Dark Season (12 page)

“How did you know that?” The words caught in his throat. He hated himself for asking in that way, with that raw longing in his voice revealing his vulnerability. His desire to surrender to blind, stupid hope. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? This kind of hoax?

Even the staunchest skeptic will banish his good sense if you can whet his need, whet it until it cuts his sanity to pieces.

He started walking again, without warning, and she trotted to keep up. It was boorish of him, but he didn’t care. He tried to make his tone contemptuous. “How did you know? Did Phillipa tell you?”

They were nearing Park Lane, and on the other side, Hyde Park stretched before them. Acres and acres of green hills and budding trees. Thousands and thousands of men and women, horses and dogs, carriages and phaetons. Give him a choice between Hyde Park and a country meadow, Hyde Park and a lonely Cypriot beach, Hyde Park and the rolling dunes of the Sahara, Hyde Park and just about anything … he’d take anything. Once, he hadn’t minded it. He’d made light of the posturing, the preening, the gossiping, the lords and ladies making peek-a-boo into a pastime, playing like infants at the game of seeing and being seen. Now the sight of colored parasols floating above the sward made him want to gnash his teeth. So much for starting over.

“Of course Phillipa didn’t tell me.” Miss Reed’s matter-of-fact tone restored him to sanity. “Mrs. Trombly told me. Shall we enter here?”

“Wherever you like.” He shrugged to underscore his indifference, although, as they crossed into the park, he realized he did, in fact, have a strong preference for where they walked. He didn’t want to go near the Serpentine, where babies were wailing in their nurses’ arms and children were shrieking over swamped sailing vessels and debutantes were milling about, entertaining delicious fantasies of whose admiring eyes were trained in their direction. He didn’t care that Miss Reed had expressed a desire to take a turn near the water. He didn’t care that he had a stale hunk of bread crumbling in his pocket. He steered them instead onto a path that led into the thickest copse of trees.

“Oh, but I want to feed the ducks.” Miss Reed looked over her shoulder. “I suppose we can circle back to the lake?” She said it as though they really were taking a constitutional. Walking for health in the brisk, bright air. As though health mattered to people like them. The corrupt.

He did not respond. He stalked along the path, and this time it was she who lagged behind. He glanced back at her and saw the rapid movements of her eyes. She didn’t like it, the relative desolation of the spot. She was dragging her feet. He felt malicious pleasure, knowing that alarm bells were ringing in her head. Smart girl. He waited for her where the vegetation was thickest. Here, despite all the people that surrounded them, they would be hidden from view. A fact that was not lost on her. She approached on her tiptoes, and he could tell she was trying to formulate some excuse, some compelling reason why she needed to feed those ducks right that minute.
They must be so hungry.
She was preparing herself to whirl and dash. She was switching her weight from leg to leg in anticipation. Pity he was so much faster. She pivoted on her heel. He caught her by the wrist before she could blink.

“Why ‘of course’?” he demanded, flexing his arm and jerking her closer. He felt angry, irrationally angry, for that moment of weakness, that moment when he’d betrayed himself and almost sniveled in his desire to believe she really could cross between worlds and bring him succor. Her eyes were wide and uncomprehending. “Why did you say ‘of course’?
Of course
Phillipa didn’t tell you. Why wouldn’t Phillipa have been the one who told you? Isn’t that what you do? Receive messages from the dead? Did you not claim to Mrs. Trombly that you could speak with her?”

“No.” She was scared now; he could feel the tremors moving through her body. Her eyes darted here and there, trying to assess her surroundings, the chance that someone would stumble upon them. He felt, suddenly, like a monster. That too was doubtless part of her act. She was playing on his sympathies. She was no fawn beset by wolves.
She
was the wolf. A small, silvery white wolf with a fawn’s liquid eyes. His head felt hot. He couldn’t think clearly. God, he wanted to shake her, even as he reviled himself for his loss of control.

“I have made no claims,” she said, with surprising firmness. Grudgingly, he credited her for her strength of mind. She did not give in to the animal fear that caused her limbs to quake. “I told Mrs. Trombly that I would
try
to communicate with Phillipa. That I would remain open to the possibility. I promised nothing more. You have no right to harass and threaten me.”

“I have every right to defend Mrs. Trombly.” He tightened his grasp on her wrist reflexively.

“What right?” She flung the words at him. “The right of son? Mrs. Trombly told me what kind of son you’ve been. Did you stay by her side after Phillipa’s death?”

He flinched. “She had her other daughters. She had her husband. She didn’t need me.”
I was the one who had nobody.

“I see.” Miss Reed yanked with her arm, but he had no intention of releasing her. “I see how Mrs. Trombly is encircled by the loving members of her family. She is nearly smothered by their fond attentions.”

“You see nothing,” he said dully, winning out against the impulse to twist her wrist until she screamed. “I saw her whenever I passed through London. We exchanged letters. She never asked me to come back. Edwina visits. Visits often. Michael—Mr. Trombly—he was with her. It’s only a recent development that his work takes him overseas.”

But Edwina
doesn’t
visit often. Louisa makes much of her visits, but they are rare and getting rarer. With Arabella in India, there’s even less of a sense of family occasion. And Michael had absented himself even before he sailed for Brazil. He threw himself into his work after Phillipa’s death. It was his outlet and his refuge. Louisa had only the house with its empty rooms. Its silence. Could anyone blame her for chasing a phantom?

“She wasn’t alone,” he said softly. “I didn’t leave her alone.” It was his own conscience he was arguing with. He knew Miss Reed could hear it in his voice, because she stopped tugging and looked at him with something like compassion in her eyes. That was worse than anything. He was terrorizing
her
,
and she looked at him with pity.

He let go of her arm. She stepped rapidly back, but there was a tree behind her and she couldn’t back up any farther. The slatted light that filtered through the sparse crowns—only a few fresh, young leaves had yet unfurled—emphasized the chiaroscuro of her features: black eyes, white skin. If he still painted, he would have painted her like that. Pressed against the tree in light and shadow. Nude, though. No bonnet. A priestess of Avalon. No. A nymph. Her red mouth hinted at bacchanalia.

Maenad in repose.
That’s what he would call it. Thank the devil he’d stopped painting.

He took a step toward her. “What happened to your lip?”

She didn’t expect this question. A gloved finger flew to the ruby scabs. Then she covered her mouth with her hand. He took another step toward her, and that did it. He couldn’t get any closer. She swallowed hard. Lowered her hand.

“I bit it.”

“Hmmm.” He laid his right hand on the tree to one side of her head. Her eyes flew to his arm, a thick black bar prohibiting any move in the rightward direction. Slowly, deliberately, he laid his left hand on the tree to the other side of her head. Now her eyes flew to that arm. He leaned into the tree, leaned over her. She was trapped in the cage of his arms. She looked back and forth, from one arm to the other, frantically. As he’d intended her to.

“It must have hurt.”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She licked the lip. She couldn’t meet his gaze. He wondered, suddenly, if she might be a virgin. Maybe she wasn’t a con man’s mistress. The huckster spiritualist with his round glasses and pointy beard was just a caricature after all. A figment of his imagination. Maybe she wasn’t lying. Maybe she had been overcome at the séance. A country mouse might faint in a crowd. Particularly a country mouse in a corset. He pushed the thought away before it could prick at his conscience. She hadn’t fainted. According to Louisa, she had frothed at the mouth.

“I bit … It happened at the séance. I can’t remember much of what occurred.”

“You were possessed by Phillipa Trombly, my dearly departed.” He brought his face closer to hers. Her wild black eyes fixed on his, and she froze. Even her trembling ceased. “That is the supposition believed in some corners.” His eyes drifted over her face, slipped from the shining eyes to the smudged circles beneath and down the regal slope of her short, thin nose to the beckoning red of her mouth. “Unless you are willing to admit it was feigned?”

“It wasn’t.” She didn’t move her lips as she breathed the words. She was afraid, perhaps, of inviting more attention to them. Too late for that. A little voice piped up in his head. “Stop,” it said. “You are
definitely
enjoying yourself.” And he shouldn’t be. But stopping was out of the question.

This Miss Reed maddened him, how she flickered between timidity and ferocity, retreating then flashing defiance. How she used her body like it was a rigid little barricade between her true being and the world. She hid behind a black-and-white façade. She was elusive, entirely untrustworthy, utterly alluring. He wanted to destroy her defenses, force her into some spontaneous action, eliminate the distance she’d created between her inner and outer self. Not only because of the harm she could do if she began to prattle about the secrets that weighed on Phillipa’s unquiet soul. But because she was a puzzle that didn’t resolve into a picture he could recognize.

Many women tried to present themselves as puzzles. They were subtle, intelligent, mysterious … but ultimately the pieces fit together. He saw what they wanted, what they feared. Miss Reed—if that was even her real name—seemed to shift like desert sands. He couldn’t get his bearings. A chasm might open at any moment.

No matter who had put her up to it, no matter how much she knew or didn’t know about Phillipa’s secrets, the fact remained: she had feigned contact. She had wormed her way into Louisa’s confidence. She was positioned to rip open old wounds. To bring what festered to the surface.

She was his foe. And suddenly he was glad of it. Because that meant he owed her nothing. Not respect. Not restraint. He could do anything he wanted to discover what she knew … to see how far she would go.

“Can you summon Phillipa now?” He raised a hand and slipped a finger beneath her bonnet, pulling it back to expose her ear. “Is she with us?” He let his hot breath stir the fine hairs that covered the tiny, dark opening. Her convulsive response brought her breasts into brief contact with his chest. She gasped and jerked back, pressing herself into the tree. He fancied he could hear her spine grinding. Unless her mystic abilities extended to de-materialization, she would not escape through the wood. He smiled against her neck. She didn’t smell like an enchantress. She smelled like a good English girl, smelled of rosemary soap and freshly laundered clothes, and only a hint of something else, something tangier, saltier, her own smell. He wanted to inhale more of it. To nuzzle her neck, seek it out. He raised his mouth so his lips brushed her earlobe. “Does Phillipa want to kiss her betrothed?”

He was teaching her a lesson. That was all. Showing her how dangerous it was to toy with people’s emotions. Showing her there were consequences she couldn’t anticipate. So what if it was ghoulish? Damnable? The whole business was ghoulish and reeked of brimstone.
She
had begun it.

He plunged his hand more fully beneath her bonnet, feeling the silky mass of hair beneath. He lifted his left hand from the tree and pressed his forefinger to her upper lip, traced that deep indentation. He’d never cared to wear gloves except when riding, or when the weather was particularly inclement. He’d abandoned the habit altogether in Egypt. His hands were bare. The fingertips of his left hand were callused from the strings of the violin. He rubbed the roughened surface of his finger down the cleft and up the peaks of her lip. She drew in her breath, and her lips parted.

“Or maybe it’s
you
who wants to kiss me?” he whispered. “Only you.”

She didn’t deny it. Her eyes had closed, and the lids, with their faint mauvine smear, fluttered.

“Open your eyes.” He still spoke softly, but it was a command. He would not allow her to retreat. She squeezed them shut more tightly. He cupped her face, pulled at her eyelids with his thumbs, stretching the thin skin, uncovering the black irises. Her eyes appeared more slanted then, more like Phillipa’s.
Damn it.
He lifted his thumbs. Her eyes opened wide and stayed open.

“That’s right,” he said, harshly. He put his forehead on hers and felt her eyelashes sweep down, up, down, up, against his cheek. Then he could bear it no longer. He lowered his face and claimed her lips with his own.

Her lips were dry, hot. They parted slightly as he breathed against them, and he availed himself of their opening. He slid his tongue along her lower lip, felt the little scabs, tasted the hint of blood, coppery, mixing with the cinnamon on her breath. God, it was the taste of sin itself. He took the lip between his teeth, gently, and suckled it, plump and salty-sweet. He felt her lips open further. He thrilled with triumph as her breath exploded. She’d been trying to hold it in her lungs, to tamp down the air in her lungs, to withdraw into herself. But she couldn’t hold back any longer. She gasped against his mouth, and her body shuddered, the clockwork mechanism winding down. He turned her face with his hands, kissed the peaks of her upper lip, the corners of her mouth, the smooth, white skin of her cheeks. He slipped his tongue along the damp crevice beneath her full lower lip, and she caught his upper lip between hers, returning his kiss, her tongue against his teeth. She pressed into him, moved her mouth on his with bruising force.

He responded with a low growl, rocking back on his heels, pulling her against him. He wanted to rip her mourning gown down the middle, expose her white skin through the ruins of those black shrouds, reveal her breasts to his plundering mouth. He wanted to lay her down on the damp ground, on the first shoots of spring still weak and tender, struggling out of the dead earth, and take her there, the heat of their bodies sending warmth into the clay, enlivening it. They would be soiled by the act, rutting in the mud, leaves in her hair, cold dirt beneath his fingernails. They would defy the sanctified dead by rolling in the mire, that compost of corpses. He bent her backwards, one hand at the small of her back. The shawl slipped from her shoulders, and he bunched the soft wool in his hand, pulled it away with one smooth motion, and let it drop. He gripped the back of her neck, and she moaned, once, loud and harsh against his lips, the sound ugly with need. He was hard, straining against his trousers. He dragged his mouth from hers, dazed, and in that moment, he glimpsed her face. Her eyes. Her wide, open eyes, black, hungry, tormented, the pain in their depths the twin of his own.