The Curse of Lord Stanstead

by Mia Marlowe

  “Good evening, Miss Darkin,” the boy said as soon as he stepped down from the carriage. A wide grin split his thin face. “I am so glad to see that you are feeling better. To you, I shall dedicate a nocturne.”

  “You will not be playing this evening,” she said evenly. “I know who you are.”

  His grin faded. “What do you think you know?”

  “You are the ASP. Your very touch is poison. You killed the Earl of Stanstead, and now you mean to do harm to His Royal Highness.”

  “Even if you are correct, you cannot stop me.” Paschal curled his lip and an old soul peered out at her through his young eyes. “No one will believe you. No one will help you.”

  Cassandra felt heat building inside until it threatened to explode. A ring of fire erupted around them, enclosing her and Paschal in its circle. “As you can see, I don’t need anyone’s help.”

  Fortunately, his carriage effectively blocked the flames from the footmen waiting by the Pavilion’s portico and all the other concertgoers were already inside. Paschal’s driver seemed frozen in shock as he watched his master and Cassie in the fiery circle.

  “Impressive.” The boy walked toward her. “So that is your secret, Cassandra, the one nobody will believe. You are linked to the flames.”

  With each step, Cassandra tightened the circle around them until it was only ten feet in diameter. The flames flared to shoulder height. Whatever else happened, she couldn’t allow him to escape.

  “Lord Stanstead was a mistake,” Paschal said. “He did it to himself. He never should have forced that handshake on me. Hand to hand is always the most effective, you see. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I was not prepared. The sudden contact sucked a couple of decades from him before I could pry myself free.”

  Cassie frowned at him in confusion. His baffling talk of hand to hand and sucking decades made her head pound fiercely. “What are you?”

  “I am a time thief.” He sketched an ornate bow that would have been more at home in a previous century. “I take life force from others and add it to myself, usually in small increments. When I stroked your hair, for instance, I doubt I shaved off more than a month or two of your life,” he said as if shortening someone’s life by any amount of time was a small matter. “How old do you think I am?”

  “By appearance, I’d say ten years old. No more than twelve, certainly.”

  Paschal shook his head. “Closer to twelve hundred. I was born in a little village near Constantinople during the reign of the emperor Heraclius. Before anyone realized a direct touch on my skin could siphon away years, my parents and siblings had been reduced to slobbering fools, their life forces stolen. When they all died, the people of the village left me exposed to the elements so that I would die, too.” His face twisted into a mask of fury and hurt. “I didn’t mean to do it. I most certainly could not help it. I was born this way, and they tried to kill me for it.”

  Against her better judgment, she was moved by his story, but she didn’t allow the fire surrounding them to die down. “How did you survive?”

  “Some brothers from a nearby a monastery found me. After a good deal of trial and error and more than a few early deaths, they discovered a way to care for me without direct contact. Once I was able, I left them so as not to endanger them further. Mine has not been an easy existence,” he said. “I must reinvent myself constantly to avoid suspicion. While I grow mentally, I have never been able to mature physically past the age you see me now.”

  Twelve hundred years of accumulated knowledge and experience. No wonder Paschal was such an incredible pianist. He might well have begun playing when the first clavichord was invented in the 1400s. His Grace would definitely be intrigued.

  “I mentioned my friend, the Duke of Camden to you before,” Cassandra said. “He makes it a practice to help people who are different.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes, like me. Like you, too. Perhaps His Grace can find a way for you to grow to the appearance of manhood. That would surely make your life easier.”

  “No doubt, but why should I give up any years of my life just to appear older?”

  Paschal had more than a millennia under his belt, yet he didn’t want to surrender a mere decade or so. Cassandra decided to let that matter drop. His Grace would know what to do about it.

  “Why are you planning to harm the Prince Regent?” she asked.

  “Because certain people who don’t want to see the House of Hanover continue on the British throne have paid me quite a lot to make sure that the Prince of Wales does not succeed his mad father.” He made a shrugging gesture that was purely Gallic. “Why else?”

  “Who would do such a thing?”

  “Traitors are always ones whom no one would suspect, but I am not political in the slightest. You cannot blame me for taking this commission,” he said. “A life like mine requires a great deal of money. Bribing my servants to secrecy takes a king’s ransom. I travel almost constantly, which is never cheap. Then there are the numerous houses I keep around the world, to say nothing of the trouble and expense involved when one of my personas has run its course and I must create a new one that will not arouse suspicion.”

  “But don’t you see? You don’t have to live like that,” Cassandra said. “I’m sure the duke can discover a way to deal with your unique circumstance. You are terribly alone, Andre-Simon.”

  “What if I am?” he sneered, but his gaze darted to the wall of flames surrounding them.

  He was afraid, as well as alone.

  “If you let us help you, that could change. It’s entirely possible that you could lead a fairly normal life.”

  “Oh, Cassandra, you have mistaken me for the child I appear to be. Why on earth would I want a normal life? It only means drudgery with each sunrise and heartache when one opens oneself to others and in the end, there’s death. Always death.”

  His logic was hard to refute. There was a certain amount of sameness in daily life that might be considered tedious. The risk of loving always carried the risk of loss. And every life that began in a cradle ended in a coffin. In some ways, Paschal was right.

  But not in all ways.

  “If your life is not open to others, if no one cares about you and you care about no one,” Cassie said, “you are not really alive.”

  “What do you know about living? You stupid, stupid girl. Let me out of here.” Paschal clenched his fists and screamed, which shocked his driver out of his catatonic stupor. The noise brought the Prince Regent’s servants running toward them. More people spilled from the Pavilion to investigate the horrific sound, but Cassandra kept the flames burning around her and Paschal.

  “I will not hurt you,” she said evenly, “so long as you remain within the circle of fire.”

  Paschal ripped off his red gloves and started toward her. “I do not make the same promise.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He wore a smile like death upon his face.

  —Charles Lamb, from “A Dramatic Fragment”

  Garret laid a crop across the gelding’s flanks, demanding more speed. He knew he was being cruel but he couldn’t stop himself. He almost didn’t care if he killed the beast beneath him if only he arrived in Brighton in time.

  The night before his uncle’s funeral, he’d had another nightmare about Cassandra and the circle of flame. She wasn’t burned by passing through the circle, but she writhed in agony nonetheless. In his dream he’d been powerless to help her, rooted to earth.

  Nothing could hold him down now.

  He flew over the dirt roads, his horse’s hooves throwing great clods behind them with each long stride. The gelding’s breathing grew labored as the spires of Brighton stabbed the sky beyond the next gentle rise.

  “More speed, old son.” He leaned over the horse’s neck and crooned into its ear. “Give me all you’ve got and I promise you a pasture and hot oats and never another saddle as long as you live.”

  As if it understood Garret’s urgency, the
horse stretched out its neck in a desperate mile-eating gallop.

  Once they entered the town, Garret didn’t slow the pace. Pedestrians and mounted travelers alike scuttled out of their path. In years to come, the superstitious among them would say they saw the devil ride through Brighton that day just as the sun’s light was fading.

  The way Garret was feeling he wouldn’t say they were wrong. He’d make a deal with Beelzebub himself, if only Cassandra was safe.

  If only I arrive in time… Dear God, let me be in time…

  With night falling quickly, he clattered up to the Pavilion where a crowd had gathered around a spectacle. Even the Prince Regent and his entourage of sycophants looked on in wonder. Flames danced in the center of the milling crowd, crinkling the air above them with wavering heat. From his vantage point on horseback, Garret made out two figures in the middle of a ring of fire.

  A woman and a boy.

  Garret’s gut clenched. It was his nightmare come true. The boy caught hold of her and the woman screamed, but the flames didn’t slack one inch. If anything they leaped higher.

  She knows who he is.

  Garret dismounted and dashed toward the fire. Whatever the cost, he had to change his dream now that it had finally manifested in the waking world. Elbows and knees pumping, he Sent Lady Easton a message that he needed the duke’s carriage and driver at the Pavilion with all speed.

  If he could muscle a way out of this disaster, a hasty escape was definitely in order.

  “Out of my way,” he bellowed and the crowd fell back to allow him through. Without hesitation, he leaped through the wall of fire. Smoke rose from his greatcoat where flames licked at its edges and his eyebrows were singed, but he had no thought for himself.

  Cassie and the boy pianist were locked in a death grip. Paschal framed her face between his bare hands. Mouth wide in a rictus of pain, she clawed at his fingers but couldn’t pull free from him.

  “Don’t let him touch you,” she tried to shout, her voice hoarse from screaming. “He’s the ASP.”

  “I know. I won’t let him touch me, but I can’t promise not to touch him.” Garret grabbed Paschal’s shoulders and tore him away from Cassie. As soon as their connection was severed, she dropped to her knees.

  “I don’t know how much longer…I can keep the fire going,” she gasped.

  “That’s because she’s old and tired,” Paschal said with a sneer. The little bastard wiggled away from Garret, then snaked out his hand, trying to grab Garret’s fist.

  Garret dodged, not sure quite what to do, not wanting to strike a child. But then from the corner of his eye, he saw Cassie sag to the ground. That decided his course of action. He planted a facer on the brat that laid him flat. Garret’s knuckles tingled and throbbed from contact with the boy, but Paschal’s eyes rolled back into his head and he winked out like a pinched-off candle.

  “Quick,” Cassie rasped. “Wrap him up in your coat and tie off the sleeves. Take care not to touch his skin.”

  As soon as Garret had Paschal trussed up like a Christmas goose, the ring of fire around them died in a final puff of smoke without leaving so much as a smidge of burned grass behind. Garret hefted the tightly wrapped form of Paschal over his shoulder and helped Cassie to her feet. She leaned against him, barely able to remain upright.

  All the onlookers began talking at once, but Garret closed his eyes and Sent a massive suggestion that they had seen nothing unusual on the front lawn of the Pavilion. They suddenly believed they were all late for a card party and the Prince Regent would be mightily put out with them.

  Right on cue, His Royal Highness chided Lord and Lady Waldgren for dawdling in the garden when the whist tables were waiting. The Prince Regent took a pinch of snuff and then waddled back to the Pavilion’s door as if nothing whatever of interest had happened. The rest followed him like a gaggle of goslings.

  Later, Garret would have to do more Sendings to clear away any remembrance of the piano prodigy Andre-Simon Paschal, but for now, he had to make off with the boy and see Cassandra safely away.

  In response to his arrow-like Sending earlier, the duke’s coach and four came pounding toward them with Lady Easton seated on the forward-facing squab. She looked cool and collected, not a hair out of place, but once the carriage stopped, she moved quickly to help Cassandra into the conveyance. Garret deposited Paschal into the boot, tying down the unconscious boy with straps meant for luggage. Riding wrapped in Garret’s coat in a bouncing boot would be a torturous journey.

  If Paschal had hurt Cassie, it was too good for him.

  “To Camden House with all speed. We’ll change horses along the way, but we will not stop for anything else until we reach London,” he instructed the driver and then joined the ladies inside the coach.

  Cassandra was slumped over, her head lolling on Lady Easton’s shoulder. Garret’s one source of comfort was Cassie’s labored breathing.

  “She fainted,” her ladyship said.

  Garret hoped with all his heart that Lady Easton was right, but after seeing the way the ASP had dispatched his uncle, he wasn’t optimistic. Cassie hadn’t simply passed out. She wasn’t the sort to succumb to a fit of the vapors. Save for his knuckles, which ached as if he’d been afflicted with sudden rheumatism, he was unhurt by his brush with the ASP. But when he looked at Cassandra, his chest felt as if it had been hollowed out with a dull spoon. The only thing left inside him was a silent quaking.

  For the first time in his life, Garret Sterling was truly afraid.

  He loved Cassandra. He worshipped her. He didn’t want to keep breathing in a world where she did not.

  In a few short weeks, she’d changed his life. He’d intended to remain detached from others for as long as he walked the earth, to guard against dreaming about them, but Cassie wouldn’t be kept out. She’d worked her way into his deepest part. She couldn’t leave this life without taking the best part of him with her.

  “You should rest, too,” Lady Easton interrupted his misery. “There’s nothing more we can do until we reach Camden House.”

  “I should have done something before this,” Garret said. It was all his fault. If only he’d been strong enough to stay away from her before she had appeared in his nightmares…

  “You did all you could. You saved Cassandra and captured Paschal,” Lady Easton said. “His Grace will be so pleased.”

  But Garret wasn’t pleased. He was filled with self-recrimination. Since Cassie had burst into his life, he had dared to hope for something approaching normal, for a family, for a lifetime of loving with his fire mage. But then he was confronted with his evil dream come to life…

  Yet, Garret realized, he’d managed to change the outcome. Cassie was still alive. He still didn’t know how Paschal’s touch would affect her, but she hadn’t been burned by the fire he’d seen in his nightmare. He could alter the course of events he’d dreamed. With more attention to the duke’s mental exercises, maybe he could learn to control them at their source.

  For the first time in a long time, he said a silent prayer. He’d make improvements in every area of his life, he promised, balling his hands into fists in determination instead of folding them in supplication. He’d take things more seriously. He’d be a better man.

  Only please, God. Let Cassie live through her encounter with Paschal.

  …

  Voices murmured above her. Disembodied. Bloodless. She couldn’t make out any of the words, but the tone was unmistakable.

  The voices were worried.

  Then they faded away and she sank back into shadowy oblivion. It was safe there. Warm. Undemanding. She floated on a black sea, serene, as if she was buoyed up by birth water.

  All sense of time fled away.

  Someone’s heels clacked on hardwood. The voices were back. This time she could tell it was a man and a woman speaking. Still no words, but now the worrying tone had graduated to anger.

  Someone named Cassandra was hurt. They blamed each other.

&
nbsp; And themselves.

  She felt cool linen beneath the pads of her fingers. Gradually, she became aware of the rest of her body, her skin prickling with the delicious comfort of being cocooned in a feather bed. The mattress and bedclothes enfolded her in a womb-like embrace. She wiggled her toes, delighted to discover she had them.

  But other than her fingers and toes, she didn’t have command of any of her extremities.

  In the furious, hushed conversation, there was that name again—Cassandra.

  It’s me. I’m Cassandra. They’re worried about me.

  She was fine. Better than fine. She’d never felt so safe. She wanted to reassure them, so she tried to open her eyes. Her eyelids weighed a ton apiece. She gave up after a few moments’ effort. She decided to speak, but the words wouldn’t form.

  She concentrated on listening.

  “There must be something we can do.” The desperation in the man’s tone made her heart constrict for him.

  “His Grace is working on it.”

  “How? He’s been shut up in his study all day. Is he planning to think Cassandra out of this?”

  “It may be as simple as that. I’m not the gifted one in our family, you know. The ways of the Order are beyond me.”

  “There’s nothing simple about this.”

  “You poor boy.” The woman’s voice was laden with sympathy. “I know how attached the two of you were. This must change everything.”

  “Stop right there. It changes nothing. I love her, Lady Easton. No matter what.”

  He loves me. Warmth flooded her entire being. If only she could figure out how to reconnect her will to her body, she would—

  No matter what?

  What did he mean by that? What was wrong with her?

  The voices receded, and she heard the snick of a door latch. Silence draped over her. Evidently, it was safe to leave her alone. That boded well. Nothing could be so terribly wrong if she were able to be left without someone to tend her.

  The man’s name rushed into her. Garret. He was the one who loved her. Warmth surged inside her again, vibrant and sustaining.