Shadows of the Night Read online

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  Shadows of the Night

  Lydia Joyce

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Copyright

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  In memory of my Gran-Gran,

  an original Southern lady

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  Prologue

  “Come back to bed.” Emma’s sleepy voice emerged from the pile of twisted blankets. “You have hours yet before the wedding.”

  Colin cast a glance over his shoulder as he gave his necktie a last quick tug into place. Morning light poured through the window, puddling across the bed to halo Emma’s cherubic face amidst clouds of white linen. Her lower lip protruded slightly, an artificial expression that should have looked ludicrous on a woman of thirty-five, but Colin doubted that Emma had ever in her life looked anything but exactly as she intended. Flirting, dancing, cajoling, even during lovemaking she kept her face turned toward the most flattering angle, her expression intense but unmarred by any unaesthetic contortion.

  Predictable, cultured, and undemanding, she was exactly what Colin had always wanted in a mistress. It was a pity their pleasant affair would be interrupted by his wedding so soon.

  Colin shrugged at his reflection. “I have yet to dress and shave and be jocularly ridiculed by my brothers, and I am also expecting some important correspondence from my solicitor. I know how these events go; as dreary as they are, somehow there never is as much time as one needs to prepare.”

  “It would be so much simpler if marriage were settled without all this unseemly to-do, parading about as if the bride and groom had single-handedly invented the institution. A few documents passed between solicitors, the appropriate signature on the appropriate blank.” Emma sighed.

  Colin chuckled. “Mon ange, you were born a cynic.” He squared his shoulders and straightened his gray morning coat before crossing the room to her bedside. Emma extended round white arms to pull him to meet her upturned face—not so carelessly that she mussed his suit—and kissed him with a faultless balance of passion and decorum.

  “I suppose this is good-bye,” she said when they separated. Her bottom lip, kiss-swollen and still jutting out slightly, began to tremble.

  “For a few months, at least,” Colin agreed easily.

  The lip stopped trembling. “For at least half a year, I should hope. It isn’t decent that a man should hurry too quickly from a wife’s bed.”

  “Nor a woman from her husband’s?” Colin returned coolly.

  Emma delicately pulled a face. “I produced Algy’s heir and a spare before I took my first lover. Now we live our lives, discreet and discrete”—her smile indicated the wordplay—“and well satisfied. I would wish you better, if I thought any better were possible upon this mortal coil.”

  Colin laughed again. “We shall see, I suppose.” It wasn’t as if he had any great aversion to marriage nor any great expectations going into it, really. He assumed that it would sort itself out, as his life always had. Eton, Oxford, the usual social clubs in London and hunt clubs in the country—his life had always fallen into place without a single conscious effort on his part. He had no reason to think that his marriage would be any different.

  He had decided last year that it was an appropriate time for him to wed. As the heir to a viscountcy, he needed a son before he grew too old, and his cordial if distant relationship with his parents assured the stipend needed for an appropriate match. The debutantes that year were as callow and self-centered as they ever were, but this discovery scarcely put him off; after all, self-centeredness merely meant that a woman would spend more time thinking about herself than harrying him. All he desired was an accomplished hostess with a certain warmth and physical charm, traits that abounded among the daughters of his set. So when he found himself spending more and more time at Fern Ashcroft’s side, as much by chance as by design, he rapidly made the socially required hints, and upon receiving the appropriate replies, he approached her father and requested her hand.

  Colin had heard other young men of his set speaking in agonized voices of love and desire—the objects of which were, often enough, neither their wives in fact nor in potentia. But he did not seek such a match, either with Fern or any other woman. He had never experienced the heights or depths of a grande passion. He did not think it within his capacity to do so, nor even to miss such a disruptive and messy experience.

  His only regret, and that a faint one, was that the engagement coincided with his discovery of the undemanding and ever-welcoming Emma Morel. But a mistress, however pleasant, was no reason to change the direction of his life, which had only one other shadow on the horizon—that of the matter of Wrexmere Manor, which his solicitor’s letter should soon clear up.

  Colin looked down at Emma and brushed a golden curl that had fallen across her forehead back to join the rest of the artfully tumbled mass. “Let’s not put a time requirement to fidelity. It sounds so calculating, and you know I never calculate. Instead, I will merely say—good-bye, for now.”

  “I should cry, you know,” Emma said, her cornflower blue eyes growing round and wet even as she spoke.

  He raised one eyebrow. “Please don’t. At least, not unless you intend upon pining after me until I return; if you do, I could hardly deny you the right to weep, however inconvenient. But you shall make me most abominably late if I must stay to comfort you.”

  Emma laughed, the dampness transforming into a merry glimmer. “Oh, you naughty thing! You know me too well. I’ve tried to pine before, but I simply haven’t the constitution. Run along, then. I shall be here when you return, but whether or not there will still be a place for you, I can make no promises!” She paused, and for an instant, Colin saw a shadow of some real emotion in her eyes. Was it fear? “You’re staying in Clifton Terrace, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied cautiously.

  She smiled brightly, and the shadow was gone. “Well, I shall hope to not see you back in my bedroom for a few years, at least!”

  “Fair enough,” Colin replied, and he turned away to face his wedding day and his bride.

  Chapter One

  The aisle stretched out interminably in front of Fern, lined with familiar faces and their smothering gazes. Distantly, she knew this should be the happiest day of her life, when her girlish dreams would finally be realized and she would emerge into womanhood on the arm of her new husband—the husband she had scarcely dared believe had chosen her. But she could muster no joy, and her smile felt more like a rictus. The heir of a viscount. It had seemed impossible that he had wanted her, impossible that she could refuse, and since Fern had never been one to attempt the impossible or even the indecorous, she had accepted. Now a stranger stood waiting for her at the end of the carpet, and the indifference of his gaze chilled her soul.

  Fern’s father stepped forward, and she found herself borne along in the wake of the bridesmaids and her flower-strewing nieces. The organ blast trembled in the vaulted ceiling, the vast space muddying the sound until it arrived as one great crash in her ears, and the scents of roses and toilet water crowded hot and cloying around her.

  She wanted to
press a hand to her roiling stomach. Instead, she tightened her grip on her bouquet and continued to smile for the staring faces, white as the orange blossoms that wilted in her grasp, and for the gray rapier figure that waited at the other end of the carpet.

  Then she was there, beside him, standing unsupported, and the minister was speaking far too fast, the words tumbling together in her head until she could catch only fragments, like the falling shards of a stained-glass window: Dearly beloved … a remedy against sin … wilt thou have this woman … this man … till death us do part …

  The man next to her was too cold, so gray and adamantine that she might break against him just as the pieces of the minister’s words broke in her ears. Fern’s stomach lurched again.

  “Thereto I plight thee my troth.” It was her own voice, and she felt it buzzing up her throat, but under what power, she could not say.

  Then her bouquet was taken away and her hand enfolded in a broader one, cool and strong through kid gloves, a hand that seemed to fill her world … and upon her finger, it slid a ring.

  Kneeling, standing, kneeling, standing. Fern wanted to shout, to clap her hands over her ears, to do something to stop the torrent of words that bore her helplessly along.

  And then it was over.

  The clash of the organ, the clang of bells, and they flew down the aisle toward the doors that spilled light like the gates of heaven into the hot cavern of the church.

  The Honorable Mr. and Mrs. Colin Barton Jonathan Radcliffe.

  Oh, God, what have I done?

  *

  And they lived happily ever after.

  Was that not what was supposed to happen? Fern gazed out the carriage window—not the window of the flower-festooned landau that had borne the wedding party from St. George’s to her parents’ town house but Colin’s discreet barouche, suitable for the quiet escape of the newlyweds. Around them, the city teemed under the thin drizzle that slid off the rooftops and dampened the streets, wheels rattling and hooves clattering as other vehicles pressed around them. But the interior of the carriage felt muffled, detached from the gray chaos beyond the door, and Fern had the fantastic sensation that the view beyond her window was nothing more than an illusion. The only things in the world that were real were the shadows in the carriage and the man across from her, whose figure was so trim in his perfectly tailored morning suit that he almost seemed edged, as if he could cut her.

  Fern had been certain she had shamed herself during the ceremony by betraying something of the panic that she’d felt, but everyone had told her she was demure, beautiful, even radiant, and she wondered if terror gave her a special sheen. The day before, her elder sister Faith had cautioned her that eleventh-hour misgivings could be overwhelming, could even send her into a fit of hysteria or give her the vapors, but Fern had laughed away her warnings. After all, uncertainty was foreign to her nature. Why would her wedding be any different?

  The more fool she, Fern thought. But it was over, the final, irrevocable step of matrimony had been taken, and now she could settle down … to being happy.

  She tried to grasp the idea of happiness now that the terrible rush of the ceremony was over and she’d had the long line of congratulations and the even longer wedding breakfast to calm her nerves. Deliberately, she brought to mind how Colin, seated at the head table, had turned toward her for a moment to treat her to one of his calculatedly charming smiles. In that instant she felt the return of the small, awed thrill that had sometimes made her blush and drop her gaze during their brief courtship. Never mind that she had looked into his eyes and seen his smile reflecting nothing but emptiness. She had clung to that rosy glow with all her might, and even now, in the carriage, the sensation had not completely receded.

  “Victoria Station.” The words were Colin’s, flat in a chilly statement of fact. Hating herself for it, Fern colored at his voice, her gaze still fixed unseeing out the window. She was a married woman, she told herself, and married women did not blush, but the knowledge that soon she’d be truly alone with him for the first time—would even sleep beside him that night—filled her with a combination of dread and a fluttery, discomfiting sensation that she neither understood nor could name.

  Briefly, she wished she could be like her friends Mary and Elizabeth Hamilton, knowing and brash and beautiful. But that was not what she had been raised for. She had been raised to be an excellent hostess, a charming dancer, a capable household manager, a loving mother—in short, a good wife. And that was the way Colin wanted her, she reminded herself, or he would have chosen someone else.

  The carriage pulled to a stop, and Colin waited impassively as the footman opened the door before descending to the pavement and turning to extend his arm to her. She grasped it, the soft gray cassimere wrinkling under her gloved fingers, and twitched her merino and velvet skirts into place.

  Colin’s arm was strong and steady under hers as he guided her into the station. Fern ventured a sidelong glance at him. His face was perfectly composed in the expression of impassivity she knew so well, wide mouth and powerful jaw relaxed, green eyes flitting about coldly, casually. No new awkwardness hung about him, no trepidation, just his usual indifferent self-assurance.

  She envied him intensely for an instant but then told herself with a sigh that she could not blame him for her own frailty. A woman was not cast in the same mold as a man, as her mother had so often told her. A woman was made of finer stuff, both more delicate and more sublime, and so she should be like a climbing rose wrapping herself around a sturdy trellis, thereby embellishing it as it supported her.

  A slight rebelliousness stirred at that simile, as it always did, but she suppressed it. She was no mythical Amazon to go charging about like a man, even if there was a small part of her—a very small part that seemed almost to belong to someone else—that whispered that it ought to be otherwise.

  Her thoughts were terminated by their arrival on their platform, where the train to Brighton lay in an arabesque of iron and brass. Their footman gave their hand luggage to the porter, and Fern preceded Colin up the three steps into the train. They followed the blue uniform of the porter to their compartment.

  “Tea, please,” Colin ordered as the man lifted their handbags onto the rack above the seats.

  “Straightaway, sir,” the porter replied, and he departed, leaving Colin and Fern alone.

  “Well,” Fern said, feeling heat creep up her cheeks even as she tried to keep her voice light. “It should be a short trip to Brighton, at least.”

  “Are you weary, mon ange?”

  The endearment—how easily said!—served only to make her blush more, despite the fact that there was no warmth in his voice when he spoke the words. “A little,” she admitted. The heat of the compartment was stifling, and Fern loosened the ribbons that held her bonnet in place and unbuttoned her braided Zouave jacket as she settled across from him. Out the window, she caught one last glimpse of Colin’s footman before he was swallowed by the crowd. It seemed to Fern that a piece of her life had been carried away with him, lost forever in the bustling confusion of the platform.

  She looked back as Colin took the seat opposite her, setting his top hat beside him. His midnight hair was still perfectly arranged in a fashionable wave above his forehead, and in the close confines, she could smell the faint masculine perfume of his macassar oil. He suddenly seemed incredibly close to her, though they had been much closer every time she had waltzed across the ballroom floor in his cordial embrace. But always before there had been a restraint—the watchful eyes of a dozen society matrons, the proprieties that seemed to dictate their every move like steps in an intricate dance.

  Surely the dance continued now; surely there were things she should say, ways she should behave, but she realized that she did not know what they were. She knew all the niceties of days at home and dinner parties, but what went on behind closed doors between a man and his wife—that, she could only guess. Her education, which had seemed so excruciatingly thorough o
nly yesterday, now felt like a handful of gossamer threads suspending her over a chasm she had not even known was there.

  “We shall arrive in time for a walk along the strand before supper,” Colin said, as if the air did not stretch both heavy and thin between them.

  “I should like that,” Fern said. “A honeymoon in Brighton might not be as fashionable as a trip to the Continent, but though I have seen Paris, the Riviera, and all the great cities of Italy, I have never even been to Brighton.” She was saying what he already knew, but such trivialities were familiar landmarks in a strange new land.

  “It shan’t be long now.” Something stirred in the inscrutable depths of his eyes. Was that a spark of amusement? Or, dear Lord, was it contempt? Did he guess what uncertainties filled her mind? And yet he looked so unruffled. She tried to take courage from his sanguinity; as long as she could be certain of his lead, she had nothing to fear. This was how it was supposed to be, after all, the wife following the husband. It was not a fault of her education that she did not know what to do but rather a part of the plan. Like a climbing rose …

  “Yes. It shall be nice to arrive,” she said, stifling her incipient surge of resentment. The words were meaningless—meaningless but safe.

  Just then, there was a rap on the compartment door, and it slid open to reveal the porter carrying a tea tray laden with stark railway china. Skillfully, he set up the table between them and placed the tray on top of it just as the sound of the engine changed. Without even swaying at the jerk as the train chugged into motion, he asked if they needed anything else, and assured that they were comfortable for the moment, left again.