“Aye?” he said half to himself. He pulled out the little dish and set it aside, noticing the thick leather packet tucked into the shadows. While Satin nudged the empty bowl about, rattling it across the floor in an impatient fashion, Padraig withdrew the thick wallet.
He moved to the narrow cot along the wall and sat down, at once unwinding the thin leather strings holding the packet closed. He opened the stiff leather to behold a veritable fortune of parchment and vellum, each page scrawled over in neat, black writing. Padraig flipped through the topmost pages, his surprise increasing to shock with each sheet revealed. Lists. Inventories. Dates upon dates, going back at least a score of years. Some of the pages were cracked and dog-eared; some were so faded, Padraig had to hold them up toward the meager light to guess at the ghostly information that had paled over the years as the page itself had darkened.
This was not some lady’s simple diary full of mundane trivialities—this was Iris’s work, he realized, and the depth of it shook Padraig to his boots.
He flipped through several more pages, his gaze skimming the words until a lumpy object between the next two sheaves gave him pause.
It was a leaf, now faded and dry and brittle, its pointed tips fragile like butterflies’ wings. Padraig recognized it as the one he’d tucked into Iris’s hair when he had still known her as Beryl, and the memory of that sweet day pricked at his heart, even as he read the entries on the page.
Is called Padraig Boyd, from the Scottish isle of Caedmaray…
Crude, ill-mannered…
Funny, kind…
Devoted to his father…
Masterful with a sword…
Padraig looked up from the page then, letting the silence of the room settle on him like a cold blanket. Satin had abandoned his noisy efforts to make a meal appear in his empty dish, and now he leaped onto the cot, stepping daintily across the pages on Padraig’s lap until his white head was in charging distance of Padraig’s chin. Padraig reached up and stroked the underside of the cat’s jaw mindlessly as his eyes stared at the cold hearth and his mind was filled with memories of Iris.
Aye, she had played him false. But looking at this sampling of evidence she had amassed, considering the grave personal danger she’d risked every single day while living at Darlyrede, Padraig realized what a pigheaded fool he’d been. She’d wanted to tell him the truth, but by the time she knew she could trust him, the situation at Darlyrede had become so much more deadly for them all.
Iris had used her incredible ingenuity to come alone to Darlyrede from France and slip into the cogs of the household so intimately as to become invisible. Likely the information Padraig held in his hand, even if it did not exonerate his father, would incriminate Vaughn Hargrave and his cronies in a host of heinous deeds. Padraig had also come of his own volition into this dangerous situation, aye. But he was a man, and had counted on Lucan Montague’s aid. He had intended on fighting for the prize that was Darlyrede House.
What had Iris stood to gain from all her risk and effort?
Nothing, Padraig realized. She would never have her parents returned to her, or her childhood home. Even if Castle Dare were rebuilt, it would take years, and it would be Lucan’s by rights. She had risked her very life for nothing more than the truth—the truth for her brother and their parents, and for Caris Hargrave, and for Padraig.
And Padraig had punished her for it.
I’ve never lied about how I feel about you.
Padraig realized it was true. And he also realized that after his foolish pride had faded away, the whole truth about who Iris really was and what she stood for only made Padraig love her more.
He stilled then. Aye, he did love her. He could no longer deny it. And rather than be frightened by the further realization as the scales fell from his eyes, they settled around him like his da’s old plaid—fitting and comfortable and absolutely correct. He was not fighting for Tommy Boyd to regain Darlyrede House, or even to win it for himself. Perhaps he never had.
Padraig was fighting for the very idea of Northumberland.
For home. For Lord and Lady Hood and Lucan and—yes, hopefully—for himself and Iris. For his brothers, yet strangers to him, and for the future of all their families. Thomas Annesley had been a frightened, injured, devastated young man with no family, no friends, the night he escaped from Darlyrede, and in Padraig’s mind, he reached back through the decades to speak to that young man.
We’re here, now, Tommy. Let us help you.
The reign of terror visited upon this land—both from Vaughn Hargrave and the bandits currently infesting the hall—would stop, if it was the last thing Padraig did.
But first, he needed an army.
Chapter 18
Iris screamed until her throat was raw, and now even the shallowest breath of damp, cold air seared her throat like fire as she lay shivering on the table. She realized now that no one could possibly hear her. The sizzling of the torch had grown louder as her ears strained for the smallest sound, but that hissing was broken only by the random, faint percussion of water dripping in some darkened corner.
Iris thought she had at last discovered where all the missing girls had gone.
All this time she had assumed that Hargrave had stolen away with his victims to another location, or kept them prisoner in his own rooms, but she realized now that it would have been impossible to remove her from Lady Caris’s wing without the guards at the stairs seeing them, Rolf in particular. To keep her mind from breaking altogether
