by C. J. Archer
Thankfully, a distraction arrived in the form of visitors. A gleaming black coach, pulled by two perfectly matched gray horses, drove along the drive, kicking gravel up beneath its fast moving wheels.
Samuel swore.
"Do you know who it is?" I asked.
"Yes. It's my parents."
***
The maid served our tea. Tommy had been sent into the village by Samuel with a message to telegram the Beauforts, despite the household needing the extra pair of capable hands upon the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone.
Sylvia sat primly on the sofa, playing the perfect hostess. She prattled on and offered pastries to her guests, despite receiving only cool refusals in return. I ate four. I was so hungry, having missed breakfast, and Sylvia seemed too preoccupied to remember that I was only supposed to eat dry toast.
"Is Mr. August Langley not at home?" Mrs. Gladstone asked, eyeing the door with caution. She looked as if she'd faint if he walked in, or rolled in as it were.
"He's busy," Samuel said.
Sylvia gave them an apologetic smile. "My uncle rarely ventures out of his rooms. If he were here he would apologize most profusely for, er, himself." She bit her lip and giggled.
I rather suspected she wasn't used to company herself. She didn't seem to know how to behave. The poor girl had probably been sheltered for much of her life if her uncle was her only companion before Jack arrived.
Mrs. Gladstone sipped her tea. Mr. Gladstone stared at his son, who stared right back. There was no awkwardness in his manner now that his temper had returned. The air around him fairly sizzled with his anger.
"Is there somewhere we can speak alone?" Mr. Gladstone asked his son.
Mrs. Gladstone winced at her husband's bluntness. Sylvia blinked down into her teacup. She seemed quite out of her depth. I suspected she'd never had to deal with an authoritative figure like Samuel's father, not without Jack being present.
"Sylvia," I said, "shall we take a turn in the garden?"
"You don't have to go anywhere," Samuel said, his tone steely. "I want you to stay."
"I think it's best if we leave."
I held out my hand to Sylvia and she took it. We walked out of the room without turning back, leaving Samuel and his parents behind, along with our tea and those delicious pastries. Perhaps we could walk to the kitchen instead of the garden.
"Shall we listen in?" she whispered once we were out in the corridor.
"Sylvia! You're so wicked." I grinned. "All right."
We crept back along the wall to the drawing room door. Mrs. Gladstone was speaking in a somewhat tentative voice.
"This place is so grim. Samuel, come home with us. Today."
"No."
"Why?" she whined. "We're your family. We love you and only have your best interests at heart."
"Ha! You cannot claim to love me and have my best interests at heart if you wish me to marry Ebony. A lifetime with her will not make me happy."
"Don't speak to your mother like that," Mr. Gladstone growled.
"I wouldn't have to if she stopped trying to force me down the aisle with that—"
"Don't. Don't call her names. Ebony is a fine girl from an illustrious family."
"If you'd let me finish, you would have simply heard me say 'that girl.'" There was a pause in which one of the men huffed out a breath. "You gave away your motives just now," Samuel went on. "You want me to marry into a good family, not because you or I like Ebony, but because Lord Mellor is a bloody viscount!"
Mrs. Gladstone gave a little sob.
"Don't raise your voice at your mother."
Samuel groaned. "Did you people have to come here now?"
"We are not people, Samuel!" his father roared. "We're your parents."
"We care about you," Mrs. Gladstone said in between sniffs. "Please, come home. We won't mention the wedding. Of course, we cannot promise that Ebony won't visit. She will always be welcome in our home."
"Why does she even want to marry me when she can see that I don't want to marry her?"
"She has her heart set on you."
"Don't know why," Mr. Gladstone muttered. "You're a bone-headed fool."
"And that is why I won't be coming home," Samuel said.
"Hush, Henry," Mrs. Gladstone said to her husband.
"I take it Ebony doesn't know about my past, then?" Samuel asked.
Mr. Gladstone grunted. "I made certain of it."
"You've done a very thorough job. There's not been a whiff of scandal in London that I can tell."
"I'm always thorough. It cost me a fortune, but I couldn't have our name muddied by your foolishness."
"My foolishness?" There was a long silence before Samuel spoke again. "So you still believe I did it?"
There was no response.
"Mother? Do you no longer think me guilty?"
Sylvia's hand curled around my arm. She tried to tug me away, but I shook my head. I was riveted to the spot and the conversation. I wanted to know Mrs. Gladstone's answer; not because it would shed any light on what Samuel had done to end up in Newgate, but because he seemed to want to hear her answer so desperately. It was clear from the thin thread of vulnerability running through his voice that he wanted them to believe him innocent. For some reason, so did I.
"Samuel." Mrs. Gladstone sighed. "Samuel, darling, whether you did it or not doesn't matter."
"It does to me!"
"I do know that you won't do it again, and that's what's important."
Samuel's chuckle was low, cruel. It sent a shiver down my spine. Sylvia's fingers tightened around my arm. "You think so?" he said. "How can you be sure? Well, Mother? How. Can. You. Be. Sure?"
She gave a little sob.
"Stop this!" Mr. Gladstone said. "Stop this at once. You're frightening your mother."
"That's because I am a frightening creature," Samuel sneered. "My hypnosis has made sure of that."
"No," his father said, equally low and with far more cruelty. "It's because of what you do with it. What you've done."
I pressed my fingers to my lips to stop myself from gasping and giving away our position. Sylvia pressed closer to the door. She no longer tried to force me to leave.
"How did I get to be like this?" Samuel went on. "Hmmm? Why can I hypnotize? What did you do to me?"
"Nothing!" Mrs. Gladstone cried.
"You must have. Think, Mother. Think back to when I was born, or before. There must be a link between me and… and another hypnotist I know."
"There's another?" Mr. Gladstone asked. "Who?"
"That's none of your affair."
"Another," Mrs. Gladstone said so quietly I almost didn't hear her. "My God."
"It's all right, my dear," Mr. Gladstone said, calmer. "See what you've done, son? You've upset your mother. You always blame others for your mistakes. This hypnotism… you ought to be able to control it by now."
"I can. Mostly," he added softly.
"Please come home," Mrs. Gladstone pleaded. "It's been long enough. You've made your point. We know how angry you are, but it's time to put that behind us. All of it. Come home so we can be a family again."
"No. I like it here. I fit in and the Langleys have been good to me."
"That August Langley is a madman," Mr. Gladstone said. "I asked around about him, after we saw you at Claridge’s. He's considered to be a lunatic, fit only for the asylum."
"He's a recluse and a genius. I won't have you disparage him."
"Does it have something to do with that girl?" Mrs. Gladstone asked. "Charity?"
"Leave her out of this."
"I asked around about her too," Mr. Gladstone said. His voice was light, mocking. It filled me with dread. I braced myself.
"Don't, Henry," his wife warned. "It won't help."
"You have quite the spy network, Father," Samuel said, too smoothly. "I suppose you learned that Charity is a teacher at an orphanage."
"We learned much more than that."
"I'm sure
you did." His words were benign enough, but the hard, cold edge to Samuel's voice gave away his true feelings.
Whether his father heard it or not, I couldn't be sure. He didn't back away, but kept poking the monster in an attempt to wake it. "Don't you want to know what sort of woman you've been cavorting with, son?"
My stomach rolled. I didn't know why I felt ill listening to the Gladstones discussing me as if I were something they'd scraped off their shoe. Samuel already knew my past, as did Sylvia, albeit to a lesser extent. Nor should I care what the Gladstones thought of me.
Yet I did.
"She's a whore." Mr. Gladstone's words punched me in the gut, even though I expected them. I wanted to throw up. "It's hardly a secret. She came from the street, where she no doubt whored herself with whoever would pay her a penny."
"Stop it," Samuel hissed.
"Then she raised her petticoats for a better class of gentleman."
"Stop it or so help me I will make you."
"By all means, use her to relieve certain urges," Mr. Gladstone went on.
"Henry!" his wife cried.
"But you must avoid her in any public capacity or the stench of her will stain you—us. I will not allow her to weasel her way into this family."
"Enough!" Samuel exploded. His shout made me jump. My heart was already beating rapidly, but now it wanted to leap out of my chest.
Please don't hit your own father, Samuel.
"It only goes to show how base Langley is if he allows a whore to sit in his drawing room, sipping tea with his guests and his own niece."
Sylvia stiffened and her grip tightened again. I went very still, and waited for Samuel's rage to boil over. It never did. Instead, a vision burst upon me.
That girl was in it again. She sat on the bed, dressed only in her nightshirt, her hands gripping hold of the bedpost as if it would anchor her in a storm. The man whose eyes I looked through was on the bed too. He had hold of her nightshirt at the neck, as if he was about to tear it off. In his other hand he grasped a leather belt with a silver buckle.
Oh God. No. He was going to whip her with it.
CHAPTER 11
The vision must have made the man pause. The girl glanced tentatively over her shoulder at him. At me. Her eyes were red and swollen, and tears streaked down her cheeks. She looked relieved that he'd not torn off her nightgown, but unsure of what to do next.
The vision vanished just as unexpectedly as it had arrived. I was once more back in the corridor at Frakingham. There was silence in the drawing room. Silence everywhere. Yet I could still hear that poor girl's sobs in my head.
I slumped against the wall, shaking. I couldn't stop it. My legs couldn't hold me up and my hands were useless. I crumpled to the floor. Sylvia tried to hold me, but she wasn't strong enough. She knelt alongside me and frowned.
What's wrong? she mouthed.
I shook my head and closed my eyes, but the things I'd seen wouldn't go away. That poor, helpless girl. It was like I was right there in the room with her. No, not with her. Like I was her. It could have been me facing the whipping.
Indeed, it had been me. I knew it with sickening certainty, that what I saw happening to her had happened to me at the hands of the man known as the master. It was the memory Samuel had blocked. The memory he tried to keep from me.
"You have to go, now," Samuel's steady voice came from the drawing room. Gone was the fierce anger. He sounded exhausted, sad. Had he seen the girl, too?
Unlikely. Usually when I saw through the third person's eyes, Samuel saw through mine. That meant he knew I was listening at the door. He knew I'd heard his father call me a whore.
"But Miss Langley asked us to stay for luncheon," Mrs. Gladstone protested.
"She's withdrawn the offer," Samuel said, heavily. "Go now. I don't want to see you here again."
"We haven't finished our discussion," Mr. Gladstone said. He sounded surprised by the sudden change in his son.
"Don't make me have the footman throw you out. It's so undignified."
Sylvia tugged me up by the arms. Go! She mouthed. I allowed her to help me and together we rushed down the corridor. She led me into the music room and sat me down on the piano stool. She stood by the window and announced when the Gladstones' carriage had driven away.
"Good riddance," she said, rejoining me. "What awful people. Especially him." She peered into my eyes. "Are you all right? You look terribly pale and you can't stop shaking. Are you having another turn?"
I looked down at my hands. They were indeed shaking. "I… I received a fright. I'll be all right in a moment."
"That man is a beast. Don't listen to him."
It was ironic that she was now defending my honor when it had seemed to bother her so much when I first arrived. Ah well, perhaps I had judged her incorrectly after all.
"It's not that," I said.
"Samuel!" Sylvia cried.
I looked past her to see Samuel enter. He focused on me so intently I felt like I was the only one in the room, the only thing that mattered. He crouched before me and closed his hand over mine, on my knee. He stroked his thumb over my scars with a tenderness that had my heart aching.
I withdrew my hand. His already troubled eyes clouded further. I couldn't stand to see his turbulence so I looked away.
He stood and took a step backwards. "I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to apologize for," I said. "You cannot control what other people say."
"No, indeed," Sylvia chimed in. "But how do you know that we overheard the conversation?"
"We had a vision," he told her. "I saw through Charity's eyes."
"And I saw through the… that man's." A shudder rippled down my spine. I wanted to tell Samuel about it, but not with Sylvia present. Her world was bright and simple; the only dark spots came when she overheard cruel barbs directed at her guest. I didn't want her to know what the master was doing to that girl.
Samuel crossed his arms over his chest. "I hate my father for what he said. He can rot in hell, as far as I'm concerned."
"Don't say such things," I scolded. "They do care about you, in their own way."
"How can they? They don't know what I want, even when I tell them. Father only wants an heir who will carry on the family name for the next generation."
"Won't your older brother inherit?"
"Yes, but his illness means he's unlikely to marry and have children. Apparently it's up to me, or so my mother says. She hates being the object of gossip, but she certainly likes the idea of her son being married to a viscount's daughter with grand schemes of her own."
Grand schemes? I didn't have the heart to ask him what he meant. I was still so shaken by the vision.
Sylvia plopped down on a chair with a deep sigh. "It's what all parents want for their children. Uncles, too. It's only natural to want your offspring to have the best in life."
"In that case, my parents and I disagree on what the best in life is. They think it's marrying an ambitious viscount's daughter. I think it's sharing a full life with someone I care deeply about."
I didn't dare look at him to see if he was looking at me. I couldn't bear it if he still held a torch for me. "They're your family," I mumbled into my chin. "You should be grateful to have them, and a lovely roof over your head. I assume your father's house is as magnificent as this."
"It depends on your definition of magnificent. It's grander, but it lacks warmth. I'd rather live in a crowded cottage than there with them."
A cottage was better than a derelict house with a leaking roof, furniture made from crates and the threat of the entire thing collapsing in a strong wind.
"Well," Sylvia said, rising. "If you're feeling better, Charity, I must leave you."
"Much better, thank you." I watched her go and waited until she was out of the room before speaking to Samuel. "I saw that girl," I told him. "We have to help her. She's in danger from the master—"
"What sort of danger?"
"He was about to whip h
er." I swallowed the bile burning my throat.
"Jesus," he muttered. He sat on the chair Sylvia had vacated and rubbed his hand through his hair. "Are you sure?"
I nodded. "I didn't see him to do it, but I'm positive he was going to. She's his prisoner, Samuel. His… plaything."
He squeezed his eyes shut as if he could block out my words, or perhaps my memories. "How can you be certain? She could be his wife."
"Because I know. I know it as clearly as I know that I'm sitting here with you. I feel it. I may not have that memory anymore, but the emotions associated with it have been slowly coming back to me. Fear, anger, horror. When I see her, I know what she's going through. It's as if it's happening to me."
He buried his head in his hands, but not before I saw the stricken look in his eyes.
"We have to help her, Samuel."
"How? Tell me how we find them and I will, gladly."
That was the problem. Where did we even begin?
***
A telegram arrived the following day from Emily Beaufort. She confirmed that neither she nor Cara had summoned a ghost into a living body, either accidentally or on purpose, and that she knew of no other spirit mediums. She finished with a promise that she would ask.
"Ask who?" Sylvia said, after reading the telegram for the second time. It had been personally delivered by an employee of the Harborough post office, while we ate breakfast. Tommy brought it in to the dining room and read it aloud for us.
"Ghosts," Samuel answered.
Sylvia's lips formed an O.
"Ghosts can come and go from the Waiting Area," he explained. "It's where they accumulate, while they wait to be assigned to their next destination."
"Heaven and hell?"
"I think there are many more categories than those two, but essentially you're right. The final resting place of the deceased, you could say. I would guess that she's going to ask some trusted spirits if another has disappeared unexpectedly."
"How clever. I hope they find one who knows something."
"So do I."
I cornered Samuel after breakfast, out of earshot of Sylvia. She hardly seemed to notice me, anyway. Her owlish gaze followed Tommy as he walked off, pushing a trolley laden with dishes. He had not looked at her or spoken to her since she'd sat down for breakfast. I was glad to see him taking my advice. The last thing I wanted was for Sylvia's heart to be broken over what was a mere diversion for him.
