Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  “What all mediums do,” said Daphne. “She uses her mystical powers to communicate with the dead.” Her lips curved into her habitual smile, the teasing smile of a society flirt who wants to insinuate that she and her interlocutor are somewhat above the rest of the company. You and I know better, of course. But her eyes were still wide, and her smile slipped. “No one has ever heard of her. She doesn’t have a following.”

  He made a choked sound of disbelief.

  “Laugh all you want. There are quite a few very famous mediums in London. Americans mostly. You don’t have to subscribe to newsletters.” She threw Spiritual Magazine onto the table, where it blanketed the lemon tart. “You can read about them in the society pages. They’re popular at parties.”

  “She’s American?”

  “No.” Daphne tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. He had never known her to fidget. Her movements had always been so sinuous, so practiced. She tried to smile again, but its falsity must have struck even her because she abandoned the effort. “I told you, she has nothing to do with all of that. She’s not established as a medium. She’s a non-entity. A woman from some backwater. Very shy, said Louisa. Not the sort who would ever go in for a spectacle. It can be a spectacle, you know.”

  He felt his patience thinning. “And how did Louisa come by this blushing damsel, this modest mystic who avoids spectacle but practices the dark arts in secret for a set fee? Did she find her mooning over a grave in Cornwall?”

  Daphne’s fingers now traced figure eights on the upholstery. She was watching them describe their unvarying loops. “She was at Miss Seymour’s last séance,” she said to her fingers. “Miss Seymour called Phillipa down from the shadows, and the woman sat bolt upright then toppled over and shook, and Miss Seymour held her down and felt Phillipa pass into her. Mrs. Wheatcroft was there, and she said it was undeniable. She got chills from it.”

  “Mrs. Wheatcroft is a twit,” he said. “I could rap on her skull with my own knuckles on Midsummer’s Eve and convince her it was the Ghost of Christmas Past.” Dear God but he felt the desire to rap on somebody’s skull growing stronger within him. “She’s exactly the type I’d imagine goes to these séances.”

  “All types of people go.” Daphne frowned. “Louisa went. Would you claim that she is a twit?”

  “No.” He put a hand on his forehead. “Of course not. But she’s vulnerable. She’s … ” She’s lonely and miserable. That too was partly his fault. He should never have gone away. He should have weathered the storm and been a son to her.

  “Louisa and I discussed it.” The drumming began again—Daphne beating a march on the chair. Maybe she was transmitting a message from one of the old generals whose likenesses stared down at them. “Yesterday. She called in the morning. She feels that the woman, the medium, will help Phillipa. She trusts her.”

  His exclamation carried him forward. “Trusts her!” He didn’t care that he was shouting. That he was looming over Daphne threateningly and he was not a small or gentle-looking man. “Trusts who? Who is she? Where is she from? What kind of woman hires herself out to channel another woman’s dead daughter? A fortune hunter. A liar. A shill. A prostitute who realizes she can wheedle more out of genteel women appealing to their sentiments than she can out of men appealing to their … ”

  He choked off the tirade before it devolved into a stream of vulgarity. His blood rushed hot and cold in his veins. The slender woman, the woman in black at the harpsichord … Was she Louisa’s medium? Did she spend her waking hours in the music room playing Bach on the harpsichord like Phillipa’s very ghost? Tormenting Louisa. Tormenting him. He shouldn’t have barked at her. He should have forcibly ejected her from the house.

  “You think she’s a fraud?” Daphne’s face mingled too many emotions for him to decipher them all. Relief was among them. Also fear. “Of course, she may be. But … ” She swallowed. “Spirits linger when they have something they want to communicate. And Phillipa … ” She broke off again, licking her lips. Her eyes seemed too bright, almost feverish. “What does Phillipa have to tell us? What do you think she’s come back to say?”

  He stared at her dumbly. This was Daphne, not some eighty-year-old woman who got the vapors if someone sneezed in church. If the medium claimed she’d received a message from Phillipa, would Daphne believe it? Would the whole damn ton believe it? This medium, this shy country lass, posed a distinct threat. What would stop her from revealing any number of secrets attributed to Phillipa’s spirit, the more scandalous the better? She would certainly gain a following then.

  What if one of those secrets was true?

  The idea struck him with the force of a blow. What if she knew? What if she wasn’t just a hapless fraud who had stumbled onto an excellent opportunity, but a calculating blackmailer?

  “I must be going,” he said. “Give my regards to Ben.” He turned so smartly the Bennington forbears might have smiled approval. But the painted mouths were fixed for eternity in those grim lines. Unmoving. Silent. As they should be.

  “I was a ninny, Sid,” said Daphne, following him into the hall. “Wait for Ben at least. He’ll be back any minute. You’re planning on barreling over there right now in a rage, aren’t you? Sid … ”

  But he was walking so fast the butler, almost running, poor man, could not beat him to the door. He let himself out.

  Chapter Six

  Ella let the book drop into her lap. She could see the brilliant blue of the sky from the window. What she felt for the sun—it was like hunger, or thirst. She rose from the chair and paced the bedchamber. She had to leave the house.

  Before she knew what she was about, she’d pulled on boots and gloves and flung a black cashmere shawl over her readymade bombazine gown. Her fingers fumbled with the strings of her bonnet. Urgency made her clumsy, giddy.

  She stepped out into the hall.

  “Miss?” At the sound of the voice so close behind her, she spun around, swallowing hard to stifle a gasp. Lizzie, the maid, was looking at her narrowly, light eyebrows knit together. Wisps of blond hair had strayed from beneath her mobcap. She was holding a duster close to her chest, like a shield.

  Ella tried to smile. She nodded at the maid and turned again to continue down the hall, but Lizzie bounded forward and was in front of her in a flash.

  “Miss,” said Lizzie, “I heard you the other day. In the music room.”

  “Oh,” said Ella, trying not to flush like a guilty child. “Yes. It’s a wonderful instrument.” She paused. “Venetian.” And then she asked, with studied indifference: “Does Mrs. Trombly play?”

  “I’ve never known Mrs. Trombly to play,” said Lizzie skeptically. That look of surprise—it was habitual, perhaps.

  “And her daughters?”

  “The oldest was off and married by the time I started,” said Lizzie. “I didn’t know Miss Edwina to play, either.” She hesitated. “It was Miss Phillipa who played.”

  Enough, Ella told herself. Don’t pry any further. What do you even hope to discover? And for what purpose?

  The afternoon sun wouldn’t wait. It would sink in the sky if she didn’t go out to meet it. But before she could move, Lizzie was speaking again, speaking in a rush, with the same momentum that carried her leaping down the halls.

  “She was a right one for it,” said Lizzie. “Miss Phillipa. She put all the other ladies to shame with their plinking and warbling. There was musicales held in the house and all the fashionable people rolling up in their carriages and the kitchen sending out rum punch by the gallon and fresh strawberries and pastries filled with chocolate, and Miss Phillipa making the prettiest racket anybody ever heard, and her being so beautiful, too, that all the gentlemen fell in love with her and sent so many flowers they didn’t fit in the house and had to be brought away and handed around at the charity school.”

  Lizzie blinked at Ella, and Ella blinked back, astounded.

  “Course I was never there,” said Lizzie. “It was before I started.”


  “But someone told you about it.”

  Lizzie stared at her like she was daft. “How else would I know about it, clear as day, like I described it? Or do you think everyone gets pictures sent into their head by the spirits like you, miss?”

  There was no way of pretending this last wasn’t meant as an impertinence, so Ella remained silent, taking the maid’s measure.

  “Sorry, miss,” said Lizzie, crossly. She wasn’t sorry for what she’d said, it was obvious, but she must have realized there was a chance that she should be sorry, or that Mrs. Trombly might see it that way if Ella brought the remark to her ear.

  “Think nothing of it.” Ella spoke coldly and, giving a brief nod, started again down the hall. She wouldn’t have minded if a closer natural sympathy existed between her and the maid—her only age-mate in the house—but she couldn’t ignore Lizzie’s hostility. And her pride forbade currying favor.

  “Miss.” Lizzie moved so quickly she was again between Ella and the stairs. “What’s it like to be dead?”

  Ella’s breath departed, and her chest hitched before it came back. Lizzie’s pale irises washed into the whites, and the black pupils bored into her.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Ella refused to look away, but she wished fervently that some new impetus would send the maid leaping in another direction. But Lizzie inched closer to her, eyes fixed.

  “If you can talk with Miss Phillipa, and Miss Phillipa is dead,” said Lizzie, “you must have asked her. I’ve so wanted to know all my life.” She spoke faster and faster, inching closer and closer. “Reverend Cotter says I shouldn’t fear it, but I do fear it, and you trapped her soul in your body and it made you fall down and look so awful and ghastly pale that I can’t help but think it is as fearful as I’ve imagined, like starting up at night with a weight on your chest and you can’t breathe, but then the air never comes, and the feeling goes on and on and on like that forever.”

  Lizzie had come so close that Ella could smell the sour milk on her breath and see where the eyelashes rooted in her pinkened lids.

  “You can tell me, miss,” whispered Lizzie. “I’d rather know, I think, than keep pretending, if there’s no angels and just the dark and not breathing.”

  “I can’t tell you,” said Ella, stunned. She wanted to push the maid away or run past her, escape the fetid breath, the black, pinprick eyes.

  “Well.” Lizzie skipped back from her with a little swish of her skirts. “If you can’t, or you won’t, it’s all the same to me. The way I see it, you’re the one who’s pretending. You want to pretend to Mrs. Trombly, instead of earning your money by the sweat of your brow like an honest woman. I know about your kind, miss. You put on airs and stand by the harpsichord like you’re Miss Phillipa in the flesh, but you’re not fooling me, miss, and if you tell Mrs. Trombly I said so, then I won’t thank you for that either. I only say so because she’s a kind mistress and doesn’t deserve to be taken in by a spirit-talker who doesn’t know anything about the state of being dead, as if you could have spirits without the dead, my word.” And she bounded off.

  Ella took a deep breath, then another. She felt shaken, both by the maid’s intensity and disdain, and by her question. She had often feared that death was like the darkness Lizzie described. Like the darkness that came from time to time and swallowed her. She had often feared that she did know what being dead was like. And it was ghastly indeed. Maybe she should race after Lizzie.

  “Yes,” she’d say when she caught her. “You’re right, Lizzie, yes. Yes, it’s dark, and you can’t draw the air in your lungs and you’re alone, more alone than you could ever imagine. That’s exactly what it’s like.”

  That would be cruel, though. Lizzie thought she wanted to know, but she didn’t really. Anyone who already bore the burden of such knowledge knew better.

  She wouldn’t wish her lot on anyone. A walk. A walk was very much in order.

  It was as Ella came down the stairs that she heard it. A voice. Male. Angry. Not loud, but low, urgent. It was coming from the sitting room.

  She knew at once. It was the man from the other day. Isidore. Mrs. Trombly was right. He’d come back. He was talking to Mrs. Trombly in the sitting room. Saying what?

  She stopped and gripped the banister. The front door was yards away but might have been miles. She would have to pass the sitting room to reach it. Impossible. She turned and stole noiselessly up the stairs. She would return to her bedchamber, come down later, and try to walk in the early evening. She gathered up her skirts, almost running.

  “Miss Reed!” Mrs. Trombly called to her just as she reached the second floor. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Would you join us in the sitting room?”

  She didn’t wait for Ella to respond but turned and preceded her into the room. When Ella entered, Mrs. Trombly smiled at her faintly. Her visitor was sitting on the love seat, but he stood immediately, unsmiling, tall and lean, in black boots, black trousers, black coat, his hair black, his face darkly tanned. Now that she saw him lit by the afternoon sun that spilled through the opened shutters, she had to draw her breath. This man—it was as though he drew all the color from the room. The room faded out. Ella could see nothing but that vibrant black figure. A fragment of poetry rose in her mind. Something she’d read with her Papa.

  No light; but rather darkness visible

  By visible darkness, that was how one could see in hell.

  Yesterday, this man had gripped her with hands of steel, held her as though he wanted to break her bones for daring to touch Phillipa’s harpsichord. Get out, he’d said, and he’d meant the music room, Trombly Place, London, the world. There was no denying that now. He wanted her to disappear. She could feel the hate rolling off of him.

  This man was dark. He was dangerous. She wished she could grab something, grip the back of the blue damask sofa, but she knew from her dealings with Alfred that she could not display weakness. Predators respond to fear, give chase the moment they sense impending flight. This man was nothing like Alfred, but he was also a predator. She stood as tall as she could, spine stiffened. Then he was gliding toward her, his tread silent, lethal, and she saw his eyes catch the light.

  Not black. Blue. Midnight blue, shadowed by the black sweep of his lashes. The eyes of a fallen angel.

  He was more than dangerous. He was the devil himself.

  “Miss Reed.”

  His voice was smoke and velvet, harsh and soft. It took her a moment to remember that she was Miss Reed, that “Reed” was the alias she’d given Mrs. Trombly.

  “Yes.” She could have cursed herself as soon as she said it. Yes, I’m Miss Reed. Could she sound any less convinced? She felt exposed, as though the blue lightning of his eyes had turned her dress to cinders, made her flesh glow transparent as candle wax. She felt he could see the dark shadows of her bones and read every lie in her heart. This man was not credulous like Mrs. Trombly, vague and dreamy and eager to pretend she was a conduit for family ghosts. He looked like he wanted to crush her beneath his boot and summon the maid to scrub the stain out of the carpet.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She curtsied, a rigid, little dip. Don’t show fear. Don’t show fear. You’ve done nothing wrong. You are in this house at Mrs. Trombly’s request. This man projected dominance. It was his height, his muscular grace, the arrogance of his features, which were slightly too large, too brutal. It was as though a face sketched along fine, aristocratic lines had been gone over by a thick charcoal. His nose was aquiline but thickened at the bridge—perhaps by a blow; his cheekbones were high and stark, eyes deep set, lips full and sneering, strong chin deeply cleft. His hair was true black, no chestnut highlights, no auburn, and thick and coarse and too wild to be fashionable. He seemed the master of the house. As though it were his right to decide what to do with her.

  He stopped before her and sketched a brief, ironic bow. A lock of hair fell across one eye, and he pushed it back with a large hand of startling beauty. His fingers lo
oked strong, but they were exquisitely shaped, long and elegant. He could make wringing necks into an art form.

  “Miss Reed, allow me to introduce Viscount Blackwood.” Mrs. Trombly, with her graying hair and her lavender silk gown and faded beauty, seemed like an apparition next to this bold, black figure. Scarcely there.

  Viscount Blackwood. Isidore Blackwood.

  His presence was overpowering. The hate that rolled from him had a black undertow, hot and inexorable. A current that made her fight to stand her ground. She wanted to sway into him. Dear Lord, her palms were sweating inside her gloves. Her pulse quickened.

  “Mrs. Trombly and I have been discussing you, Miss Reed.” The viscount smiled, a lazy, predatory smile. His teeth were even and blindingly white against that sun-darkened skin. “What a remarkable power you possess.”

  Ella kept silent, aware that he was toying with her, prepared to pounce if she uttered the wrong word. They’d been arguing about her; that’s what he meant. Mrs. Trombly had claimed she’d lost him as a son, but he was certainly acting the part of a son. He wanted to protect Mrs. Trombly from her. She supposed it was laudable. She wished she could explain to him that she meant no harm.

  She said only: “Mrs. Trombly is very kind.”

  “She is,” he replied, narrowing his brilliant eyes.

  Ella wondered if he was about to unsheathe his claws, denounce her a charlatan and demand some proof of her ability, or if Mrs. Trombly’s gentle presence would restrain him.

  The look he gave her was frankly insulting. “Mrs. Trombly is too kind.”

  This last made Ella narrow her own eyes. She returned his look with as much scorn as she could manage. Too kind. Alfred had said the same thing about her papa.

  The thought of Papa’s kindness made her heart throb now. It gave her the strength to answer the man who stood before her, contempt in every line of his face. She looked Viscount Blackwood in the eye.

  “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as too much kindness, my lord,” she said. “The world is ever in short supply.”