“I saw him with pails, going down to the sea to fill them with water. And then he set them up on the headland. Left them there. And walked back into the house with empty hands.”

Nicholas.

“Was this the night they died? Olivia and Nicholas?”

“No,’twas the night before. I was in the wood, looking for roots while the moon was near full. I watched him for a time because my back hurt, and it felt better to straighten it. So I stood there, and wondered what he was about. And then I knew.”

“Knew? Knew what?”

“He was putting water out for the hounds to drink. Because he knew they were coming.”

He felt a coldness between his shoulders. As if something evil had come up behind him and laid a hand on his back.

“Do the Gabriel hounds have a human face? Have you ever seen it?”

“I told you. Miss Olivia warned me to have naught to do with them!”

“Yes, I understand that. But Miss Olivia is dead. I think the hounds killed her. I think now she’d want you to be the one to tell me his name. Or how he looked. I think it’s time to make them pay for the harm they’ve done.”

She shook her head. “You can’t make the hounds pay for killing. It’s in their nature. It’s part of their blood. Like the Turks.”

“Was Mr. Nicholas baptized?”

“Aye, at the Hall, because he was sickly at first. Jaundice. And there was a storm coming that promised to be a bad one. Miss Rosamund said she’d not risk him driving in the carriage, nor in the drafty church. Truth to tell, he was better within the week, but she insisted, and the old rector came to the Hall.”

Did a baptism in the Hall count for less in her eyes than one in the church? She was leading him round in circles.

But Hamish, Highland bred, understood better what was being said, and rumbled with uneasiness beneath the surface of his mind.

“The face of the hounds. You said you could tell me, now that Miss Olivia is dead.” Rutledge added, “Safely dead.”

Her eyes were clouding over, and she said querulously,

“You said it, I didn’t.”