The Fire in the Glass

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “It’s a stimulant,” Lord Deveral replied, plucking another cigarette from the case. He lit it off the remains of the last. “Provokes sensations of euphoria.”

  “For how long?”

  He shrugged. “An hour or two.”

  “Does it interfere with sleep?”

  “Not if one downs a sufficient load of brandy.”

  Lily looked back at Strangford.

  “How would such a drug interact with chloroform?”

  “We would have to ask Dr. Gardner,” he replied.

  “But presumably it could compromise the effects of an anesthetic?”

  “It’s a bloody shot of lightning,” her brother interrupted flatly.

  Lily stood, moving closer to Strangford as the pieces fell into place, sparking her to urgency.

  “What if she woke up?”

  “You mean while he was administering the chloroform,” Strangford filled in.

  “He would have had to find a way to silence her before she could alert the staff. And there was the knife on the vanity.”

  “How do you know that?” Lord Deveral snapped, swinging his legs to the floor. “How do you know so much about what went on in that room?”

  Lily ignored him, pressing on, carried by the force of this revelation.

  “This one doesn’t look like the others because it didn’t go as planned. But if she hadn’t taken cocaine just a few hours before . . .”

  “What’s your interest in this, anyway?” her brother cut in, surging to his feet. “Why do you care about Annalise? Is it because of him?” He turned to Strangford. “You know she’s a bastard, don’t you? Unfortunate result of my father’s dalliance with a music hall whore? You’ve always been an odd duck, but I would have thought it beyond the pale to associate with something like that, even for you. Unless, of course, you’re engaging in a dalliance yourself. One would think the fact she’s lifted her skirts for most of Drury Lane might put you off. Picturing her spreading her legs for every heaving stagehand . . .”

  The shock of it silenced her, the sheer, vicious vulgarity of his words robbing her of the ability to reply.

  “That’s quite enough.”

  Strangford’s voice was soft and deceptively even, but Lily could hear an element of threat in it she had never sensed in him before. She was conscious of his presence beside her, the stillness that felt like the moment before a storm breaks.

  Lord Deveral threw his cigarette in the fire, then stepped closer, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You come in here like you have any right . . . You use our father to force me to go along with your little game. You think you’ve won? I won. I won fourteen years ago when Father wanted to foist you off on us like some lost puppy—the bastard he’d sired on that thick Irish slut when he should have been home with his wife.”

  The words struck like bullets, tearing her armor to shreds.

  Fourteen years ago . . . when Father wanted to foist you off on us . . .

  Could it be true?

  I wish you knew . . .

  “Mother would’ve done it,” he went on, musing, the firelight casting cruel shadows across his aristocratic visage. “She was that desperate to make him happy, as if making him happy would’ve kept him home when it was always perfectly obvious he’d keep taking his pleasure wherever he bloody wanted to. I’m the one who made her refuse,” he snarled. “I told her if he brought you home, I’d walk out the door and never speak to any of them again. Better that than stay in a home I had to share with the living, breathing embodiment of our humiliation. My family’s humiliation.”

  She felt them hit, every dagger-pointed line. They cut her with their truth, their horrible and undeniable veracity.

  “Do you know how I heard them speak of it when they thought I was too young to know better? All the gossip, the women with their pitying looks for the poor countess who couldn’t keep her lord at home. The men who’d all seen him parading his whore around town. And he dared ask us to accept you?”

  He moved closer. He was tall, like their father. He loomed over her, his long shadow blackening the silk-papered wall, the scent of tobacco and stale claret thick on his breath.

  “It will never happen.”

  It was a killing blow, his final cut, and Lily knew that she was done. She held herself together, impossibly, like a vase that had already shattered, some delicate thing suspended in the moment before it hit the floor.

  She didn’t want any of them. She never had, she told herself, grasping at the notion like a lifeline that dissolved under her desperate hands.

  The anger radiated off of him, a palpable force in the room, searching for another way to strike its target.

  She could not take another hit. Not without falling apart and exposing all her terrible vulnerability in front of this man who hated her.

  She summoned her last fleeting reserves of strength, mustered them to steady her tone.

  “Thank you, m’lord,” she said evenly. “You have been most helpful.”

  Then she turned and walked out of the room.

  FIFTEEN

  LILY'S PACE WAS CALM and even as she walked down her half-brother’s hall. Her hand remained steady as she turned the knob of the front door and revealed a street soaked with bitter sleet.

  On any other night, on any other call, she would have waited in the warmth of the drawing room while some poor footman bundled up against the foulness found her a hackney. They might have joked over another glass of brandy about how quickly the weather could turn this time of year.

  This wasn’t any other call. It was a battlefield. Lily needed to retreat before her defenses crumbled and her vulnerability spilled out across Deveral’s plush oriental carpets, where her brother would surely see her and know that he had won.

  She stepped out into the storm.

  The streets were deserted. The only carriage in sight was some nobleman’s coach-and-four which raced past her with a hiss as the wheels cut through a puddle of standing water.

  Ice drenched her, plastering her hair to her scalp. The wind gusted, whipping her damp skirts against her legs.

  She walked on in spite of it, putting a tenacious distance between herself and the pain that threatened to overtake her.

  Footsteps splashed along the pavement.

  “Lily!” Strangford called.

  She stopped.

  He stood within arm’s reach, still in his coat and shirt, his hat and overcoat deserted back at the house.

  “I’m fine,” she told him before he could ask. “None of it matters.”

  Her voice hitched on the last word.

  She realized, with horror, that she was going to break.

  She fought to hold herself together, to at least spare herself the indignity of shattering into a mess in front of him.

  “None of it matters,” she repeated, more forcefully this time as the rain pounded down against her like tiny daggers of ice.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Even through the storm, she could see that he knew perfectly well she was lying.

  “We need to get inside,” he said, the sleet flattening his hair, soaking the pale fabric of his shirt.

  The cold was bone-chilling. If they stood out in this weather much longer, it would turn dangerous.

  She considered their options, grasping at that welcome distraction from the tumult of emotion raging inside of her—feelings that were far less comfortable than the sleet.

  The road they stood on lined the park. At this time of night on any other evening, it would have been busy with carriages.

  It was deserted. She and Strangford were utterly alone. Which left what option?

  The great fine houses marched up and down the street, their windows either dark or thoroughly curtained, closed off against the black expanse of the park. The gaslights of the distant carriageway were wavering and uncertain through the curtains of the downpour.

  Deveral’s house was just down the road behind them.

  No. She would no
t go back. She would rather freeze.

  A carriage turned the corner, the rattle of wheels on the pavement cutting through the hiss of the storm. Lily turned to see a lone hansom cab hurrying down the empty thoroughfare.

  Strangford raised his hand to flag it.

  It didn’t slow.

  “He must already have a fare.” Lily stuttered over the words, embarrassed to realize her teeth were chattering.

  “It’s empty,” Strangford countered as the vehicle approached.

  The driver continued as though blind to them, hunched resolutely over the reins—at least until Strangford stepped into the road in front of him.

  The horses clattered to an abrupt halt, the driver raising his head.

  “Oy! Watch it, mate. I’m off for the night. Not taking any fares.”

  “Make an exception,” Strangford countered, still in the middle of the road. “Please. I need to see this lady home. I’ll happily double your fare. Just one more run, as far as Bloomsbury.”

  Lily could see the man readying his refusal, but Strangford’s last word gave him pause.

  The sleet continued to rattle down around them, bouncing off the pavement at her feet. Her jacket was soaked, the icy damp seeping into her shoulders and crawling in rivulets down her neck.

  They would find another way, she told herself firmly as the ice stung at her skin. She would not go back. Not if she had to walk to Bloomsbury.

  “Come along, then,” the cabbie agreed ungraciously. “I’ll take you. But only as I’m headed to Clerkenwell myself.”

  Strangford didn’t hesitate. He strode to the door and opened it for Lily.

  She climbed quickly inside. He pressed in beside her. The carriage immediately rocked into motion.

  A hansom was a tiny space when enclosed, something Lily had not really appreciated before. The front panels were perhaps six inches from her legs, the glass of the enclosing window near enough she could fog it with her breath. The sleet tapped against it as they moved, the cold still penetrating through to where they sat.

  She glanced at the empty streets outside the window and felt a flash of recognition.

  “We have to stop,” she burst out.

  “No, we don’t,” Strangford countered evenly.

  “But that was your road.”

  “I’m seeing you home.”

  “How will you get back to Bayswater if you do that? The driver said he isn’t accepting any other fares tonight. He won’t take you.”

  “I’ll find another cab.”

  It was a senseless sort of chivalry. Lily found she had little patience for it.

  “You are aware that I spent years walking far worse streets than Bloomsbury by myself.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why do you think it necessary to accompany me here, in the comfort of a carriage?”

  “I don’t want you to be alone right now.”

  It was not the answer she expected and rattled her more deeply than the uneven road.

  Deveral’s words came flooding back with all their deliberate rage, their focused intent to cause her pain. They were an earthquake shifting the ground beneath her feet, the comfortable rock of isolation she had carefully built for herself after learning, long ago, that she could never depend on anyone else.

  But if her father had wanted her . . .

  It wouldn’t matter, she reminded herself fiercely. In the end, he had not done it. She had not been brought into his home, made a part of his family. What did intention matter when measured against action?

  Except that it did matter.

  Habit told her to retort that she was fine, that she didn’t need anyone. She never had, and nothing had changed.

  She hesitated. With her long-held pretense stripped away by the cold, Lily admitted to herself that she was not fine.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  The silence of the dark, close space was broken only by the song of the sleet against the glass. Lily found herself exquisitely aware of Strangford’s presence beside her, quietly studying the world through the ice-streaked window. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to close the narrow space that separated them or move as far away as she could.

  “I should have called him out,” he said at last.

  “Pardon?”

  “Deveral. For what he said to you.”

  “Are you talking about a duel?”

  “What else?” he replied with all apparent seriousness.

  She was at a loss for a response, picturing Strangford in his sober vicar’s suit standing in some forgotten corner of the heath, plucking an awkward eighteenth century flintlock from a case and then marching his twenty paces from her arrogant half-brother. Turning at the mark, drawing, and putting a bullet into the center of Deveral’s cold black heart—which he would clasp dramatically as he tipped backward onto the lawn.

  “Pistols?” she suggested.

  “If I make the challenge, he chooses the weapon.”

  “Deveral would pick swords. He’s too much of a coward for pistols. Can you handle a sword?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On which end I’m handling,” he replied.

  Lily burst out laughing. It was wrong that she should be laughing after everything she had been through that evening—after all they had experienced over the last few days—but it felt good. It felt very good, and she knew that had been exactly the intent of it.

  She was grateful and a touch uncomfortable. This man beside her wasn’t supposed to know her that well.

  He smiled with her, then grew more serious.

  “I’m only half joking,” he admitted.

  “About fencing?”

  “About what I should have done to your brother. I should never have let him say as much as he did. I should have . . .”

  “But you didn’t,” Lily cut in quietly.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Her curiosity was genuine.

  “Because in amongst all that bile coming out of him, I knew there were pieces of truth you deserved the choice to hear.”

  Tension stretched between them, both aware of how Strangford came by that knowledge.

  Standing in that smoky drawing room, hearing all the viciousness pouring from her brother’s mouth, the man beside her had known exactly how important it was. He knew her pain and her confusion, the whole of her history. He knew it because she had given it to him when she told him to touch her. This was the consequence—a stranger who knew more about her deepest hurt, her unspoken and long-abandoned wishes, than any living soul on earth.

  “It wasn’t my place to decide where that had to stop.”

  She understood it then. This man whose gentlemanly instincts wouldn’t let him see her take a hackney on her own had swallowed his own outrage and ceded control to her.

  It was something a shade braver than challenging her brother to pistols at dawn.

  He turned from the window to face her, his face drawn and earnest.

  “I just hope that you understand . . .”

  “I do,” she cut in before he could go any further.

  There was more to say, but she let it fall into the silence. She could still feel the damp chill of her soaked jacket leaching through to her skin, her toes numb inside her boots, but something warmer had risen up inside of her. She felt dangerously close to the edge of a precipice that dropped into a place she was very afraid to go. She pulled back from it as the carriage swayed along the ice-slick streets, the deserted night flickering past the windows.

  The hansom swung around a familiar bend, and she found herself looking at the drenched facade of March Place.

  The vehicle rocked to a stop. Conscious of the wet, tired driver on the seat above her, Lily wasted no time getting out of the cab. She fumbled for her purse, but Strangford was quicker, passing what she recognized was an exorbitant amount of money up to the driver.

  The man acknowledged it with a curt tip of his hat—a fair enough gesture, given that
they had all but extorted the ride out of him. Then he snapped his reins and clattered down the empty street.

  The sleet continued to drill down, stinging against her scalp. The unheated interior of the now-departed carriage felt balmy by comparison.

  Beside her, Strangford had something of the look of a drowned cat, his dark hair plastered to his head, dripping rivulets of icy water down his face.

  “And now you are safely delivered,” he announced, nodding toward her front steps.

  “It appears I am.”

  “Then I will bid you good evening,” he replied. The tone almost made her expect him to offer her a gallant bow, like some beau dropping her at home after an night out courting.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded as he turned down the road.

  He considered. “I thought I might have better luck finding another cab on Tottenham Court Road.”

  She took in the deserted street around them, empty even for quiet March Place. It was well after one in the morning. In this storm, even Tottenham Court Road would be as barren as the heath. He could be waiting for hours before someone came by.

  The solution to that problem was obvious. She found she had less hesitation than she might have expected in accepting it.

  “Come on,” she said, mounting the steps. “You can wait inside till it stops.”

  He did not follow, lingering uncomfortably on the pavement behind her.

  “I’m not quite sure that’s . . .” he began, then trailed off, not quite knowing how to finish.

  She felt her cheeks burn, recognizing the apparent implications of her offer. She held her head high against them, refusing to give in to it. Someone had tried very hard to shame her for what she was that night, for history both her own and inherited. She was not having any more of that, at least not before dawn broke a new day.

  “I’m not asking you to go to bed with me,” she replied neatly. “I’m offering you tea.”

  “Well. When you put it like that . . .”

  She fought back the urge to smile.

  He joined her on the steps as she unlocked the door. She turned the knob, then paused, glancing back to where he stood just behind her.

  “My landlady disapproves of gentlemen. In the house.”