Ashes on the Waves Page 4

From the highest point on the island of Dòchas, the building, with its sharp, pointed spires, numerous chimneys, and jutting battlements, loomed like an enemy armed for combat. I swallowed the lump of dread in my throat and fell into step beside Anna when the path widened at the base of the hill.

  Villagers talked about how beautiful the mansion was with its imposing size and carved marble accents, but I found no beauty here. Whenever I was near, the hairs at the base of my skull tingled. Something instinctual in me sensed evil in the house. Perhaps it spoke to my own darkness.

  Anna stopped outside the black iron gate but made no move to open it. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath.

  The door to the mansion opened and Miss Ronan stepped onto the porch. She didn’t say a word at first; she didn’t need to. Her expression said it all. She was furious.

  “I went to the village store to make a phone call,” Anna said, tugging on the gate. I wanted to help her open it, but I was still balancing the bag of coffee beans on my shoulder with my only functioning arm. The feeling of inadequacy was overwhelming as I watched her pull on the bars. Finally, the door opened enough to give her access.

  “You were instructed not to leave the grounds,” Miss Ronan said.

  I followed Anna up the path to the porch steps.

  Miss Ronan looked me up and down as if I were pestilence embodied. “What are you doing here?”

  “Francine asked me to deliver this coffee,” I answered, avoiding eye contact just as I would with an aggressive dog.

  I hadn’t seen Miss Ronan in years, but she looked exactly as I remembered her: abnormally menacing for such a diminutive woman. She wore an austere black ankle-length dress with her sable hair pulled severely back, making her brown eyes look enormous. Brigid Ronan was the sole witness to my birth and she hated me. “We don’t need coffee,” she said. “Take it back . . . and yourself with it, Liam MacGregor.”

  Anna’s face flushed red. “I wanted it, and I asked him to carry it here for me.”

  Miss Ronan pulled her piercing gaze away from me and leveled it on Anna. A myriad of emotions played fleetingly across her features before she resumed her mask of stoic indifference. “Very well, Miss Leighton. You are my superior, of course, as I am in the service of your family. He can leave it here on the porch.”

  I bent down and slid the bag off my shoulder, letting it fall the rest of the way with a thump.

  “Thank you. Now go,” Miss Ronan said.

  I turned to leave, but Anna grabbed my shirt. “No, Liam.” There was desperation in her voice and eyes. Fear. But just as Miss Ronan had done, she almost instantly slipped an expression of indifference over her features. The only indication of how affected she was could be felt in her trembling fingers entwined in my shirt. She addressed Miss Ronan with a leveled, smooth tone. “I invited him, and he’s my guest. Please treat him as such.”

  Miss Ronan’s huge dark eyes bored into mine with such intensity, I was compelled to lower my gaze. She, more than anyone, was aware of the danger I posed.

  “I should go back to the store, Anna.”

  “You were nice enough to lug that coffee up here,ont cup I should Anna said, releasing my shirt. “At least have a cup of it with me. Just a cup, okay?”

  Miss Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “I will have Mr. MacFarley retrieve the bag.” She stiffly nodded to Anna and disappeared into the house.

  The air felt lighter once she was out of sight. I took a deep breath and noticed Anna had done the same.

  “She creeps me out,” Anna said, rubbing her upper arms as if cold.

  “She has that effect on everyone, I believe.”

  “Why on earth does my family keep her on? They fire people all the time at home. Total hard-asses with employees—except with her. It’s like she has something on them.”

  Probably. She had something on everyone. Especially me.

  “You wanna come in?” she asked, gesturing to the formidable wooden doors.

  I took an instinctual step back. “No. Thanks. I can’t stay long. Francine expects me back.”

  Anna gave an unfeminine snort. “As if! She was practically throwing us at each other. Having you bring coffee? Come on. We’ve got coffee and anything else we need up here and she knows it. She wanted you to come with me. She doesn’t expect you back soon, Liam.” She punctuated her statement by lowering herself onto a wrought-iron bench, arms over her chest.

  I leaned against the pedestal of a huge urn near the steps.

  “I will not let crazy Miss Ronan tell me what to do or who I can talk to,” Anna said with a smirk.

  My heart dropped a bit. I was a pawn in her game of chess with Miss Ronan and no more. Still. I was here in her presence, spending time with her. Memorizing her. And that was enough.

  Anna jumped to her feet at the sound of boots on the stone walkway at the side of the house. Connor MacFarley came around the corner dressed in overalls and heavy rubber boots. He removed his hat and wiped his bald head with a handkerchief. “Hullo, miss. I’ve been sent to fetch a bag of . . . Oh, there it is.” He easily hefted the bag onto his shoulder and, upon turning, spotted me. “What ’er you doin’ here, MacGregor?”

  “He’s my guest,” Anna answered before I could draw breath.

  “Guest?” Connor adjusted his eye patch and scowled. “Careful the company ye keep, Miss Leighton.”

  He made a growling sound and lumbered back to the side of the house and out of sight. Anna said nothing until the clomping of his boots on the stone faded into silence.

  “Asshole,” she muttered. “And what’s with the pirate look? What happened to his eye?”

  I relaxed a little when she sat back down, relieved she hadn’t heeded his advice and sent me away. “No one knows for sure, but it’s rumored his wife did it one night as he slept.”

  “Ew. Really?”

  “So they say. He won’t talk about it, so we’ll never know for sure.”

  She leaned back and crossed her legs. “Well, what does she say happened?”

  “She accidentally fell from the cliff trail the next day.”

  Anna gasped. “Accidentally?”

  I shrugged. “No witnesses, so yes.” I wanted to sit next to her but found it hard to conjure the nerve.

  “Wasn’t th cWo yes.ere an investigation? Seems awfully convenient for her to die after poking his eye out.”

  “This is Dòchas, not New York City. We don’t have prisons or police. What happens between a husband and wife is their business. The elders intervene if property or another family is involved.”

  She draped her arm over the back of the bench. “So who are the elders?”

  “Any male over fifty years old.” I moved several steps closer. “Connor MacFarley is on the elder board.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Figures. No women?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  I leaned against the pillar closest to her. “Our ways are old-fashioned, Anna. All of the villagers are descendants of Scotch and Irish immigrants. They’ve clung tight to their roots and traditions. Perhaps too tightly. Outside influence and learning is discouraged and in most families forbidden.”

  “So, you’re telling me that if we were married, you could fling me from a cliff and nobody would do anything about it?”

  The thought of being married to this magnificent creature seemed too fine a fantasy to cast off quickly, so I paced the porch for a moment, letting the images of us together fill my head as I pretended to consider her question. “Yes.”

  “That’s barbaric. And wrong. You know that, right?”

  “Were I your husband, Anna, I would never throw you off a cliff or harm you in any way.”

  She stepped in front of me to stop my pacing. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. I meant letting somebody get away with it is wrong.”

  “I believe the act of murder is far more egregious than the deception that follows.” And I would know. Yet, unlike Connor, there had been a witness to my crime
and everyone in Dòchas knew of it. “I firmly believe that evil is punished and crimes are vetted naturally.” I was punished every moment by guilt, and the Bean Sidhe made certain I would never forget it. “Sometimes natural and self-inflicted atonement is more severe than that of mankind’s devising.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Wait a minute. You’re telling me that Connor MacFarley is being punished for murdering his wife by some kind of cosmic karma or something?”

  “I’m saying that in some cases, being locked up or executed would be a relief. Guilt is a heavy burden, Anna. It weighs down not only the mind, but the soul itself to the point of intolerability. Connor MacFarley must live not only now on earth with what he’s done, but in the hereafter.”

  She strode down the steps of the porch toward the opposite side of the house from Connor MacFarley. “That’s seriously messed up, Liam.”

  I rounded the corner after her. “I’ll acknowledge that, from your point of view, it must seem less than perfect.”

  She made that peculiar snorting sound again, like a laugh in her nose. “Well, if his punishment was perfect, he would be forced to look at that day and night.” She pointed to a grotesque, winged gargoyle statue perched atop the keystone of a tall arched window. It reminded me of the etchings in my copy of Dante’s Inferno.

  “Ugh,” she said with a shudder, still studying the gargoyle. “My great-great-grandfather was a nutcase.” She sat on the lip of a round, multitiered fountain and stared up at the gargoyle. “This place was built as c wagreat- a gift to his wife.” She choked out a laugh. “Ha! Maybe he should have just shoved her off a cliff instead.”

  I laughed and sat near her. “It would have been much cheaper and less drawn out a torture, to be certain.”

  She dipped her fingers gently into the fountain, skimming the surface just enough to cause shimmering ripples in the wake of her fingertips. “He was a total recluse and she was a socialite. Both of them were loaded from real estate and railroad money. She wanted a castle to rival those of her friends and all he wanted was to get away from the society his wife adored.” Anna pulled her fingers out of the fountain and flicked the water off. “Voila! Taibhreamh. Built miles and miles from the Maine coastline on the tiny island of Dòchas. A retreat for the recluse and a prison for his wife.”

  “And a prison for his great-great-granddaughter, as well,” I added.

  “More like a reform school, really.”

  “For those with tendencies to disrobe in public?”

  She laughed, and the world stood still. I closed my eyes to focus on the sound. It was like a brilliant tinkling of bells in my ears. The laughter stopped abruptly and I opened my eyes to find her staring at me.

  “Are you imagining me naked, Liam?” she asked.

  From what I’d read in the tabloids, Anna Leighton was anything but shy, but this was unexpected. In retrospect, perhaps I should have been imagining her naked, but at that time, her laughter was entrancing enough to fill my thoughts. “Um. No. No, of course not.”

  “What were you doing?” She scooted a few inches closer.

  “Listening.”

  “To?”

  “Your laugh. It’s beautiful.”

  One side of her mouth pulled up in a quirky smile. “You’re a strange one, Prince Leem.”

  “So I’m told.” Her reference to our childhood relationship made my spirit soar, as did her nearness, but the elation was short-lived. The clatter of Miss Ronan practically dropping a tea tray on a small iron table near the fountain pulled me back to reality. We weren’t children now, and I was way out of my league sitting in the garden of a mansion with this beautiful girl.

  “I assume you can serve yourselves?” Miss Ronan said before stiffly striding back to the front of the house. She didn’t want me near Anna, and who could blame her? I was much worse than Connor MacFarley and she would undoubtedly tell Anna all about me at the first opportunity. All the more reason to enjoy the here and now. I knew I might not get another chance to be alone with her, and that thought emboldened me.

  Anna stood and poured a cup of coffee. “What do you put in it?” She was so graceful as she set the silver decanter down on the tray with barely a clink of metal upon metal. Such a difference from my one-armed awkwardness.

  “Anything. Whatever you put in yours.”

  She scooped sugar in both cups and a bit of cream, then stirred them before handing me a cup and sitting back down even closer than before. It felt as though a small electrical storm raged between us and my senses were heightened by her every move. I watched with fascination as she lifted the cup to her lips and blew before taking a sip—so soft and feminine. How would it feel to touch those lips, to feel them on mine?

  “Kiss me,” I whispered, unsure whether I’d actu cer touch tally said it out loud. “Kiss me, Anna, and I swear I’ll never ask it of you again.”

  I had indeed said it out loud because she lowered her cup and met my gaze straight on. “Well, this is unexpected, Prince Leem. What brought this on?”

  “I . . .” What a fool I was—a desperate drowning person grabbing for one last moment of life. I stood and placed the coffee cup on the tray. “I apologize. I don’t know what came over me. Thank you for the coffee and the company.” How could I have been that stupid? I so rarely got to talk to anyone and I had let my guard down and allowed my base instincts to take over. Base, animal instinct and no

  thing more. With Anna of all people. Shame rushed through me in a torrent, forcing reason from my head and driving me to leave in such haste, I didn’t spare a second look back.

  7

  Instinct, so far from being an inferior reason, is perhaps the most exacted intellect of all.

  —Edgar Allan Poe,

  from “Instinct vs. Reason—A Black Cat,” 1840

  The ceiling of my birth mother’s shed held no great wonders, but I had memorized it to the finite detail. The morning sunlight crept in around the curtains from the only unboarded window, illuminating every familiar imperfection and knothole. This had been a toolshed to a small house owned by Francine’s aunt. Francine had taken pity on my mother and had begged her elderly relative to allow her to live here. It was just big enough to hold a tiny bed, a small, wood-burning stove that could also be heated with propane, a table, and my mother’s prized possession, a copper bathtub that was hidden by a curtain tacked to the ceiling. The tub was a luxury few on Dòchas had and no one knew where she had gotten it. There were a lot of unanswered questions about my mother. Thanks to me, they would never be answered.

  My foster parents had adopted me on the day of my birth, and I’d lived in their house near the harbor until my foster mother died. After that, my relationship with Pa became so contentious, I had to leave. My birth mother’s abandoned shed seemed like the perfect refuge.

  Out of honor to his wife, Pa still supported me in a sense. He provided enough propane to keep me alive in the winters, which were brutal on Dòchas, and for that I was grateful.

  Dòchas. I laughed out loud. Naming the island Dòchas was a joke of some kind, surely. “Hope.” The island of hope. No more hopeless a place existed on earth, I was certain of it. Or had been until yesterday, when a gorgeous ray of hope fleetingly entered my life for a brilliant few hours. I rolled over in bed and touched the small charcoal drawing I’d made last night. The curve of the throat, the sloping shoulders. Such hope. Now gone because I’d allowed thoughts to become words. Careless fool.

  The wooden planks leading to my door creaked. I held my breath and listened. No one had ever come to my shed before. Even Francine allowed me privacy and never intruded. Perhaps I’d imagined it. Things were always muddled after a bad night from the Bean Sidhes and last night had been the worst ever. It was almost as if they were trying to tell me something rather than just punish me. Their cries had been more panicked than mournful, which was unusual.

  No more noise from outside. It must have been my imagination. I tucked the drawing under my pillow and rolle
d ov fze=er. I never slept in. Nobody on Dòchas did. Laziness meant death from starvation or cold, so it was a luxury no one could afford. Still, this morning, it certainly was tempting.

  The creak sounded again. Someone was definitely outside. “Hello?” I called. I was answered by a delicate rapping against the wood. “Just a minute,” I shouted, grabbing my trousers from the floor and slipping them on. The shirt was another issue. Putting it on one-armed took a little longer. “I’m coming,” I said, holding the collar in my teeth as I fumbled to get the shirt turned right side out so I could put it on. It had to be Francine coming to check on me. She had instructed me not to come in until lunchtime after I told her about my visit to Taibhreamh.

  Rap, rap, rap.

  “Hold on.” I tugged the sleeve over my bad arm and reached around behind my neck to pull it to my good side. The buttons would have to wait; it took me a while to button a shirt.

  Fully expecting to find Francine, I yanked the door open. “Anna.” It came out almost as a gasp.

  “Heya, Leem,” she said with a half smile. She looked tired—as tired as I felt. Her pale skin was marred with dark circles under her red-rimmed eyes. Most people wouldn’t have noticed this, but I’d memorized her yesterday. Something had happened last night.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She scanned me head to toe. “I might ask you the same thing.”

  I pulled my shirt closed and ran my hand through my bed-tousled hair. I probably looked a mess. “I’m fine.”

  She leaned to look around me into the shed. “Are you going to invite me in or are we going to stand out here like a couple of losers?”

  I shot a look over my shoulder at my shed. “You might prefer it out here. It’s not much.”

  She answered with an arched eyebrow.

  I stood aside. “Come in, please.” I groaned inwardly as the beautiful creature entered the monster’s cave. She looked anomalous among my things—like precious art amid ruins.

  She took a deep breath through her nose. “It smells good in here. Like wood and nature.”