Page 115 of Her Scandalous Pursuit

“He must have sneaked it out of the box when I wasn’t paying attention.”

“There were a dozen times he could have done it. At the train station, at the tavern. The cart when we were looking through the clothes—neither of us was paying attention. He could have done it at the very beginning. We were tying up Wallace and the others while he held the gun on them. I never looked over to see what else he might be doing.”

“I checked three times to make sure the box was still in the bag,” Thisbe said in disgust. “Why did I never think to open it?”

“No use worrying over it now.” Desmond tossed the box back in the bag and began gathering their other belongings while Thisbe dressed. “We have to get it back.”

Thisbe’s fingers stilled on her buttons. “Desmond...that must have been Carson who was fighting you in my dream. I should have realized—he was too tall to be Wallace and too slender to be Grieves. It’s Carson who stabbed you.” Suddenly all impetus to recover her grandmother’s possession vanished. “Let him keep the Eye.”

“You said you needed to get rid of it, and you can’t do that unless you get it back.”

“What if that is how the Eye will destroy you? Maybe that was her warning—to stay away from the fight.”

“She said the Eye would tear her child apart, didn’t she? That ‘he can’t resist it.’ That doesn’t sound like getting stabbed in a fight.”

“She said it would ‘take you over,’” Thisbe admitted somewhat reluctantly.

“And you said the way to stop that was to destroy the Eye, which means we must get it back from Carson.”

“But I can’t let him kill you!” Thisbe cried. “You don’t know that will be the outcome. Did you actually see me die?”

“I saw him plunge the knife. I couldn’t reach you. I knew—”

“You assumed. Our fate isn’t written in stone. What you saw was a possibility. If we know what might happen, I can protect myself from it.”

“You’re a fine one to be talking about changing one’s fate!” Thisbe stormed, planting her hands on her hips.

“Look.” He went to her, taking her hands in his. “Anne Ballew came to you for a reason. She wants you to change the outcome. She believes you can end the evil she created. If you are her descendant—”

“But I’m not. I’m positive.”

“Then why was it in your family’s possession? Why are you so connected to it? To her?”

“Because I am her enemy.”

“What?”

“I think it was my ancestor who brought the charge of witchcraft against her. I saw him in my first dreams, standing beyond the fire, watching her death, unmoved. No, worse than unmoved—gratified. I think he wanted the Eye for himself, wanted Anne’s power. So he orchestrated her death and took the Eye. That is how it came to be passed down from generation to generation in Grandmother’s family.”

“Are you certain?”

“Not in any way I can prove. But some of the things Grandmother said about it indicate that. ‘One of his kind, one of ours.’” Carefully, Thisbe excised the idea of paying for one life with another. “In my visions, Anne told me that I owed it to her, that she had bound me. Yesterday, when I grabbed the Eye from your hand, it burned me. I saw a man’s hand in a thick, old-fashioned glove reach into flames and grab the Eye. And in that instant, I knew what had happened. My ancestor killed Anne for the Eye, an evil act to gain the evil she had created.”

“Then that is why you will be the one to end it,” Desmond said with finality. “Can’t you see the perfect symmetry? She created the evil—your ancestor compounded the wrong by killing her to get it. Now you must rid the world of it.”

Desmond was right. She had to end it. Thisbe knew it in the same way she knew her connection to the Eye. This was Anne Ballew’s curse on Thisbe’s ancestor and all his line. I bind thee. The debt that must be paid. Yours for mine. A life for a life.

Thisbe must destroy the Eye and the evil that infused it so that the nightmarish scene she’d witnessed in her sleep would not come to pass. She would ward off Desmond’s death. And if the price for his life was her own, she would pay it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“HOW WILL WE find him?” Thisbe asked as they hurried down the stairs. “All Carson said—if he was telling the truth—was that his family estate was in the Lake District.”

“That’s why it’s a good thing that he invited me to visit him once,” Desmond replied. “It’s near Grasmere. I can find it from the village.”

There were no more horses to hire, but there was a light carriage, and the innkeeper assured them the team was fresh and fast. It was warmer, too, than riding on horseback in the wintry air. When they started out, Thisbe’s stomach roiled, but oddly, as they drew closer to their destination, her nerves calmed, a steady resolve forming inside her.

She and Desmond talked little. What was there to say? That she loved him above all else? That their lives hung in the balance?