These Vicious Masks: A Swoon Novel

by Zekas, Kelly

  “Ev-lyn?”

  I spun around to find a figure standing in the doorway, her red hair wild, her face wan. Miss Grey. “Is R-Rose still with you?” she asked, her voice quavering.

  I shook my head.

  “He took her?” she asked, eyes wide.

  The way she spoke sent my heart racing. This time I managed to speak, slightly. “Who took her? Where is she?”

  She gazed up at the ceiling. “Then—she must be here. Please, Evelyn, you have to find her before—”

  And I saw past her, past the doorway, to the staircase leading up to the third floor, and nothing else mattered. I flew up the stairs, the darkness swallowing me back up and spitting me out into my bed, and I lay awake until the sun rose, hating these dreams that could solve nothing at all.

  THE TICKING OF the giant grandfather clock grew as loud as life as I waited, resentfully, with Mr. Braddock in his friend’s large and obviously well-loved London home. We stood in a drawing room lined with faded floral wallpaper and elegant chairs inviting us to delight in the rainy light, which, under normal circumstances, might have made for a cozy morning visit. But for the moment, it was quite the opposite. I crushed the folds of my gown in my fists and hovered in the middle of the room.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lodge will be downstairs shortly,” Cushing, their quiet steward, said before shutting the door, imprisoning me inside.

  I was even more confused than I was last night. This did not look to be a ploy. Laura had confirmed that the Lodges not only existed, but they were apparently a respectable family that had only recently withdrawn from social events because of their daughter’s illness. But Mr. Kent had insisted Mr. Braddock was not to be trusted, when I urged him to continue the search without me for the day. And I hadn’t even told him the whole story about the powers. Mr. Braddock surely had ulterior motives for creating such an elaborate explanation, but for the life of me, I could not determine what they were. Was the man cleverer than he looked or just crazier? The line separating the two seemed rather thin.

  “So, who is this friend of yours?” I blurted out, hoping to distract myself.

  Mr. Braddock glared at me as if I had just stepped on a kitten. “Miss Mae Lodge.”

  “Quite informative. Where did you meet?”

  “A house.”

  “Do you willfully circumvent all questions?”

  “As I recall from last night, my full, honest answers were not to your liking. At least cryptic responses require less breath.”

  “Then you admit to being purposefully cryptic and mysterious?”

  “Sebastian!” a rich, friendly voice interrupted Mr. Braddock’s elegiac sigh. An older man and woman stood at the door, both excited to see him—heaven knows why. With an elegant bow, Mr. Braddock greeted the couple, whom he introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Lodge.

  Mrs. Lodge’s puff of blond hair bounced gently as she turned her welcoming countenance toward me. “Thank you for coming, Miss Wyndham,” she said, clasping her hands. “We are terribly in your debt for helping our Mae.” I had done nothing yet.

  Her husband, a thin, red-faced man with snowy hair, had the same honest smile as his wife. I was finally forced to discard the idea that Mr. Braddock might have me here for some other purpose. Their distress was written into every line that creased their kind faces. “Sebastian has told us the stories of your work. We find that dedication to be by far the most important quality, after some of the doctors we’ve seen.”

  “Has anyone given her a diagnosis?” I asked.

  Mrs. Lodge gave a sober nod. “There have been a number of them. But more recently, the doctors have suggested Addison’s.”

  I stared at them blankly. Addison’s? Was that a real disease? I resisted the urge to burn Mr. Braddock with my eyes. He brought me here to cure a disease I had never even heard of. How could I let these kind people think there was anything I could possibly do to help?

  “I am afraid that there may be little I can do,” I started, giving voice to my thoughts, but their faces fell so quickly, I felt compelled to continue. “But I will do what I can to see to her comfort.”

  The Lodges nodded eagerly, and I felt like the worst of charlatans, peddling Evelyn Wyndham’s Magically Useless Elixir.

  “Shall we head upstairs?” Mr. Lodge smiled at me expectantly.

  I forced out the words. “Yes, of course.”

  Miss Lodge’s room was massive—at least twice the size of my own in Bramhurst. Her parents had spared no expense to make her comfortable. Buried beneath the silk sheets and quilts, she was barely visible. The shuttered windows blocked all but a few beams of sunlight. Beside her bed was a snug nook, settled with a plush chair and damask chaise, presumably to make bedside visitors more comfortable. A rather bleak consideration, really.

  The Lodges roused their daughter, and she struggled to summon the energy to rise a few inches until Mr. Braddock stepped into her sight. She was up at once. Though she had little strength to express her excitement, it was apparent in her tanned yet obviously sickly face.

  “Sebastian!”

  “Mae, how are you?” Mr. Braddock asked with an affectionate smile so unexpected, I almost tripped. Who knew the man had teeth?

  “I’m well,” Miss Lodge replied serenely, though she hardly looked it.

  He hesitated near the doorway as if he couldn’t bear to see her illness up close. “I would like you to meet someone. This is Miss Evelyn Wyndham. She and her sister are talented nurses from Bramhurst.”

  My face burned as he raised their expectations even higher. I wished there was a cure to rid a room of Mr. Braddock.

  “Good morning, Miss Wyndham,” she greeted me as I stepped closer to the bed. Despite her sickness, Miss Lodge was an exceptionally pretty girl. Large, luminous gray eyes, a perfect upturned nose, and lovely golden hair that was probably even brighter when she was healthy—now it was plastered against her damp forehead. It was the shade of her skin that seemed strange. Oddly dark, yet unhealthy and at odds with her light eyes and hair.

  Her parents informed me that Cushing was at my full disposal for all necessary medicines and supplies and they would only return to check on Miss Lodge’s progress whenever I deemed it fit. They exited with hope lingering on their faces. I silently cursed Mr. Braddock for putting me in such a position. Deciding to curse him out loud, I asked him for a private word.

  “Mr. Braddock, you are a very unthinking person to give these people false hope!” I whispered when we stepped into the hall. “I don’t even know what this disease is!”

  “I know you don’t believe me about your abilities,” he replied. “But I don’t believe it as impossible as you say. And we have an agreement.”

  “Fine, I shall honor it by attempting to use my ever-so-magical powers to cure your friend of this affliction I know nothing about. But if you want your friend to actually recover, I suggest you start looking for my sister now. She is the only one who might begin to help.”

  “I told you already, I do intend to help you even if you are unable to cure Miss Lodge,” he replied, frowning as though I had assumed otherwise. “I’ll leave you to it now. If there is anything that can lessen her pain . . .”

  “I will do what I can, but that is likely nothing!”

  “Just please, try . . . holding her hand, measuring her pulse, anything. As mad as it may sound, I beg of you—I believe it works through direct contact.”

  I faltered, thrown by his apparent sincerity. Reluctantly, I nodded.

  He continued: “I understand you feel quite thrown into a difficult situation—”

  “A sterling observation.”

  He smiled determinedly and continued, taking a small step closer. “So truly, thank you. Thank you for even coming today. I will not forget it.”

  I had the clever response of opening my mouth and letting air run through it. The small space between us seemed to fill with a strange vibration. I finally just nodded again. He wished me a good afternoon and descended the stairs. My han
ds found the doorknob, and my feet brought me back into Miss Lodge’s room, half dazed.

  The first order of business was to liven up the dismal space. Rose detested the propensity to leave a sick person’s room somber and miserable. She called it an early concession to death. I began by tying up the drapes, flinging open the shutters, and letting the light flood in while my patient observed me silently. Soon, the pale light of rainy London bathed the room in a soothing gray.

  A paper and pencil in hand, I sat in the chair next to her bed.

  “Miss Lodge. How are you feeling today?”

  “Better than most days . . . I was nauseated earlier this morning, but it passed. Thank you for seeing me, Miss Wyndham.” She smiled serenely, quite willing to have my presence in her sickroom. I smiled back, completely unsure of what to do next.

  “I am happy to do what I can. Now, can you tell me your symptoms?”

  She listed them in such rapid succession that my hand struggled to keep pace. For the past month, she frequently suffered from nausea and vomiting, fatigue, lack of appetite, weight loss, and a change in skin color. The extreme weakness kept her confined to bed the past two weeks. The last doctor to see her said she would be lucky to survive the winter.

  Truly, this strange disease dwarfed anything Rose and I had ever dealt with. Miss Lodge’s calm disposition helped cover it up, but when she went quiet, tightly squeezed her eyes shut, and lay back down as a wave of dizziness overtook her, I wondered how much pain she was silently enduring. Calling for Cushing, I quietly asked him for willow bark and boiling water. He observed me curiously, surely doubting the country remedy, but he held his tongue and left to fill my request.

  Returning to my patient, we sat in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, smiling politely at the bed linens. She was the one to break it by asking me about Bramhurst in her calm, inviting voice, and we slowly slid into exchanging the typical questions and answers of new acquaintances. The details and description of Bramhurst quite enthralled her, reawakening her childhood memories of the times spent in her grandmother’s old countryside home with her brother, Henry. And drawing on our mutual acquaintance, she began to regale me with stories of Mr. Braddock and their many misadventures.

  “And there was the day I almost jumped off the roof,” Miss Lodge said with a giggle and shrug, as if it were some small matter.

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked. “You do not seem quite so desperate.”

  She gave a small laugh. “It happened just after I had finished reading a collection of Greek myths. Somehow, I had gotten it into my head that I could fashion a pair of wings and fly like Daedalus—I believe it was my brother, Henry, who convinced me. I could think of nothing else after the idea took root. For several nights, I constructed a set of wings by gluing together all the paper that could be found in the house. By dawn on the third night, I was ready and supremely confident.

  “I climbed out the window on the third floor, crawled my way over to the edge of the roof, slipped on the wings, and never gave the danger a second thought. I wholeheartedly believed it would work. So I prepared to jump—”

  “And Mr. Braddock heroically caught you at the last second,” I said, with wicked pleasure, sure to my bones that I was correct.

  Miss Lodge grinned at my impertinence. “Yes, exactly! I was just above his room, and he heard the racket. And I must mention that when he pulled me back, he tore the wings in the process. I was furious with him!”

  “It seems Mr. Braddock has had years of practice, then.”

  Miss Lodge looked curiously at me. “Practice saving people?”

  “Acting like a dark, brooding hero,” I said, wondering if she could not see it herself.

  A wrinkle appeared between her light brows. “I . . . suppose I can see it. But really, he’s not like that at all, Miss Wyndham.”

  At that moment, Cushing returned with the willow bark and a boiling pot of water on a tray, and I left her bedside and set the willow bark to steep. The simple act only occupied a minute of time and needed a half hour to steep. Thoughtfully, Cushing had also brought us two cups of good strong black tea, and I decided they certainly could not worsen Miss Lodge’s condition. I returned to her side and helped her prop herself up in the bed, her breath coming too quickly for the slight effort.

  “How did the two of you first meet?” I asked as she took a shaky sip. “It sounds as though you have many years of acquaintance, but he has an incurable condition that keeps him from answering questions.”

  “He was best friends with Henry. They were schoolmates from a young age, and our families were also close.”

  “And your brother, is he away at school?”

  Miss Lodge looked grave as she put down her spoon. “Henry passed away almost two years ago.”

  Not the pleasant teatime conversation I had expected. I choked on a sip and coughed it away. “I did not mean to—”

  “No, no apologies. I am simply not used to telling others. It doesn’t seem real, still.”

  “I’m sorry, it must have been . . .” I trailed off, for what does one really say?

  “It was hard for all of us. And Sebastian had just lost his parents the prior year—”

  “I beg your pardon? He—how . . . is that possible?” I asked, cold settling in my stomach.

  “His parents were both stricken by the same illness. He lost his father first and then his mother a few months later.”

  “What sort of illness?”

  “Consumption. The same as my brother.”

  I shook my head, as if that could change everything. “And now you have this . . . this Addison’s disease. How horrible.”

  “You could also say I’m lucky,” she replied with a smile. “I showed some of the symptoms of consumption myself after Henry, but I managed to recover. I’m still here despite the dismal odds.”

  I agreed but felt a little sick myself. Neither one of us spoke for some time. The faint sounds of traffic seeped inside. Miss Lodge’s eyes glimmered in the glow of the sinking sun.

  “Thank you for bringing him back, Miss Wyndham,” she said.

  “He brought me here to help you,” I insisted, placing our empty cups back on the tray.

  “Yes, but you see, when he was younger”—she paused to shift uncomfortably in the bed—“Sebastian was always the responsible one. The way Henry talked about him at school, he was the one other boys looked up to. But after all this happened, he was— he was distraught. He retreated further into himself. He never said it, but I know he feels guilty that Henry fell sick while they were traveling together. He’ll hold himself responsible no matter what you say. He seemed quite lost after the funeral, and he rarely visited or wrote.”

  She looked up and gave me an earnest smile. “He must have faith in you if he decided to bring you here personally, and I’m glad of it. I want him to remember that this is a home for him. That he does not need to run away again.”

  “I doubt he will,” I replied, unable to name the particular emotion running through me. “His desire to see you was apparent to me the moment he stepped in here.”

  “I hope so. He’s still adjusting, but it’s fortunate we’ve all been brought together.”

  Not entirely hearing her, I simply nodded. My cheeks burned as I turned away from Miss Lodge and poured her the willow-bark brew. Mr. Braddock truly had reasons for his grief, and I had mocked his pain. I winced inwardly, remembering my accusations about his fake tragic past. He had had every right to yell at me—indeed, he had been incredibly restrained for someone who had lost both parents and a best friend. With every breath, my perceptions seemed to rearrange until I was hopelessly confused and my opinion of him was reduced to a chaotic mess.

  Serving Miss Lodge the tea, I endeavored not to betray my swirling emotions. She drank it down quickly, lay back, and began to drift away. Though I knew it was futile, I couldn’t help but take her hands in mine, hoping that I really did have some ridiculous power. As Rose’s assistant, I’d never held a
life in my hands and felt that full, impossible responsibility. This girl did not deserve to die, yet here she was: weak, delicate as a bird, and wasting away.

  I didn’t know how many long minutes passed, my thoughts bounding back and forth between this girl I wished I could save and the man who was at every turn an enigma. When there was nothing left to do but pray, I noiselessly stood up and slipped out of the room. Before closing the door, I took one final glance at Miss Lodge, finding her color almost matching the ivory bedclothes. Her fair complexion seemed to be returning. But as I looked closer, I realized it was just a combination of the faint sunset and wishful thinking.

  I hated wishful thinking. It always made me feel useless.

  I WAS ABLE to return to the Kents’ early enough for dinner. Lady Kent questioned me on my whereabouts the entire day, but Laura helped corroborate my hasty excuse about visiting my friend Catherine. To repay the favor, I spent far too long giving Laura an exhaustive account of my day with Miss Lodge. She almost fainted when she heard the drama of Mr. Braddock’s tragic past.

  Before I could take my well-deserved rest, though, Tuffins informed me that Mr. Kent had come to speak with me. I groggily shuffled into the drawing room and found him standing by the fireplace, eyes full of pity.

  “How was the search today?” I asked, my voice high and worry pounding in my ears. “Did you find anything?”

  “No, and I’m sorry. I almost did not come because I hate the idea of delivering bad news to you, but then I realized that my absence would in itself be the worst news you could possibly receive.”

  “Thank you for sparing me from such despair.”

  “But to be positive, the list of druggists grows shorter, and from a broader perspective, we are one day closer to finding Miss Rosamund.”