by Jane Ashford
Richard looked annoyed, Emily thought.
“Why don’t we all go to the park?” said her aunt. “We can take my barouche.”
With a small flurry of conversation, it was settled. Richard handed the three ladies into the carriage and climbed in after them. The driver slapped the reins, and they were off.
“A delightful day for a drive,” suggested the duchess blandly. Lady Fielding agreed, and the two older women initiated a flow of commonplaces to fill the silence. Emily risked a glance at Richard, sitting beside her on the forward seat. He looked intensely bored. Her aunt was staring at her, Emily realized. Guiltily, she straightened in her seat and smiled. Her aunt nodded very slightly and looked away.
The park was busy, as it was, in fact, a very fine spring day. The duchess and Lady Fielding acknowledged acquaintances as they passed. Emily had just concluded that this outing would not be so difficult after all when the duchess said, “Perhaps you would like to walk a little, Emily?”
She had to repress a start at being called back from her own thoughts. “Oh…yes.”
The carriage was stopped and the footman jumped down to open the door. Emily stepped to the gravel drive and hesitated. Was her aunt coming? But both the older women were looking at Richard, who responded by joining her and offering his arm. Not joyously, Emily noted.
“Would you care to see the Grecian temple?” asked Richard in a colorless voice.
Emily glanced up at him. He looked like a man going through the motions. There was no trace of the person she had helped across the fields, the one who had spoken to her forthrightly and without affectation. That was because she had imagined him, Emily told herself sharply. “Yes, thank you.”
He led her along a landscaped path toward a small building ornamented with columns and carvings. Flowers had been planted all around it, and in urns along the pediment. “It’s pretty,” Emily ventured.
“If you like fakery.”
This silenced her. They strolled toward the temple, properly in full view of the duchess and Lady Fielding, who sat chatting in the carriage.
His arm was hard and unyielding under her hand. His face was equally stiff. No one was going to believe that he was enjoying her company. Her aunt’s scheme was doomed. She looked around the park, desperate for some suitable, interesting topic. A spot of color caught her eye. “Look.”
Richard turned and the boredom vanished from his expression. “It’s a balloon.”
“What?” Emily watched the gaily striped sphere drift upward. It was high above the rooftops already.
“A balloon. A silk bag filled with gas that is lighter than air. That’s why it rises.”
“Lighter than air? How could anything be lighter?”
“The various gases it contains have different properties. If one separates out the less dense element, it will lift even quite heavy objects.” His gaze was fixed on the still rising balloon. “It gives us flight.”
“Us?” echoed Emily.
“Mankind. There are aeronauts in the basket hanging below the bag. You can just see it.”
She squinted. There was indeed something dangling from the bright sphere.
“An ancient dream finally coming true,” Richard murmured.
“Wishing for wings, you mean?”
He stared down at her with such intensity that Emily was abashed. “How will they get down?” she asked to divert him.
He continued to gaze at her for another moment. “They let out gas to descend, drop weights to rise higher.”
“You know a great deal about it,” said Emily, impressed.
Abruptly, he looked self-conscious. Turning away from the balloon, he led her along the front of the Grecian temple. “I have read about such things,” he answered, his voice once more emotionless. “Shall we return to the carriage?”
Emily started to ask another question. But something moved in the corner of her eye, and she turned, startled. An urn on the roof of the temple was toppling slowly over the edge of the pediment. In the next instant, Emily was snatched off her feet and tumbled to the ground in Richard Sheldon’s arms. The urn crashed into the pavement where they had been standing and shattered in a rain of soil and stems.
Emily felt the flying shards of pottery strike Richard’s back. His body had wrapped around hers, shielding her almost completely from the projectiles and taking most of the impact of their fall. She rested in his embrace, breathless and a little dazed. He had moved so fast, and so decisively. There had been no time to think. He had somehow just known. It had been the same when he lunged at Jonathan in the field behind her house, Emily remembered; this very large man suddenly became a blur of lethal motion.
A man shouted behind them. Shrieks sounded from the direction of their carriage.
Richard’s body was all muscle, like sprung steel. It felt as if he could hold her forever, effortlessly. Emily began to feel odd, tingling with energy and languorous all at once.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
His lips were inches from her ear, which made the question seem intimate and intensely personal. A flush of heat washed over Emily. She made a soft affirmative sound that surprised her.
Richard untangled himself and rose, pulling her up after him. Emily swayed a little on her feet.
In the next instant, Lady Fielding hurled herself at Richard, keening at the top of her lungs. He caught her and held her against his chest. “It’s all right, Mother. No harm done.”
“You were nearly killed!”
“Not at all. We had stepped out of the way. Mother, calm yourself.”
Stepped out of the way? That hardly described it. But watching Lady Fielding wail and wring her hands, Emily could see why he would make light of the incident. She took a deep breath. There had been something just before the urn fell, some small movement barely glimpsed. She took another breath, regaining her equilibrium. Emily started around the temple to look for some sign of what it might be.
“Are you all right?” asked her aunt.
“Yes, I am just going to…”
“What a very distressing accident.”
“I’m not sure…”
“I believe we had better get Lady Fielding home. She is quite…distraught.” The duchess’s expression showed her low opinion of such displays of emotion. It also seemed to contain a glint of satisfaction.
“I want to look behind the temple.”
“Behind it? Whatever for?”
Emily didn’t feel her aunt would respond well to her suspicions. “We should tell someone about this…accident,” she ventured instead.
“You may be sure I shall. Disgraceful carelessness.”
Lady Fielding had descended into hysterics, Emily saw. She could not keep her from home. With great reluctance, looking back over her shoulder more than once, she returned to the carriage. On the drive back, she bent all her faculties to recalling that moment when she had seen—what? A movement? The urn itself, or someone pushing it?
The duchess was soothing Lady Fielding with her vinaigrette. The latter had subsided into weeping now.
At the house, the duchess took over, sending a messenger for Lady Fielding’s physician and summoning her dresser and a covey of maids. All of them supported Richard’s mother up the stairs, leaving Richard and Emily standing in the front hall gazing after them.
“She is easily upset since my…absence,” said Richard, as if to himself.
Emily had, of course, heard the story of his shipwreck. It was a choice bit of gossip among the ton. “I’m sure she’ll be all right.”
He nodded, eyes still on the stairs, then turned to her. “You should sit down. Would you care for anything? No doubt you are quite shaken by the—”
“I think someone pushed that urn. I may have seen…well, I’m not sure.”
Richard looked skeptical.
> “There was something,” she insisted. “A movement. Why should the urn fall otherwise?”
“A crack in the base,” he suggested. “A flaw in the wall under it.”
“But after the way those men attacked you on the road…”
“Footpads.”
“They did not act like footpads. Don’t you think it suspicious that they—?”
“My dear Miss Crane, you read too many sensational novels.”
“I don’t read any.”
“You will not mention this foolishness to my mother.”
Emily drew herself up. “I would never do such a thing.”
“Or to anyone else either.” He shook his head. “What an on dit that would make. Warrington thinks himself persecuted. I suppose I was deliberately marooned in the wilderness as well?”
Emily hadn’t thought of this. “Could it have been arranged?”
Richard gave a harsh laugh. “Indeed. By someone in direct communication with the Almighty. Or perhaps a sorcerer who summons storms? I beg you to curb these idiotic flights of fancy, Miss Crane.”
“You have to admit—”
“Stop it!” His voice was like a whip. “I have no patience with this lunacy. You will drop it at once.”
Before Emily could reply, her aunt appeared at the head of the stairs and began to descend.
“How is she?” asked Richard.
“Better. She is asking for you.”
Richard started up, then hesitated. “Do you need…?”
The duchess waved him on. “No need to see us out.”
With a nod of thanks, he strode up the stairs. Emily turned to walk out with her aunt. She didn’t see Richard pause on the upper landing and stare intently after her.
“A volatile woman,” commented the duchess as they returned to their carriage. “She has endured a difficult time, of course. But a bit more fortitude…” She shook her head as they started off.
What was behind the attacks? Emily wondered. If she was right, a determined killer was after Lord Warrington. She bit her lower lip. Was she right? Was she imagining things? She frowned. The men at the pond had been solid and very real. But today…she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps the movement had been the balloon? There was no way to know. And it was no business of hers, in any case. Lord Warrington clearly did not want her opinion. She should put the matter from her mind. But she couldn’t.
* * *
Stepping down from the carriage in Grosvenor Square, Emily noticed that a caller was departing from one of the neighbors, escorted by all four daughters of the house. That was odd. Only the eldest was out. The younger sisters would not be receiving callers. As her aunt entered the house with a sweep of draperies, she hesitated. The caller made his final farewells and sauntered down the pavement toward her. “Daniel Fitzgibbon,” she blurted out.
The man stopped, stared at her, and then came forward slowly. He didn’t look gratified by her notice. And no wonder—the last time Emily had seen him, he had been head of a company of motley traveling players just one step ahead of a magistrate.
Coming up to her, he bowed most elegantly. “Miss Crane.”
“How…how are you?”
“Very well, thank you. And you?” He glanced up at the imposing mansion behind them.
“I’m staying with my aunt.”
“Ah.”
“What are you…?” Emily hesitated once again. Her father had befriended this man, and she rather liked him herself. But he did have some dubious habits; things had been known to go missing from the towns where his company of actors performed. If he was playing these tricks on her aunt’s neighbors… Emily glanced uneasily at the house. Aunt Julia would not approve of the connection.
Fitzgibbon smiled as if he could follow her thought processes. “I am an exceedingly fashionable dancing master to the young ladies of the haut ton,” he told her.
Emily couldn’t help but stare.
The man raised his eyebrows, waiting.
“Dancing master?”
He gave her a slight bow. “I am a very fine dancer.”
Emily remembered the complicated dances in some of his performances. “Yes, but…how did you come to be teaching?”
The footman holding the front door coughed discreetly. Emily heard her aunt’s questioning voice from inside.
“A complicated story,” said Fitzgibbon. He made a gesture indicating that he did not wish to tell it in a public street. “Will you bubble me?” he added with some urgency.
“No. That is… I don’t…”
“Emily?” said her aunt, appearing in the doorway.
Bowing once again, Fitzgibbon handed her a card, tipped his hat, and walked quickly away.
“Who is that you were talking to?”
Emily slipped the card into her reticule. “The Talbots have engaged him as dancing master for the girls,” She hurried up the steps and into the house.
“Dancing? Is that the fellow everyone’s talking of? Maria Talbot was telling me he’s even got Margaret moving with a bit of grace.” She frowned. “But I do not understand why you were speaking with him.”
“I…I was thinking I could use some lessons,” Emily said in a rush. “I have had so little practice dancing.”
“Hmm. Perhaps.” Her aunt turned and started up the stairs. “I am glad to see you taking an interest in your social skills,” she added with more warmth.
Emily kept her head down as she followed Aunt Julia upstairs. She hadn’t exactly lied to her. No, she had simply neglected to tell the truth, jeered another inner voice.
In her own room, she took out Fitzgibbon’s card, only to discover that the name engraved on it was Edwin Gerrity. What if she had mentioned his name? She sat down abruptly in the armchair under the window. How many of her father’s collection of eccentrics were now in London? she wondered suddenly. They included a great many disreputable figures, and a few out-and-out scoundrels. If Daniel Fitzgibbon, thieving actor, could so easily become Edwin Gerrity and enter the houses of the haut ton, what else might happen? The possibilities daunted her. Aunt Julia would be furious.
Emily went to the small writing desk in the corner and put the card safely inside. She had to keep her two lives firmly separated. There was no room in this household for characters like Fitzgibbon/Gerrity. Imagining him here was as difficult as picturing her Aunt Julia among Papa’s paints. She swallowed. Completely separate, she thought. It was the only answer. Everything would be fine as long as she held to that resolve.
* * *
Richard folded his arms across his chest as his mother’s carriage started off along the cobblestones. He glowered at the tufted blue velvet lining the interior. He had tried to forbid this expedition. But his mother had resorted to tears and laments about the incident in the park, and he had had to yield. He had also had to accompany her, wasting his time and spoiling his temper. But he wasn’t about to send her alone into the clutches of Herr Schelling.
She sat happily beside him, gazing out the window. When would she recover her spirits? When would she be able to contemplate his leaving London without falling into a despond? This fearful, clinging woman was so unlike the mother he remembered.
A wave of compassion overtook him. He had changed. No doubt she felt the same bewilderment over the son who had returned to her. And she had mourned his death for a long time. She could be allowed more than a week or two to recover. “Are you warm enough, Mother?”
She turned and smiled at him. “Yes, thank you, dear.”
Her expression touched him. He had given her a good deal of pain over the last year. And in the years before that. The old persona was all too easy to resume, but he wasn’t going to do that.
“It is so good to have you home again,” she added. “Nothing was the same with you…gone.”
A year ago, he would have dismi
ssed this as maudlin sentiment, Richard thought. But he could see the emotion in her eyes.
“Even the Season seemed a lot of silly posturing.” She looked self-conscious and gave a brief laugh. “How people would stare to hear me say that. Of course, it is all right now that you are back.”
Richard watched her visibly gather the elements of her social self around her. Family connections went deeper than the roles individuals played in the world, he saw. But one didn’t always understand that until a crisis struck.
“I’m afraid Herr Schelling lives quite out of the world. In Kensington,” said his mother in another tone entirely. “But he says the vibrations there are good for his work.”
“Indeed?”
She nodded. “There is a rift in the etheric envelope that allows him to reach through to the other realm.”
“A what?”
Lady Fielding gestured airily. “A rift. I don’t understand it precisely, of course.”
“Of course.” Because it was gibberish, Richard added silently.
“But it does help Herr Schelling do the most amazing things.”
“Such as?”
His exceedingly dry tone earned him a doubtful glance.
“Besides communicating with my supposedly deceased spirit,” he added.
“That was a mistake,” she acknowledged. “But Herr Schelling was wondering… You do not think, Richard, that you received any sort of etheric communications when you were trapped in that awful jungle?”
“No, Mother, I do not.”
“You might not have noticed them, you see, because they are very subtle…”
“Vanishingly so.”
“Richard.”
He subsided. He had promised to keep his sentiments to himself on this expedition. It was going to be even more difficult than he had imagined.
Herr Schelling lived in a respectable looking house on a quiet street in this unfashionable suburb. The maid who admitted them looked quite ordinary, as did the furnishings Richard glimpsed, though they were rather luxurious for a man in his position. Apparently, Herr Schelling paid some heed to the physical plane as well as the etheric.
The upstairs room to which they were taken was different. Its only furniture was a large round table in the center, set on a circular carpet decorated with stars and surrounded by straight chairs. All the walls were muffled with heavy dark draperies. The only light came from a branch of candles set on the table.
