In any case, I did not speak, waiting for him to do so first, as I had done that first night when I saw him hunched in a corner scribbling with a nub of charcoal, revealing so much about his inner turmoil with just that simple act. I wanted to shout at him, to pull him from the battlements, but I was afraid such a drastic action would only precipitate matters, so I willed myself to wait, trusting the roof would hold and Will would eventually respond to me.
It took a few minutes—several long, nerve-racking minutes—but, as expected, somehow my quiet, undemanding presence loosened his tongue.
“I thought I could do it this time,” he murmured in such a soul-weary voice that I felt the breath catch in my lungs. “I’ve wanted to so many times. It’s just . . . it’s all too much. I just want it to end.” He was begging now, the words wrung from so deep inside him that they were raw and ravaged.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes.
“But every time, every time I think I can end it, or just . . . let it end, when it comes right down to it . . . I can’t.” He began to weep; bitter tears etched trails down his cheeks. “I always change my mind. I always fight it. Despite how much it hurts to do so.” He turned to look at me. “Why? Why don’t I have the strength to end it? Is this my punishment?”
“No,” I rasped, unable to listen silently to his self-recrimination a moment longer. I grabbed hold of his hand, clasping it between my own as his image swam before me and answering tears spilled down my face. “No. None of this is your fault.”
“But it is,” he insisted.
I shook my head.
“It is,” he sobbed. “I killed her!”
My heart stuttered in my chest and grew cold. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t, and meanwhile he continued to speak.
“She was good and sweet and kind, and I killed her. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t want to. That I begged her not to make me.” He turned to look out at the firth, the wind playing with his hair, but his mind was far away in memory. “But she threatened to do it herself. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She said hell would be better.” He shook his head. “But I couldn’t let her do that. She didn’t deserve that fate. She was an angel. My angel.” His face tightened in revulsion. “And I killed her.”
Somewhere in the midst of his speech, I had become confused. Were we still talking about Mary Wallace, or . . . I suddenly realized he was talking about the girl from the drawing, the one Michael had showed Gage and me.
“By suffocating her?” I guessed.
He nodded, too lost in his memories to wonder how I had known such a thing. “Meg told me it would be just like she’d gone to sleep. That she knew she was going to die soon anyway. The seizures were getting worse from everything they’d done to her, and she wanted to die peacefully rather than in the grips of one of those fits. She promised she wouldn’t fight me, and she didn’t. But I could see the pain in her eyes. She’d lied about that. It wasn’t peaceful, and it wasn’t kind.”
I didn’t know what to say. His pain, his hatred of himself was so deep, I didn’t think there was anything I could do, anything I could say to even come close to touching it, to soothing it. Especially when I myself felt so conflicted about what he’d told me. Yes, he’d killed this Meg, but only after she begged him to. If he hadn’t acted as she wanted, she had threatened to commit suicide. Her threats must have been very real, because after listening to him, I didn’t for a second believe that he would have carried out her wishes if he hadn’t feared she was speaking the truth. Suicide placed her soul in jeopardy. It could be argued that the girl was insane, either before she entered the asylum or because of what had happened to her there, and thus the sin might be forgiven, but how could Will allow her to chance it? To face eternal damnation?
And if Meg’s seizures were getting worse, and she was certain she would die soon anyway, wasn’t Will protecting her from further pain, despite what she felt when he suffocated her? Whatever they were doing to her in there couldn’t have been tolerable, not if she was that desperate to end it.
It was difficult to absolve him completely of guilt, but it was also hard to condemn him. I couldn’t help but wonder what I would have done in similar circumstances. What if Will had been the one begging me to end it for him? I couldn’t with any certainty say I wouldn’t have done the same thing for him that he had done for Meg.
I frowned. That name kept nagging at me, as if I’d heard it recently. But where? I didn’t think I had met anyone named Meg, not in Cramond or on the Dalmay estate. Perhaps someone had mentioned a . . .
I jolted, suddenly recalling. Good heavens! Could it be true? I glanced up at Will, wondering if he knew the girl’s full name or if he’d only known her as Meg. I decided there was nothing to do but ask.
“Do you know, was Meg short for Margaret?”
Will replied without looking at me. “Yes.”
I swallowed. “Lady Margaret?”
That brought his head around, suddenly curious. “Yes.”
“Was she, by chance, the Duke of Montlake’s daughter?”
He nodded hesitantly.