His sad smile made her want to pull him close and console him as if he were a frightened child. She held herself back, fearing she might upset him even more. He still didn’t lift his gaze and allow her to look into his deep blue eye, which always held the kindness she needed.
Leaning against the wall, he took one hand off his staff and tugged the weave closer around his neck. “I thank ye, lass. ’Tis a verra fine gift I wish I could repay.” Then he tilted his head and looked at her, surprising her with a tender touch to her cheek. “Hie yerself home, dear Ethne. I beg ye.”
“Come with me.” The words tumbled out of their own accord. Surely, Mama would be all right with such an act of kindness. “Come with me,” she repeated, covering his hand with hers and holding it tighter to her cheek.
His smile faded, and he sadly shook his head. “Go. Ye would never make it in time with me at yer side.”
She cast another quick look at the horizon. He was right. She would have to run to make it home before the sun dipped out of sight. A glance at the sea revealed the mist creeping toward the shore. “I could stay here and plug my ears with my fingers.”
“No.” The word rumbled from him like the snarl of a cornered animal. He backed deeper into the shadows, shaking his head. “Ye will go to yer home. Now. Ye ken?”
It hurt to see him so upset, so unsettled. Ethne hurried to empty her basket, placing the bundles of bread and herbs in the cracked holy water font beside the door. “Daren’t ye fret. I’ll make it home safe, and tomorrow I shall come early enough so we might have a longer visit, aye? And I’ll bring ye some of the berries I found.”
Shuffling even deeper into the shadows, he shooed her away with a wave of his staff. “Aye. Now go. Run for yer life, Ethne. The mist is almost here.”
Chapter Three
“When will yetell her?” Mrs. Tarrel, as stubborn in death as she had been in life, shimmered into view.
Wolfe sagged into the tattered chair behind his broken-down desk and propped his staff against his knee. “When will ye relent and go to yer heavenly reward?” He already knew the answer, but the selfish part of him loved hearing it.
“When the curse is broken and yer life is returned to ye.” She floated closer, clutching her pale hands across her broad middle, even though she was much like the mist. If he peered hard enough, he could see right through her.
She wore the same clothes she had on the day she died. A dark kirtle, an apron to keep it clean, and shoes with stubby heels that sounded like thunder whenever she hurried down the halls. Over the years since her death, she had learned how to make the same racket throughout the keep, even though she no longer had a solid body to aid in her noisemaking. He had laid her to rest in what was left of the chapel, regretting he couldn’t do better by the dear woman who had shown him so much loyalty and motherly love.
“When will ye tell her?” she repeated, moving so close she hovered above his desk.
He glared up at her. “Ye should ken that without even asking. Ye are many things, Mrs. Tarrel, but simple is not one of them.”
“Mistress Ethne willna run from ye.” The housekeeper moved to the shattered window and peered out at the sea. Her wispy hair fluttered around her face as though dancing in the wind. “I told ye what I overheard at the pub. Who her mother is—or her foster mother, I should say. I dinna ken who her true family is. Although some say she might be from the next settlement over.” After a judicious nod in his direction, she turned back to the stark view. “And there are those who hate what they did to that poor mother of hers because she bore the Morrigan blood.”
“And yet they didn’t lift a hand to stop it. Ye heard her screams that day, same as I.” Wolfe didn’t fault the villagers for hanging Morrigan-the-wicked or her daughter, Morrigan-the-lesser. But according to Mrs. Tarrel, Morrigan-the-least, Ethne’s foster mother, had never been right in the head since the day the wicked ones had nearly beaten her to death for freeing the doves they used for blood sacrifices. And he felt sure that the torture of having half her face burned away hadn’t helped her sanity either. “Ethne should take her mother and move from this accursed place.” Two centuries of bitterness burned hotter within him.
“Mistress Ethne canna leave here anymore than ye can.” Mrs. Tarrel floated back to him. “She takes care of her poor, troubled mother. Keeps the house and all the duties required while Mistress Rhona does what this world has forced some women to do for centuries just to survive.”
“When ye lived, I dinna recall such a generous nature toward whores,” he teased.
“At least Mistress Rhona doesna curse those who spurn her bed,” she retorted.
He flinched as though she had struck him. The housekeeper had stopped mincing her words well over a hundred years ago. In times like this, he wished she would resume the habit. Helowered his gaze and worried his thumb across the gnarled knots in his twisted staff. “Mistress Ethne deserves better than me.”
“Ye have learned much in the last two hundred years,” Mrs. Tarrel observed. “Loneliness and pain are cruel taskmasters.” She floated down to his desk and perched on it like a plump, wingless fairy. “Ye are a better man now than the one I served all those many years ago.”
“And yet I send many to their deaths. Just as I sent Lady Aria to hers.”
“The curse sends them to their deaths.” Mrs. Tarrel shifted with a deep sigh as though she still possessed the need to breathe. “And the agony of losing her only child sent Lady Aria to hers.” She crossed herself and looked upward. “God rest her soul.”
“God rest her soul,” he echoed, meaning every word more than anyone would ever know. “I hope the saints let her into heaven even though she took her own life. She didna ken what she was doing.”
“She will be judged fairly.” Mrs. Tarrel leaned forward and earnestly peered into his face. “As will you. By both God and Mistress Ethne, if ye will but give the lass a chance.”
“Why after all these years—”
“Friend?”
The lilting voice that always lifted his weary heart reached him through the ruins. It was Ethne. Earlier than usual. Just as she had promised.
Mrs. Tarrel disappeared, but she wasn’t gone completely. The nosy housekeeper couldn’t help herself.
