Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  “Hyde Park is that way.” He pointed back the way they had come. Heaven help him. He set the pace now, slower, back along Mount Street. Miss Reed walked stiffly, quivering with the suppressed energy that had sent her bounding from Trombly Place as though hell-bent to escape him.

  “I didn’t realize I was walking in the wrong direction.” The indignation and chagrin in her voice sounded disturbingly authentic. As had her avowal that her swoon during the séance was not a performance. Well, what was a medium anyway if not an actress?

  “You could have said something sooner.”

  I could have.

  “I’m glad to learn that we agree on certain points.” He smiled at her and watched with interest the way she compressed her full lips in irritation. He might come to enjoy torturing her. She was so jumpy and so desperate to contain her anxiety. It rather brought out the feline instincts. But he shouldn’t be thinking about enjoyment. He shouldn’t be savoring anything about the situation. He should be direct. Move in for the clean kill.

  “Now that it’s just the two of us … ” he said pleasantly. The two of us. Intimate friends. “We can speak frankly. Why are you living in Mrs. Trombly’s house?”

  “She asked me to,” came the ingenious reply. Miss Reed had decided to take shelter in a country mouse routine. She was making a show of looking up at the grand homes. He wouldn’t be surprised if she suddenly tugged his arm and asked him to take her to a shop to buy hair ribbons. I’ve never been behind those big, plate-glass windows before!

  “Indeed,” he said shortly.

  “You will remember, my lord”—Miss Reed flashed a quick glance in his direction—“that Mrs. Trombly and I agree on that. She brought me into her house and begged that I stay. The arrangement took me quite by surprise.”

  “What if I go and speak with Miss Seymour?” He expected to see her start in fear at this proposition, but the arrow missed its mark. Miss Reed only looked at him gravely. He wondered if it were possible that Miss Seymour was not involved. She had to be. The setup was too perfect.

  Louisa had described the scene in more detail than he cared to see it. Miss Seymour had felt a presence in the shadows—young, black eyes, black hair. When Louisa stood, sobbing out Phillipa’s name, Miss Seymour had stretched out her arms.

  Come, Phillipa. I will bring thee where no shadow stays.

  And Miss Reed had been taken, possessed, and consumed by the spirit.

  How many times had they done it before?

  “I wish you’d bring me.” Miss Reed’s voice was low and steady … and sincere. “I want to speak with Miss Seymour as well. About what she thought she saw when I … ” Miss Reed broke off then started again. “She reminded me of a vulture. Or a crow. She croaked like a crow.”

  “Crows feed on the dead.” He said it to disturb her, but she nodded as though he were raising a point she had considered.

  “I thought of that,” she said. “That was part of it. She was feeding on something. If not the shadows themselves, then on sadness. I’d never been to a séance. I only went because a girl at the boardinghouse … ” She caught herself and changed tack. “I went imagining I’d find it silly,” she said, “but I didn’t. It was different than I expected. Have you ever been to a séance?”

  “No,” he said. Her conversation disarmed him. Its searching quality. She sounded for all the world as if she were really trying to figure out what to think about it. The séance. Her subsequent employment. That didn’t fit at all with his theory about the huckster spiritualist or Miss Seymour, grand madam. “No, I haven’t.” He gave her what he hoped was an enigmatic smile. “But I have seen men walk on fire and swallow live snakes. Does that seem more outlandish to you?”

  “Where did you see these things?” she asked.

  “Cairo.” He winked at her. “Would your answer be different if I said Berkeley Square?”

  She laughed at that, a brief, halting laugh. He saw a flash of her small, white teeth. The front two angled backwards just enough for her incisors to seem slightly prominent. He found the imperfection beguiling. He found her beguiling. He hated to admit it even to himself. It was probably what she was counting on.

  “I suppose they’re equivalent,” she said, a hint of smile on her lips. “Conjuring a spirit out of a cabinet. Walking on fire. England isn’t any less bizarre than Egypt.”

  “Do you know why they’re different?” he asked softly. “The firewalker and the medium?”

  She looked at him, and the traces of laughter disappeared from her eyes. They were solemn again, round and black and wary.

  “Motive,” he said. “The firewalker is undergoing a rite of purification, a stripping away of the self to come nearer to his god. The medium is charging admission. The medium wants something from the people watching, and the firewalker wants nothing.”

  She dropped her gaze to her boots. Maybe she was imagining fire beneath them.

  “I’m going to ask this a different way,” he said. Then, as slowly as he could: “What do you want from Mrs. Trombly?”

  “I want what she said she’d give me.” Miss Reed still walked looking down, the brim of her bonnet obscuring her face. “A reference, so I can earn my own keep.”

  “That’s all?” He shook his head. Not good enough. “Miss Reed, you’ve chosen a roundabout way of getting work as a governess.”

  “I didn’t choose it.” She sounded as though her teeth were gritted.

  “I know, I know.” He tipped his head back and blinked up at the blue sky. “You just happened to fall over at the wrong time.”

  At this, her head rose and snapped toward him. Her upper lip lifted in a snarl, baring those small, crooked teeth. “That’s right.” She almost hissed it.

  “And you had no acquaintance with Miss Seymour before that night?”

  “None.” Her eyes were sparking, and he felt his own anger kindle.

  “You did not know what that night was? The significance of that night?” He’d stopped walking and was shouting down at her. A couple passing with a Cocker Spaniel on a short leather lead turned their heads and looked at him with widened eyes. Hoping to sniff out some scandal. He nearly growled at them.

  “I did not know.” Miss Reed sought his gaze and held it. With the sun’s light falling across them, her dark eyes glistened. Black pools, fathomless. And suddenly, they no longer glared defiance. They held a sorrow too deep for tears.

  “I did not know then,” she said. “I know now.”

  “What do you know?” He turned from her abruptly to hide his own response. A throng of children barreled by and forced her to step forward, brushing against him. He looked down at the curve of her cheek, the swell of her lower lip. Her lips were so red, so lush, so unexpected in that face as white as powder.

  Too red, he tried to tell himself. Like a poison berry. But he watched the corner of her mouth, fascinated. He watched those lips move as she began to speak.

  “I know Phillipa died that night, five years ago. I know she fell from a balcony and that you carried her back to Trombly Place. You sat up in the room with her all night.”

  This recital took his breath away. He didn’t want to remember it. To travel back to that night. He looked away from Miss Reed, concentrated on the everyday sights and sounds of the street. The gorgeous weather had called everybody with two hale legs, and some without, into the street. He saw a man with a wooden leg on the corner selling nuts. Charwomen and countesses alike were making their way down the thoroughfare. The handsome equipages of Mayfair’s finest, drawn by glossy horses, better fed than a good three-quarters of the citizenry, rolled toward the park with pedestrians weaving in and out in little groups, brightly clad in afternoon dresses and suits dyed blue and green and that suddenly ubiquitous shade of chemical purple.

  What a pair they made, he and Miss Reed, both in matte black, except for the glimmer of black silk at his throat, both silent, both still, locked in struggle over a ghost.

  He did not want to travel back to
that night, but he could do it so easily. He could get back there so quickly.

  Yes, he had sat up with her, gazing at her face, always so mobile, a thousand expressions flitting across it, gone cold and fixed. Gazing at the glimmer of her eyes just barely visible beneath the lids he’d pressed down. He had taken off her gloves and held her hands.

  Yes, she had fallen from a balcony. She was drunk that night. They were all drunk. There was rum in the punch, gin in the lemonade. Everywhere: glasses of sherry, claret, champagne. Clement had lit a cheroot in the ballroom, and other men had followed their host’s example, lighting cheroots, cigars, pipes, filling the house with smoke. Many lovers had quarreled that night. Tipsy spats punctuated the music. Other pairs had disappeared upstairs. The party had started late—after the opera let out—and the good little debs in their pastel silks should never have ended up there. He should have turned Phillipa around at the door. Instead, he followed her up the stairs.

  No one had seen it happen. He didn’t look for her on the balcony. He didn’t realize she’d gone in that direction. He thought she’d run downstairs. No one knew how it had happened. She might have hoisted herself up onto the balustrade as she often did and toppled over. But she was so lithe. She had such balance. Even as distraught as she’d been … racing away from him … sobbing … flinging her body about as though she wanted to punish it … would she have slipped? Could she have slipped? Phillipa, who could stand on the back of a cantering horse? Could she have fallen … if she hadn’t wanted to? If at least one little part of her hadn’t desired that spiraling moment, that leap into oblivion?

  Suddenly, he wanted Miss Reed to be genuine. He wanted her to know. He wanted her to speak the truth. He wanted her to be absolutely guileless, undesigning, no purpose whatsoever other than to act as Phillipa’s mouthpiece. He wanted her to put him out of his misery. To pronounce judgment. Exonerate him or seal his doom. He wanted it so badly he would almost, in that moment, do anything to believe in her.

  He became aware again of her slender, upright form. She was so close. Vibrating with that odd tension. The top of her bonnet came up just past his shoulder. If he lifted his hand, he could stroke the exposed curve of her cheek, brush his thumb across the ravaged flesh of her swollen lower lip. Catch her chin and lift her face, hold her still, and plunge into those eyes until he drank in their darkness, glutted himself on the black knowledge that brimmed there.

  “How did you know that?” The words caught in his throat. He hated himself for asking in that way, with that raw longing in his voice revealing his vulnerability. His desire to surrender to blind, stupid hope. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? This kind of hoax?

  Even the staunchest skeptic will banish his good sense if you can whet his need, whet it until it cuts his sanity to pieces.

  He started walking again, without warning, and she trotted to keep up. It was boorish of him, but he didn’t care. He tried to make his tone contemptuous. “How did you know? Did Phillipa tell you?”

  They were nearing Park Lane, and on the other side, Hyde Park stretched before them. Acres and acres of green hills and budding trees. Thousands and thousands of men and women, horses and dogs, carriages and phaetons. Give him a choice between Hyde Park and a country meadow, Hyde Park and a lonely Cypriot beach, Hyde Park and the rolling dunes of the Sahara, Hyde Park and just about anything … he’d take anything. Once, he hadn’t minded it. He’d made light of the posturing, the preening, the gossiping, the lords and ladies making peek-a-boo into a pastime, playing like infants at the game of seeing and being seen. Now the sight of colored parasols floating above the sward made him want to gnash his teeth. So much for starting over.

  “Of course Phillipa didn’t tell me.” Miss Reed’s matter-of-fact tone restored him to sanity. “Mrs. Trombly told me. Shall we enter here?”

  “Wherever you like.” He shrugged to underscore his indifference, although, as they crossed into the park, he realized he did, in fact, have a strong preference for where they walked. He didn’t want to go near the Serpentine, where babies were wailing in their nurses’ arms and children were shrieking over swamped sailing vessels and debutantes were milling about, entertaining delicious fantasies of whose admiring eyes were trained in their direction. He didn’t care that Miss Reed had expressed a desire to take a turn near the water. He didn’t care that he had a stale hunk of bread crumbling in his pocket. He steered them instead onto a path that led into the thickest copse of trees.

  “Oh, but I want to feed the ducks.” Miss Reed looked over her shoulder. “I suppose we can circle back to the lake?” She said it as though they really were taking a constitutional. Walking for health in the brisk, bright air. As though health mattered to people like them. The corrupt.

  He did not respond. He stalked along the path, and this time it was she who lagged behind. He glanced back at her and saw the rapid movements of her eyes. She didn’t like it, the relative desolation of the spot. She was dragging her feet. He felt malicious pleasure, knowing that alarm bells were ringing in her head. Smart girl. He waited for her where the vegetation was thickest. Here, despite all the people that surrounded them, they would be hidden from view. A fact that was not lost on her. She approached on her tiptoes, and he could tell she was trying to formulate some excuse, some compelling reason why she needed to feed those ducks right that minute. They must be so hungry. She was preparing herself to whirl and dash. She was switching her weight from leg to leg in anticipation. Pity he was so much faster. She pivoted on her heel. He caught her by the wrist before she could blink.

  “Why ‘of course’?” he demanded, flexing his arm and jerking her closer. He felt angry, irrationally angry, for that moment of weakness, that moment when he’d betrayed himself and almost sniveled in his desire to believe she really could cross between worlds and bring him succor. Her eyes were wide and uncomprehending. “Why did you say ‘of course’? Of course Phillipa didn’t tell you. Why wouldn’t Phillipa have been the one who told you? Isn’t that what you do? Receive messages from the dead? Did you not claim to Mrs. Trombly that you could speak with her?”

  “No.” She was scared now; he could feel the tremors moving through her body. Her eyes darted here and there, trying to assess her surroundings, the chance that someone would stumble upon them. He felt, suddenly, like a monster. That too was doubtless part of her act. She was playing on his sympathies. She was no fawn beset by wolves. She was the wolf. A small, silvery white wolf with a fawn’s liquid eyes. His head felt hot. He couldn’t think clearly. God, he wanted to shake her, even as he reviled himself for his loss of control.

  “I have made no claims,” she said, with surprising firmness. Grudgingly, he credited her for her strength of mind. She did not give in to the animal fear that caused her limbs to quake. “I told Mrs. Trombly that I would try to communicate with Phillipa. That I would remain open to the possibility. I promised nothing more. You have no right to harass and threaten me.”

  “I have every right to defend Mrs. Trombly.” He tightened his grasp on her wrist reflexively.

  “What right?” She flung the words at him. “The right of son? Mrs. Trombly told me what kind of son you’ve been. Did you stay by her side after Phillipa’s death?”

  He flinched. “She had her other daughters. She had her husband. She didn’t need me.” I was the one who had nobody.

  “I see.” Miss Reed yanked with her arm, but he had no intention of releasing her. “I see how Mrs. Trombly is encircled by the loving members of her family. She is nearly smothered by their fond attentions.”

  “You see nothing,” he said dully, winning out against the impulse to twist her wrist until she screamed. “I saw her whenever I passed through London. We exchanged letters. She never asked me to come back. Edwina visits. Visits often. Michael—Mr. Trombly—he was with her. It’s only a recent development that his work takes him overseas.”

  But Edwina doesn’t visit often. Louisa makes much of her visits, but they are rare and getting r
arer. With Arabella in India, there’s even less of a sense of family occasion. And Michael had absented himself even before he sailed for Brazil. He threw himself into his work after Phillipa’s death. It was his outlet and his refuge. Louisa had only the house with its empty rooms. Its silence. Could anyone blame her for chasing a phantom?

  “She wasn’t alone,” he said softly. “I didn’t leave her alone.” It was his own conscience he was arguing with. He knew Miss Reed could hear it in his voice, because she stopped tugging and looked at him with something like compassion in her eyes. That was worse than anything. He was terrorizing her, and she looked at him with pity.

  He let go of her arm. She stepped rapidly back, but there was a tree behind her and she couldn’t back up any farther. The slatted light that filtered through the sparse crowns—only a few fresh, young leaves had yet unfurled—emphasized the chiaroscuro of her features: black eyes, white skin. If he still painted, he would have painted her like that. Pressed against the tree in light and shadow. Nude, though. No bonnet. A priestess of Avalon. No. A nymph. Her red mouth hinted at bacchanalia.

  Maenad in repose. That’s what he would call it. Thank the devil he’d stopped painting.

  He took a step toward her. “What happened to your lip?”

  She didn’t expect this question. A gloved finger flew to the ruby scabs. Then she covered her mouth with her hand. He took another step toward her, and that did it. He couldn’t get any closer. She swallowed hard. Lowered her hand.

  “I bit it.”

  “Hmmm.” He laid his right hand on the tree to one side of her head. Her eyes flew to his arm, a thick black bar prohibiting any move in the rightward direction. Slowly, deliberately, he laid his left hand on the tree to the other side of her head. Now her eyes flew to that arm. He leaned into the tree, leaned over her. She was trapped in the cage of his arms. She looked back and forth, from one arm to the other, frantically. As he’d intended her to.