Lady Anne and the Menacing Mystic

by Victoria Hamilton

  Skillfully, with a natural polish and finesse of which Anne wished herself possessed, Osei brought the conversation around to the subject they agreed would be interesting to pursue. When Mr. Doyne had asked him a little about his life in Africa before his enslavement, he spoke briefly, then said, “I wish I could disabuse the English of the notion that all of the African continent is plagued by witch doctors and magic men. There is, unfortunately, great fear of me for that reason; people see me and once they learn of my origin, immediately think of shamans, and even cannibals.”

  “Outrageous!” Mr. Doyne said with horror. “I apologize for my fellow Englishmen.”

  Anne smothered a smile at Osei’s skillful manipulation. He had both interested and engaged the gentleman.

  “No apology necessary, sir; I could amaze you with the tales my people heard of the European travelers they encountered. The Spanish were considered especially barbaric. But I was therefore surprised, when I got to know your country better, that the same people who say my people are superstitious go to mystics and seers here in England. In fact, I have heard there is one in Bath that I should visit, a woman by the name of Mother Macree. I’ll admit, I am tempted simply out of interest. Have you heard of her?”

  “Indeed I have, Mr. Boatin,” Mr. Doyne said eagerly, his plain face alight, his jaundice-yellowed eyes wide. “My dear fellow, please do not dismiss what you have not experienced! She is most interesting, a real character, and I believe she does have some power of sight through the veil between this world and the next. In fact, I have her to thank for this lovely lady entering my life!” he said, patting the gloved hand of Mrs. Noakes, resting on his satin-clad arm.

  “Is that so? How is that possible?”

  “I visited the mystic,” Mr. Doyne said, his tone now serious and sober. “I had heard marvelous things about her accuracy from many sources but I was, I’ll admit, skeptical. Her reading was uncanny! She told me things she could not have known without being a visionary. I went back again, and then, on my third visit, she told me I would meet a woman with blue eyes and reddish hair, a lady who would hale from Sussex and would be a child of October—all the best spiritualists make a study of the stars and know the ancient secrets of the zodiac—and then I was introduced to Mrs. Noakes! It was simply astounding how much we have in common,” he cried, his volume rising in conjunction with his enthusiasm. “I discovered we share a passion for King Charles spaniels, and the reintroduction of the white stork to England; the species died out after the civil war, you know . . . great shame. Anyway, it is uncanny how perfectly suited we are to one another.” He cast her an affectionate look and squeezed her arm to his side. She returned the smile with a coquettish simper.

  It was as if Mrs. Noakes had been made to order for him, Anne thought, listening in. How many ladies did she know who adored dogs and were avid bird fanciers concerned with reintroducing the white stork to England? Mrs. Noakes would be the first, if it was in any way true, which she doubted.

  “Who introduced you, sir, if I may be so bold to ask?” Osei said.

  “Oh, a young fellow . . . very congenial sort. Mr. Thomas Graeme.”

  Of course; it would be Mr. Graeme, but it was not news to her, as Anne had already surmised it. She asked, “Pardon me, Mr. Doyne; how well do you know Mr. Graeme?”

  “Met him as one does in the Pump Room, you know, a casual acquaintance.”

  “I have heard various tales of his past,” she said. “And a friend said he had met him at some club,” she said, regarding the gentleman closely. But he did not flinch at the word club, as Alethea and Lord Westmacott had. Perhaps the salacious gossip had not reached the prosaic and provincial Mr. Doyne. He was not a longtime denizen of Bath, as her two friends were.

  “Club? Can’t say. Don’t belong to any. I came here for my health, you know, not to carouse.”

  “And how is your health, sir?”

  “Middling.”

  Her attention was claimed by friends who desired to introduce her to another lady. That was merely a pretext to gossip, she feared, as one pulled her aside, and, with an avid look, said, “You were at the Birkenheads’ musical evening the night Mr. Lonsdale died, were you not?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  The two ladies exchanged glances and one said, “I heard he killed himself over a love affair gone wrong.”

  “Is that so?” Anne replied, stiffening. “Where did you hear it from?”

  The lady recoiled from Anne’s brusque tone. “One does hear things, you know, here, there—”

  “But where did you hear this particular piece of gossip?” she said, her annoyance quickening and her cheeks flushing hot. She did not need a mirror to know they would now be a most unbecoming shade of livid red. She slapped her fan against her skirt. “You must remember.”

  “I know the Birkenheads are your particular friends and I fear that I have offended,” the acquaintance said, curtseying and then turning away to her companion.

  Curses on her intemperance. Anne shook her head. She must take lessons from Mr. Boatin on retaining a sense of decorum even when outraged.

  A chime indicated the concert hall was ready, and as the doors were opened the sounds of the orchestra tuning up drifted to them. The two women swept away, heads together, no doubt gossiping now about Lady Anne Addison’s highly inappropriate reaction. Susanna and an Assembly Rooms footman helped Quin to his chair, as Osei took Anne and Lolly on his arms and—despite his slight limp—guided them skillfully through the crowd to sit with their friends.

  Anne adjusted her skirt while Osei politely chatted with Lolly. The conductor bowed, then turned and the music flowed. In moments the soothing effects of it lifted Anne, improving her temper, the program inspired, as usual. Mr. Venanzio Rauzzini, the famous castrato who had retired as a soloist singer to become the music master of the Upper Assembly Rooms, led the orchestra in a series of Telemann overtures. The lovely acoustics of the tearoom ensured that the music soared into the heights, reaching even to the back of the seventy-foot room effortlessly.

  Anne glanced to her left; Osei was enjoying it greatly. She would be sure to let Darkefell know that if he didn’t wish to go to a concert—he was no great lover of music, he had confessed, while she deeply appreciated great musical performances—that his secretary would be more than an adequate replacement. Lolly, on the other hand, was looking about at the crowd with interest and paying little heed, it appeared, to the music surrounding them. She was, as always, interested in everything, but there was not the air of gaiety in her mien that Anne was accustomed to.

  Finally, there was a break. “Let us amble, Lolly, while Mr. Boatin accompanies Quin and Susanna to the card room for tea.” They strolled to the fireside in the Octagon Room, where there were fewer people, though the babble of chatter humming was still ever-present, cocooning them in muffled conversation. Anne leaned into her cousin. “Did you discover anything about poor Lydia?”

  “What I have discovered is most distressing,” she said, grabbing Anne’s hand. “Lydia’s maid is beside herself, and finally confided in me. I don’t know what to do.”

  “What is it?” Anne asked. “Tell me now, or I’ll fear the worst.”

  Lolly stared up at her, tears welling in her bloodshot eyes. “You won’t let darling Lydia know what I’ve told you and how I found out? The maid is desperately afraid, both for herself and her mistress. Please, Anne . . .”

  She watched her darling cousin’s pouchy lined face, drawn down with an unusually sober expression of worry. One tear swam over the red rim of her eye and took a wayward zigzag path down her soft, wrinkled cheek. “I promise,” Anne said. “But I may have to do something about it, you know. If I must speak to her, I will conceal the source of my knowledge. She won’t question it; she knows I am relentless where my curiosity is aroused.”

  The tears became a flood, dripping down her cheeks and spraying as she vigorously nodded and sniffed. Anne offered her a handkerchief, and she dabbed at her eyes. “Y
ou’re so clever, I’m sure you can figure this puzzle out. I want the darling girl to be relieved of her worry.”

  “Then tell me, so I can help, what is going on,” Anne cried softly, becoming impatient. “Did it start the day we went to the mystic?”

  “Oh, no, Anne, it was before that,” Lolly said, hastily dabbing at her tearstained cheeks with a handkerchief. “It was the reason she wished to go to the mystic in the first place.” She blew her nose, and a couple glanced over at her in horror. “Poor dear Lydia is deathly afraid that her baby and her family are under a curse.”

  “A curse?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of all the featherbrained—”

  “Anne, do not be cruel!” Lolly said, glaring up at her with a rare stern tone. She took Anne’s gloved hands in her own. “Listen to me!”

  “Yes, Lolly,” Anne said.

  “Not long ago, Lydia found a note on her dressing table addressed to her. She opened it. It contained a message; she had been enchanted by the evil eye. Her baby, it said, was doomed to be born a monster.”

  “How hideous!” Fury rose in Anne’s heart and a sick taste flooded her mouth. Those around them turned and gazed at her with interest. She lowered her voice and hissed, “To trick a gullible girl like Lydia, to prey upon her fears—”

  “Shush, Anne,” Lolly said, squeezing her hands. “Poor child. She is desperately seeking a hunchback—”

  “A hunchback? Whatever does that mean? She spoke of it to me several days ago.”

  “A hunchback can ward off the evil eye.”

  Anne sighed and opened her mouth, but then closed it. She had nothing to say. Railing against Lydia’s folly would not help. She needed to focus on solutions.

  Lolly released her cousin’s hands and fidgeted with her fan, flicking it open. She glanced around as those closest returned to their own gossipy chatter, drifting away. Bending closer to Anne again, Lolly said, “Listen: her maid tells me that the note said the only way to counter it was to not speak of it to anyone, but to find a magic practitioner, someone who understood how that kind of evil spell worked. The maid knows because she was curious; Lydia threw the note in the cold hearth, but the girl took it and read it before destroying it. Lydia’s only hope, the note said, was a talisman to ward off the evil eye and a potion of protection for the babe.”

  Fear clutched her stomach. Potion? Her breath caught as she considered that if Dr. Fothergill was right, Lonsdale had died as the result of drinking a potion, of sorts. “That is why Lydia was so intent on going to see the mystic.”

  “Yes. I don’t understand why that woman wanted to see Lydia in private, though. How did she know the child is suffering such an enchantment? She truly must be a mystic.”

  Anne regarded her with an incredulous gaze. “Lolly, listen to yourself! Think! From whence did the curse note come if not the mystic herself?”

  “Oh. Oh!” Lolly stared, her eyes bulging. “It’s like those sellers of quack medicines who diagnose an illness and sell you the exact cure. You never had the illness, but feel the good effects of the cure completely.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Because you believe,” Lolly mused, frowning. “I had not thought of it that way around. It never occurred to me that the original note was from the mystic, or someone in her employ. I trusted her! I was kind to Mother Macree,” she exclaimed. “Giving her an ointment for her poor cramped hands, even. How could she trick poor Lydia in such a cruel manner?”

  The bell was rung for the second half of the concert, and arm in arm they strolled back. “It wasn’t just her, Lolly. She had the aid of a confederate who wrote and carried that execrable note. I have a feeling I know exactly who is responsible. If I am correct I can uncurse Lydia swiftly.”

  “But can you convince her it is all a sham?”

  That gave Anne pause. Lydia had a stubborn streak that usually became evident when it was least convenient. How did one eradicate the effects of irrational dread on one who was deeply superstitious?

  The second half of the program was a lilting set of Vivaldi concerti con molti strumenti, the sound of the strings singing and dipping among them: mandolins, violins and cellos, and even the theorbo, a lute with bass strings. Then the sweet woodwinds—flutes, oboes, the resonant bassoon, and the chalumeau, with its lovely folk music lilt—and the happy harpsichord to round it out.

  But all Anne could think of was her plan; the so-called Mystic of Bath and one Mr. Thomas Graeme had overreached themselves when they frightened Lydia. She was determined. She would stop them from persecuting the gullible, but there was more. She must uncover the matchmaking enterprise, and how they benefited from the matches they made. To that end she must employ her mother’s genius at recalling a piece of alarming gossip Anne vaguely remembered from one of her first days in Bath.

  Lives could hang in the balance.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Morning dawned with a cold rattle of wind at her window. After her morning tea, she set her plan into action. First, to gather every scrap of information she could. “Mother, may we talk?” Anne stood in the open door of her mother’s bedchamber, a large dim room papered in a cheerful floral William Kilburn print, as her maid, Eloise, pinned in a length of false hair and swept it up into the coiffure that was the Countess of Harecross’s unique style.

  The woman turned and regarded Anne with surprise. Unpowdered, her face was surprisingly youthful, the faint lines in her forehead and beside her blue eyes less noticeable. “Of course, Anne. I have been wanting to speak with you these last few days, but you are always rushing in and rushing out, visiting and gallivanting. What would you like?”

  Anne hesitated.

  “Come, sit,” her mother said, indicating the end of the elegant testered bed. Her maid selected more pieces of false hair, combed and pinned them, then adorned the resultant style with silk flowers, feathers and pearls. “I will start. When is the marquess arriving?”

  “Monday, Osei says.” A flush of heat crept up Anne’s body from her toes to her cheeks.

  “You look like you have a fever. You aren’t sickening, are you?” Lady Harecross met her daughter’s gaze in the mirror and stared, narrowing her eyes.

  “I’m in perfect health, Mother. Mr. Boatin has engaged a house for the marquess—”

  “Why he’s not staying with the Bestwicks is beyond me. Frivolous waste of money.”

  “—and is making sure it is fitted up as Tony . . . uh, Darkefell prefers. He is not particular about much, but he is about a few things.”

  “I wish, of course, to hold a party to celebrate your engagement. When is best?”

  “Never,” Anne said bluntly. “He’ll hate it. He’ll insult half the people there without meaning to and your friends will take against him.”

  “You make him sound an ogre, as though he is the rudest man on the face of the earth.”

  “I’m trying to keep you from false hope, Mother. He does not suffer fools gladly.”

  “Are you saying my friends are fools?”

  Anne bit her lip and stayed silent.

  She harrumphed loudly. Her maid waited a moment for her mistress to calm, then resumed her task. “I will not believe someone as well raised as he is, with such an illustrious title and so much a gentleman, would misbehave,” Lady Harecross said, sliding her gaze sideways to her daughter. “He was perfectly charming to your grandmother and me.”

  “I think we can fairly assume I know him better than you, Mother.”

  Lady Harecross caught her smile and said, “You enjoy his bad temper, don’t you?”

  Anne smiled more widely, surprised by her mother’s perceptiveness. “I suppose I do, for I never need to apologize when I lose my own temper, or say something in haste. He more than matches me for irritability, and yet he doesn’t frighten me in the least. When he is angry at me I let him rage. Once he gets over it, which he does quickly almost always, we carry on and do what I wish.”

  “I’ll never understand you, A
nne.”

  “That coming from a lady who also likes to get her own way? We are identical in that, Mother, though we diverge in our methods.”

  “You are a most contrary young lady.”

  “I have captured a marquess,” she said with a sigh. “He is securely in my leg-hold trap. Doesn’t that please you?”

  “Don’t be vulgar. Of course it pleases me, but I’d be happier if I could speak of it to my friends.”

  “Soon enough, Mother. I’ve already told you . . . once he is here and settled we will announce our engagement. He can share that horror with me, though I’ll bear the brunt of it, no doubt, from disappointed females trying to understand how I snagged a marquess with my limited charms.” She sighed heavily. “But that is talk for another day. I have something I wish to ask you. The first day Mrs. McKellar was here for a fitting, you and Clary were speaking of a Mr. Court-something-or-other, who died soon after marrying.”

  “You rarely listen to gossip. Why do you care?”

  “How much do you know about him? How did he come to meet his bride? Who is she?”

  Lady Harecross stared as her maid pinned in one last spray of silk flowers. “You never do or say anything without purpose, Anne.” She examined herself in the mirror, then nodded and flapped her hand at her maid to dismiss her. “Tell me why you want to know and I may indulge you.”

  “You know how I am; I can’t help but poke around in things. I have recently come across a couple of odd matches between ailing men of means and younger ladies who appear to have come out of nowhere. They were introduced by a young gentleman I have met. I’m curious.”