Shadows of the Night Page 24

  Fern watched until she saw Colin emerge from the vicarage. “I’m going down, too,” she said in sudden decision.

  “But your hair’s not done—”

  “Devil take my hair!” she said from the doorway, hurrying out.

  The borrowed dress was made for a taller woman, and she took the stairs as quickly as she dared without risking her neck. By the time she stepped onto the walk, Colin was already at the road, his powerful figure just as remarkable in the vicar’s castoffs as it was in the finest London suit. Fern hurried after.

  She caught up to him just as the crowd and the men with Reston came together. “Fern,” he said, giving her a smile that squeezed her heart and offering her his arm before turning his attention to Reston’s arrival. Fern took it, clung to it, sure of its steadiness—for now.

  Reston was lying on a makeshift stretcher made from a blanket and two brooms, muttering and thrashing blindly as the men bore up stoically under his weight.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Colin’s voice rang out over the murmurs in the crowd.

  One of the men—Fern remembered that he had called himself the local sheep doctor, with the implication that such a profession was good enough for doctoring people when the need arose—laughed shortly. “He’s had a right good crack on the head and an even better dose of laudanum in him when he thought to fight us. He’ll be right soon enough. Until then, he’s babbling like a child, ain’t he?”

  “Where are you taking him?” Colin asked.

  “To Rob Sterne’s henhouse,” said another of the men. “I told him he’d built it like a gaol, and soon enough, we’ll see how right I am.”

  As Reston approached, his words became clearer. “… that damned man, crazy old granfer. Ye didn’t never trust nobody, did ye, Pa? Hiding the papers, keeping me from school, beating me for trying to better myself by reading. Always the papers. ‘Twere always about the papers vor you. Madman. Hiding out on the moors, hoarding every scrap of paper to trick me so I’d never be out vrom under your thumb. Got ye in the end, didn’t it? Dying out there all alone, covered with your own vomit and vilth, and you’d never told your only son where the real papers were, as you’d meant to. Ha!” The man struggled upright for an instant, his eyes unfocused, before collapsing back against the stretcher again.

  The stretcher bearers stolidly ignored him, carrying him away down the lane. The crowd followed, but Colin did not move, staring after the man for a long moment.

  “I don’t think he would have killed me,” Fern offered tentatively.

  Colin snorted. “You don’t think, you say. You’re a great bloody fool, Fern Radcliffe, and I am deuced glad that you married a man who could save you from your own good intentions.”

  “I am deuced glad I married you, too,” she said, the raw honesty of the words hurting her throat.

  “Let’s go back inside,” he offered, his green eyes warm. “If we don’t retire immediately, we shall spend the entire afternoon being gawked at as half the village manufactures an excuse to drop by.”

  And they did, leaving assurances through the vicar that they would be at the villagers’ disposal in the morning. They retreated upstairs to the vicar’s spare bedroom, gently rebuffing even his attempts at getting them to take tea with him.

  Fern sank onto the room’s single chair with a sigh as soon as she entered. “I somehow imagined that, after such an adventure, the day would have a more dramatic conclusion than retreating to an old churchman’s outmoded guest bedroom.”

  “For example?” Colin raised an eyebrow.

  She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “For example, making a grand exit in a coach bound for civilization.”

  Colin chuckled at the patent longing in her voice. “Tomorrow morning, I’ve been promised.”

  “I hope the driver keeps his word.” Fern lapsed into silence, staring at the fire in the grate, her mind turning over what she knew she must say. “Finally, the heat comes to an end, and it’s the day that I get drenched.” Those words took up space, took up time.

  “Of course,” Colin said, leaning against the mantel. “You aren’t coming down with anything, are you?”

  “Not at all.”

  Colin watched her knot and unknot her hands restlessly in her lap for a few moments. She knew he was watching, but she could not stop herself, nor could she make herself broach the hateful subject that she had left to consider before encountering Reston.

  Eventually, Colin said, “You do not wish to speak to me about the weather, Fern.”

  She looked up, biting her lip. “You are quite right. I am just too much a coward or a prude or something to bring it up myself.” She took a deep breath, drawing herself together. “I thought about everything before Joseph Reston arrived, just like I said I would. And I came up with three points of difficulty. First, you said you have changed—sincerely believe you have changed—but how much can a man change in less than a week, especially since you were still calling me by the same name you were calling your mistress on our wedding day? Second, even if you have changed, what is to keep you from straying in the future, out of passion if not convenience, and can I trust your oaths of fidelity simply because they are earnestly meant now? Third, what is the kindest and most just thing to do with the babe?”

  Colin’s face froze. “And your answers?”

  “I don’t know,” Fern confessed. “I only have questions. I do not think the first two are entirely answerable except by time, and as for the third … I don’t know if I’m as good as I should be to do what would be best. I rather fear that I am not.” She sighed with bone-deep weariness. “But just because I have no answers does not mean that the risk is not worth it. I love you, Colin, and that changes nothing and everything.”

  “What do you mean?” The words were tense and quiet.

  “I mean that I want to pretend that we have the answers, the best possible answers, and that I want to work toward making them true.” She spoke from the deepest part of her, the rebellious portion of her mind for once in harmony with everything else. “Loving you has not improved my ability to see into the future or to judge the largeness of my heart or the wisdom of trust. But in another sense—in the sense that, I hope, matters the most—loving you has made every difference in the world. It has made me choose to be an optimist, because I have realized that it is something that is worth risking everything for.”

  Colin just stood, swaying slightly. Even slightly disheveled, he was painfully handsome, with his perfect features and raven black hair. “I was angry that you read my private correspondence until I realized that, fundamentally, it didn’t matter why there was a rift between us, only that it was there. I told you the truth—I am a changed man.”

  “And I believe that you meant it,” Fern said.

  “But flesh is weak,” Colin finished. “I understand. Yet I want to share your optimism and your dreams.”

  “Truly?” she said, the breath catching in her lungs as she scarcely dared believe the words that her ears were reporting.

  “Truly,” he said.

  She let out a peal of laughter and pushed to her feet, throwing herself into his arms. And Colin laughed, too, an awkward, rusty sound that she thought she could become quite accustomed to.

  Then he kissed her, hard, and they said no more for a very long time.

  Esmeralda is keeping a secret. Lord Varcourt is determined to know the truth. Passion and mystery turn adversaries into lovers in Lydia Joyce’s next sizzling historical romance, Wicked Intentions, on sale December 2008.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek.

  The smothering velvet curtains were shut against the night, but Thomas Hyde, Lord Varcourt, could feel the darkness pressing against the edges of the crowded parlor, tightening around the silk-shaded gaslights and dimming them from yellow flame to orange.

  The coals glowed sullenly in the grate as the chill of autumn sank deep into the old stones of the city. Parliament still sat in its new limestone palace, already
damp and lichenous where it crouched beside the stinking Thames, and so the Season continued, with the endless rotation of dinners, dances, operas, and soirées, accompanied as always by the constant, grating murmur of politics and gossip, marriage and legislation, secret cabals and open scandals that took place in the myriad stifling rooms which celebrated rising stars or betrayed faded glories.

  Thomas stood apart in a corner of the Rushworth parlor, watching the currents in the room. Jewels glinted in the muffled lights, on swan necks, and on wrinkled wrists alike. The men moved, shadows in superfine and linen, between and among the wide skirts of the ladies, stooping to murmur in a delicate ear or pulling aside a hoary one for a moment’s stern exchange. The world was made and unmade in rooms like this, and already, Thomas could begin to read the threads that went into its making. Soon enough, he would have enough gathered in his hands so that he could pull them, and watch men dance …

  Bright laughter rose above the subdued murmurs with the suddenness and clarity of a shattered wineglass. His sisters, ever oblivious to any nuance they did not care to notice, stood by the piano with Mrs. Christopher Radcliffe. They were a false focus in the room, as insignificant as the bustling of the servants. Of more interest to Thomas was the presence of Lord Edgington in one corner of the room; the men around him shifted uncertainly, uncomfortably, for the staunchly Tory, if wildly libertine, family reputation had been shattered a year ago with Edgington’s defection to the Whigs.

  It was whispered that perhaps some portion of Edgington’s political shift was due to his marriage two years before to the utterly unknown Margaret King. Thomas did not discount it. That tiny woman sat in a chair directly in front of him, her thick black coils of hair framing her delicate face, as silent and unreadable as an exquisite sphinx.

  Only one other woman sat as quietly as she—and more still, for Thomas at times wondered if she had breathed since the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies after their postprandial cigars. That day, the woman wore a dress in a shade of red so dark that it was almost black, accompanied by a filmy veil of jet lace cascading from a golden comb on the top of her head to fall in folds across her face.

  Esmeralda, she called herself, though God only knew who she really was or from whence she came. She was the newest accessory for the fashionable parlor, one of a thousand charlatans who now pretended unnatural powers for the credulous admiration of peasant and monarch alike, a mass continental insanity that Thomas had instantly despised and suspected. It was an unpredictable element. A corruptible element. A potentially useful element, to be sure, but far too fickle to be trusted.

  Whom was she watching from behind that veil? Whose tool was she in this game of empires? And how many of the women present, in addition to his own mother, had already been drawn into her thrall? Not even Edgington, with all his spies, had been able to find out. Not even Thomas, with all his ability to coax out confidences.

  Lady Hamilton passed on, rubies glittering in her ears in utter disregard to the dark lilac of her dress and her bold new necklace, which marked her captivity to this Esmeralda. Rubies guarded against harmful thoughts, the woman taught—emeralds against envy, diamonds against the spirits of the other world, and topaz against ills of the spirit. Thomas’ gut clenched, but as long as his father clung to both life and title, there was nothing he could do about his mother’s preoccupation with mediums and spirit guides, who promised to reunite her with the son she had lost some ten years before. The son who many in that very room thought Thomas had a hand in killing.

  Lady Hamilton’s hand fluttered self-consciously at her neck. She had been playing with her new necklace all evening, all but flaunting it in front of the other guests. Thomas wondered cynically what charms Esmeralda had said over it, or if her visions had led his mother to a certain jewelry shop where the spiritualist coincidentally knew the owner.

  Lady James Ashcroft intercepted his mother as she passed near Thomas without acknowledging him. The countess gave the necklace a near-convulsive jerk, and Lady James’ eyes obediently slid downward.

  “What a brilliant new piece that is!” Lady James exclaimed, her own hand rising to the heavy jewels hanging from her neck and ears, relics of the Indian mines that had made her husband so rich. “It is so deliriously medieval. Please do tell me whom you had make it.”

  “It wasn’t made,” Lady Hamilton said in tones of deepest mystery. “It was found. Esmeralda has been possessed of visions concerning it for weeks, and though she told me the import of each, none of it made sense until she saw what I recognized as a peculiar stone in the walk behind Hamilton House. I ordered it pulled up, and beneath, in a little casket near rotted with age, was this extraordinary necklace!”

  Even as those light words elicited the proper admiring noises from Lady James, Thomas felt a chill cut through him. Lady Hamilton turned to show the necklace in the best light as she expounded upon the story in answer to Lady James’ inquiries, and it glittered in the light. Necklaces did not come from nowhere—and they certainly were not found through otherworldly visions. It had to be a ruse, a beautiful millstone to tie about his mother’s neck in order to drown his family. There could be no good hidden in such a carefully woven plot.

  Thomas wanted the thing gone—and with it, Esmeralda. He stood, silent and immobile, until Lady James moved off so that he could confront his mother alone. He stepped forward, taking Lady Hamilton’s elbow. She started when he touched her, and he tamped down a surge of anger against the statuelike form of Esmeralda.

  “Madam,” he said quietly, “you did not tell me that Esmeralda had given you that necklace.”

  His mother looked confused, the dark painted lines of her brows drawing together. “Given me it? No, I had the gardener dig it up—”

  “Nevertheless.” Thomas cut her off. “It is a gift. Her visions led you to it, you say. How easy would it have been for her to keep silent about them and keep the necklace for herself? No, she wanted you to have it, and I mistrust her reasons.”

  Her face grew stony. “You are simply speaking from your prejudices.”

  “I simply do not like the intentions of a stranger who has no reason to be kind and may have many other motivations you know nothing of,” he returned, forgetting in his annoyance to pander to the illusion that the spiritualist possessed supernatural gifts. “Did it not occur to you that the piece might be stolen? Imagine the damage it would do to your husband in Parliament if our family were connected to a theft. Madam, I would ask you to remove the necklace and to conceal it until we reach home. Then put it away and pretend it was never found.” He looked down at her, ruthlessly exploiting the uncertainty in him that Esmeralda had fanned into fear. “Do not wear it—or even refer to it—until that spiritualist is gone.”

  The color drained from her cheeks, and with it went the traces of her girlhood beauty. “You are punishing me,” she whispered, “for not getting rid of her as you told me to.”

  Thomas stretched his lips in a smile he didn’t feel. “No, madam. I am trying to save you.” And with that, he let her go, praying that she would accede to his demands.

  He turned to face the woman who sat so still across the parlor, who had been sending shadows for him to duel for the better part of a year and who had insinuated herself so fully into society that her presence had become well nigh inescapable.

  He had never spoken to her. Never acknowledged her, knowing that she would, in time, be tossed away like last season’s fashion in hats. That had been a mistake, for society had not tired of her quickly enough—a mistake he would commit no longer.

  He closed the space between them, weaving between belling skirls and through the archipelago of chairs. The air was heavy with the sickly sweet scents of sherry and sweat, cologne water and drooping flowers, the stench of tobacco hanging upon the coats of the men who had indulged themselves over the supper table after the ladies had retired.

  Esmeralda did not stir in her corner, though he would have sworn that her eyes were fixed upon him as
he drew near. He stopped so close to her chair that his boot tips touched the stiff dupioni of her dark crimson skirts. He could tell almost no more about her from that vantage than he could from across the room, for she was still just as motionless, the fabric of her veil revealing nothing but a hint of the shape of her face beneath. Her high-necked dress ended far beneath the veil’s edge, her tight sleeves coming down over her wrists to meet short black gloves. She was slender but tall for a woman; he had seen her rise from a chair and use that height and her eerie quietness to silence a room. She could be any age, any woman, really, beneath the armor of silk. If it were not for the small movement of her chest as she breathed, echoed by a flutter of her veil, he could almost believe that she was not even alive.

  But she did breathe—and he could feel the tension radiating from her body as he stood over her, looking down.

  She said nothing, so neither did he. Instead, he walked slowly, deliberately around her until he stood in the gap between the corner of her chair and the wall, directly behind her left shoulder and out of her peripheral vision.

  “We need to talk, Esmeralda,” he said. “I think I would like to have my palm read.” He put a hand on her shoulder. He could feel the muscle over her collarbone, rigid through her silk dress.

  “I do not read palms,” she said. It was the first time he had ever heard her voice, and it sent a shock through him, for it was neither the exaggerated Gypsy accent nor the cronish cackle he had expected. Instead, it was low and melodious, with the merest trace of an accent he could not place. “I read souls.”

  Thomas tightened his hand upon her shoulder. “You lie.”

  “You sound so sure.” The reply was swift, practiced; she had met doubters before.

  “I am sure,” he countered. “If you could read my soul, you would be trembling now.”