Dark Season (26 page)

It might take another dip in the Thames to shrink the signs of his arousal.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting.” The effort it took not to reach over the chair and run his thumb along her jaw made his voice harsh. “I’m glad to see you’re not much the worse for last night’s ordeal.”

“I would have left before you returned, but … ”

“But you haven’t anything to wear,” he drawled. “I noticed.” The image of her standing before him in just the nightdress rose again in his mind. Wonderful piece of luck that Violet was so small in stature.

“Where would you have gone?” he asked, watching her closely.

“To Trombly Place,” she said immediately. “To collect my belongings.” He heard the split second of hesitation before she said the word “belongings.” She numbered among her
belongings
not a shilling but quite a few jewels. He narrowed his eyes. “And to take my leave of Mrs. Trombly,” she rushed on. “She must be quite … That is, when she discovered this morning that I was not in the house … ” Her lips parted. She could not hide her discomfort. As she stumbled over the words, her mortification only increased. She looked like a debutante caught kissing in a garden. Her lips were red, as though she had been kissing. Red and full. “I wanted to write, but … ”

He was staring at her too intently. She dropped her gaze. Her eyelids too had a lilac tinge. She needed more rest. She needed someone to take her cares away from her. And here he was, preparing to introduce her to greater horrors.

“You needn’t have troubled yourself about it,” he said. “I wrote to Mrs. Trombly.”

“You wrote?” Ella’s eyes lifted. She always mastered herself quickly. She took an audible breath. “And you’ve had a letter back?”

He hadn’t opened Louisa’s response. His letter to her had been brief. He’d written it and posted it at Clement’s.

“I don’t know why I worry what you told her.” Ella’s lips curved. A faint sneer, self-mocking. He recognized the type. It was similar to the one he often wore himself. “She won’t think well of me as a thief if she has less cause to think ill of me as a woman.”

“I told her you had another vision,” he said, and she jolted, brows winging upward. “You walked out into the night in a trance, and I found you staring up at Clem—St. Aubyn’s house. The scene, as it were, of … ”
The crime.
“The misfortune,” he finished. “I detected the signs of spirit possession. I took you here at once so as not to disturb her household.”

Her eyes were wide. She was gripping the back of the chair.

“Why?” Her pink tongue moistened the corners of her mouth. “Why would you tell her such a thing?” She lifted her chin. “
How
could you write such a thing? You accuse me of playing with her emotions, and then you write a lie that needs must excite and terrify her. That needs must raise false hopes.”

“I regret raising her hopes falsely,” he said. “But she will talk of your latest trance to Mrs. Wheatcroft. And Mrs. Wheatcroft will talk to Mrs. Hatfield. And Mrs. Hatfield will talk to
everybody.
And before too long, rumors of your stunning feats of mediumship will reach the ears of someone whose hopes are
not
raised by the news that you have opened a powerful channel to the otherworld. Someone who feels nothing but fear at what you might say.”

She shivered. Perhaps the cold was creeping out of her bones now as well.
No sweet dreams for the likes of us
, he thought. Strange that he should now think of that agonized coach ride as a hallowed interlude. They’d been inside a magic circle, everything complicated and insoluble locked beyond the glass and the wooden panels, their bodies close together, struggling to exchange animal heat. Protection.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said.

“A proposition?” She stepped back from the chair. Suspicious. Outraged, even. Too late, he realized he had been infelicitous in his word choice. She would leave his house without shoes, in that sheer nightdress and bulky shawl, before she would accept a
proposition.
Her situation didn’t permit her the luxury of such pride. But he couldn’t help but admire it. She was as stubborn as he.

He didn’t want to coerce her. To threaten her with Newgate.

“Let’s call it a devil’s bargain,” he said. “To free an immortal soul from its bondage.”

She gave him a measuring look and drew the shawl tighter about her shoulders. She nodded slowly, as though considering. As though she were free to make her own choice. A lady through and through.

“I will hear your proposition,” she said.

The porter came before dinner with her gown of black bombazine. Ella dressed but ate alone in the room. Waiting for the summons. It came, and she went to Isidore’s study. He sat behind his desk, and she sat on a chair across from him. There were sconces on the walls fitted with gaslights, but he’d opted for oil lamps. The light they gave was low, intimate.

“Brandy?” he asked.

She shook her head. He poured two glasses and put one down in front of her.

“You’ll need it,” he said. They stared at each other. Two generals at a war council. He looked tired, tired as a general in the field, and as determined.

“Yesterday I told you in no uncertain terms that you were to leave Trombly Place.” He took a sip of brandy, but his eyes remained locked on hers. “You made no answer to allegations that you are a thief.” He paused, as though to give her time to make answer now.

She said nothing. What was the use? Protestations of innocence rarely swayed opinions founded on the bedrock of preexisting prejudice. Nothing could be easier than assuming the worst of her. She wouldn’t embarrass herself with declarations or appeals. He didn’t care if she was a thief. Not anymore. You don’t ask an angel to make a devil’s bargain. She waited. His eyes narrowed.

“I wasn’t happy that Mrs. Trombly had hired you in the first place. I did not conceal my misgivings.”

No, he hadn’t. He had made his misgivings plain. She glanced at his mouth then quickly away, but not before she saw those lips curve. He’d noticed.
Damn him.

He leaned forward but not to taunt or tempt her. The tempest in his eyes obscured their blue light. They were black, fixed. “I worried that your position as medium would give you the power to make claims about the dead. Claims that might gain currency. People tend to be credulous when it suits them. The
ton
has an insatiable appetite for scandal, the more sensational, the better. Séances just extend their reach—gossip from beyond the grave.”

“Surely it isn’t only gossip people want.” She sounded so brittle. Why did his cynicism provoke her? Maybe she was more of a contrarian than a cynic. Maybe he just flustered her.

He shrugged as though the point weren’t worth debating. “In some cases, spiritualist fervor is prurience disguised as sentiment. In other cases, it’s sentiment disguised as prurience. For the practitioners, the mediums, the spirit-writers, it’s money in the bank.”

“Your thoughts on spiritualism are known to me, my lord,” she said stiffly. She didn’t disagree. But she’d be damned if she admitted as much now.

He tipped his head. Relaxed his posture. He wasn’t challenging her anymore. The weariness crept back into his face.

“Phillipa died with certain secrets,” he said. “Secrets that I wanted buried with her. I felt I could not allow any tapping from beyond the grave to spell out some message—however cryptic—that hinted toward the truth. I even feared that you may have discovered something about Phillipa, through spiritual or worldly means … ” He smiled a faint smile. “And that you had planted yourself in Trombly Place to turn this knowledge to your advantage.” He paused again. She couldn’t keep herself from shaking her head slightly.

“No,” he said. “I begin to believe you. I begin to believe your presence is a dark coincidence. Or, if you prefer, the workings of fate. I believe you are to be the instrument of justice. Of retribution. Divine or demonic—it matters to me not in the least degree.”

She clutched the glass of brandy. He was right. She needed it. To hold on to if nothing else. The snifter was cool and smooth in her hand, narrowing from the wide base, delicate enough to crush. He could crush
his
snifter certainly. His long fingers cradled the transparent curves. He tipped the glass this way and that, absently, swirling the brandy. Watching her.

“Until yesterday,” he said, “I thought that my fiancée had thrown herself from that balcony.”

“Why?” Her face burned as soon as the word slipped out. She sipped at the brandy. Now her lips burned as well. Heat rolled down her throat. The question had pounded in her head all night.

“We had a row.” He leaned an elbow on the desk. She saw the muscle in his arm bunch as he raised his hand to rub the back of his neck.

“It must have been a bad one.” She could have bit her tongue at the inadequacy of this remark.

“Worse than you could imagine,” he said slowly.

What was it about?
She wished for him to continue with every fiber of her being.
Was it about these … secrets?
But he lapsed into silence.

“I was wrong,” he said at last. “She ran from my presence. I pursued, but … ” He shook his head. “I tripped. While I lay there on the floor in a stupor, too drunk to give chase, someone followed her onto the balcony and broke her skull.”

Her involuntary cry checked the brutal flow of his speech. She put the brandy on the desk before it could slip from her nerveless fingers. It was hard to look at him. Someone had broken Phillipa’s skull. Smashed the life from her. If he could bear this revelation, so could she.

For a moment, his gaze gentled, responding to her shock and horror. It was amazing to her that he could spare her a look of such compassion, before his own torment again marked his features.

“I wanted the world to believe Phillipa’s death was an accident. I encouraged that interpretation. A suicide—it would have destroyed her family. If an inquest had discovered more … ” He stopped. She glimpsed it again—the man he might become. Grim, lined, haggard. His beauty the beauty of a ravening wolf.

“I thought I was protecting her,” he said flatly. “Instead, I was protecting her murderer.”

“What do you want me to do?” she murmured. Her heart thudded in her chest. She realized he could say anything, make any demand, and she would consent. She was giddy with the peril and with the power she felt. He thought
she
could help him. Isidore Blackwood, so large, so strong. He had hands that could break her in half.
He needed her help.

“I want you to enter my service as a private medium.” The irony of the situation made his lips quirk despite the blackness brimming his eyes. Then a rueful, crooked smile spread across his face. “It’s deuced inconsistent of me. I suppose I should apologize.” The smile transformed his features. And stopped her heart.
Heaven protect me from that boyish grin.
It made her want … That was it. Plain and simple. It made her
want.

“It’s not necessary.” She averted her face. “Nothing is consistent in this world. Some things we can more or less rely upon. The sun rises in the east. We wake with a roof over our heads. Our loved ones are with us as they were the day before. We think things will be the same tomorrow as they were today. But one day, we wake … and everything is different. One day, we don’t wake at all.”

Her wandering gaze settled on a row of wooden figures on the mantelpiece above the fire. In the low light, they were a menagerie of shadows. Animal shapes. Relics, perhaps, from Egypt.

“You are philosophical for one so young.”

She looked back at him. He wore the look that most disconcerted her. No mockery. Just an earnest, avid interest. His eyes were considering. Curious.

“I had few amusements in the country,” she said. “I was often reading books with my father.”

“A cloistered life,” he said. His lifted brow was quizzical. “Were there no opportunities beyond the library? Perhaps you lived with your father in a hermit’s cottage deep in Exmoor forest?”

“You are whimsical, my lord, for one so grim.” She feared she had overstepped herself, but his other eyebrow shot up and he laughed.

“It’s true the hermitage I imagined was excessively picturesque. Thatched roof. Briars of blooming rose along the stone path. A lantern burning in the window.”

“It wasn’t a hermitage.” She smiled at him, beguiled by the image. There would be linnets chirping in the thatch. The roses would climb the walls. “But it might as well have been.” The question she read on his face forced the lie. “My father was an invalid.”

Understanding flared in his eyes. As though she had given him a piece of a puzzle.

“That must have been difficult,” he said, and his sympathy only deepened her shame. He must have seen in her face that she could endure no further questioning. He pushed back his chair, unfolding his long body with that fluidity that characterized all of his movements.

“You have come from your country cottage to the city of shadows,” he said. “And here you will help me apprehend a murderer.” There was regret in his voice. The way he described it, it sounded like a fairy tale. She was like Rhodopis in the city of the fire god. Ripped away from everything she knew. But there would be no miraculous resolution. In real life, eagles didn’t speak to pharaohs. Strawberries didn’t bloom in the snow. A dead brother never reappeared, alive, in a cloud of smoke. He knew it too, that there was no such thing as happily ever after. She couldn’t help him bring Phillipa back. The love of his life. She hated herself for the jealousy that gnawed at her.

“Who is he?”
The murderer.
The idea of him didn’t produce terror so much as a welling sadness. He had ended Phillipa’s young life and warped so many others. Man was the cruelest beast. No other creature would kill a female of its species for pleasure. Or in rage.

She too rose, without grace. Her body never moved fluidly, all of a piece. Her limbs were too ungainly. He had drawn his brows together. A deep crease scored his forehead. He was looking at a point above her head.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, low and thick, voice like a black cloud. “But I know things about him. He’s a friend. An acquaintance, at the least. He’s young. Handsome. Rich.” That smile he wore, so full of loathing, seemed the precursor to an act of violence. He seemed to have forgotten she was there.