It was his blood trapping him now, the legacy his father and mother had spent years struggling to escape, the one ruled by the iron fist of Lord Helton.
Conrad took another long drink and silently cursed his uncle. Lord Helton cared for nothing except power and using it to make men in government and society bow and scrape before him. After Conrad’s father’s early death had put him beyond his brother’s reach, it’d been a struggle for Conrad and his mother to escape Lord Helton’s grasping control. If it hadn’t been for Heims Hall and his mother’s brother, Jack, they might never have known peace, or the security of a home and an income not encumbered by the Helton legacy.
Conrad smiled at the memory of his mother standing in the grand entrance hall at Helton Manor after his father’s funeral, breaking Lord Helton’s walking stick over her knee after he’d dared to strike Conrad with it for mourning his father. She’d pelted the man with the broken bits and a barrage of insults, stunning Lord Helton into silence for the first time in his life.
Conrad’s smile faded. Afterwards, Lord Helton’s methods had become more subtle and he’d resorted to lies and rumours to attack her instead of confrontation. When she’d passed, Lord Helton then turned his vengeance against Conrad, using his influence in government to make sure every ship Conrad received after becoming captain was more worm-eaten than the last. Yet Conrad had accepted each doomed command and made a stunning success of them all, securing his reputation as a first-rate officer and diluting Lord Helton’s influence. After Napoleon’s defeat left Conrad without a ship and on half-pay, he’d volunteered for the Discovery Service and built a name for himself as an explorer, one of Mr Barrow’s favourites, a man who always succeeded.
Except this time.
Conrad took another deep drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He should have turned Gorgon for home before the short Arctic summer had ended. Instead, he’d pushed north and others had paid the price for his mistake, sacrificing fingers, toes and even a life to Conrad’s desire to accomplish his mission.
He gripped the decanter tight against his chest, hanging on with both hands to keep it from slipping out of his grasp. At times, he’d barely been able to hold his pen on the voyage home, the weakness nearly crippling him as he’d reread his journal and relived the horrors of his experience to write his report. In the cold north he’d thought it would ease once he reached warmer climes, but as time passed it was becoming apparent the weakness was driven not by cold but by memories, especially those of Aaron’s hopeless eyes meeting his before he’d slipped out of the tent door and into oblivion.
Eyes as vacant as those of the skeleton of the tiger-like creature perched in front of the window.
Conrad rocked a little as he approached the animal, coming face-to-face with the long jaw and the two curving canine teeth protruding from the mouth. He slid his hand over the top of the skull, feeling the slight pits and crevices of the bones. It was an exquisite specimen, one he’d purchased from an Inuit trader in Greenland at the end of his first voyage to the Arctic three years ago. The same man had sold Conrad the skeleton that was even now in one of the many crates making their way to Heims Hall, the likes of which he’d never seen in any book or collection.
He ran his fingers over the tiger’s long nose and down the back edge of one curved and serrated fang. He’d spent hours watching Katie and her father meticulously clean and piece this animal together. Katie would do the same with the creature in the crate, making sense of the jumble of bones in a way he could never understand. Her face would light up in excitement when she did, just as it had when she’d attached this skull to the vertebrae.
He flicked the pointed end of the fang with his fingernail. A dead animal would receive a warmer welcome than he had.
He backhanded the skull, knocking it free of its neck and sending it flying across the room. It thudded each time it bounced along the carpet before the leg of a wide, leather bench brought it to a sudden stop. He marched up to it, ignoring the sting to his hand as he focused on the hollow eyes watching him above the mercifully unbroken fangs. He raised his foot to stomp the poor thing into oblivion, to crush it and all memories of the frozen wasteland which had ruined everything, but he couldn’t.
He lowered his foot, staggering a bit before he righted himself. He was a man of discovery, not a destroyer, though this last expedition had nearly crushed him. He braced himself against a nearby desk, the wood beneath his fingers smooth and cool, unlike the rough timbers of the ship. The sounds of the house surrounded him—the whinny of a horse in the mews, the twitter of a night bird. They were as familiar now as they’d been when he was ten and in their echoes he found a faint comfort. Then the creak of the floorboard beneath his boot sent a shock racing up his back. In the straining wood he heard the echoes of Gorgon groaning beneath the pressure of the ice, struggling to keep it at bay until at last she’d given up the fight.
Conrad moved uneasily to the chair beside the cold fireplace, set the half-empty decanter on the table and dropped into the thick cushions. The house was much quieter than the ship. During the long Arctic months, the wind had always been blowing and the men had been talking, complaining or playing cards, anything to fill the hours of boredom with something other than worry. The weariness of the past eighteen months, of the last few hours, settled over him like the fog of drink. He should go upstairs. He needed to sleep in a proper bed, but he couldn’t move. He’d known true exhaustion and this wasn’t it. Even if he went upstairs, there was no guarantee of rest, only hours of sleep jerked from him by nightmares of the cold.
It didn’t matter. Years of exploration had taught him to catch sleep where and when he could, to do with as little of it as possible in order to make it through another day. Only this wasn’t the North Pole, or the hull of a ship. It was the study where he’d first wooed Katie, the woman whose soft voice and love he’d hoped would silence the doubts and memories torturing him.
As the darkness closed in around him, the crack of icebergs slamming together drowned out the quiet of the house. Each thud made Conrad wince until at last it faded and a dreamless sleep brought much needed silence.
* * *
Katie peered into the dark study. In the hallway, she thought she’d heard a noise, but everything in here was quiet. She must have imagined it the way she sometimes imagined hearing her father return from a dig. She’d look up from sketching a specimen, thinking she’d see him come through the door, only to remember he was never coming home again.
It shocked her how keenly she noticed his absence. Even when he’d been home, he’d never truly been there. There’d never been anyone who’d been willing to place her above their own selfish pursuits, not her mother, her father or even Conrad.
Bitterness stiffened her steps as she moved beneath the timbered ceiling and past the books, animals and artefacts filling the room. At one time the tattered flag, seal skins and the stories behind each item had impressed her. Tonight, they were a crushing reminder of Conrad’s true passion, like the tiger was a reminder of her father’s.
She stopped in front of the skeleton bleached an eerie white by the moonlight coming through the window. It stood just as she’d last seen it, wired together as her father had arranged it, except for the skull. It was missing.
She searched the floor beneath the table, looking for it, irritated to think it’d been ruined by someone’s carelessness. She and her father had spent hours hunched over the bones, studying, drawing and arranging them just as she had as a young girl when she’d sit beside him in their small house in Whitemans Green, cleaning away the hard dirt encasing her father’s latest find. Working with him had been the only way to garner his attention and she’d taken in everything he’d taught her about anatomy and biology. He’d even spent precious money on drawing lessons
