People seemed to appear and vanish at will, and everyone—everything—was connected in some grotesque fashion. Padraig’s thoughts went back to the portrait of Euphemia Hargrave in the entry hall.
Lady Euphemia had become obsessed with the idea of Thomas Annesley and Cordelia Hargrave nearly to the point of madness…
Thomas Annesley is accused of returning to Northumberland and setting the blaze that killed my parents and destroyed Castle Dare. The same night Euphemia Hargrave disappeared…
Must be the English of you all. Your eyes…
Searrach, Lucan, Iris, Hargrave, Castle Dare…everything—everything—seemed to be connected by gossamer threads that were invisible at first glance. The only outlier seemed to be Euphemia Hargrave, who had turned up at Darlyrede apparently from nowhere—a motherless infant who’d had no other to care for her in the world save for Lady Caris Hargrave—and then vanished fifteen years later.
Padraig thought of the lambs he’d taken from their dying mother in the spring, and then he stilled.
It was madness, the ideas that were circling in his mind then, like carrion birds waiting for the opportunity to swoop down and devour the carcass of Padraig’s reality.
But Tommy Boyd was no liar. He was no murderer, and he was no liar.
Could Euphemia Hargrave… have been Cordelia and Thomas’s baby? If it was true, the sad girl in the portrait had been Tommy’s firstborn child, and Padraig’s own sister.
He could see nothing in his mind now but the eyes in the portrait in the entry hall—unhappy, hopeless, frightened.
Even if the insane idea was true, there was no way Padraig could prove it. Euphemia Hargrave was dead, and Padraig knew too little of that long-ago time in Northumberland, had no facts, no station to call on to demand the truth.
But Lucan Montague did. Iris did.
The sudden touch of Searrach’s cold hand creeping around the back of his neck shook him from his reverie, and he realized that the woman had slunk closer to him, pressing against his arm, reaching up her face to nuzzle his hair.
“Do you think me beautiful, Padraig?”
“Searrach,” he began.
Her lips tracked along his ear, his cheekbone. “Your skin is cold,” she whispered. “Let me keep you warm.”
“Nay,” he said, half turning and placing his hands on her arms to halt her progress. “It’s not like that between us. It will never be like that.”
“It will,” she countered easily. “You’re taking me to Caedmaray. I’ll be your woman there. I’ll take care of you.”
“Nay,” he repeated, more firmly this time even as she struggled against his restraining touch to move closer to him. Padraig released her and stood, looking at her from over the fire. Her face was bright with yellow light, turning her already dark eyes black. “I’m going back to Darlyrede.”
She stared at him with those black eyes for a long moment. “I canna go back there,” she said. “Nae even for you, Padraig. Lord Hargrave will kill me.”
“Then doona,” Padraig said. “But I must.”
“He’ll kill you,” Searrach insisted. “Are you so blind that you canna see what he’s been doing? He nearly succeeded while you were there.” She got up suddenly and walked toward him. “I’ve saved your life a dozen times already. And now you owe me mine, by taking me from here.”
“What do you mean, you’ve saved my life?”
“I made excuses. I took the punishment. Those scars you saw…” Her mind seemed to wander for the briefest instant, but then her brows lowered. “So now you will take me from here. Back to Scotland.”
Padraig shook his head. “I’ll nae force you to return to Darlyrede. Take the horse, go on if you would. But if anyone else figures out what I think I have, people could be in great danger.”
“Figures out what you have?” Searrach’s eyes narrowed and she fixed him with a derisive look. “You mean about your precious Beryl?”
Padraig didn’t respond. Something in Searrach’s eyes—perhaps it was madness—reminded him that he’d always known to be wary of the woman, and just now there had been a quiet whisper of something more sinister behind the words she’d spoken. And so Padraig held his tongue, sensing that she could no longer keep the darkness to herself.
And he was right.
Searrach walked toward him slowly. “He already knows,” she whispered through a smile. The snow fell on her dark hair, turning it white in the flickering light. “He knew before you. And so did I.”
“What are you talking about?” Padraig managed to croak.
She walked closer to him, another pair of steps. “Your precious Beryl was supposed to have been a servant—a very special servant—of Lady Paget’s. Only,” she was just a hand’s breadth from him now—“Lord Paget didn’t know her. Wherever she’s come from, it’s nae from Elsmire Tower. He told his good friend, Lord Hargrave, just after their arrival.”
Padraig was as still as the stone monoliths rising out of the earth around Darlyrede.
“Lord Hargrave told you this, did he?” Padraig asked at last. “It doesna seem like the sort of information he’d share with a servant.”
“He’s shared lots with me,” Searrach said. “I’ll nae forget any of it. And now neither will Beryl. Or whatever her name is. My lord was quite put out when he found out she’d been lying all this time, in such close quarters with his sickly, pathetic wife.”
Searrach reached out and grasped a fistful of his cloak. “There is naught you can do to save her now. You must believe me. She’s gone. Vanished, like all the others. We must leave this place.”
He pulled away from her with a jerk, and after a confused blink, her brows drew downward and she gave a furious shriek.
“You’ll nae leave me here!”
Padraig caught her wrists as she struck out at him, not feeling the pain from the pulling of his wound on his ribs, but the sensation of warmth took over his flank. He wrested
