Dark Season (19 page)

“You think
workingmen
can be trusted to support ‘the greater good’ as you call it?” Lord Berners sputtered. “Of all the sentimental rubbish. Blackwood, I wouldn’t have suspected you of it. Might as well let my horse, or a Hottentot, decide the fate of the country. My horse, at least, never beats his mate or starves his children so he can spend his last ha’penny on gin.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Tenby, and she shot out of her seat like a jack-in-the-box. “If it is time for the gentlemen to discuss the Reform Bill, that means it is time for the ladies to depart for the parlor.”

Things only went downhill from there. Amongst the ladies in the parlor, the reprieve Ella had enjoyed over dinner ended abruptly. Mrs. Bennington initiated the inquest.

“You are from Somerset, Miss Reed?”

“Yes.” Ella smiled. The chair she had selected was less comfortable than it looked.

“But you have no relations in London?”

“No.” Ella glanced around and saw far too many eyes fixed on her. Mrs. Tenby was hunched in her chair, clasping her elbows, trying to recover, no doubt, from her failure to rescue the dinner conversation from doctors and radicals. She had powdered sugar on her chin. Mrs. Penn was perched on the edge of the sofa, explaining hospital administration to Miss Tenby, who looked as though she might cry with boredom. But the other women had made her the center of their circle. Lady Berners’s lips were pursed, fine lines fanning out around them. Mrs. Trombly nodded encouragingly. Mrs. Hatfield stifled a yawn. Mrs. Bennington wore an inscrutable smile.

“My mother was an orphan,” Ella explained. “My father’s family confined their activities to Somerset.”

“There
is
so much to do in Somerset.” Lady Berners might have intended her smile to be friendly.

“And your father, while he lived … ?” asked Mrs. Bennington.

“Wrote poetry,” said Ella. A startled silence descended.

“And he was principally occupied in … poetry?” asked Lady Berners.

“A poet!” Mrs. Hatfield shook her head pityingly. “How vexing that must have been.”

“And he never remarried?” Mrs. Trombly hadn’t pressed her for any more information than she’d offered at Trombly Place, but she couldn’t restrain herself now. “You said your mother died when you were very young.”

“Of course he never remarried!” For the first time that night, Lady Berners looked scandalized. “You heard the girl. He was a
poet.
If a poet can’t be counted on to let the wasting sickness of true love gnaw eternally at the core of his being, who can?”

“He never remarried,” said Ella.

“He wrote poems about your mother, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Trombly with sweet conviction.

It felt like sacrilege to talk about her father’s poems in such company. Looking around at their faces, she saw she had no choice.

“I suppose they were all about her,” she said. “In a sense. Many of his poems had to do with love, but some dealt with nature, or time. They could be beautiful, but also abstract. He took great inspiration from philosophy. His metaphors were often—”

“And now, Miss Reed,” interrupted Lady Berners. “Before this discussion delves into prosody and becomes unsalvageable, let us discuss matters of more interest.”

She
did
mean to be friendly when she smiled, Ella decided. She just wasn’t very good at it.

Lady Berners bent her lips up even more severely and blinked her deep-set eyes. “I hear from Mrs. Trombly you are a necromancer. Don’t look so alarmed! I adore necromancy. I believe it accounts for the preservation of
several
ladies of my acquaintance. One of them a duchess. I won’t name names!”

She waved a finger admonishingly. Mrs. Hatfield shrugged and settled back in her seat. Bored again. Lady Berners leaned toward Ella.

“I hope myself to be animated long beyond the span of years allotted to mortal woman,” she said, with a smugness that suggested this was entirely within her reach. “My great-great-grandchildren will be the better for it. I shudder to think what will happen to them if they are raised outside my sphere of influence. They might become
doctors
.” And she did shudder.

“Coffee?” asked Mrs. Tenby in a high, unnatural voice. Ella felt almost sorry for her. Lady Berners waved her off.

“What I detest about this
modern
spiritualism,” she continued, “is that it is so
democratizing.
The oldest families always had their ghosts. The Elphinstones have a ghost, if I recall. And the Giffards, of course. The Blackwoods have a ghost. A weeping lady. She appears from time to time in a lancet window. She was Scotch, the story goes. The third viscount, or maybe the fourth, who can keep track, brought her back from Culloden, but she never took to him, languished, and died. Very proper. A man could write a poem about that.” She nodded at Ella. “But the way spiritualists today go on, you would think
any
family has a right to a ghost.”

Mrs. Trombly looked pained.

“Do you think it takes a title to make a shade?” asked Mrs. Bennington, eying Mrs. Trombly with a touch of malice.

“Well,” Lady Berners considered for a moment. “Yes. There are haunted castles, not haunted haberdasheries, after all.”

At that moment, the men entered the parlor, and the shades, titled or otherwise, were sent back beyond the mortal veil. The men’s arrival reconfigured everything. The circle around Ella dispersed. Mrs. Tenby began to pour the coffee. Miss Tenby drifted away from Mrs. Penn toward Lord Blackwood. Mrs. Hatfield, with a few undulations of her impressive physique, maneuvered Lord St. Aubyn into a corner.

Ella took the opportunity to stand and walk a few paces to the other side of the room under the pretense of admiring a framed engraving. Really, she found nothing to admire about the parlor, except the piano, which was tempting—mahogany with ebony inlay and sheet music on the music rest that she wished she’d gotten a better look at—and, of course, the carpet. On the whole, it was too ostentatious, every ornament multiplied by three. It would be lovely when it was time to leave. And loveliest if no one spoke to her again until that blessed hour arrived.

“I hope you didn’t take Lady Berners seriously.” Mrs. Bennington was suddenly at her elbow. “None of us do.”

Just her luck. Sometimes Ella thought the surest proof of God’s existence was the swiftness with which he denied her supplications.

Mrs. Bennington’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled. She took Ella’s arm as though they were intimates.

“It’s so wonderful that your father was a poet and immortalized your mother in verse,” she said. Ella regarded her warily. Anything could be happening behind that china-doll face. “So few women find men who truly love them,” she added, almost wistfully.

She glanced back at the guests milling about the parlor, and Ella followed her gaze to Mr. Bennington, who stood conversing with Lord Berners by the fireplace.

“And sometimes the ones who do don’t deserve them. Do I sound terribly jaded?” Mrs. Bennington leaned closer, applying pressure to Ella’s arm. Her perfume was too strong. Ella wished she could inch away. The realization she’d had at the dinner table came flooding back to her. Well, why not out with it? Why play a game?

“You do sound jaded,” she said, and Mrs. Bennington’s eyes widened. Ella looked at her steadily. “I think it’s because you’re unhappy.”

A mistake.
She knew it immediately. She should have made some flippant remark or a vague protestation. Mrs. Bennington sucked in her breath. She dropped Ella’s arm and drew back.

“Unhappy,” she repeated. Her eyes looked slightly unfocused. The effect of the wine perhaps. “What makes you think I’m unhappy?”

“Nothing,” said Ella hastily. “I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You say whatever you want, don’t you?” said Mrs. Bennington slowly. “No matter who it hurts. That’s what people like you do. I don’t know how you stand it. You even look the part. You look … morbid.” She shook her head. “
Necromancer.
Lady Berners
is
a funny woman. But it fits, doesn’t it?”

She clutched at herself, as though suddenly cold. “I was Phillipa’s dearest friend, you know. We were like sisters.”

Her face wasn’t quite so perfect as it had appeared from across the table. One of her eyes was slightly larger than the other. She used powder to hide the light tracing of broken capillaries on the tops of her cheeks. She didn’t seem to be talking to Ella at all, but to herself, or to something unseen, something hovering between them.

“I told her everything,” she said.

This is a nightmare.
Mrs. Bennington’s eyes were so pale. Her perfume filled the air. Ella felt as though she might gag.
Dear God, don’t let me have a fit.
Her head swam. She put her hand discreetly against the wall, propping herself up. She breathed to steady herself.

“She must have been a good listener,” she said, although that didn’t accord at all with the image of Phillipa she’d formed.

“No.” Mrs. Bennington’s lips curved. Dimples formed. “She didn’t listen to anyone.
He
was her betrothed. Lord Blackwood.”

Ella would not risk a look in his direction. She looked instead at the teardrop earring dangling from Mrs. Bennington’s left ear. She tried to think of it as an anchor. A tiny, diamond anchor.

She had to ask.

“Lord Blackwood,” she said and stopped. She feared for a moment her voice had given something away. “Lord Blackwood,” she began again. “He loved her truly, didn’t he?”

Mrs. Bennington was silent. Then the teardrop earring swung dizzyingly as she laughed her musical laugh, a shower of notes. She laughed like a pianist playing scales. A practiced laugh. No feeling in it whatsoever.

“He loved her blindly,” she said. Then she caught Ella’s arm again and stroked it, absently.

“You aren’t really a medium, are you, Miss Reed?” she asked. “You can tell me.”

And make Mrs. Trombly a laughingstock?
Ella stiffened.
Don’t trust her. Don’t trust any of these people.

“I am employed by Mrs. Trombly in the capacity of medium,” she said, as proudly as she could. “You may discuss my credentials with her.”

Lord St. Aubyn was approaching. His arrival broke the tension.

Mrs. Bennington turned her dimpled smile on him. “You’ve escaped from the man-eater?” She raised a delicate brow.

Lord St. Aubyn made a face. “Only just,” he said. “You might have come to my aid.”

“I was speaking with the enthralling Miss Reed.” Mrs. Bennington stroked at Ella’s arm again, more demonstratively.

“An enviable situation.” Lord St. Aubyn accompanied this gallantry with a slight bow. “And about what were you speaking? Or is it to remain shrouded in feminine mystery?”

“I’m sure you can guess.” Mrs. Bennington raised a conspiratorial eyebrow. “We were speaking about Miss Reed’s powers.”

“Ah.” Lord St. Aubyn smiled, and Ella felt a flutter in spite of herself. “I’m sure Miss Reed has many powers.”

“Her
spiritual
powers. Miss Reed”—Mrs. Bennington gave her arm a squeeze—“have your ears been burning? You’ve been much discussed this evening. Up and down the table, everyone was whispering your name.”

“Surely I couldn’t have competed with London’s sewer system,” said Ella, and Lord St. Aubyn laughed appreciatively.

“Perhaps it would be vulgar to suggest that sewers and mediums have a certain similarity?” Mrs. Bennington seemed to relish Ella’s slight start. “They are both, after all, conduits for corpses.”

“From any other lips it would be the
height
of vulgarity,” said Lord St. Aubyn. “But you can get away with anything. Of course, you’re just teasing Miss Reed. Really, Daphne, you go to such lengths to be provocative.”

He was trying to soften Mrs. Bennington’s remark. Ella could have told him not to bother.

“But Miss Reed,” Mrs. Bennington persisted. She was going to
bruise
her arm if she didn’t stop squeezing. Ella extracted herself with difficulty. “Are you really a conduit?” That peculiar intensity had crept back into her voice.

“Let’s get away from
conduit
,”
said Lord St. Aubyn. “I’ve had enough of that for one evening. Miss Reed, I believe Mrs. Bennington is asking you, rather indelicately, if you can, in fact, speak to the dead?” His posture belied his casual tone. He was leaning toward her.

The two of them, quite unconsciously, it seemed, were crowding her into the wall. Ella shut her eyes.
Just for a moment. Leave just for a moment.

How wonderful to shut out their inquisitive gazes. To escape that parlor. To drift away from the palatial home, away from Park Lane, away from London, toward the forests in the west that exhaled such sweet air. The library window was open. In the dark garden, the glow worms shone with faint, green light. She could hear her papa as he read aloud to her, the morocco leather-bound volume open in his hands.

I saw eternity the other night,

Like a great ring of pure and endless light

She would always hear his voice. Her papa would always be with her. And that knowledge gave her the strength to answer them. Her eyes flew open.

“Yes,” she said. “I can. I can speak to the dead.”

She heard her certainty ring through in her words.

Mrs. Bennington frowned. She looked to Lord St. Aubyn, but he was staring at Ella. Intent. Mrs. Bennington glanced at the rest of the party over her shoulder, and her frown changed. She looked almost ugly, her face twisted.

“Oh, hell,” she murmured.

Mr. Bennington was sitting on the sofa with Mrs. Hatfield. Their heads were very close together.

“Excuse me,” she said coolly to Ella and Lord St. Aubyn and stalked toward her husband.

Ella stood awkwardly under Lord St. Aubyn’s stare. He was handsome, yes, but he didn’t make her skin tingle. She didn’t worry that she was about to tumble into him, crash against his chest like a wave against a rock.
Thank God.
Thank God only one man seemed able to harness the elements and override all the senses.

Lord St. Aubyn was doing it again. Peering at her with his sea-green eyes as though he sat behind a microscope. Suddenly something clicked in her head.