by Baird Wells
“Because you weren’t thinking about it, at the end.” His smile was faint and hung shyly at one side of his mouth. “I’d distracted you.”
Her eyes fell from his lips to the well-made shape of his hands, and she was silent. Drink and confusion prevented her from weighing out any hidden meaning, and risked damning her if she tried.
James palmed his thread and needle case. She grabbed a fistful of his sleeve when he reached for his bag.
“Don’t go; not yet. I don’t think Margaret is at home. Sit with me a few minutes longer.”
He finished putting away his things and then rotated his chair so that they were seated side by side.
“I don’t hate men,” she offered when he didn’t speak, countering an accusation she’d heard more times than she could count.
“I have never perceived that you do.”
“I’m not out to browbeat anybody.”
His laugh was tired. “Now that I would argue over.” When she frowned, he laughed again. “You’re persistent. You don’t browbeat.” He turned in his chair and leaned back, seeming to consider her. “If you’re defending yourself, or asking if I approve of your activities –”
“I am not asking your approval.” She wanted it, wanted him to believe in her cause, but she wouldn’t remold herself or apologize to get it.
“Good. But if you’re asking about my support…” James exhaled with weight. “I’m a doctor. Proud men jibber and sob at a fatal diagnosis; tough men bawl like babies at a broken limb. The chronically ill are tempered to empathy and compassion, or acute bitterness for their healthy neighbor. I see the humanness, the equality of the sexes and ages, the colors. Death is my fair-weather companion.” His laugh was black, and Hannah saw Emily reflected in a dampness that pooled in the corners of his eyes. “And he is the equalizer of all mankind.” James straightened, composing himself as he went. “Yes, I think your cause is just, and justified. We die the same, and we ought to live so, too.”
She didn’t want to say thank you. It felt wrong to thank someone for speaking the truth. But James had done more than that, somehow, venturing into gray areas he needn’t enter if he wished to show only thin support. Drained and bruised, incapable of more complicated exploration, Hannah rested fingers on his sleeve and gentled his hand.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Saturday brought the allegedly happy occasion of Irena’s birthday. James wouldn’t deem the celebration of anyone’s birth otherwise, but having witnessed Simon and Irena’s treatment of Elizabeth, their treatment of Hannah, and each other, he chose to remain neutral on the topic. He would have declined the invitation out-of-hand except that Hannah would be there. Her presence anywhere had become siren-song enough, but he had other reasons. A black spot had grown inside his breast days before, and now it festered, forcing James to acknowledge the secret he’d kept from her. However he managed Simon from this night forward, whatever esteem he lost in Hannah’s eyes, he couldn’t go on hiding what he’d been asked to do.
He stalked the ballroom and endured three dances before he decided that it was safe to engage Hannah. He’d kept his distance since the rally, since Simon had ranted to him over lobster rolls about the incompetence of the London police, and the spineless inaction of asylum administration. James, he had muttered with a mouth as pinched from lemon as a distaste for his admission, was really the only person on whom he could rely. A dubious honor, but one he’d come to appreciate since the picket as giving him leverage where Hannah was concerned. He had influence on Simon’s treatment of her, but it came with an awareness of Simon’s scrutiny. He hadn’t bothered attending this evening’s celebration, an absence acknowledged by Irena’s laughing louder, drinking more champagne, and displaying her bosom more than any other lady in attendance. Simon might be absent, but as always, he had eyes everywhere.
James was under no illusion of going unnoticed by those agents. Hannah, breaking all the rules that society had set out for her, was laced into rich dove-gray silk that revealed bare forearms, and a wispy white marabou feather around a neckline that was anything but mournful. Her gown’s fabric glowed like a pearl in evening light, and even in the room’s more shadowed corners there was no missing her. Every eye, conspiring or not, would settle on her in the course of the night.
He had caught Hannah’s glances with plenty of his own, aware by degrees of a thaw inside for days now, but fiercer tonight. She’d stirred an exhibitionism in him; he wanted her to see him truthfully and was aching to show himself. Her impatience was growing, too; her foot-tapping, and he watched her confusion fall with her brow into frustration, but didn’t risk more than a curt nod at first.
She was understandably chilly when he at last sought her out near the ballroom doors, and reached for her hand, dropping his voice. “You’d be right to make me cool my heels, but I need every moment of this dance.”
If Hannah understood she didn’t show it, but she took his hand without hesitation. He held his tongue as he towed her along, and until they had taken the second turn and he could draw them a bit away from the other couples. “I’ve waited for days to tell you something, but we are never alone, never unwatched.”
Hannah cocked her head and beamed up at him, as though he’d just solved a riddle she’d answered ages ago. “Which is why you had better hide that scowl and smile,” she warned. “And be hasty; we have two minutes left.”
“You’re the only woman in London who can make gray silk look fetching.” His compliment was sincere, but not his intention. He hoped it paved the way for him to confess.
She dropped her eyes and, he took pleasure in the fluster she tried to hide behind her words. “That’s what’s been tormenting you? I’d hate to see you with anything truly pressing on your conscience.”
Her lips twitched at his exasperated huff. “Then look closely at me now.” He loosened his shoulders and heeded her caution about how short their times was growing, infinitely shorter depending on how she took what he’d say next. When she arched a brow, he filled his lungs with breath and courage. “Simon has employed me to spy on you. Since that first dinner.”
Her left arm tightened and she stiffened under his hand. “So that was what he meant, ‘wolves circling’.
James didn’t understand and didn’t ask, watching her for any hint of his fate. Her eyes set over her shoulder, and she didn’t speak, a silence made urgent by the waltz’s passing notes. He counted out the steps, minded the nearby couples all by rote, because his full attention rested on Hannah. “One more dance,” he begged. “Give me a moment longer to explain.”
“You’ve had countless moments.” Her lips barely parted to free the words, and his heart sunk. “Even I understand the balance, and how much I may flaunt it before real consequences come to play. I can’t spare you another dance yet.”
He led her into a last graceful whirl. “Walk slowly with me then, back to your seat.” She kept her face canted away, but he still caught the struggle playing out there. When he was sure he’d snap, she spared him with a lone nod. He claimed her arm and aimed them to the ballroom’s far side, so they could make a long half-circle back.
“I haven’t told him anything,” he promised, granting nods only when blatant notice from an acquaintance required it.
Her smile was barren. “Simon goes without something he’s asked you to fetch for him?” She tsk’d. “I find that impossible to believe.”
“I tell him plenty, of my own invention. I’ve never once broken your confidence.”
She stopped and faced him, freed a little by an empty corner just passed the fireplace. Her expression was one of sadness, as though she regretted how backward he was. “You have been doing just that all along.”
He hadn’t seen it that way, insulated by a belief that his hands were clean if he didn’t let them touch. “Simon has paid me to make visits, but that’s not why I come, not even why I came the first time. He only gave me an excuse to further an acquaintance which I already wis
hed to further.”
It was Hannah who took his arm and started them back around the room, and James knew without a doubt that she was sending him away. “Perhaps I shouldn’t fault you for ending up in Simon’s grasp, but I do. I lay some blame on everyone who doesn’t fight back.” Her voice was barely above a graveyard hush. “Even myself. Greatly to your credit, though, you didn’t submit. I respect your efforts, even if your methods annoy me.” James felt a first glimmer of hope, but not enough that he was encouraged to speak and squash it with clumsiness.
“What did he ask of you?”
“To get your confession, or at least find your guilt.”
Her smile now was genuine, malicious. “My husband. That’s what he wanted from you.”
“Mm. Simon wants me to discover how you murdered him.”
She snorted. “In the way that any woman kills a man: slowly, and out of spite.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You should,” she said, forgetting to temper her expression. “It’s the only true part of the whole story.”
He ignored the remark. “I’m going to give him notice, tell him I haven’t been able to discover anything.”
“No!” she hissed. “No. Go right on as you always do. Margaret will be out on Friday afternoon. Call then and I can explain.” She gripped his fingers. “But don’t betray a thing until then.”
He made his smile bland as white pudding and bowed now that they’d reached her chair. When she curtsied, he glimpsed stitches just visible beneath her clever arrangement of curls, and tasted guilt. “How is your head?”
She bowed a little, batting her lashes in a demure show that strained his ribs with caged, relieved laughter. “Set on straight, despite popular opinion.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he walked her back to her seat. “I’m so sorry, for not telling you.” It was as far as he could apologize and not expose the seedy edges of his fascination with her.
Hannah fanned them both in wide sweeps, intoxicating him. “Thank you. And anyway, I’m angry but I can’t fault you for wanting to know the truth.”
“I wasn’t even trying to find it.” His laughter escaped, full and sincere. “You made me forget to look.”
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hannah still couldn’t believe her good luck at Margaret’s going out alone for the afternoon, a rare and precious occurrence. It had seemed like fortune, but a relaxed silence that followed her departure made space for Hannah’s nerves to stretch out, billow up, and then fold back to suffocate her. She did nothing between the time Margaret left and the time James was expected except pace and fall into and start up out of different chairs. What she was on the verge of confessing she had never admitted to another soul.
She paced ruts in the floor under Mrs. Delford’s wide eyes and raced for the door against all propriety when a knock finally came. She threw it open and looked over James head-to-toe, and then leaned out to see up and down the street before she let him in. “Margaret is out for the afternoon,” she murmured, taking his coat, “but I have no idea how long she’ll be gone.”
“I have a fair guess,” he said, peaking a brow and stealing her breath. “Her employer may have made that known to me.”
“Goodness, what utility you have,” she teased.
“No. Just advanced warning.” They went into the parlor, where she locked the door as was her habit, earning an amused smile from James.
She sat, folded her hands, and fidgeted. Something in his face stopped her, and she looked him over until he cocked his head. “I was just thinking of that first night we met, at Meadowcroft,” she said.
His adam’s apple bobbed and he nodded. “I think of it often. Each time I wake to see another sunrise, in fact.”
His words pierced her heart, and she squeezed shut her eyes and drew in a breath to pull back her tears. “You are the only person left on earth who remembers Emily as she really was. I certainly don’t. Not our parents; I don’t think they’ve ever known either of us, just knew what they wished us to be. You have to keep going, for her sake.”
“Emily is gone,” he said bitterly. “I don’t think any of this is for her sake.”
“Then for my sake!” Admitting her fault, she shot up from the chair. “Because I need you in the most selfish way. I don’t know my sister, and now I never can!” She panted and hung her head to avoid his wide gray eyes, and deflated back into her seat. “I should have come home; even when she was little. But my parents made it clear that my rebellious nature would be harmful. It probably would have been, not to Emily’s character but to the artificial peace she enjoyed with them, which I never did.” She looked down, trying to hide more tears. “And so I stayed away.”
“She thought of you,” he rasped, head hung down with elbows on his knees, his hands clasped as if it were the only thing keeping him tethered to the world. “From time to time, but more after we knew about the baby. I think that’s when it finally settled for her, that she was a woman with her own household and could do as she pleased.”
“She wrote me, to tell me, and asked me to come. I kept thinking I would just wait until the baby came, and maybe be an extra pair of hands to you both. I spent too much of myself on Simon and not enough on Emily.”
“We can comb all sorts of regrets from the past. It’s not as though you were sitting idly, neglecting her. It sounds as though you had trouble enough here.”
He was the voice of reason, of comfort for a change. It surprised her, not because she thought him callous, but because she assumed he was still too wounded. Hannah closed her eyes and absorb what he’d said, feeling her posture relaxed a fraction at the idea that maybe she didn’t always have to blame herself. They sat together in silence, but when she looked at James, worry was etched on his face.
“He’s certain of proving your guilt. Simon thinks I can reckon it out, or that you’ll confess to me.”
“For once, he’s correct.” Her hint of serenity faded. She settled back and smiled at the glimpse James had given her of the cards in Simon’s hand. “I have confessed. I told you that I killed my husband.”
“No more games,” he chided. “No riddles. Tell me what you mean.” There was gravel in his rich voice that rasped her flesh and sent a shiver up her back.
She got up, went to a cabinet near the door, and took out a long cordial decanter, high necked and globe-bottomed like a genie’s habitat, filled with a ruby syrup. She poured a glass of the raspberry cordial and tossed it back, shuddered at its dangerous sweetness, and poured another for herself and one for James.
“My story is not a new or interesting one,” she began, handing him the glass and settling deep in her chair. “Gregory was older, much older, and rich and sophisticated. He made interesting conversation. My parents approved of him, and in the course of two waltzes and a weekend party at his estate, I was in love. Not that it mattered if I weren’t; my father would have ramrodded the marriage into place one way or another.”
James took a sip and puckered, at the cordial or the story she couldn’t guess.
“While we were courting, he listened to me, to my ideas and opinions. He seemed so charmed by them, but now I wonder if he was just patronizing me. Once the vows were spoken, he didn’t laugh, didn’t listen. He cut off my conversation, and worried over my ‘exhausting myself’ with masculine concerns.” She shrugged. “Everything from that point follows the first, second, and third acts to form. My virginity and inexperience bored Gregory, who praised my virtue even as he disdained my want of experience, and tried to dress and touch me like a whore. Sex with him perplexed me, his rutting and huffing and pressing his sweat into me.”
The discomfort lining James's face, the redness of his cheeks, almost quelled her. But once she’d started, a fermented pressure of bitterness wouldn’t let her stop. “Sometimes he groaned and rolled off and left the room without a word, and sometimes it seemed he gave up without satisfaction and stormed out under a cloud of vu
lgarity.” Hannah flinched to think of it: lying stiffly on her back and twisting a fistful of the quilt beneath her, breathing through her mouth because she couldn’t bear the fumes of his cologne and hair cream, his thick breaths painting her breasts. Wishing he would touch her with a gentle hand, longing for him to cup and cradle her or spare a kiss at least. She pushed past her old disappointment.
“So, I should have been quick to wonder, after a few years, when his visits all but ended. I didn’t even pause when he insisted it would be good for me to have a companion, a lady’s maid. But I was twenty-three and lacking the education I received later.”
“Margaret,” James concluded, and she nodded.
“It’s comical now, how hard I tried to be a companion to her. Holding up the whole conversation, or making sure she was taken to the best dinners and parties, and getting mostly cold silence in return.” She swallowed and wondered if she would ever stop feeling sick at the memory. “I went out one afternoon for tea and to shop. But I felt unwell and, by the time I arrived, I turned right around and came home.”
“Hannah,” he whispered.
“I was furious enough to spit fire! I threw open the door on them and hurled everything in reach at her bare backside, huddled over him while he shouted empty placation. And then I stormed out on the most righteous pinnacle of fury and went straight to my parents at Braburn. My father would set the whole thing right, I was certain.”
She shrugged and tossed up her hands, because the result had been almost too ridiculous for words. “They were mortified that I had raised my voice to my husband and were shamed that I had thrown things. My father led me, sobbing and begging, by the arm back out to my carriage and told me to get back in and go home. The trip was long enough, he told me, that I would have ample time to think of an apology. My mother pleaded softly around us as he dragged me out, for me to think about how I could better please Gregory so it didn’t happen again. And for me to be quiet, so that Emily didn’t hear the fuss.”
