Murdoch came forward and gently took her hand, drawing her toward the adjoining washroom. “Ye canna understand what prison is like, lass. When a single night passes in fear and despair, a week might as well be a lifetime, and a year becomes an eternity.”
Farah’s bare toes curled against the cold white marble floors of the washroom, streaked with silver and blue. Gilded silver mirrors and dainty white furniture upholstered in the boldest cobalt littered the room almost to excess. More windows spilled sunlight through gauzy sapphire curtains that fluttered in a spring breeze. A porcelain bath stood on a dais surrounded by the softest blue paisley rugs.
Murdoch busied himself by dragging a silk-and-iron changing screen from the corner and placing it next to the bath, talking all the while. “In Newgate, a story to make the time pass with greater alacrity has more value than gold.” He draped a large robe of heavy blue fabric over the silk of the screen. The draw of the steaming bath overcame her misgivings about disrobing in the same room with a relatively strange man. Of course, this would never be done back in London, but when one was a prisoner of the Blackheart of Ben More, one didn’t worry about paltry scandals.
“Thank you.” Stepping behind the screen, Farah undid laces of her bodice and pushed her dress from her shoulders. She could hear Murdoch bustling about the room, keeping himself busy for her benefit, she guessed. “Would you tell me about it, Murdoch, your time in Newgate with Dougan?”
The restless movement ceased and the older man gave a gusty sigh, or maybe it was whatever dainty chair he lowered himself into that produced the sad noise. “As I said, the nights are the worst,” he began in a faraway voice. “The hours of darkness break even the bravest of men, let alone frightened wee boys. We’d be finished with a day’s worth of work on the railway and return to our world of iron bars too exhausted to move, let alone defend ourselves from the dangers the night might bring. The sounds. The cries. The whispers from the shadows … they’re dreadful. If ye didna have friends to help protect ye…” He trailed off, leaving the rest to her imagination.
“I’m sorry,” Farah whispered, stepping out of her skirts, and draping the stiff dress over the sturdy screen.
“Thank ye,” Murdoch acknowledged. “By the time I arrived at Newgate, Blackwell and Mackenzie had been there nearly three years. Thick as thieves and twice as shrewd, they were, each of them dark as the devil and just as ruthless. It always amazed me that ones so young could learn such cruelty.”
Luckily, Farah’s corset was laced in the front, and she went to work on that as she absorbed Murdoch’s words. “It’s hard for me to imagine a cruel Dougan,” she admitted. “But … he was kind to you?”
“Eventually,” Murdoch said evasively. “But once I proved myself useful, I was taken into their gang’s protection and that made life much easier for me, most especially at night. As ye likely know, Dougan had a gift for words and an eerily accurate memory. On the darkest and coldest of nights, he’d tell us about books he’d read with ye, and often he’d be sidetracked from the memory of the book and just go on about some adventure or another the two of ye had together.”
“He did?” Farah breathed, pausing before peeling off her chemise and exposing her breasts to the chilly air. Once she’d finished that, she bent and tucked her only treasure beneath the washroom rug, not wanting anyone to find it.
Warmth stole into Murdoch’s voice at the memory, and Farah’s heart clenched at the picture of her Dougan not yet a man, and yet not a boy, regaling a room full of hardened prisoners about the graveyard capers and bog adventures of a ten-year-old girl in the Scottish Highlands. “He described ye so many times, I feel as though any of us would have recognized ye had we seen ye on the streets. He told us of yer kindness, yer innocence, yer gentle ways and boundless curiosity. Ye became something of a patron saint to us all. Our daughter. Our sister. Our … Fairy. Without even knowing it, ye gave us—him—a little bit of sunshine and hope in a world of shadow and pain.”
“Oh.” Farah again lost the battle to her tears, and she stood behind the screen, naked and shivering, her arms wrapped around herself as she drank in Murdoch’s memories as though she could make them her own. She barely noticed her nakedness, as it was her insides that felt so entirely exposed and vulnerable. “Are you quite certain he was never angry with me? That he never—blamed me for his incarceration?”
The older man was silent for a time, and tendrils of panic snaked through her. “Please. You must tell me the truth,” she begged.
“Get in the bath, first,” Murdoch nudged gently.
Farah complied, stepping up and into the fragrant tub and lowering herself into lavender-scented water that lapped at her shoulders.
“The truth is, lass, that it would have killed Mackenzie to ever hear ye ask that question,” Murdoch continued when he seemed certain that she was situated. “It was only we who were closest to him who knew the particular depths of his fears for ye. He never told anyone but Blackwell and me yer name. To everyone else, ye were his Fairy, and that was all the information they ever got. He guarded ye like the jealous husband he was.”
“Our marriage was never legitimate, Murdoch,” Farah confessed, letting the hot water and lavender soothe the chill and the aches from her stiff muscles. “You must know that, as well.”
Murdoch’s rude noise echoed off the stone and marble of the washroom, amplifying his contempt for her words. “Dougan Mackenzie was as faithful and devoted a husband to ye as there ever was,” he insisted. “And after all these years, Mrs. Mackenzie, seems to me ye’ve stayed as true a bride to his memory as ye would have if he was alive.”