by Jess Russell
“Yes, Anne. You will call me James.” He smiled and squeezed her hands.
She nearly smiled back before remembering she did not like her smile. “If you cannot speak of these devils, then you must draw them. Like you drew on the walls of your room when I first came. You must draw your dreams.”
He shook his head. “Anne, I am better now. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to go back to—before you.”
A lovely and unexpected gift. She hugged his words to her. Tonight, when lying in her bed, they would warm her, but now she must push him to open—to not be safe.
“I have begun writing down Phoebe Nester’s dreams. They are quite…shocking, but within them there is truth and healing. I believe she is better now, calmer and more ready to face her fears. She has allowed some light into those dark places. I have made headway with Lady Tippit as well, though to a lesser degree. She is more guarded.”
“Do you know she is at Ballencrieff of her own free will?”
She nodded.
“She is truly barmy.” He shook his head.
“A little, but she needs to feel safe. The world has damaged her.”
“And what of your dreams, Anne Winton?” White teeth, lips hitched to one side as if he had a delicious secret. A smile he must know set her heart hammering. “Do I ever make an appearance?”
Her dreams. No one had ever asked her such a question. Ah, if he only knew the nights spent in her tiny room, on her tiny bed, with her huge fantasies.
“You are evading me.” He looked at her as if he could see straight into her.
She had no defense against this jaded man.
His patience eroded her fortress of privacy; the moat she used to surround her draining away under his steady gaze. Silence was not so much a defense as habit; no need to speak when no one ever asked what she thought.
She brushed her fingertips against the feather of her pen and then, feeling self conscious, put her hands in her lap. “I dream of my parents. I only remember bits and pieces. And even those I am not sure if they are true facts or what I have made up over the years. When one is an orphan, one has the luxury of making one’s parents into whatever one wishes them to be.”
“Hmmm. Yes, I suppose that could be called an advantage. My early memories are all too real and not very pleasant.” He picked up the deck of cards and executed a complicated shuffle. She imagined he must have done this hundreds of times in the outside world of his past. He would be breathtaking in his element, flashing his grin, holding court among a glittering crowd of admirers.
“But you still have not answered my question.” There, that smile again. A rogue’s smile.
Was she so transparent to him? “Yes, I dream of you. You are in a category all your own.”
“A category? Remind me I should never look to you for flattery.”
“Do you wish to hear, or do you wish to be flattered?” Perhaps if she talked of herself, he might open as well.
“No, Anne, I wish to hear. I could listen to you spouting Fordyce’s Sermons and be happy. Hell, I’ve listened to half the bloody—and I do mean bloody—Old Testament just to hear your honey voice. But to find out your dreams, that I would love above all things. Well, most all things.”
Outwardly she ignored his innuendo, but inside could not contain the hitch in her heart. “I believe I have begun to know more of my parents through my dreams.”
And the nightmares, but she would not think of those now. Those memories would not serve him.
“They told you nothing of them at Ardsmoore?” He had picked up his crayon and began to sketch her.
“Only that they died. That they were sick. I could not save them.”
Despite her will, old memories rose. A shovel unable to pierce the frozen ground. Her father, so heavy in death, his skin yellow and waxy. Covering his face with an old tattered quilt.
“Non, ma petite,” Let him sleep. “Mon ange,” her maman had said, through a haze of delirium.
Her child’s hands burned in sympathy, as she laid them upon her mother’s breast, willing her to breathe, trying to take on some of the fever. “Mon, ange.” My angel. “Tu dois etre courageux.” You must be brave. “DeVere. You are a DeVere. You must take care of your father when I am gone.”
In the end she’d curled around her maman, still desperate to give her some life even as her body turned as cold as stone.
Like jumbled pages in a book, beautiful pictures mixed with images of terrible suffering. With each page she turned, she never knew which picture would appear. Passing time made the pages easier to turn, but the story always ended the same. Always in death.
“I was lucky to be placed at a school instead of in the workhouse. The vicar, Mr. Harlow, intervened. I owe him a great deal.” His hands had stilled over the half-finished drawing, his eyes full of questions. Ones she did not want to answer.
He traced the shape of the lips he had drawn. “You believe the answer to my demons lies in my dreams?”
“I do. Perhaps not all the answers, but dreams are a window into greater clarity.” She waited. “Let us leave the devils at bay for the moment. Perhaps you can tell me why you paint?”
“Why I paint?”
She nodded. Obviously he had never asked himself this question.
“Why…” He made a few scribbles on his paper. “If I did not paint… I would dissolve. I would melt into these floorboards. My worth is in this crayon and paper. With it, I can be king of the world. Without it, I am nothing.” He put his sketchbook down and carefully set the chalk on top. “I suppose that sounds like drivel coming from a marquess.”
“No, not at all. You are privileged, but you are also human. Wealth does not mean one is happy. Indeed, I believe my parents, poor as they were, were very happy. But perhaps that is my fantasy.”
Time to reveal more of herself, to show him it was safe. “I suppose you have felt the heat in my hands.”
He sat forward. “Yes. I have never experienced anything like it.”
“I have always been this way for as long as I can remember. When I first came to Ardsmoore, I did not speak for a time. They nearly sent me away thinking me possessed. Perhaps I would have ended up here as a patient.” A stray breeze ruffled the edge of his drawing. “Mr. Harlow stopped them. But no one would come near me, touch me. They called me The Witch.”
The memory made her shift in her chair. “For nearly four years, I believed there was something horribly wrong with me. I often slept with the youngest girls who were more tolerant of me. But when the school’s cow, Daffy got sick, it was winter and there was no milk. The children cried with hunger. I could not stand by and do nothing. So I snuck out one night. As I got closer to the barn, I could hear Daffy’s piteous bellow, and my hands got very hot despite the bitter cold.
“I laid my palms on her. Her eyes opened, and she looked at me as if I were some angel.” She would never forget Daffy’s beautiful face, a patina of sheered brown velvet, worn thinner at her nose and softly blowing nostrils. “Her cries eased and then stopped. I seemed to be one with her for that time—one vibration.”
He nodded. They had made that same vibration.
“I could not save my mother, but I believe I saved Daffy. It was then I knew this oddity of mine was not evil, but a gift. Eventually, I gained control over it and was no longer afraid.”
“What of those horrible girls who had called you a witch?”
“Oh, they were not really so horrible, only easily led.”
“What do you mean?”
Heavens, she did not want to delve into this, not now. But if she were asking him to face his terrible memories, she should reveal some of her own.
“Anne, are you well?”
She jerked her head up. “I did not tell you the full truth when you asked why I came to Ballencrieff. There was an incident that—caused me to lose my place.”
“An incident?”
“A girl, Madge Barrow was her name. She came to Ardsmoore last autum
n. Her family, though well-off, despaired of her and thought a strict school would be beneficial. In no time she had most of the older girls following her, believing her terrible lies. Only no one believed her tales of me. Madge could not stand this betrayal, for that was how she saw their devotion to me. She resurrected ‘Witch Winton’ and turned many of the students against me.”
His fingers gripped the crayon until she thought it might snap.
Still, once begun, she must finish. “One afternoon Madge approached me. She smiled and said she wanted to show me a book. She had it under her mattress and insisted I come with her to see it. I was hesitant but thought perhaps if we could speak alone, I might begin to understand her.
“But once we got to the dormitory she began to scream. She tore a scarf from her neck, red marks ringed her throat. I rushed to her, thinking she was having some sort of seizure, but her smile made me freeze. The girl was almost laughing as she screamed. Then she put something into her mouth.
“When Mrs. Abbot and some of the other girls rushed in, white spittle foamed from between Madge’s lips. Her smile had turned to sheer terror as she pointed at me, clutching her throat.
“The watch was called. Even the book she was to show me condemned me; it was a book on witchcraft. She insisted I gave it to her. Mr. Harlow somehow talked them out of taking me away. But I could no longer remain at Ardsmoore.”
“But you would never—”
“No, I would never. But Madge Barrow was my devil, and just like your tower of cards, my world collapsed. So, Mr. Harlow sent me here to Ballencrieff.”
Confession must be good for the soul. Hers felt lighter, as if she had shed a heavy cloak.
He reached for her hands touching them with a kind of reverence. Then he looked up into her eyes. “I am sorry. But I am certainly the luckier for your being placed here. With me.”
She squeezed his hands. “Your devils are not within you either. You are merely a sensitive soul. An artist. Your creative passion has been squelched. Your freedom taken from you. You have been drugged and misused. These devils are only your poor mind trying to make sense of this terrible abuse.”
She brushed her fingers down his long ones and then set the crayon in his hand. She opened his book to a blank page.
He pushed back from the table, his arms outstretched, his head ducked between them. Slowly his fingers slipped off the table’s edge until his body fell onto his thighs.
Still too soon. Too much for him. She drew the pad away, but his arm snaked up, his fingers biting into her wrist. He sat up, his face like a death mask.
They sat in silence connected not just by flesh but by something more, as if the very air between them pulsed with a tangible web tying them to each other. Finally he released her arm and gripped the crayon in his fist like a child. He hunched over the paper, his body heaving as if retching. She ached to comfort him but knew she should leave him be.
Heavy dark lines filled the page as if his hand was guided by some unseen force. He pushed the paper toward her and turned away as if he could not bear to look.
Angling the book to face her, a huge moon-like face crowded the entire page. Wedged into the corners were devils and serpents whose black tongues licked at the white, reaching for the deep empty pits which must be the eyes.
“It is a face,” she suggested.
He nodded. But then shook his head.
“James, can you tell me more?”
He fumbled for a crayon—red—and, without even looking, drew a ragged line down the middle of the face. The crayon snapped. He looked up, pain and guilt filling his eyes.
In that one stroke, the face had become a pregnant belly. The murdered girl’s white, bloated belly.
No, not murdered. He had been trying to save this child and her babe.
Just as he would never harm the cat, Penny, he had never meant to harm this girl.
If only she could tell him, give him back this memory. But she could not. He would have to find his salvation through his art.
Mere praise would be paltry in the face of his bravery. No words could suffice. She rose and walked to him. Taking his head between her hands, she touched his temples. Her fingers threaded into his hair. And then she pressed his forehead to her breast.
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next few days, layers of grime sloughed off with each new dream-drawing. Maybe one day he would understand them. But for now the drawing was enough.
The pages were tucked safely beneath the loose floorboard in the niche where Austin stashed his laudanum. Now the space was empty save for the drawings. Normally this fact would have had him twitching, but perhaps these drawings were another way to bring peace—a different kind of peace. Maybe one that might be lasting.
Now, back in the North Tower, Dev adjusted his stance and shut his mouth, suddenly aware he stood poised like an eager puppy. Hell, if he had a tail, it would be wagging furiously.
Today he and Anne would be entirely alone. Ivo had just left for the barn. The new piglets would occupy him for hours.
Anne’s portrait was finished. It was his secret. Less than two weeks to complete, and his best yet. He was sure of it. Anne Winton glowed within the canvas, innocence mixed with hidden sensuality. A myriad of colors against pure white. This second painting would be quite different. Again, his secret. But he needed to do some research before beginning.
She arrived breathless, with apologies on her lips.
He wanted to stop them with his own, but his chain would not reach that far. God, he hated the sound of that clank against the floor, the constant chafe around his ankle as he strained against the leather cuff. He pushed the anger down. He had no time for it. Not today.
“I have been thinking. I do not believe Cristabelle would treat Prince Gallant so shabbily.” He spoke of her story rather than tell her how he had longed for her. “Gallant will be her lover, yes? Even though she has been walking in the human world she would not be tainted by the trolls. She does not have guile in her character.”
She held her hands together in front of her, very like his old nanny, Mrs. Baxley. “I passed Ivo on my way here. He seemed very excited and could not spare me a moment.” She raised her eyebrows. “Is this wise?”
“You are the owl. You must tell me.” She could turn and leave. He would not stop her. Or blame her.
Her answer, the soft click of the door closing. She turned to face him.
Releasing his pent breath, he met her as far as his chain would go. Her mussed hair tickled his lips. To remedy the situation, he reached up and pulled out the pins. It had become a bit of a ritual. One by one they fell to the floor like petals from a daisy—she loves me, she loves me not…
She tried to catch them, but he was too quick. They would find them all. Later. He was getting fairly adept at getting the lush mass back up into some semblance of prim.
Like heavy silken ropes, her hair parted and flowed between his fingers. He grabbed a fist full, wrapping it around his hand, and tipped her head back.
He had to be careful of this magical owl with her hidden colors, her golden touch and her wise, soulful eyes. She could snare him in a heartbeat without even batting her ridiculously long eyelashes. He had to keep his feet firmly on the ground.
“Unlock me.”
Her eyes widened along with her mouth. “Will we be safe?”
Sweet Jesu, she was worried about them being safe from the staff, not that he might do her harm.
“I believe they are all preoccupied with Mr. Beauchamp’s latest launch. Come now, I want to show you something, and I don’t want to rush.”
“Is it the portrait?”
“No, that you cannot see. This is something entirely different. A gift of sorts.”
She looked around the room and then took a small chair and wedged it under the door knob. Clever girl.
She flew back to him and arched up, so ready, bless her. “I don’t remember ever receiving a gift before. Shall I close my eyes and hold out my h
ands?”
He brushed his lips over hers and to her ear. “Unlock me. Now.”
She tried to capture his mouth.
“Ah, no, my lady, not so fast. First…” He jangled the keys at her waist. He could take them from her in a heartbeat, but he wanted her to do it. To set him free, if only for an hour or so.
She fumbled for the keys at her waist, unhooked the ring, and then dropped to his feet. He waited, eyes closed. The leather collar slid around his ankle, her fingers fluttered as she worked, and finally the snick of the lock as it opened.
Free.
Her skirts pooled around her like thick mud, her face upturned, a white lotus.
He hauled her right up against him. The music of her hit him full in the chest, and he spun her round and round. It turned into a waltz of sorts. Technically it was more of a gallop and she his rider, as he lifted her right off her feet. She melded into him as if they were one. And then he heard real music.
He stopped mid lurch. By the goddess Athena, his Owl was laughing.
Head thrown back, a waterfall of hair cascading down her back. She had a tiny gap between her two front teeth—he’d never really seen it before—and dimples.
His hands bracketed her face. “You are so beautiful, Miss Owl. But when you smile, you are the rarest of birds.”
She ducked her head, to hide her glory, but he would not allow it. He whisked her up to cradle her in his arms. She felt like air and curled into him like a wing. Could she hear the thumping of his heart? Certainly she heard his hiss when her bottom brushed his cock.
He laid her gently on the small fainting couch and sat back on his heels.
Flushed cheeks and parted vermillion lips. Deep sable eyes with a ring of black plum and emerald flecked with gold. Indigo hair spilled exactly as he had pictured it over the chintz upholstery. The palest cream where her pulse jumped in her throat. So much color.
What other treasures lay beyond this shapeless sack she wore? The color changed from a washed out grayish charcoal to the dun brown of this gown, but the shape remained the same, always too large everywhere. What would she look like in perfectly tailored silks, her hair softened, a smile on her solemn face? He realized none of that really mattered. Well, except her smile. That would become her more than any fripperies.
