Whispering Twilight

by Melissa McShane

  She stood and crossed the room, avoiding the dancers and the few people who looked inclined to accost her, and slipped away down the hall and up the stairs to her mother’s drawing room. No lights burned there, but Bess knew it well enough that she could maneuver past the sofas and tables even had she been fully blind.

  She crossed to the window and tied back the drapes, letting in the soft moonlight. There was not much of it; she had lost track of time, but the moon had been full the night of her kidnapping by Mendoza’s Bounder, so it must be past its quarter phase and waning toward new. She lifted her face toward it, closing her eyes and breathing in the lavender scent of the room. Now that she had come to a decision, she felt remarkably calm. Whatever came next, she was ready.

  Mr. Quinn, she Spoke, will you join me in the upstairs drawing room?

  The quiver of an active communication filled her, but Mr. Quinn was silent. Finally, he Spoke, Miss Hanley. You know who I am. It was not a question, and the finality of his Voice made her tremble.

  I do. I am waiting for you upstairs.

  You do not address me by my name? Is this a ruse?

  Only one man present can be Mr. Quinn. That should be enough.

  Again, there was silence. Then the connection dissolved.

  Bess waited with her hands clasped loosely behind her back. Her breathing hummed in rhythm with her pulse, steady and peaceful. She knew she had guessed right, and the knowledge relieved her mind. It must be a relief to him, as well, to put an end to his pretense.

  But suppose he still thought his identity and his past a barrier to their union? She could not fall in love with anyone else, or marry without love. The idea of joining with anyone else while Mr. Quinn was still there, always within reach of her Voice, sickened her. She finally understood why Mrs. Grantham was so adamant about unmarried men and women not sharing the intimacy of the reticulum; such a deep, passionate connection as she had with Mr. Quinn would make Bess virtually an adulteress were she to marry anyone else.

  She realized her hands were gripping each other too tightly and made herself relax. There was no point in worrying when she could do nothing about it.

  Behind her, the door creaked open, and someone entered the room. He took a few steps forward, closed the door behind him, and stood motionless as if waiting for her to make the next move. Without turning around, Bess said, “Won’t you join me, my lord?”

  Chapter 37

  In which Bess discourses on the nature of redemption and true love

  She heard him let out a long, deep breath. Then he walked forward to stand beside her. “How did you know?” Lord Ravenscroft asked.

  Bess rested one hand on the windowsill. “I remembered the evening of Mrs. Ramkin’s recital,” she said. “I called Mr. Quinn’s name, and you did not react, so I believed you could not be he. It was not until tonight that I understood what had bothered me about that interaction. Despite my apparent distress, Mr. Quinn did not respond to me, and he—you have never failed to Speak to me when I called, let alone when I am in greatest need. I realized that the only reason Mr. Quinn would not have responded under those circumstances would be if he knew I was not in danger—and he could only have known that if he were speaking to me at the time.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lord Ravenscroft bow his head. “Such a small thing to give me away,” he said.

  “There were other details. Mr. Quinn continued referring to the Inca emperor as Sapa Inca, when the other person I believed Mr. Quinn might be had told me he was the Sapa Inca, that it was a title. And tonight my brother Edmund informed me that you had been taken suddenly ill a few nights ago with convulsions whose effect passed remarkably fast. It is a not uncommon reaction to having a burst of offensive Speech blasted into your mind. I apologize again for that.”

  “It was quite uncomfortable,” Lord Ravenscroft said. “Well. Actually it was extremely painful. I choose to be grateful that you have such a weapon at your command, for your defense.” He sounded as calm as she felt. Honesty did wonders for the spirit.

  “I do not understand why you did not react when I shouted at you the evening of the recital,” Bess went on. “I considered it a clever trick. It should have worked.”

  He let out a low chuckle. “Your Speech is always preceded by a tingling sensation in my temples,” he said. “Why is that?”

  “It is something Speakers are trained to do, to alert someone that they are being addressed. Your Speech, by contrast, always seems rather abrupt.”

  “My apologies. At any rate, it was enough warning that, combined with the fact that you were standing beside me, I was able to brace myself against it.”

  “Foiled by Speaker etiquette. I will never take it for granted again.” She found herself reluctant to turn and look at him. This conversation felt so much like the Speech she was accustomed to sharing with him, his physical form was irrelevant. How odd, when his physical form had been her major preoccupation these last few weeks.

  Lord Ravenscroft shifted his weight. “So, what now?” he asked. “Though I realize you are probably burning with questions.”

  He sounded amused, and resigned, and it goaded her into turning to face him. He was looking out the window at the moon. “Of course I am!” she exclaimed. “You are not objectionable, or evil, or even dreadfully coarse, and I do not understand why you felt I would hate you if I knew who you were. I do not understand what circumstances led you to conceal your talent. And I certainly do not understand why, if we are friends, you could not trust me with all of those things after I have trusted you with my life.”

  He let out another deep breath. “I have a history of making the wrong choice,” he said, “and I feel now I should not have played this game with you, teasing you with my identity and forcing you to work at ferreting me out. I apologize for that.”

  “I—” She did not know how to respond. “You said you had good reason.”

  “Perhaps I was wrong.” He turned his head to look at her, his hazel eyes dark in the dim light, his bright copper hair silvered on top by the moonlight. “Do you know who my father is?”

  “I know he is the Earl of Waymark, and that he…does not have the best reputation.”

  He smiled, a surprisingly bitter expression. “My father is a foul-tempered, evil man prone to casual cruelty to those in his power. He never resorts to violence—that would be ungentlemanly, as if he were any kind of gentleman—but he can use words as weapons, and use his rank and power when words are not enough. I am certain he drove my mother into an early grave, between his evil nature and his excesses of behavior. I was nine when she died. My father brought his elder sister to run his household, and she was…not as evil as he, but certainly no one of a kind and loving temperament. I grew up unprotected from both of them. I may have been the only boy in England for whom Eton was a beloved refuge.”

  “It is astonishing you grew up to be as good a man as you are.”

  “Hah. I know not how good a man I am, but at least I am not as vicious as my father. But that is not the point of the story. What you perhaps do not know is that my father is a Speaker.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Then she said, “Oh. Oh, no.”

  “No one knows what talent may arise in any given individual, but I knew from my youth, deep in my heart, that I would become a Speaker, and that my father would be the first one I Spoke to. It filled me with horror, the thought of sharing that intimacy with such a beast. As the years passed, and I did not manifest, my father came to assume I would be talentless. So when I did manifest at the late age of fifteen, I had had several years of planning how I would conceal it—and conceal it I did.”

  “That is astonishing. I do not blame you one bit for not wanting to Speak to anyone. You could not do so without alerting your father, and he would not have accepted your refusal to make him one of your reticulum. But—”

  “You are about to tell me there are ways to prevent it.”

  “No. I would not insult you
so. Once he was part of your reticulum, you would not be able to remove him, and could only put up barriers against him. And that wears on one’s soul.” Bess thought of Catherine Tweedy, and her heart ached on Lord Ravenscroft’s behalf. “I was actually about to say, but you must have realized you were an Extraordinary. Extraordinary Speakers Speak to non-Speakers accidentally until they learn to control it. Why did no one realize you were doing that?”

  Lord Ravenscroft chuckled again. “I think you cannot appreciate how well I closed myself off from everyone around me. If anyone ever heard my inadvertent Speech, they must have believed it was their own thoughts. At any rate, I did not know it until you told me.”

  Bess nodded. “That explains why you concealed your talent. It does not explain why you have such a low opinion of yourself. I admit I know little of you—of you as Lord Ravenscroft, I mean—but my observation is that you are, at worst, a little frivolous.”

  That made him laugh, an infectious sound that drew an answering laugh from Bess. “You are so generous of spirit,” he finally said. “Eton may have been a refuge, but it was also full of young men who were venal, stupid, cruel, and corrupt. They were not the majority, I admit, but there were enough of them who went on to fill positions of power and influence that I became disillusioned with those of the same social rank as myself. I decided there was no point in being honorable if the world rewarded dishonorableness so thoroughly.”

  “That does not make any sense, my lord.”

  “I did say I have a history of making wrong choices. At any rate, I gave myself over to riotous living for many years and established a reputation for being…not evil, I could never bring myself to that, but frivolous, fond of playing very high, a careless flirt. And that continued until I woke one morning and realized I hated myself.”

  Impulsively, Bess took his hand, squeezing it briefly. “That is the saddest thing I have ever heard.”

  Lord Ravenscroft shrugged. “I hated who I had become, and I had no idea how to change. I set about slowly ridding myself of the friends who were my worst influences, stopped drinking to excess, and—well, the details will not matter to you. And I met Edmund Hanley, who for some reason decided I was worth befriending.”

  “My mother believes you are a terrible influence on him.”

  “I am sure she does. But he has been a leavening influence on me, and I am grateful for his friendship. At any rate, I am not the man I was three years ago, but I am still far from being the man I would like to be.”

  Bess released his hand. “But that makes no sense either,” she said. “I know who you are at heart. You are good and generous and everything a man ought to be. How perfect do you insist you become?”

  “Your opinion means a great deal to me. But it is not who I am at heart that matters, it is who I appear to be.” He shook his head. “I cannot suddenly change everything about my façade because I now have reason to conceal my identity. Even if I wished to change dramatically, I would still not be able to.”

  “Reason? My lord, you speak in riddles.”

  “My apologies. I am afraid there are things I cannot tell you.”

  Bess rounded on him, furious. “Do not dare suggest I cannot be trusted,” she said. “I know you better than any other person alive, I know your heart, and I have given you all my secrets, including one that might endanger me were it to be made known. How happy has concealing the truth made you, my lord?”

  Lord Ravenscroft blinked at her, startled. Then he smiled. “Miss Hanley, you are invariably right,” he said, “and in all honesty I find I would rather not keep secrets from you. Especially since this particular secret is due to you.”

  “More riddles. Am I to worm it out of you, then? I warn you, I am exceptionally talented at a mental attack.”

  “Pray, do not attack me. I found the first one almost unbearable.” He went from smiling to sober in a breath. “When you told me I was an Extraordinary, I gradually realized you had given me a dilemma. Extraordinary Speakers are required by law to serve four years with the War Office, and while no one but you knew of my existence, I could not help but feel I was defrauding my country in not serving. But I cannot—you understand this, yes?—I cannot reveal myself while my father lives. I am of age, and legally I am not required to add him to my reticulum, but I feel as deeply as I did the knowledge I would manifest as a Speaker that he would find a way to force himself on me. So, as I said, a dilemma.”

  “I am certain you are about to tell me you found a solution.”

  “A solution found me in the form of Mrs. Sophia Rutledge. When she was searching for you the first time, the Seers had no object that would permit her to compel Visions of you, so she resorted to Dream. And for some reason, all her Dreams pointed her to me. When she appeared on my doorstep, I was so startled I confided the truth of my talent to her.” He smiled. “She is dogged in her pursuit of the truth. I found myself telling her everything, including my feeling that I should serve my country in some way. She introduced me to a man whose work for the government is clandestine, but no less important for that. He enlisted me as an Extraordinary Speaker to send messages for him without making myself known. As such, it benefits him for me to be seen as a frivolous man about town, someone no one would suspect of a connection to him. So for at least the next four years, I can only continue to change slowly.”

  “I cannot decide if that is brilliant or monstrously unfair to you.”

  “It is both.” Once again the smile dropped away from his face. “Had I known then what I know now, I might have rejected his offer.”

  “Why is that?” Bess asked.

  Lord Ravenscroft lowered his head again and studied his fingers, cradled loosely before him. “Because,” he said, “at the time I had not yet given my heart into your keeping.”

  It felt as if he had knocked all the breath out of her. Everything she might have said seemed hopelessly inadequate.

  “Your brother warned me away from you,” Lord Ravenscroft went on. “Edmund Hanley is the closest friend I have, the man who knows me best, and even he does not believe I am worthy of a woman such as you are. I know your parents feel the same. And when I am honest with myself, I admit Lord Ravenscroft is no one a gently-born woman ought to tie herself to, however much Mr. Quinn wishes otherwise.”

  He turned back to face her. “But I love you,” he said. “I long to hear your Voice because you are dearer to me than any treasure, and when I dream of my future, you are there with me. And I hope—” He touched her cheek with a gentle hand. “I hope you feel the same, despite everything I have done that should have convinced you—”

  “Stop,” Bess said. She put her hand over his where it rested on her face. “Stop speaking of yourself as if you were some monster, because I will not hear anyone speak of the man I love in such terms. You are good, and kind, and there is no one I would rather be with than you, even when you were nothing but a Voice in my head.”

  He smiled. “Then…will you wait for me? I know it is a hard thing I ask, because it will be a long time even with Speaking to keep us close, and we will not be able to be together in public. I almost feel I should not ask it of you, but…will you wait?”

  Bess lowered her hand. “No,” she said. “I will not.”

  Even in the moonlight, she could see him pale, and his jaw slackened as if she had struck him. “But—”

  “I am not a patient woman, and what you propose is abhorrent to me,” she went on. “To be so intimate in Speech and be unable to publicly acknowledge our love…no.” She took a deep breath. “I will simply have to reform you.”

  “You…what?” He looked even more stunned than before.

  “It is common knowledge that women often fall in love with bad men, knowing they can make them good. In fact, popular literature is full of examples of such reformations.” Bess took his hand and clasped it in hers. “My work will be considerably simpler than theirs, given that you do not actually need any reforming—though now I come to consider it, it
might be difficult not to give the game away. We will need a plan. You should write a list of Lord Ravenscroft’s worst failings, and I will devise a plan to eliminate each one. Perhaps we should start with gambling, unless—yes?”

  “Miss Hanley,” Lord Ravenscroft said. He appeared to be in the grip of some strong emotion. “Miss Hanley, are you quite serious?”

  “Of course I am! Now, it occurs to me…Edmund says you are abominably lucky at cards; is this true?”

  He nodded. “Miss Hanley—”

  “Almost as if you can read the minds of your opponents?”

  “Miss—did you say read minds?”

  Bess nodded. “I believe you have been doing so for many years without realizing. Possibly you should give up cards on the grounds that you have an unfair advantage. Though I am not fond of cards myself, and I believe those who play high and lose deserve to be taught a lesson about the futility of gambling, so perhaps you should go on playing so as to teach them that lesson.”

  Lord Ravenscroft burst out laughing. “Bess, my sweet, you are incorrigible,” he said, drawing her into his arms. “You will be my salvation.”

  “It is the least I can do, because you saved my life as well.” She tilted her head to look up at him; she had never realized how tall he was before now. “I would have died in that treasure room had you not been there.”

  “I felt so helpless. I wished nothing more than to be there with you, to hold you as I am doing now.”

  “Your Voice was enough. Do you know, I do not even know your given name?”

  “It is Philip.”

  “Philip. That is an excellent name.”

  “I have never liked it so much as when I hear it from your lips,” he said, and bent his head to kiss her.

  It was nothing like the terrible embrace she had had from Mr. Pakenham; his kiss was sweet and tender and filled her with a longing for more. She put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer, welcoming his hands on the small of her back, caressing her. It was amazing how much different that touch was when it came from someone she loved with all her heart.