CHAPTER THREE

“Are you ragingly insane, my friend?”

“Hmm? Sorry?” Divers O’Roarke let go of the door jamb and glanced round. Two glasses of brandy cast amber shadows on the wooden serpents. The ones that slithered along the sideboard, as opposed to the one that had slithered off up the stairs.

“Insane?” Gil set the decanter down. “After Eirwin, are you insane?”

“Why would you think so?” Divers cleared his throat, walked purposefully to the flickering fire. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

How could it be? Destiny Rhodes had been totally discomfited; her hands clinging like talons to her dress. His would have too if he wore a dress. Obviously he didn’t. Not this far anyway.

‘I’ve said it, about coming with the house,’ she’d said. So of course, he’d also said he wanted her to say it once more.

Why not? He wasn’t seventeen any more. The stupid boy she’d taken a wrecking ball to. Only then he’d lowered his gaze to her soft breasts, outlined in the clinging black velvet, the least he could do since he wasn’t exactly going to get to touch them, what was more he hardly wanted to.

That wasn’t so damned clever because then he’d seen that he wasn’t seventeen sure enough. He was eight and perhaps he didn’t just want to hear it all again because he’d simply wanted to make her squirm, either. What he wanted was something he couldn’t believe. Even now.

If you let her speak to you …

“Well, then.” Gil picked up the two glasses. “Tell me what the hell it is, man, because from where I’m standing, and from where Lyon is standing, I just know one thing. She can’t stay here. You know that.”

Divers eased down into the ancient chair, grasped the generous glass Gil offered. This was the way to end the day, especially now Orwell was sleeping it off upstairs. Of course Orwell shouldn’t be sleeping it off anywhere on the premises. Divers was unsure how that had happened—oh, all right, he wasn’t. Orwell was here because she’d said she’d leave if he stayed. So obviously Divers was letting him stay, at great cost to himself when Orwell Rhodes had made his life an even bigger misery than Destiny Rhodes, which was really saying something.

‘Midnight, you say?’ Destiny Rhodes had said and so had he. At least he’d said it earlier and he’d been going to say it again in this cavernous room lit by the mounting candles of memory and deceit, in the silence broken by the steady tick of the corner clock and the rain trickling down the window pane, leaving steamy patches in its wake.

But for some reason, when there were no gold medals for guessing which choice was the more odious to her. Him? The far distant relative? The family pauper? The man who had not got where he appeared to be by tilting headlong at a gate? Or the loss of this damned mausoleum? He’d then damn well said he was going to accept her offer. To make her squirm, of course. Sort of anyway.

And that was how Orwell had come up in the conversation. As far as Orwell was concerned, as far as Divers knew, he hadn’t thrown himself in along with the house. Even if he had, he was hardly Divers’ type.

And that was how Destiny Rhodes had said she’d stay and they would talk about it in the morning.

So now?

Now, apart from the fact she didn’t know Orwell was still here? Well, he could see why Gil felt there was a problem. Divers eased further back in the chair and took a mouthful of brandy. Not the best. Tart with a trace of acid. In fact, probably like the stuff they cleaned their windows with in Kent, although that was down to the sheer volume flooding the place.

“Not that I see what it is, is your business, Gil, but I’m dealing with it. Obviously. I’ve not come here to waste the golden opportunity so kindly bestowed on me by Mr. Lyon. Miss Rhodes will be leaving in the morning. Her brother too.”

Gil sat down in the chair opposite, the moldy one with the bottom sitting two inches from the floorboards. Christ but this flea-bitten dump had certainly seen better days. Imagine anyone being that desperate to hang onto it, they threw themselves in with it?

“Not my business? Maybe not. But, you saved my life, remember, when I was starving, when I’d nowhere else to go, when I couldn’t remember who I was, didn’t know where I was. I owe you. So you’ll pardon me for talking out of turn. After Eirwin, she’s trouble you don’t need. We don’t need.”

“It just seems that way.”

“Whatever it seems, man, do you need me saying what Lyon will do if you get involved with her? Unless that’s what you want?”

He shrugged.

A possibility he’d not considered. Revenge in a very different form. Better than no revenge at all?

“You do know it was no odds to her who she offered herself to, just as long as she could stay here?” Gil sat forward. “Me. You. That spells danger in my book.”

“I know what I’m doing. I always do. So can you please just drop it? Thank you.”

Wasn’t he the one who’d told Destiny Rhodes they’d talk about it before the morning? He could tell she couldn't contain herself. Yes. Her expression had been reminiscent of a dead viper’s.

“I just remember her differently, that’s all. Hell, the things she did in her time. But I’ve said it. Rest assured, tomorrow she goes. Do you think I can afford to let her stay here? Her drunken buffoon of a brother either? Well? I was just having myself a little fun, you know?”

He meant it. Let Destiny Rhodes stay and she’d soon discover things about him he couldn’t allow to be discovered. Then what? She’d slay him. So he steered clear of her tonight, finished the brandy, took the lantern lit walk onto the moor, signaled to Lyon things were on track. Vital when Lyon’s nose was for a rat and Divers was that rat, back at work by a mere whisker.

As for talking before the morning? It was a dilemma because he’d sooner dig his grave with a twig than let her think he was eight again and too afraid of her to go near her. But what if he then couldn’t leave it at that? He’d never known any man leave it at that around her. Look at Nick Trengouse, threatening to blow his head off with a pistol after she turned down his offer of marriage, look at Harold Penhaligan who’d gone to drink and the devil when she’d finished toying with him for giddy months on end. It didn’t matter how changed she was.

Then there was Rose, here, waiting to ambush him. What would she think if he followed Destiny Rhodes upstairs, presuming the dead could think? So, over his dead body could he go up these stairs.

“Then tomorrow can’t come fast enough, sir,” Gil said. “Because if she ever finds out what your business really is she’ll go to the law. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I don’t doubt it, but aren’t you forgetting one thing?”

“What?”

“I am the law.”

***

Hadn’t changed? Her? As Destiny seized the tree branch, swaying about above her head, she acknowledged one thing. It wasn’t that the branch was swaying so badly in the howling gale, it all but took her eye out. It was the cold cheek of those who hadn’t the wit to look in a mirror at themselves and see they were as unlike the kind, malleable boy they’d once been, as she was from a talking horse. She’d only had to glance at herself in passing, in the bedroom mirror, the one she’d just sold herself to keep--to keep her pine cone garlands too—to see she was a pitiful, starving shadow of her former self. Her hair hacked because she was done with the world, her clothes as decorative as sackcloth and ashes.

Oh yes, gossip said that she was strong, stalwart, unfazed by any downturn in events, because gossip was vital in the circumstances when people laughed behind her back and thought she didn’t know it.

But she must be fazed, fazed by him, to have prostrated herself at the toes of his polished boots. Surely not because she thought she could still dominate him and shocks one and two--knowing he owned Doom Bar Hall and finding him changed beyond recognition—had undercut her?

She had changed. Beyond recognition. The old Destiny would have secured him in seconds. As she’d almost secured that Wryson man, what with her warm smile and all. What a pity he’d been the wrong one.

Well …task one? It was Doom Bar Hall, or it was nothing. She was here, wasn’t she? At least she was in the vicinity, the house walls rising up in their storm-riven shroud. Distant but visible.

What a foul night but, as if everything else wasn’t damn well bad enough, there was the little matter of what was stashed in the summerhouse. If Divers O’Roarke got his hands on that, she’d hang. She’d need to stop him going in there till she sorted this with Tom Berryman—task two.

Hellish, wasn’t it? And hellish too, that she’d had to brave coming out here first, with the threat of discovery hanging over her head, to do just that? Stand on tiptoes, hang that lantern, now swaying worse than the branch, on the branch, to let Tom Berryman know there was trouble. Some might say that was before she even got to Divers O'Roarke. Oh, and all the things she, Orwell and Chancery had done to him as children. Let her not sodding think of that when there were things she couldn’t ever put right.

She inched a breath, let go of the lantern, stepped back. Thank whatever lord served her, it never pinged backwards, taking her right eye out, or causing her to win the set of grinning wooden teeth in the I just had me head panned in by a lantern and now I need to belt back home to meet me lover, before he finds out I’m not there, competition. But at least now—finally--she could do that, despite the fact she was swaying worse than that tree, with hunger, what with all this shock and that, and her having left out breakfast and lunch as it was. As for the black ribbon the path was going to make if she left that lantern here? That was something she hadn’t thought of. And sod all she could do about it either. Holding her hands out so as to keep her balance, she skirted the clumps of bracken.

Divers O’Roarke.

Expensive leather boots, grey greatcoat to match his eyes that put anything Orwell owned to shame, a silver fob watch on his waistcoat that would win him five minutes on the platform being ooh'd and ah'd at in the Penvellyn Fair finest gentleman competition. No small wonder. He won houses playing drunks at cards, cleaning out their wallets and throwing the family silver to the dogs.

How could he look so different though? Confident? Strong? Towering, despite the fact he wasn’t hugely tall. His hair, tied at the nape of his neck with a black ribbon, darker and straighter. Nothing like that chestnut mop she remembered so well. Did he darken it? And why would he? Unless he was a peacock? As for him skulking into that tricorn hat in ways that would put the bogeyman to shame? Where had that and the sort of not so obviously Irish in terms of an accent, even come from?

How jealous was she, when she’d tried and outright failed all the years to get rid of her mother’s northern accent, to sound more refined, in keeping with being Destiny Rhodes? Or, at least as if she belonged here where she’d been born? Oh, and what was that talk, or lack of it, about a wife? Had she died, run away? Been cursed too? A bit like herself, struggling along with the stony ground beneath her soles and the wind blowing her backwards, as she clung to her cloak ties, when by rights she should be in bed dreaming of Ennis.

Divers O’Roarke.

Who she better damn well hope was sitting in Doom Bar Hall counting the spoils right now, the risk she was taking coming out here. He might, for that matter, be knocking on her bedroom door. And here she was, torn between rushing--not because she was eager, that was for sure--and taking her time. She could be out for an evening constitutional after all, even if it was in the middle of a howling gale. Then again he might think she'd run away.

Still? Nearly there. She was nearly there. Almost at the garden wall, lying low beneath the scudding clouds. After that she just had to get through the garden, then in the back door which she’d left unlocked and up the stairs. Thank God.

Divers O’Roarke.

She clasped her cloak tighter. Very well, of course she, Chancery and Orwell had made things difficult for him and Rose. It was in that way children made things difficult for other children, especially poor, earnest children, with the sweetest smile. The kindest nature too. Why not stomp on his then chestnut curls? Grind his grey eyes and exotically-boned face into the gutter? It wasn’t just what children did, some would say it was what she, Chancery and Orwell won first, second and third prize for doing.

Only now?

Oh God, only now, Jesus spare her, what the hell was that coming along the garden path towards her? A shining bright orb. Shit.

Forget what? How about who?

Not the Man in the Moon, or anyone going to win any prizes for trying to be him either, that was for sure, not with that purposeful stride and the tricorn jammed down over his eyes. A shiver crawled up her spine, followed by its sister in hob-nailed boots. Its aunts and cousins too.

And her torn between rushing home--not because she was eager, that was for sure--and taking her time too? No wonder her heartbeat nearly beat her ribcage to death and her feet slowed to a crawl. Her throat dried.

Tell him the truth? The real truth of Rose and Chancery that summer? Before he went a bit further and saw that lantern? The one she'd left for Berryman, dangling on a tree branch somewhere behind her head?

Out here? When he’d be as likely to accept it as he would a place on the roasting spit in hell? What kind of local idiots’ competition was she trying to win? No. What she must do, was pray he didn’t see that lantern. Or ask, as she slowed her steps to a snail’s pace, why the hell she was out here. Pray her steps didn’t falter any more than his did. That he was out here looking for her. Sodding unlikely though. Flash him her coolest stare. Especially now, now he drew level and her heart nearly leapt onto the path, under his fancy boots. Anyone could have left that lantern. Anyone. Including herself, to welcome Orwell home and just forgotten to take it down. But …? But wanted to check in case it fell down and started a fire. Only to find it was stuck fast. Well?

Besides? His head was down. Protection against the wind beating at his face.

“Divers.” She nodded.

What kind of stare did he flash her in return? Only she couldn’t see for the shadow cast by his tricorn hat. Maybe it was none at all?

“Destiny.”

Oh God, just let her get past him. It wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t … My God. It just had. He kept walking. So did she. Without falling down onto the ground, or looking behind her either. Just kept walking.

She snagged a breath. Then she snagged another. Maybe, for that matter he just liked moonlit walks too?

Did it mean he'd no intention of coming to her room?

She brought her gaze back to the path. Whatever he did tonight, tomorrow, whenever, there was another aspect of this. One she marvelled she’d forgotten, one that flowed like life back into her veins, breathed in her decayed pores.

Courtesy of him everything she touched turned to dust.

Why should he be any different?