He felt the gentle press of her hand on his arm. “I promise to be very careful,” she said. “And you shall be with me.”
He did not like this, any of it. Supernatural issues aside, the Mr. Dashwood who moved freely in the world—whichever Dashwood he might be—was an unpredictable rogue. Darcy would not put it past him to become violent if sufficiently provoked, and should that happen, he wanted Elizabeth nowhere near. Indeed, he would rather himself not be anywhere near. But somehow it had fallen upon them to make one final attempt to reclaim his soul—either from the mirror or from perdition itself.
He took his wife’s hand and went to sit near the professor again. “All right,” he conceded. “How do we do this?”
Randolph tapped the page he’d been studying. “I have just thought of a strategy.”
Twenty-eight
“I came determined to know the truth; though irresolute what to do when it was known.”
—Colonel Brandon to Elinor,
Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 31
“But my business with Mr. Dashwood is most urgent,” Elizabeth insisted to Harry’s housekeeper. “I would never call upon him at this hour were it not.” She hoped she sounded convincing. Her errand was indeed urgent, though did Sir Francis know its nature he might hold a different opinion. Releasing Harry from the Mirror of Narcissus and becoming reincarcerated himself probably did not top his priorities this morning. “Tell him Mrs. Darcy calls.”
“Oh, I know who you are, ma’am. The master is not at home.”
As Elizabeth pulled her wrap tight against the light rain, her hand brushed Professor Randolph’s amulet, which she wore on a chain round her neck. She resisted the urge to steal a glance at her carriage, where the archaeologist and Darcy concealed themselves. Seeking admission alone had been her suggestion, one Darcy had resisted until the moment the coach stopped in Pall Mall. He had not wanted her to enter Mr. Dashwood’s townhouse without him—and she had not even told him about Sir Francis’s indecent advances yesterday. But relations between Darcy and Sir Francis had become so strained that she feared Darcy might no longer gain entrée any time of day, and she hoped that Sir Francis might be sufficiently intrigued by her calling unaccompanied so early in the morning that he would receive her. Unfortunately, he had not yet been given that choice—first she had to pass Cerberus.
“May I please at least step in from the rain while you ask whether he will receive me?” While the housekeeper was thus occupied, Elizabeth would let in the gentlemen, who would make their way to the room with the mirror and wait for her to lead Sir Francis there. That was the second part of the scheme Darcy disliked. Actually, he disliked all parts of it, particularly those that involved her.
To be honest, she was not bubbling with enthusiasm over the plan herself. Nervous about today’s events, she’d gone to bed nauseated, woken up nauseated, and probably would remain so until the situation was resolved. She hardly looked forward to being once more in proximity to Sir Francis, the source of her indisposition.
“I’m telling you truly, ma’am, the master is not at home. He’s not in his chamber, nor anywhere in the house—”
A woman’s scream resonated somewhere deep in the house.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am!”
The housekeeper hurried off, swinging the door behind her. Before it shut, Elizabeth caught it and stepped inside. The hall was empty, and she could hear a commotion belowstairs. She went back to the door and beckoned Darcy and Professor Randolph to come quickly.
“The housekeeper claims Mr. Dashwood is not at home,” she said when they joined her. “The servants are all below—someone just screamed.”
“The scream came from downstairs?” Darcy asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Go up to the chamber with the mirror, as we planned. You will never have a better opportunity to reach it unseen. I will determine whether the scream warrants our concern.”
Darcy shook his head emphatically. “You stay here with Professor Randolph while I investigate the scream.”
“And how will you explain your presence in the house?”
“That is immaterial.”
“Mr. Darcy, I must concur with your wife,” the professor said. “If you reveal yourself now, our whole scheme falls to pieces. We cannot risk failure over a scullery maid spying a rat.”
Darcy released an exasperated breath and cast his gaze about the hall. It came to rest on the dining room door, which stood open. “We will wait for you in there,” he said. “If someone is screaming, I do not want to be three stories away from you. Tell us what you learn, and we will proceed from there.”
“But how will I report back to you without the servants noticing?”
Her husband looked at her confidently. “If I know you, Mrs. Darcy, you will find a way.”
It was not difficult to determine how to reach the lower level; she simply followed the noise. Nor was it hard to overhear the cause of the excitement and return to the dining room undetected by the preoccupied staff.
“We no longer have a need for subterfuge,” she announced to Darcy and the professor. “Sir Francis is dead.”
“I just knew those ices would be the end of him.” The cook shook her head sadly. “Only, I thought he’d eat himself to the hereafter. I never expected this.”
“I doubt anyone did.” Elizabeth tried to sound sympathetic, but her mind was only half engaged in the conversation. The other half wondered what they were going to do about Harry now that Sir Francis had died. A glance at Darcy and Professor Randolph revealed that they didn’t know, either.
“The master was in that larder every night, don’t you know, dipping into the ices. Usually after all of us had gone to bed. Lemon was his favorite. I think his lady friend preferred strawberry. Liked to sneak down there himself, instead of waking a servant—made it seem like more of a guilty pleasure, I think. I’d get up in the morning and find the empty pans.” She dabbed her eyes with her apron. “This morning, I found him.”
The cook had discovered Sir Francis in the subcellar larder, his body as cold as the ices of which he was so fond. It was her scream that Elizabeth had heard and that had summoned the whole staff. The servants were in such a state of shock over their employer’s demise that when Elizabeth had returned to the scene with Darcy and the professor in tow, no one had looked askance at their sudden appearance. In fact, many of them recognized Darcy from previous visits and gratefully looked to him, a gentleman, as some sort of authority figure who could provide direction.
“How did you come upon him?” Darcy asked.
“After I started breakfast, I went down there to get ice cream for the master’s strawberries—”
“Ice cream at breakfast?” Elizabeth could not help but interrupt.
“He used to simply have ordinary cream, but since he built that larder, now he wants ice cream. So I give him ice cream.” She shrugged. “That was nothing. Gentlemen have all sorts of peculiar tastes—if you’ll pardon my saying so, sir—but the master had more than anyone else I’ve ever worked for.”
“Continue,” Darcy said. “You went down to the larder?”
“Yes. When I opened the door, there he was on the floor. All huddled up, like he’d been trying to keep warm.”
“Was the door locked?”
“Bolted, sir.”
“And that is normal?”
“Well, of course, sir. The door must stay shut to keep the cold in.”
“Would Mr. Dashwood have closed the door behind him when he entered?”
“Oh, I doubt it, sir. Though he was well into his cups last night, and you never know what a man what’s been drinking might do.”
Elizabeth recalled Sir Francis’s, state when she’d seen him the previous afternoon. He’d still seemed in possession of his faculties, but if he’d continued to consume brimstone at the rate she’d observed, he would have been pickled by midnight.
“The bolt can be operated only from the outside?”
“Ye
s, sir.”
“Might someone have seen the open door and closed it, not realizing Mr. Dashwood was inside?”
“No one else was about. I’m always the last of the kitchen staff to retire. Last night I left a fresh pan of lemon ice in the larder before I went to bed. This morning, I was the first person with any cause to go down there. The lemon ice was still there—along with the master.”
Darcy raised his gaze to Elizabeth’s, and she saw that they had both reached the same conclusion. Someone had murdered Sir Francis.
Further conversations with the staff confirmed as highly unlikely the chances that their master’s death was accidental. Sometime between midnight and five o’clock, when the cook had retired and risen, an intoxicated Sir Francis had descended to the larder to indulge his sweet tooth. Someone had either followed him or happened upon him, bolted the door, and left him to die of cold. His mind muddled by drink, he quite possibly had not even heard his captor or realized his peril until it was too late. The room was so well insulated and so deep in the house that with the door sealed, no one would have been wakened by a shout.
When Darcy dismissed the last servant, who joined her fellow domestics in hovering outside the drawing room waiting for instruction, he shut the door. Elizabeth was glad to finally have a chance to discuss the situation privately.
“Have you learned enough to identify a suspect?” she asked.
“All London.”
“Splendid. I was afraid we would be unable to narrow the field.”
“Apparently, Sir Francis had instructed the staff to leave a back entrance unlocked at night so that his paramour might come and go as she pleased in anonymity. Though no one can say with certainty whether she visited the house last night, neither can anyone say she did not. That unlocked door, meanwhile, offers easy ingress to anyone who might harbor less than amiable feelings toward the house’s owner. The way Sir Francis had been conducting himself, that list includes everyone from jealous husbands to government officials.”
“There is plenty of motive within the house, as well,” Elizabeth said. “From what I was able to learn, it sounds as if he seduced half the female staff.”
Professor Randolph entered. He had gone downstairs to have a look at the corpse.
“The body is as they describe,” Randolph said. “Very cold, very stiff, and from the smell of liquor, very well preserved. His hands are quite bruised—I expect from beating against the door, trying to escape.”
“We should summon the authorities,” Darcy said.
“Not yet,” countered Professor Randolph. “Once they arrive, we’ll lose all opportunity to help Mr. Dashwood.”
“I think he is beyond help.”
“I meant the one in the mirror.”
“So did I,” Darcy said. “Assuming Harry’s soul is indeed trapped in the glass—an assumption about which you know I still harbor doubt—with Sir Francis dead, we have no spirit to exchange for Harry’s. His has fled this earth, we certainly are not going to offer one of ours, and allowing anyone else to fall victim to the mirror is unconscionable.”
Darcy had voiced the conundrum that had weighed on Elizabeth’s mind since the moment Mr. Dashwood’s lifeless body had been discovered. Without Sir Francis, what were they to do? The murder had left them with a horrible dilemma: They could not sacrifice an innocent party to release Harry, but neither could they abandon him to an eternity of imprisonment within the glass. The whole situation had her stomach in knots.
“Professor, is there not some way we can yet rescue Mr. Dashwood?” she asked.
“I have been pondering that question. Sir Francis’s death profoundly complicates matters. I must say, his murder occurred most inconveniently.”
“Murder usually does,” Darcy said. “At least to its victims.”
“We are fortunate, however, in the manner of Mr. Dashwood’s death, as I believe the circumstances have left his body still viable. Between the cold and the liquor, it has not yet started to deteriorate. If we can release Harry’s essence very soon, his body might yet sustain life.”
The weight on Elizabeth’s chest eased. Her heart had grown heavier as the morning passed, but now she rejoiced that there was any hope at all for Harry.
“Very well,” Darcy said. “His spirit has a place to go. But how do we transfer it there?”
“That is the more difficult part. However, one account of the mirror suggests that it may be possible for a spirit to leave the glass and roam incorporeally for limited periods. It was a passing mention—an unsupported speculation, really. But the notion caught my attention, as it could explain how Sir Francis gathered his former associates to conduct the ceremony that imprisoned Harry.”
“It could also explain all those occasions when people observed him in places he later claimed he had not been,” Elizabeth said.
Randolph regarded her keenly. “What occasions?”
“There were so many of them.” She looked to Darcy for help. “He was seen in Bond Street, and outside Boodle’s . . .”
“At the Pigeon Hole and other gaming establishments . . .”
“All over town the week he was in Devonshire.”
“Yes, I saw him myself that week in his window.”
“Indeed?” Randolph asked. “Did these incidents occur before or after the night of the transference ritual?”
“Before,” Elizabeth said. “We all went to Norland for Mr. Dashwood’s birthday, and the on-dits started shortly after we returned.”
“Is this when he first brought the mirror to London?”
“No,” said Darcy. “He brought it with him on a previous trip.”
“He did, however, return at that time with this portrait of Sir Francis.” Elizabeth pointed to the painting that still hung above the fireplace.
Professor Randolph pondered that intelligence, and the portrait. “This image of Sir Francis looks remarkably like the young Mr. Dashwood I met in March. The people who saw Mr. Dashwood about town, after this portrait arrived—they were quite sure it was Harry?”
“They were all positive,” Elizabeth said. “Though he ignored those who knew him best, and many thought they saw him in costume, as his clothes were quite out-of-date.”
Randolph nodded at the portrait. “That far out-of-date?”
Elizabeth started at the sudden realization. Darcy, deep in contemplation, stared at the portrait.
“Think back, Mr. Darcy. Are you certain you saw Harry Dashwood in the window?” Randolph asked. “Or could it have been Sir Francis?”
“Until this moment, I would have sworn it was Harry Dashwood,” Darcy said. “But now—” His eyes met Elizabeth’s. “Perhaps it was Sir Francis.”
She held his gaze a long moment, knowing what it had cost him to concede that.
“It sounds as if Sir Francis’s spirit was indeed able to leave the mirror before the exchange,” Randolph said. “So there is hope that Harry’s might as well, if we can determine how Sir Francis managed to liberate himself. I suspect his freedom had something to do with this portrait. Has it hung here since its arrival?”
Elizabeth recalled one of Harry’s memories. “No. In the first memory I experienced of Sir Francis speaking to Harry, the portrait hangs behind me—him. I could see it in the glass.”
“Aha.” Professor Randolph leaned back to better study the portrait. “Harry Dashwood unknowingly hung this portrait where Sir Francis could see himself as he was in life—no doubt triggering the same sense of loss and yearning that caused him to become entrapped in the mirror in the first place. Just as his spirit once flew toward his reflection, it now went outward, toward the portrait. But without a body, it could not remain outside the glass for long. Or perhaps Sir Francis simply wasn’t satisfied with a ghostly existence and wanted more. Either way, he decided to make his freedom permanent.”
“At terrible cost to his own kin,” Elizabeth declared.
“Just one in a litany of moral transgressions, from what I understand,” the prof
essor said. “Now, if only we had a portrait of Harry Dashwood, we might use it to free him.”
“What about the birthday portrait?” Elizabeth said.
“It is at Norland, which means it now belongs to Lord Lovejoy.” Darcy reminded her. “And we have not time to send for it anyway.”
“Norland was filled with portraits of Harry,” Elizabeth recalled. “Perhaps his mother has one in Harley Street. It would not be as recent—”
“The particular image should not matter,” said Randolph. “It is the same soul.”
A secretary stood in the corner of the drawing room. Elizabeth went to it and found a pen, ink, and paper. She got no farther than the salutation before she realized she had no idea what to say. Dear Mrs. Dashwood—Though you never liked my sister and you have not spoken to your son in weeks, I need to borrow a portrait of him to release his soul from a cursed mirror and restore it to the recently vacated body his lecherous ancestor stole from him. Yours most sincerely—
“Perhaps I would do better to call in person,” she said.
“Go immediately,” Randolph urged. “While you are gone, we will have Mr. Dashwood’s body moved to the room with the mirror.”
“You truly believe this can work?” Darcy’s skepticism remained obvious.
“We must hope so. If it does not, I have one last idea, but it is far more dangerous.”
“And what is that?”
“You might call it a false exchange. Essentially, we deceive the mirror. One of us poses as a new victim and gazes into the glass to release Harry. At the very moment of transference, just as Harry emerges but before the new soul is drawn in, we break contact with the mirror. The importance of precise timing cannot be overstated—a second too soon or too late, and Harry could be lost, or a new victim claimed.”
Elizabeth shuddered. “I’ll go retrieve that portrait.”
Twenty-nine
“I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling.”
Suspense and Sensibility: Or, First Impressions Revisited Page 23
