Jack glanced at the old woman. “Genevieve posed as a wealthy dowager and was invited to their home. She was able to sneak away and found the letter in Mr. Radcliffe’s study. In it, Miss Radcliffe references an obscure type of heather that only grows near Quick. Radcliffe was able to use this information to locate Ballentyne in the tax records and draw a link to Elizabeth von Stein’s family.”
Lucy stifled a gasp. “Oh God, Juliet, you have to believe me. I was just telling Mama how pretty the moors were. I didn’t want her to worry about me. I would never have revealed our location, not in a million years.”
“I believe you,” I said quietly. “But it doesn’t change the fact that he knows.” I turned to Jack. “Where is he now?”
“When we left them, they were preparing to leave Inverness. I took the liberty of opening the levees between here and the village to flood the road behind us. That will slow them down, but not for long. The moors will drain in a few days, or they’ll find some way past the floodwaters. You haven’t much time, Miss Moreau. Where is Elizabeth von Stein?”
A silence fell over our small group.
“She died,” Montgomery answered at last. “Last night. There was a fire in the southern tower. Hensley is gone as well. Juliet’s the mistress now.”
No emotion showed on Jack’s face. He was as unflinching about death as Valentina had been on our first night here, telling me about the vagrants’ bodies in the cellar. Was he just used to death? Or was he one of that particular rare breed of person, like my father, who felt so little one wondered if they felt anything at all?
“I hope you have a plan, Miss Moreau,” Jack said. “Radcliffe is heavily armed, and he’s planning on storming Ballentyne and killing anyone who gets in his way.”
“All this effort, just in the name of retribution?” I asked in a faint voice.
“If it’s retribution, then he is determined to get it, and a bloody one at that. Either you can flee, or you can stay and make a stand. We shall help you in whichever course you choose. I advise you to give both options careful thought, but think quickly. He’ll be here day after tomorrow.”
THAT NIGHT, AFTER JACK and his men made camp in the lower fields, Lucy found me sitting on the manor’s cold front steps, huddled in a tartan blanket, staring at the deep puddles collecting in the courtyard since Jack had broken the levees. She sat beside me and pulled the corner of the tartan around her own shoulders, too.
“I can’t apologize enough,” she said. “I feel awful for writing that stupid letter. I didn’t think any harm would come of it.”
“I know, Lucy.”
“And now Papa’s on his way here. It feels like something out of a nightmare. I keep clinging to some desperate hope he’s just worried about me, but I know that you must be right. He probably put that article in the newspaper hoping I’d come across it and contact them. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s taken advantage of my affections for my mother.”
I wrapped an arm around the small of her back. If there was one thing I understood, it was manipulative fathers.
“What will we do?” she whispered. “Shall we stay here and take our chances, or flee?”
The night was too quiet, as though it also waited for my answer. My first impulse had been to flee. We could keep heading north, hoping the cold and desolation would dissuade Radcliffe, or we could try to find a new place to hide. But I had no other contacts in Scotland except for Elizabeth, and I dared not trust anyone else with our secrets. The possibilities had been eating away at me like a snake consuming its own tail, pointless and never-ending.
“We could flee,” I said, taking my time to think it through, “but that would only buy us a few more weeks at most. Without the safety of Ballentyne we’d be vulnerable on the road, with no place to go but inns and abandoned barns. It wouldn’t be long before someone recognized me from the poster, or else saw Balthazar and started asking questions. Besides, I fear what might happen to the servants if your father arrives and finds us missing. He might torture them to see where we’ve gone.”
She was very quiet. “So we stay?”
I took another deep breath. Staying went against everything that came naturally to me. On my father’s island, when I’d discovered the terrible crimes he was committing in his laboratory, I had run. After I’d maimed Dr. Hastings and the police had come after me, I’d run, too. It seemed no matter what danger I faced, my instinct was to flee, and yet fleeing hadn’t solved any of those problems. They’d all come back, one by one, to haunt me.
There was no escaping one’s fate.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” I said, tightening my fingers in the blanket, and with it my resolve. “I’ve been running for years—from the police and from my father and now from yours. If it’s ever going to end, then I think we must face it, and I think it must be here, where we at least have a fighting chance.” I pulled the tartan closer. “I’ll have to talk it through with Montgomery and McKenna to make certain they agree. I don’t know if the staff will trust me like they did Elizabeth. And I can’t imagine telling them tomorrow—just one day after her death—that an army is bearing down on us, and I expect them to stay and fight.” I shook my head. “I can’t ask that of them.”
“You saved them from the Beast. They’ll remember that.”
“I didn’t save them. Hensley stopped the Beast, and now we don’t even have him.” I sighed, burying my head in my hands. “As unpredictable as he was, Hensley would have been a great asset. Your father would never suspect a child of such unnatural strength.”
Lucy rubbed my back, pulling the tartan tighter around the both of us.
“Hensley wasn’t the only one with extraordinary strength,” she said softly, and our eyes met in the twilight. “I think it’s time we told everyone about Edward.”
THIRTY-FOUR
IT WASN’T YET DAWN when I went to the kitchen, after changing into one of Elizabeth’s tailored dresses. All my dresses were those of a young woman, with ruffles and lace, and I wasn’t that type of girl any longer.
I found a grieving McKenna already awake baking bread for breakfast. Her eyes were rimmed in red, though she pretended she hadn’t been crying. She jumped up when she saw me.
“Miss Juliet! I thought I’d seen a ghost with you in the mistress’s dress.” She motioned to the bread almost apologetically. “Just heating up the bits left over from yesterday’s feast for breakfast. Didn’t have the heart to cook a full meal, not after last night.” She turned away, fiddling with the oven so I wouldn’t see her tears. “You and I should sit down and discuss the running of the manor. I’ve kept meticulous ledgers over the years, just like my mother and grandmother. I’ll help get you on your feet, and the staff will be calling you ‘Mistress’ in no time.”