slept. She’d curled into him as though she was right where she always should have been.
Marcus smacked her bottom as they walked through the front doors. “Good evening, Wilkins,” Marcus said to the old butler as the man took Cecelia’s wrap. “Where is my family?”
“They are all over the place,” the butler said, looking out over the crowd. “Shall I announce you?”
Marcus looked at Cecelia and she arched a brow. “Yes, please,” he said.
This was nothing like the last ball he’d attended. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know he was there because nothing was right without her in his life. Nothing was as it should have been that day. But everything was right now. His life was the way he wanted it.
“Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Thorne,” Wilkins said loudly and clearly. The crowd stopped, turning toward them as they cheered. They clapped hands and clinked their glasses and yelled salutations. Marcus linked his hands with Cecelia and held them high in the air.
The ocean of people parted and Cecelia walked into the throng with Marcus. They accepted well wishes, but then the quartet began to play a waltz.
“Come and dance with me, Mrs. Thorne,” he said, tugging her toward the dance floor. The floor cleared until it was just the two of them. He pulled Cecelia into his arms and looked down at her as he swept her around and around. She was beautiful in an emerald green gown, her hair piled high on her head and falling into ringlets to tickle her neck. He could look at her forever. And a day.
Eventually, others filed onto the floor and Marcus had to look up from the pool of her eyes to survey the floor.
“Mayden is here,” he warned her.
She looked around without being obvious. “Where is he?”
“To your left with the blonde,” Marcus said quietly.
“Will he come to me to give me his salutations?” she asked. Her brow was knit with worry.
“Since the celebration is for us, probably.” He jostled her in his arms so she’d look up at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
She nodded.
“Promise you won’t do or say anything dangerous,” he said. He couldn’t lose her now. He’d just gotten her.
“What could possibly happen that’s dangerous?” she asked.
She had no idea what Mayden was capable of. The music stopped and everyone clapped. Marcus led his new wife off the dance floor and walked toward his family. “What did we miss?” he asked of his father.
“He came in as though nothing had ever happened,” his father said. “It was odd. And eerie. And not at all what I expected. He bowed over your mother’s hand and introduced his wife.”
Marcus looked over at him. “The blonde?”
“Yes, the American. A very sweet girl.”
“She won’t be for long,” Marcus warned. Mayden had a way of breaking a woman’s spirit.
Lord Phineas looked like he wanted to run across the room and thrash the man to within an inch of his life.
“Did he speak to you? Or to Claire?” Marcus asked.
Lord Phineas shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Let’s try the direct approach, shall we?” Marcus’s father asked.
“Meaning?” Marcus tried.
“I’d like to talk with him. We all would. I’ll invite him to my study in ten minutes.”
“Do you think he’ll go?”
“Only one way to find out,” his father said. He adjusted the fit of his coat, shrugged his shoulders, and walked away.
His father walked to the edge of the dance floor and put his hand on Mayden’s shoulder as he moved to walk past him. Mayden looked Marcus’s father in the eye, and he smiled. Marcus could read his lips from there. “Of course,” the man said. “Ten minutes. I’ll see you there.”
Then Mayden stepped forward and bowed before Claire. “Mrs. Trimble,” he said. “Would it be possible to claim a dance with you?” he asked. His eyes skittered across her face, not landing in any one place.
“I am not feeling very well. I believe I’ll have to decline,” Claire said. Her hand shook on Lord Phineas’s arm. Cecelia wanted to reach out and hug her, because Claire was the one person who knew exactly what the Earl of Mayden was like on the inside.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mayden said smoothly. “Perhaps later?”
“Perhaps,” she said, noncommittally.
He turned to Cecelia. “Mrs. Thorne,” he said, his tone jovial and light. “May I claim the next dance?”
***
Marcus moved to step forward, but she pushed him back with a glance. “I’d be honored,” she said.
Mayden was tall and thin. His hair was dark as night, and his eyes were tiny pinpricks in a sea of nothingness.
He smiled and took her hand into the crook of his arm. A reel began, so she didn’t have to waltz about clasped in his arms, at least. She breathed a sigh of relief.
They came together for a moment, and Mayden said, “It was stupid of me to come here.”
Cecelia startled. She hadn’t expected that. Not at all. “I wouldn’t say that,” she tried.
He snorted. “Quite bacon-brained of me,” he admitted. “I’d hoped to let bygones be bygones. But I see that’s not possible.”
They stepped apart and then came back together. “You did some terrible things.”
“I belonged in Bedlam,” he explained. His eyes were troubled.
“Are you still mad?” she asked. She searched his face for the truth but couldn’t find any. Perhaps there was none left.
“I am thinking much more clearly now than I have in a long time. A man can become desperate when he’s faced with losing everything.” He stepped back, and then they switched partners with the people beside them.
She could see that happening. Her father had gone a bit mad when he’d lost her mother. Yet Mayden was speaking of material things. Not a love or a life. Not a soul. He spoke of his wealth. His home. His livelihood, perhaps.
“Your wife is lovely,” Cecelia said.
“She’s a twit,” he snarled.
Cecelia startled. “Beg your pardon.”
“She’s a treat,” he said, correcting himself.
“Oh,” Cecelia breathed.
The dance ended and Mayden escorted her back to Marcus, and he went to stand beside his wife on the edge of the room.
After a few minutes, Mayden walked toward the corridor that led to Robinsworth’s study. He stepped out of view, and Marcus, his father, Lord Phineas, and the duke all filed out behind him.
Cecelia took a deep breath and walked to stand beside Claire and Sophia. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Claire said.
“Nor do I,” Sophia agreed. She raised a finger to her lips and began to nibble a nail.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Cecelia asked. “Certainly he wouldn’t do anything terrible with this many people looking on.”
“You don’t know him,” Claire scolded.
A clatter at the refreshment table drew their attention. Marcus’s mother rushed from the dance floor when a table holding three large ice sculptures overturned.
“Oh, dear,” Claire said, startled.
“Mother,” Sophia said, and both the girls rushed forward to help her.
Everyone in the room was looking in the direction of the clatter. Cecelia noted absently that the American girl who’d married Mayden was in the middle of the throng screaming at the top of her lungs. What the devil?
But just then, an arm snaked around Cecelia’s waist and pulled her toward a corridor at the back of the room. “Don’t say a word,” Mayden hissed in her ear. “If you do, I will have no choice but to shoot blindly into the crowd.” Mayden was supposed to be in Robinsworth’s study. He must have never gone to meet them after all.
He had a gun. Had he had it all along? It was in his hand, and she heard the click of the lever being pulled back. “I’ll go with you,” Cecelia said. “You don’t have to force me. I wanted to talk with you anyway.”
Cecelia worked to adopt the placating tone she’d used with her father when he was drunk.
“Why did you want to talk to me?” Mayden asked as he led her toward a long corridor. He walked quickly down it, his hand at her elbow, gently but forcefully pushing her forward.
“Where are we going?” she asked, rather than answering him.
“Somewhere that we can talk privately,” he said. He pushed through a set of doors and then led her up a set of stairs. They circled around and around and around and around, and by the time they got to the top, she was winded.
“Can we slow down just a little?” she asked.
Mayden brushed cobwebs from the entryway of a large stone room. Cecelia walked to the edge and looked through a stone opening. Through the hole, she could see the ground below. “Where are we?” she asked.
“The turrets,” he said as he began to pace.
“This is where you killed the first Duchess of Robinsworth,” Cecelia said. She struggled to remain calm. But it was difficult.
His mouth fell open, and he stopped pacing to glare at her. “I didn’t kill her,” he said.
“You didn’t?”
“Oh, my God,” he breathed. “All this time they thought I killed her?”
Cecelia didn’t say a word. She just looked at him. His gaze was clear and steady. Not at all like she’d imagined. He was truly shocked at the revelation.
“I didn’t kill her,” he said. He laid a hand on his chest and pleaded with her with his eyes. “You must believe me. I didn’t kill her. I needed her.” He began to pace again.
“Did she love you, too?” Cecelia asked.
He shook his head. “She wanted to make her husband jealous. Nothing more. She was mad.”
“And you’re not?” Cecelia asked.
“Not right now,” he said, laughing.
“Why did you take me? And not one of the others?” Cecelia asked.
“The duchess and her ladyship were rushing forward to help their mother.” He looked at Cecelia as though she were the one bound for Bedlam. “You were the only one left. And you are more likely to listen to me.”
Cecelia cocked her head to the side as she edged toward the door. “What did you have to say to me?”
“Stop moving,” he yelled. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair.
“I’ll stay right here,” Cecelia said, holding up her hands as though surrendering.
“Tell me what my sins are,” the earl said. He made a forward motion with his hands. “Let me hear them. What else do they think I did?”
“They think you killed the late duchess,” Cecelia said.
“I didn’t. She jumped.” He made another forward motion with his hand.
“What happened that day?” Cecelia asked.
“We were up here talking. And she jumped. She just jumped. She said His Grace knew about us and that he was angry. And she couldn’t bear her life anymore. I tried to stop her. I tried to stop her.”
He didn’t look upset by this at all. If anything, he looked irked that he had to stop to explain it.
“Did you love her?”
He waved a breezy hand through the air. “She was a means to an end.”
“A means to what end?” Cecelia asked.
He shrugged, pacing again. “I needed funds for my estate. His Grace is good with investments. But she ruined me.”
“And she made you angry when she ruined you. So, you shoved her from the turrets. She fell to her death.”
“I would never have pushed her.” He laughed, but it was a sound with no mirth. “I thought about it many times. But her daughter was with us that day. She walked in looking for her mother. Her mother didn’t want her to see me. So, she tried to rush her from the room. But I think the girl could smell her mother’s desperation.” He laid a hand on his chest. “I would never have shoved her from the tower with the little girl there. I’m not a monster.” He looked shocked.
“I didn’t know Lady Anne was there,” Cecelia said.
“What are my other sins?” He motioned for her to continue.
“You tried to shoot Claire and Lord Phineas.”
“Yes, I did do that,” he admitted. “But I hadn’t slept for days. Do you think they would accept my apology?”
Cecelia bit back a snort. It was difficult, but she did. “We could try. Shall I go and get them?”
He motioned with his gun, jabbing it toward her. She flinched every time he moved it. “No, no. That’s no good. I need your help. Tell me what to say to them. Tell me what will fix it.”
Cecelia certainly doubted that anything could fix this man. Particularly not while he was alone with her with a gun. Marcus would find her soon. She was sure of it. He would come. He always did.
“I’m not a bad person,” the earl said, clasping the sides of his head between the gun and his flattened palm. “She always said I was a bad person. But I’m not.”
“Who said you were a bad person?” Cecelia asked. She sat down on the low stone wall that surrounded the turrets.
“She did.” Mayden sat down on the other side of the stone room and began to rock slowly back and forth, back and forth.
“Who is ‘she’?” Cecelia asked, keeping her voice low and soft, although all she wanted to do was scream and run.
“Her. My mother. The late countess.” His rocking became faster and faster. He clutched himself with his arms.
“What did she say to you?”
“I can’t repeat it. It’s too vile.”
Cecelia could help him. She knew she could. “Will you let me help you?” she asked. She leaned toward him. He was leaving her in his mind, she could tell.
“I need for someone to help me,” he said. A tear rolled slowly down his cheek.
Cecelia’s heart broke for him. “I’m going to reach into my reticule and then I’m going to show something to you,” she said slowly. “Will that be all right?”
He looked at her, focusing only slightly, and he nodded.
“I have magic dust, and I’m going to blow it into the air. I want to see the truth. Will you be all right with the truth?”
“The truth about me?” He pressed a hand against his chest. “You can see the truth about me? That’s all I’ve ever wanted anyone to see. I want someone to see the truth.”
Cecelia poured some magic dust into her hand and said the words, “See every lie, see every sin, but before we do, let’s go back to where it begins.” She blew the dust from her hand, and it began to swirl in the air.
A small tornado of magic dust formed in the middle of the space, and the wind spun, waving cobwebs and dirt into her face. But then the dust began to take shape. Rather than the pictures she’d expected to see of scenes from his head or memories, she saw his thoughts. They came out in single words. The word “fear” formed in the cloud, and then it grew teeth like a tiger and chomped its way across the turret.
He’d known fear. Mayden moved his feet from the path of the chomping word. He began to tremble. But he didn’t look away.
The word dissolved, and another took shape. “Hopeless” formed in the dust, and it wafted about like a kite caught in a storm. It had no direction, and it had no place to land. It just floundered about, with nothing to anchor it. “Rage” formed next, and it beat itself about in the dirt, bouncing off the walls and against the floor.
This was what was in the man’s head. And it was there in the most elemental of ways. It was almost as though he’d never grown past a certain point in his life.
Suddenly, lifelike people made of magic dust shimmered in the middle of the room. A couple dancing. Their kisses were loving, their laughter real. He gasped. “My mother,” he said. “And my father.” He reached a hand into the mist, and they vanished. He cried out. “Come back.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “That was before he died. Before she became sad.”
The next image was that of a woman in bed and a little lad running to her side, only to be told to leave. He needed his mother, and she’d shooed him from the room. She threw things at him until Cecelia could even feel the lad’s pain.
“Your mother changed after your father died,” Cecelia said calmly.
He nodded, continuing to watch. Two men formed in the dust. They looked alike. “My brother,” he said.
“What happened to him?” Cecelia asked.
Then image changed to that of a duel, and she saw the man fall to the ground in a pool of blood. “He died,” Mayden said simply.
She saw the image of three caskets being lowered into the ground. They couldn’t all have died at the same time, but this was in his mind, after all. “My mother,” he said. “My brother. And my father.” He took a deep shattered breath. “They all left me.”
“They all died.”
He turned to her and snarled, “They all left me!”
She nodded, finding it easier to agree.
“When did you break?” Cecelia asked softly.
The image changed, and the vision of a little lad being smacked by an older woman, probably his mother, came into view. “I changed then.” The scene changed to a different one of violence. “And then.” Still the same woman, another scene. “And then.”
The little lad grew up to be a man. But the man was broken. She could see it in his eyes. And he could as well.
“This is what I am,” he said.
“Our memories can make us, or they can take us,” Cecelia said. “It looks like yours took you.”
“They took me,” he repeated, but his tone was flat.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
He looked up at her as though he looked for salvation.
“My sins, show them to me.”
Cecelia turned to face the wall. She couldn’t watch any more.
He grunted as each scene changed. She could hear that much. He began to fidget. And he scrambled to get away from the images until he was pressed against the low stone window, and he sat inside its frame.
“Don’t fall,” Cecelia said.
“I have done too many bad things.”
“It’s all right. I can take your memories and put them in a box. I can fix you.”
“No one can fix me.” He let the gun fall to the ground, and it went off with a resounding boom and a flash of light. Cecelia covered her ears and waited for the pain to hit her.
***
Marcus searched the ballroom calling Cecelia’s name over and over. “Why did you let her walk away from you?” Marcus shouted.
“We thought Mayden went with you,” Claire explained. She buried her face in Lord Phineas’s chest.
“Where would he have taken her?” his father asked.
Marcus jerked his compass from his pocket and flipped it open. It would show him where home was. Cecelia was home. “West,” he said. And he began to run in that direction. Mayden probably hadn’t taken her from the house, that much Marcus was sure of. He had a reason for being there. Now Marcus just had to figure out what it was. He ran through the corridors of the castle, with his entire family and Cecelia’s father running behind him. When he reached the lowest level of the turret, the compass began to spin. “Where now?” he asked himself.
But then a shot split the quiet of the open space. “Cecelia!” he cried. He couldn’t lose her. He simply couldn’t. He would die without her. He ran as fast as he could up the winding staircase.
He stopped in the doorway of the open room, and his heart jumped from his chest when he saw her standing there. Cecelia was safe. She was well. She looked out the window, rather than at the scene behind her. She held her palm flat, urging him to stop. How could he?
Mayden sat in the open stone window, a look of revulsion on his face.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Mayden was too engrossed in the changing scenes before him to even look at Marcus.
“He dropped the gun and it fired. But I’m fine.”
“I’ve never been so scared,” Marcus said. He turned to hold his family back. “Stay,” he said to them.
“I will trade my life for hers,” Cecelia’s father said. “Let me up there. I don’t care what happens.” Marcus refused to let him pass.
Cecelia finally turned and looked at Mayden. “I can help you.” The dust settled at their feet, all the life gone from it.
“I hurt too many people,” Mayden said. His eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
Marcus agreed. But Cecelia said, “I can help you, if you’ll let me. I’ll take your memories and lock them away in a box. You can start anew.”
“It’s too late.”
Mayden rocked in the open window. And Marcus could almost feel his pain. “He’s broken, Marcus,” Cecelia said. “But we can fix him.”
“I’m not certain there’s any fixing him. He’s not redeemable.”
“There’s hope,” Cecelia said.
“The hope died inside me a long time ago.” Mayden pointed toward where the dust had fallen. “The things I’ve done. I wasn’t even aware of all of them.”
“Did you show him everything?” Marcus asked.
Cecelia shook her head. “Only some of it.”
“There’s more?” Mayden asked.
Cecelia nodded.
Mayden smiled. But he looked directly into Cecelia’s eyes and said, “Thank you.” Then he leaned backward and fell from the window.
Cecelia ran to him, but Marcus thrust her out of the way. He reached for Mayden, but the man slipped through his fingers. He leaned over the side and caught the sleeve of the man’s coat. He grunted, holding tightly to Mayden’s arm.
“You can’t save me. No one can,” Mayden grunted, trying to shake loose of Marcus’s grip.
“I can if you’ll let me,” Marcus ground out. He reached to catch Mayden’s jacket with his other hand. But the material tore, and Mayden wiggled. “Hold still. I’ll pull you up.”
“Let me go,” Mayden said clearly.
“I can’t. My wife won’t like it.” His grip was slipping.
“She’ll have to be angry at you, because I won’t let you save me.” He jerked his shoulder, until he began to slide from the sleeve of the coat. “Thank you for trying,” Mayden said. And then he slipped free of the coat entirely. Marcus reached, trying to catch him as he slid free. But he moved too fast. And then he was gone.
Marcus ducked back inside the turret, refusing to watch when Mayden hit the ground. A soft thud met his ears, and Cecelia rushed into his arms. Marcus pressed his eyes closed tightly, trying to forget the memory of the way the man looked into his eyes, right before he shook loose of his grip.
“I always thought he was a coward and so weak,” Marcus breathed.
“Oh, Marcus,” she said. “He was in so much pain.”
“I saw some of it,” he said. “Are you all right?” he kissed her forehead. Cecelia sobbed into his shirt.
“How could he survive after all those years of abuse?”
“He didn’t,” Marcus said. “Something died within him a long time ago.” He looked at his father. “Will you go and check to be sure he’s not in pain?”
Claire covered her face with her hands and cried. Then she wiped her eyes and said, “Who would have thought I’d be crying about the Earl of Mayden’s demise?” She laughed, a watery chuckle. “Marcus, you have to be certain he has a funeral. And treat him with respect from here going forward.”
“I promise we’ll take care of him.” He kissed Cecelia’s forehead again.
“He wanted absolution,” Cecelia said to the room. “He wanted forgiveness.”
“Well, he has it,” Lord Phineas and the duke said at the same time. They were the two people he’d wronged the most. And they’d just forgiven him.
“Can we go home?” Cecelia whispered to Marcus. She kissed his neck softly. “Please. I need you.”
He needed her, too. More than anything.