His nails struck the book’s binding, his fingers stretched and closed around it, drawing it out with infinite circumspection.
Then it was in his grasp.
He stood, and in the silence there was now a humming of tension, like the distant baying of hounds. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted in a primeval reaction. Hamish, hissing malevolently, heard it too.
There was very little time.
He opened the slim book. Thumbed through the pages once, then again. Found the family genealogy that had been written carefully here, ever since a century-dead FitzHugh had held this prayer book in his hand at confirmation. Long ago in Ireland. In another time and another world ...
The sound was louder, the tension something that made his body tighten with anticipation. It was like waiting for the Huns to come over the top, and yet—different. The first rumble of nearby thunder shook the house, and his pulses leaped, as if the first shells had landed.
“Hurry!” Hamish urged him.
With one swift movement he drew his pocketknife, opened it, and gently slit the handwritten pages at the binding so that they fell out in his hands.
He checked once more as the footsteps rang out on the bare wood, coming closer, boldly stalking down the passage towards him.
Yes. He’d gotten them all. The records of a family—and a single line at the end: “Cormac FitzHugh. Mother unknown. Father unknown. Taken from a ditch along the road to Kilarney. FitzHugh by courtesy, not adoption.” And the date. The Gabriel Hound, unblessed—and cursed. Without a name or blood of his own.
Lifting out the book on Irish horses from the others Stephen had kept on the table by the window, Rutledge slipped the pages inside, then returned the heavy volume to its place and the closed knife to his pocket.
Was it his imagination or did the echoes seem to double, triple the number of footfalls? As if there were hordes in the passage, crowding it, elbowing each other, cutting off all space and air.
Sudden panic seemed to choke him. He fought it down, refusing to give in to it. But he was trapped here. Damn it, he wasn’t in France, this was Cornwall!
He was facing the open doorway, the little prayer book in his left hand, his balance even, ready for whatever was coming for him.
And then once more Cormac FitzHugh came out of the darkness and into the light. He was in his shirtsleeves, now. His eyes went directly to the book Rutledge held.
“I wasn’t sure my father had kept it. After turning Anglican for Rosamund. Stephen swore he had it,” he said. “But he wouldn’t tell me where he’d put it before he died. I thought it was probably a lie, but I had to keep searching. Thank you for sparing me further trouble over it.”
“He must have found it—and hidden it-—that same morning. Did you kill him?”
“The fall would have, I think. But I gave him a more merciful end. He couldn’t move. Whether it was true paralysis or temporary, I can’t tell you. I twisted his neck until it snapped, then shouted for Susannah and Rachel. Give me the prayer book now, if you please.”
“Interesting reading,” Rutledge said, thumbing the pages lightly. “Apparently you’re illegitimate. Not the stigma it once was, of course, but you have lived a public lie for many years, haven’t you? Stepson to the Trevelyans. Even these days, the news wouldn’t sit very well in London business circles, would it, where a gentleman’s word is his bond? Especially not if it came from Stephen Trevelyan, in banking himself. His doubts, dropped in the right quarters, could have ruined you.” He flipped the book closed. “Did you ever learn who your real parents were?”
“No. FitzHugh found me abandoned along a country road. Half starved, filthy, and sickly. And he took pity on me. But you’re absolutely right about London, especially since the Troubles and that 1916 uprising in Dublin. England saw it as an unforgivable stab in the back, in the middle of war. Being Irish just now is the same as being a traitor. A bastard Irishman—an upstart and a nobody—Stephen swore he’d use that to ruin me in the City if I didn’t help turn Trevelyan Hall into a mausoleum. Rosamund’s house! The Hall is all I ever truly desired in this world. Even the money I’ve earned was only a bridge to owning it. And I wanted to come here by right, not with my tail between my legs!”
Before Rutledge could read anything more than light amusement in the man’s eyes, he’d moved, swift as lightning, without conscious preparation, like a snake striking without warning.
Rutledge, expecting it, dodged, but not quite fast enough. His head, jerked back by Cormac’s stiff forearm, hit the wall with a loud crack, and as light flashed behind his eyes, Cor-mac moved in to follow up with a blow that had the full force of his shoulder behind it.
Rutledge felt his knees buckle and his senses reel under the impact. He was nearly unconscious, Hamish fiercely yelling at him to hold on, when the third and final blow brought down a pall of blackness.
27
He awoke to block nothingness, lashed out in the primeval primeval fear of blindness, and realized suddenly that the lamp had been taken away and he was alone. A flash of lightning told him that he was in Stephen’s room, where Cormac had left him. He moved gingerly, and everything worked.
Shaking his head to clear it, Rutledge felt a wave of dizziness that threatened to send him back to his knees. Using the table’s edge to pull himself to his feet, he leaned on his hands for precious seconds, willing himself into full control of his senses again. The amazing thing, he told himself, dazed still, was that he was alive.
Rutledge stumbled across the room and in the next flash of light, saw his way through the door. Thunder rattled the windows behind him.
The passage was black but there was still a lamp in the drawing room to guide him down the stairs. He ran across the hall and looked through its door.
The portrait was there, but Cormac had gone.
Where had the man hidden his car? Or had he come by boat, as Rutledge had anticipated. It was the most silent, the most secretive means of coming and going unseen. But was it still there? The boat?
Swearing as the rising wind caught the big door when he opened it, Rutledge went out into the night, down the steps, towards the strand. Ahead of him was Cormac, moving through the darkness. Which meant that he, Rutledge, couldn’t have been unconscious very long.
Rutledge called out to him, shouting his name.
Cormac turned and lifted an arm mockingly.
“He wants you to come after him! That’s why he didna’ finish it in the house!” Hamish exclaimed. “Will you no’ stop and think, man!”
Rutledge said nothing, his eyes straining to follow the figure ahead of him. But Cormac was no longer taking the path to the beach; he’d veered off towards the headland, picking up his pace. Swearing again, Rutledge plowed on, the wind tearing at his face and his coat, pushing him sideways. His head seemed to split open with the pounding pace he’d set, but he clenched his teeth and ignored it.
At the headland, where it curved to its highest point, Cormac turned. In the lightning, his pale hair blowing in the wind, his shirt white against the black clouds beyond, he seemed to glow with malevolence.
“Lucifer—!” Hamish warned.
Rutledge saved his breath and ran on until he was within a few yards of the other man.
“The way it will look,” Cormac yelled, “you broke under the strain tonight. Unable to sleep, disoriented, you came out here to the headland to watch the storm, and in a wild moment of self-doubt, you went over the edge. Thunder brought back the guns, and guilt, and all the nightmares.”
“Did you kill Olivia? Or did she choose her own death?”
“Ah, Olivia. She mesmerizes you as Rosamund mesmerized me. I meant what I told her the weekend before. That I wouldn’t hesitate to tell London that she and Nicholas were lovers. The Lucifer poems created quite a stir. And I had the feeling another collection was coming out. That she hadn’t finished with me. I wasn’t sure I could ruin O. A. Manning, but I knew how to kill Olivia Marlowe.”