City of Ash

by Megan Chance

  “I’ve never written better or faster in my life. Penelope’s almost done, and I’ll be able to devote myself to the new play. We could be a force together. I’d write the plays, you’d act in them. They’d form lines around the block. Eventually we could have the company you want.”

  He said it so damn ardently that I wanted to believe him. It was stupid how much I wanted it.

  I glanced away. “It would take too long. Look at me, Bastian. I’m nearly thirty.”

  “You’ve just reached your prime.”

  “I can’t keep the lead without Nathan.”

  “Lucius won’t take it from you now.”

  “You don’t know him the way I do.”

  A sigh of exasperation. “How can you be so damned blind? Why can’t you see that he would do anything for you?”

  “Because he won’t,” I snapped. “I’d like to live in your world, Bastian, where everyone’s good and their motives are pure, but it’s a delusion.”

  “If Penelope’s a success, your position will be assured.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “But I can’t afford to count on it.”

  Sebastian swept his hand through his hair, obviously frustrated. “God, if only she hadn’t died—”

  Ginny Langley again. I snapped, “But she did, didn’t she?”

  He went still. He said softly, “We could do it. You know we could. Don’t go back to him, Bea. Please.”

  And there it was, the jealousy I’d waited for, that I’d wanted. And, you know, the irony was that if he’d said these things to me even a few days ago, I might have done what he wanted. If I’d got Ginny on a wagon that night. If we hadn’t snuck into her house and I hadn’t seen how much money she had. If I hadn’t made her cause my own. Now there was too much I wanted. And we were too damned close. It was too late. I was entangled with her in ways I couldn’t see clear of, and more important, I didn’t want to see clear of them. I would save Geneva Langley. I could save myself.

  “Trust me, Bastian,” I said quietly. “Can you do that? Just for a little while longer?”

  He hesitated. I saw his struggle. I put my hand on his arm.

  “Just a little while longer,” I said again. “And it will all be over.” I thought I had him. I truly did. But I was wrong.

  “What will be over, Bea?”

  I couldn’t answer. And so he walked away.

  Geneva

  When she came to the tent that afternoon, bearing the usual half-smashed, moist, and doughy slices of bread, I was still elated over my success with Nathan. I ate the bread so quickly I nearly choked on it.

  “You should have seen his face,” I told her. “He was terrified.”

  She was sitting on the floor, her arms around her knees. “Aloys said there was talk. People are saying that Nathan is coming undone.”

  I smiled. “Well, then it went better than even I’d supposed, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Distracted, barely audible.

  I frowned. I noticed for the first time how quiet she seemed. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. I have the next step. The next step in the plan.”

  That distracted me, as she must have known it would. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know how we can do it, but the spirit appears to Barnabus in his own bed.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “His own bed?”

  A little smile. “I told you I didn’t know how to do it. But it’s perfect, of course. Trust Sebastian to bend a plot.”

  There was a sarcasm there, and something else, something I would have questioned had I not been so caught by the plan. “Well, there’s no other choice, is there? Unless you’ve a better idea?”

  “It’s dangerous,” she said. “Nathan’s not himself.”

  “Isn’t that what we wanted?”

  “We wanted him to appear to be mad, Ginny, not to actually … be mad.”

  “I doubt he’s as far gone as all that.”

  “You haven’t seen him the way I have.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”

  Her chin came up, her dark eyes lit. “Of course not.”

  “And we don’t have much time until my father is here.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I know.”

  “What other way is there?”

  “None,” she said. “None at all.”

  And I saw again her strange mood, a kind of bleakness that seemed to have settled over her. I didn’t like it. “What happened today, Bea?”

  “It was nothing. Another argument with Sebastian. His questions are becoming impossible.”

  “It’s only for a few more days,” I reassured her. “He’ll be fine. When it’s all over and I reemerge, I can help you to smooth his feathers.”

  “I’m certain he’d like nothing better.”

  Now I heard jealousy; I was not mistaking it, and I knew I should try to assuage it. But there was a part of me that liked the fact that she was uncertain of him, even as she shared his bed and owned his heart, because it meant that I had been important to him.

  So I only said, “Remember what we intend for him.”

  “Yes. I remember.” Then she sighed. “Damn. I suppose … I must spend the night with Nathan again. And you’ll have to be waiting.”

  “I was rather hoping I never had to share his bed again.”

  “I’ll try to have him tired enough—and drunk enough—that all you’ll have to do is lie in it.”

  “Poor Bea,” I said, meaning it. “I do sympathize.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck. “At least do me a favor. While you’re waiting there, sneak into the pantry or something and have a decent meal. You aren’t one of those who makes the cook sleep in the kitchen, are you?”

  I laughed. “She has her own room at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Is she a sound sleeper?”

  “I don’t know. Strangely enough, the question has never arisen.”

  “Well, I hope for both our sakes that she is.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back. “I don’t want her waking up and raising an alarm.”

  “You can trust me to be certain of it,” I said.

  Her eyes opened. She met my gaze. “I do,” she said, and there was a wondering in her voice. “I do trust you. Funny, isn’t it, when you think of how we started? Remember that first rehearsal? Bastian told me I would regret it. And I do, you know. I regret it.”

  I told her, “I regret a great many things. I try not to think of them.”

  A half smile now, one that warmed me. “Neither do I.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Beatrice

  Another plan: Ginny said, “Go to the Rainier Club. At least they’ll know where to find him. Offer to soothe him. Offer to stay. Unless you come back here, I’ll assume he’s taken you up on it. I’ll wait until midnight. Then just unlock the bedroom door.”

  She made it all sound so damn easy, and I suppose I was glad for it too, in a way, because it meant I didn’t have to spend the night with Sebastian. I’d stopped at his tent, feeling nervous as an ingenue, and I’d been both relieved and disappointed that he wasn’t there. There were scraps of paper laying around, a pencil, and I wrote him a note telling him I was with Nathan and left it on the crate for him, and then I left. Sebastian felt like a little wound, a bruise deep in my chest that I couldn’t lose and that wouldn’t heal, and I hated that feeling. I hadn’t shared it with her, either, and that was something I couldn’t explain. Maybe because she had so much confidence now that this was all going to work, and that we’d be able to make it right. She’d made me believe it too, when I was with her, but now that we were apart, I wasn’t so certain.

  But I couldn’t think of him now. I had to think of Nathan, of how to find him, of how to convince him he needed me tonight. The Rainier Club was my first step.

  It was the bastion of men in this city, settled in the old McNaught mansion up on Fourth Street. Even before the fire, you could see its
elaborate tower from almost any point in the city, and now that the whole business district was nothing but ash, it sat there like some king holding court, unharmed, its grassy yard untouched. I’d never before done more than walk by it, and so it felt strange to go up those long, sweeping stairs and ask the doorman if Nathan Langley was about. Truthfully, I didn’t expect that he would help me. I mean, I looked like some flotsam dragged off the street, if not a vagrant then certainly a whore, and neither of those would be even close to welcome in this place, so it surprised me when the doorman tipped his hat and said, “He’s not here, Mrs. Wilkes. They had meetings all day, but he went home for the evening. He was a bit under the weather.” He smiled. “May I say I hope the Regal starts up again soon. I went to see you every week.”

  I was startled, and more than a little pleased. “We’re doing Much Ado About Nothing starting Monday. At the tent where the Regal used to be, though we’re calling it the Phoenix now.”

  His eyes lit, and that filled something inside of me, something I hadn’t realized I’d been missing. That yearning for admiration, the things that fed my vanity and my pride.

  “I’m surely happy to hear that,” he said. “I’ll be there. You can count on it.”

  It was growing late now, the cool breeze off the harbor settling into that stillness that came with the sunset. By the time I got to the Langley house, it would be dark. I was tired; it had been a long day and meant to grow longer still, but I trudged my way up First Hill, wondering how I would get past the Langleys’ maid. God knew if I were her, I’d kick me to the street quick enough. Although she’d seen me the other night, I supposed, so she already knew who I was.

  By the time I made it to the path that led to Nathan’s front door, it was as dark as I’d predicted. Still no streetlights, and still the dim yellow pulse of oil lamps in the windows. But the night was cooler, even a little chill once the breeze came up again, drying the sweat on my face and neck. I took a deep breath, gathering my courage, and went to knock upon the door.

  It wasn’t long before I heard footsteps. When the maid opened the door, I said politely, “I’m Beatrice Wilkes come to call on Mr. Langley.”

  Her expression collapsed into a scowl, and in one quick sweep her gaze took me in. “Yes, ma’am. He’s been waiting for you.” She said it in this tone that told me how little she thought of that, which didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was his knowing I would come. But before I had time to think about that, there was a flurry of footsteps behind her, racing down the stairs, and then Nathan was there, pushing her aside.

  He looked terrible. Worse than last night, worse than I’d ever seen him. He was swaying, as if he’d been drinking, and his hair looked as if he’d raked his hands through it a dozen times. His face was almost gray, and there were great shadows beneath his eyes, and I remembered what Ginny had said about his mad mother. Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be away from here, because his gaze seemed to gobble me up like a fox devouring a hen, and there was something desperate in it.

  “Bea,” he said, grabbing my arm, pulling me inside. He turned to the maid. “That will be all, Bonnie.”

  She gave me a disdainful glance and then she retreated, and Nathan closed the door. “Thank God you got my message.”

  “Your message?”

  “I sent one to Greene this evening asking for you. Didn’t you get it?”

  “Oh yes. Yes, I did,” I lied, because it made everything so easy. I made a note to thank Lucius for so promptly searching me out, the bastard. Of course, there wasn’t a message box now, and I didn’t suppose he’d march himself to the tent city, but they all knew where I was, and he could have sent Brody to find me.

  “I imagine you heard,” Nathan said.

  “Heard what?”

  “That I saw her again.” He walked distractedly toward the parlor, leaving me to follow him. He picked up a glass and splashed scotch into it—quite a bit of scotch—and he downed most of it in a gulp. At least I would be able to keep my promise to Ginny that he’d be drunk or exhausted tonight. He poured in more and gestured to it. “Would you like a drink?”

  I shook my head. “You mean you saw your wife’s spirit again?”

  “This morning. Twice. And then once at the windows of the club.”

  She’d said nothing about going to the club, and I didn’t believe she had. Nathan was fevered, talking fast. I had no doubt he was seeing things in every shadow.

  “She said she wanted vengeance. I think she won’t leave you until she has it.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Nathan said. He downed the drink completely and set the glass aside. “I was hoping, with you here, she would leave me be.”

  “I saw her last night too,” I pointed out. “I don’t think I’m much of a safe haven.”

  “Then you’ll exhaust me so I can sleep. I … these damn nightmares …”

  “What did you do to her, Nathan?” I asked him. “Why is she so bent on haunting you?”

  He turned a bleak gaze to me. “I wish I had some idea.”

  He should have been an actor; he was that good a liar. I hated him for it, how damn innocent he appeared, as if he hadn’t been scheming to put her away, as if he hadn’t still been working all those angles even after the fire.

  I had to look away, because I was afraid he would see my contempt if I didn’t, and it took me a minute to compose myself. “Well, perhaps she’ll tell you.”

  “Christ, don’t say that!” He was across the room in no time, grabbing my arm. “Don’t say that! Take it back!”

  His fingers dug hard into my arm, bruising it. “All right. I take it back.”

  “I don’t want to tempt fate.” He glanced around the room as if he expected to see her in the gently flickering light of the oil lamp.

  I didn’t like Nathan anyway, but I really didn’t like him this way, like a pocket watch wound too tight, one more turn and a click and you had a broken watch in your hands. And then I remembered that it was what we wanted, for him to be broken, for his mind to snap like that watch, and he looked near enough to it that I started to wonder what would happen to anyone standing too close. And here you are, Bea, closer than anyone.

  I tried to pull away. “Christ, Nathan, you’re hurting me.”

  His grip went slack. “I’m sorry. I … just … please don’t go. I haven’t slept.…” He put his hand to his eyes. “If I had a good night’s sleep, I would be fine.”

  So of course I was going to make certain he didn’t get much more than an hour or two. Just long enough for her to slip inside and show herself again. Just one more turn.

  “As you like,” I said. Then I smiled wickedly. “But I don’t expect you’ll get much sleep with me here.”

  He caught my gaze. “That’s what I want. Exhaust me.”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him up the stairs to his bedroom. He locked the door behind us, but he left the key there, and I told myself to remember to unlock it when he was asleep so she could get in.

  He kissed me and said, “Promise me you’ll stay,” and I told him I would, and then he lit a lamp on the bedside table and turned it down low. He looked at me, slow and admiring, and you know, I’d never seen that in him before. It made my skin crawl. I preferred him impatient and distant, where I was just a body for him to use.

  He came over to me and undressed me, and he was deliberate about it too, another strange thing. And then he undressed himself and pulled me to the bed, and though I didn’t mean to feel anything and never had with him before, the way he touched me tonight … well, he knew what to do, and he was good at it too, though I’d never seen that before now. He wasn’t the Nathan Langley I knew at all, not the selfish bastard who’d bribed me with money and candy, not the one who hurt me.

  And though I was uneasy at the change, I had to do this, and I stretched beneath his hands and thought of her, and that made it easier. I remembered what she’d said about the passion between them, and I pretended to be her.
I imagined her twisting beneath him, desiring him, and it was like a part I took on but not like that too, because I heard Sebastian’s voice in my head saying, “You became her …” and suddenly I was. I was Ginny Langley. And then it was all right that I bucked like a wild thing beneath him. And it was all right too when he made me come the way no man but Sebastian had ever done, because in my head it was not Beatrice Wilkes he was making love to, but her.

  It made it easier to do what I had promised I would do, to exhaust him. We were both sweating when we finally stopped, and he rolled off me and threw his hand over his eyes, and it wasn’t more than a few moments before he whispered, “Ginny,” as if he were half-asleep, and there was a moment where I accepted the name as mine, a moment before I remembered who I was and was ashamed. But there was no time for that now, and I pushed it away, and then his breathing became rhythmic and steady, and his hand slipped from his closed eyes.

  I lay still, waiting for his sleep to deepen, wondering when I could risk moving. Finally, he began snoring lightly. When I was certain he wouldn’t wake, I moved carefully from the bed. He shifted; his snore caught, and I froze until his breathing righted itself again. I went to the door—stark naked, but if I wanted it to seem as if her ghost had just replaced me, I couldn’t do anything about it—and unlocked it, opening it a crack, which was the signal Ginny and I had agreed on.

  The house was dark and there was no sound. The servants had gone to bed, everyone asleep but the two of us. She must have been waiting in the shadows down the hall, because she was there in moments, slipping inside, glancing at me in question and not even raising her brows at my undress. I gave her a quick little nod, and crept to the other side of the bed, Nathan’s side, where the lamp was, and drew back against the wall, waiting while she went to where I’d just been lying.

  She lay down beside him, fully clothed—the gown she’d died in, still burnt and filthy with ash and heavy with the smell of smoke. She turned onto her side, raising up on one elbow, and Nathan kept sleeping the sleep of the dead, not even snores now, and our eyes met across him and she smiled this beautiful smile, and I felt a shiver of excitement that raised gooseflesh. Then she touched his shoulder.