Ether & Elephants

by Cindy Spencer Pape

  Obediently, he folded tissue paper around the dozen or so family portraits that littered her plain wooden dresser. The images included him, along with their brothers, sisters, parents, brother-in-law and four-month-old nephew. Family. It’s what they were and always would be. It was too bad Tom’s heart—and certain other parts of him—couldn’t quite seem to grasp that concept.

  Once the trunk was mostly loaded, Merrick said his goodbyes and left them, but not before reminding Tom that Nell was his to protect. Tom wasn’t exaggerating when he said, “With my life, sir.”

  Merrick cuffed Tom on the shoulder. “Try to keep that intact, as well. Remember I have to answer to your mother.” Then he was gone, removing the only buffer between Nell and Tom.

  Tom picked up the tiny china jewel box he’d given Nell for her eighteenth birthday. He hadn’t known she’d even kept it, and something pricked at the back of his eyes as he wrapped it in tissue and placed it carefully on the top tray of the trunk. The dainty porcelain rose on the lid was as delicate as Nell and just as easily broken. He couldn’t be responsible for hurting her again, but something in him still lashed out. “You can go home, if you want. In fact, you should. I’ll find the blasted boy. It’s what I do, remember?” Tom folded a quilt and added it to the trunk. The idea of spending extended time with Nell was like rubbing lemon juice in a wound.

  “This is my problem, Tom. If you’re going to be a prat about it, maybe you should go home.” Nell whirled on him. “You can stop your high and mighty airs anytime.”

  “I’m high and mighty? Forgive me for not rolling around in sackcloth and ashes.” He gestured to her plain gown. “Perfect, self-sacrificing, noble Nell. Everyone’s darling. Everything I do is wrong in your eyes.” He knew, even as he said it, that he was being petty, but after so much time, his temper had finally snapped “Your so-called vocation for teaching is nothing but a hair shirt, worn for my benefit. You might as well have become a nun and announced to the world that it’s all because of me. I made a mistake when I was a green lad. Most of us do, except for the perfect Miss Nell. I’ve done everything I can to fix things, but I can’t change the past. You’ve been rubbing my nose in my one mistake for years. Aren’t you done with it yet?”

  Nell gaped. “Is that what you think? That I came here to, as you call it, rub your nose in it? You self-centered beast. I came to Glenbury because I wanted to do something with my life. I may not be as strong as the rest of you, but I’m not entirely useless. As it turns out, I’m a damned good teacher. It is a calling, just like fighting is for you or building things is Wink’s. I love what I do. Did. And now, you and Papa have come in like a steam train and taken that away from me.” She slammed the lid on her trunk. “Bollocks.”

  Tom grimaced at the ceiling and tried for a mollifying tone. Had he thought earlier that he appreciated her new boldness? Now that it was focused at him, he wasn’t so sure. She was wrong, of course. He’d never thought her useless, he just didn’t like seeing her work for that harridan, and they both knew that hunting monsters wasn’t in her nature. “I’m sure you were a wonderful teacher. You’ll find another job, if that’s what you want. But coming along on a mission? Not at all your thing, old girl.”

  “Well I am. So there.” She tucked a small coin purse from her dresser into the pocket of her skirt. “And you have no say in the matter, so stop being cross.”

  “I’m not cross, I’m concerned.” Well, truthfully, he was both. “Just promise to be careful. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have.”

  “I’m always careful.” She looked across at him as she closed the latch on her carpetbag. Her silver mechanical songbird was the last personal possession in the room, and she patted her shoulder, instructing Lark to flutter from his perch on the windowsill and settle on her shoulder. “So what do you think? Shall we split up and check the local villages?”

  “I suppose.” Tom’s conscience struck so hard it almost felt as if he’d taken an actual blow to the skull. “But I have a suspicion about where we’ll end up.”

  Nell raised one eyebrow. “Oh?”

  Tom shoved his hands through his hair, not caring if it stood straight up like a lunatic’s. “Cambridge.” He dragged in a deep breath. “I think…that is…it’s possible…” He flopped down on the bed and rested his chin on his hands. “Don’t hate me, Nelly.”

  Nell sat on the room’s only chair. “I couldn’t if I tried, Tommy. You know that. But this isn’t about us. It’s about Charlie.”

  Of course it was about the boy. Nell would walk through fire for a child, any child. Like

  it or not, though, their relationship hovered over everything. Just as he would always love her, she cared for him, despite his betrayal. Now he was going to make things even worse.

  “Barrowclough,” he said hoarsely, “is a very rare name. Almost extinct, in fact.”

  “You know this how?” Nell gazed into his eyes without blinking. “Is this an Order matter?”

  Tom held her gaze, accepting all the blame he deserved. “No. It’s my matter. You know I’ve been searching for years to find my—” his tongue stumbled over the words “—my…wife. Charles Barrowclough was the name her father wrote on the marriage license as a witness.”

  “Your wife?” Nell’s powerful voice rose to a shriek. “I have a missing boy and you’re trying to tie this in to a search for the woman you married in university and haven’t seen since?”

  “No.” Tom said. “But I have only run across that name once or twice, and the woman your ghost described—well, she sounds like Polly. And if Polly did have a sister, then your Charlie might be Polly’s son, meaning there’s a possibility, you see…”

  “I do see.” She stood and turned away, fussing with the handle of her carpet bag. “Two birds with one stone. I understand.”

  “No. Not even that. It’s not as if I want to see Polly. Hell, if I’m right, that means she’s probably dead, which I’m human enough to think would be something of a relief, and man enough to feel guilty about it.” He squeezed his eyes shut, his voice thick. “I didn’t tell you the whole truth when I told you about my marriage.” Three years ago, he’d blurted it out like an idiot, right in front of Nell and with no real explanation. This was the first time he’d been alone in a room with her since.

  “You didn’t tell me much of anything at all. Until just this minute, I didn’t even know her name.” She stayed as she was, her back to him, which was probably for the best. His eyes were feeling rather prickly and almost damp. “But it’s rather cruel of you to wish her dead.”

  “I didn’t say I wished it. Just that my life would be less complicated,” he said. “But another thing I didn’t tell you is that Polly and I weren’t strangers when I agreed to marry her. I’d known her for a few months. She waited tables at a pub the university crowd frequented. We’d even had a brief…fling.”

  Nell’s spine stiffened. She was too smart not to put the pieces together. “So what you’re saying now is that Charlie…” Nell blinked and turned her head away.

  He wanted to kneel at her feet and beg forgiveness, but there was no point. He’d said it all before, and she hadn’t even known the worst. “Exactly. Charlie could be my son.”

  Chapter Two

  Nell gripped the bamboo handle of her carpetbag so hard the grain of the wood was probably dented into her fingertips.

  Tom’s son? Charlie?

  For a moment she forgot how to breathe and every cell in her body screamed with denial. And yet…it would make sense, in a horrible sort of way. Both were tall, with pale hair and blue eyes. It would explain the way she’d been naturally drawn to the cheerful lad who was determined to make his way despite his handicap, much like a young Tom had decided to survive amid the flotsam of a London slum. Without Tom and Wink, the two eldest of their little band of pickpockets and vampyre hunters, Nell, her half brother Piers and little Jamie McCann would never have survived. Instead they’d become a family, long before they were adopted
and four of them shared a legal name.

  She took a deep breath, wishing she could scream at him. He’d promised her. Three years ago, she’d found out about Tom’s hasty marriage at nineteen to rescue a pregnant barmaid from her abusive father. Nell had been furious, but she hadn’t known until now just how badly he’d broken her trust. She’d assumed Tom was being noble and rescuing a relative stranger. The girl had disappeared the next day with Tom’s wallet, and Nell and the rest of the family had thought perhaps it had all been a hoax. Unfortunately the Order’s barristers had judged it legal, putting an end to Nell’s hopes forever. Still, she’d never imagined that this other woman had been carrying Tom’s child. It seemed fate wasn’t through heaping cruelties on her head.

  Nell had always wondered why Tom hadn’t filed for an annulment on grounds of desertion. Now she understood. Not only had he broken his promises to come back and marry Nell, he hadn’t even bothered to be faithful.

  “Nell,” he began, a look of pity on his face that was possibly the worst insult of all. “I know we—”

  She cut him off with a lifted hand. “Well, I suppose we need to find Charlie.” She despised the quaver that invaded her voice. “For everyone’s sake. We should start with the nearest train station. There’s only the main Cornwall line toward either Falmouth or Plymouth.” The station was perhaps a twenty-minute canter by road from the tiny village that was home to the school. The men had rented horses from the station to come to the school, meaning Tom was fretting about the absence of a steam car.

  “Yes.” The ragged edges in Tom’s tone hurt something, low in her gut. No matter how he’d betrayed her, she couldn’t bear to see him in pain. “I’ve searched almost a decade for anyone named Barrowclough, Barclay, Barrow, Berkeley, Barry and so on. I’ve never even heard the name Berrycloth, though I think I’d have noticed it if I’d seen it anywhere.”

  “Me either,” she said. “You know, if she married you under a false name, you might be able to contest it.” Piers, at twenty, had been the youngest man ever to pass the British barristers’ examination. When Nell had first learned of Tom’s situation, she’d pestered her younger brother with questions. Perhaps this new information would change things, prove once and for all that he wasn’t married.

  “I know. But that wouldn’t change the other circumstances. We’ve both been illegitimate, Nell, or at least believed we were. Do you think I could willingly inflict that on any child? Even one who might not be mine? Of all people, you know how vicious our society can be.”

  There wasn’t much she could say to that.

  He stood. “Come on. Show me the boy’s room. Then you can say your goodbyes while I nip down to the train station.”

  After finding absolutely no clues in Charlie’s room, she saw Tom out, then went to the teachers’ parlor, hoping Roger would be there, waiting to take her in to supper. She took several deep breaths before pushing open the door and stepping inside.

  “Nell!” Roger Braithwaite, the school’s mathematics teacher, leaped to his feet. “Darling, I heard you’d resigned. It can’t possibly be true.” Uncaring that three other instructors watched from around the small, comfortably shabby room, Roger caught both of Nell’s hands in his and drew her close.

  “It is true, I’m afraid.” She stepped back and looked up into his sweet, dear face. Roger was a lovely man. Brilliant, modestly attractive with a square face and soulful dark eyes, he often taught exercises and games to the children along with maths. “I’ll write once I’m settled back at home.” She would, but didn’t know if it would be what he wanted to hear.

  He didn’t seem to understand that she’d made up her mind. “But you have to stay, Nell. I’ve already gotten permission from the Chisholm to court you.”

  Might have been nice if you asked me first. Nell sighed. She’d known Roger was working up to proposing and she’d almost talked herself into accepting. The future with him would be pleasant—teaching, raising their own children alongside their students. It was the brightest outlook she could hope for—a family of her own, good companionship that could grow into love of some kind, and the vocation she truly adored.

  Still, she hesitated. Mindful of their audience, she pulled Roger out into a small nook off the corridor. “I wouldn’t have accepted. Not yet at least. You’re a great friend, Roger, and a good catch, but I’m just not ready to make that decision.”

  “But I thought… That is, when we kissed…and more, I was under the assumption…” He swallowed like a suffocating fish. “I certainly didn’t mean to seduce you and not marry you.”

  And that was exactly why she couldn’t make up her mind. He was a good man, and his sense of honor was powerfully attractive. The only thing holding her back was that nice as he was, intelligent as he was, Roger was just so perfectly normal. Their life together would be absolutely normal. Nell had become so used to being out of the ordinary that it had taken an almost-love-affair to point out that sometimes, ordinary was awfully close to boring.

  She pulled him farther into the alcove and pushed him down on a wide window seat. “It wasn’t that much more than kissing.” He’d barely touched her breasts and his hands had stayed firmly above her waist. She’d had worse gropings as a child on the streets of London, selling flowers. And while his touch had been pleasant, it hadn’t thrilled her to her soul the way it was supposed to, at least according to Wink and their married friends. “And I didn’t say no, I said I needed more time. But right now I have to go, Roger. My foster brother and I are going to go check on Charlie, and he’s taking me back to my family in London.”

  “I’ll miss you.” He regarded her with eyes as sad as a devastated puppy’s. “Write. I can come up to see you when the term is over, if you change your mind.”

  “I’ll write,” she vowed. “And you’re more than welcome to visit. But I can’t promise anything. Be well.” Why couldn’t she just fall for him? Still, leaving him hanging didn’t seem fair. In fact, it felt rather like what Tom had done to her. Roger deserved better. “You might think about asking Miss Harper to go walking. She’s always had an eye for you.” The local vicar’s daughter would be a perfect match for Roger.

  Nell gave him one last hug before going into dinner to say goodbye to her students.

  It was all too easy to say someone in her family was dying. It wasn’t a someone, of course. It was just another little part of her soul. Several parts, maybe. Some for Charlie and some for the sheer magnitude of Tom’s betrayal. Some for the hurt she’d unintentionally inflicted on Roger, who took supper in his room, claiming a headache. Finally, a large part for leaving the rest of her students. After lots of tearful hugs she joined Tom, who waited outside with a pair of rented hacks. With Lark perched atop her shoulder as if they were back in Wapping, Nell let Tom help her up onto a small, dappled mare equipped with a side-saddle. She dashed the moisture from her eyes. “Did you learn anything at the station?”

  “Even in such a rural location, there was enough traffic that the stationmaster didn’t know everyone passing through. He couldn’t remember if there was a blonde woman with a blind child, just that there were some women and children aboard. The last train for tonight left an hour ago, headed toward Plymouth, so I thought we’d drive to the nearest town with a decent hotel. It’s much less likely that they headed west to Truro or Falmouth.”

  Nell agreed, so off they went. “I wonder if the station has ghosts.” Trusting the sturdy mare’s footing, Nell stared out at the passing countryside as the horses clip-clopped along the road. Cornwall was so lovely and rugged. She enjoyed England in all its permutations, but this corner of the realm had been her refuge for the past three years, so it was special, and now she might never have reason to come back here again. It wasn’t home, but she would miss it.

  “Why would a railway station have a ghost?” Tom’s question broke into her nostalgic haze.

  “Why not?” She turned her gaze back to the road ahead. “Perhaps he died on a train, or was murdered in t
he station. Or he simply liked it. Ghosts don’t always stay where they died. The rules seem to vary for each individual spirit. Some are attached to a place, some to a person, some go where they like… You just never know. Pubs are full of them. Regular patrons who continue to haunt—pardon the pun—their favorite taproom even after they’ve passed on. It’s worth a try.”

  “We don’t have much else to go on.” She caught his shrug from the corner of her eye. She’d never seen him look so defeated. “Might as well give it a go. It’s on you, though, if we get nicked for trespassing. Stationmaster was locking up when I left.”

  “Like a lock is a problem for you,” she teased, hoping to buoy his spirits. “Or seeing in the dark, for that matter. We won’t even need an etheric torch.” The gas-based handheld lamps were a brand-new invention, but Tom had spells. Like most of the other Knights, he also had senses that were more acute than those of normal humans, a gift passed down genetically from their ancestors, the original Knights of the Round Table.

  “I can pick a lock,” Tom agreed. He didn’t speak often about his magick. Not finding out about his heritage until he was sixteen made him different from other Knights who’d been raised in the Order.

  After another awkward silence, Nell said, “We missed you at the christening. Especially since you were supposed to be one of Teddy’s godfathers.” Wink’s adorable baby boy had been born just before Christmas, with the ceremony during school holidays for both Nell and Jamie’s sake.

  “I am.” Tom’s tone was taut. He obviously didn’t want to talk to her. When had he come to hate her so? “They arranged to have a second mini-service when I visited in January.”

  “That’s good.” She bit her lip. Why hadn’t Wink mentioned that? They spoke by telephone at least once a week and wrote just as often. Of course none of her family ever mentioned Tom when they wrote or spoke to her, at least not to speak of. “Tom’s in Scotland,” someone might say if she asked, or, “He’s on a mission in Birmingham.” Ever since he’d revealed his marriage, there had been a studied effort on the part of the family to keep the two of them apart. Nell appreciated their thoughtfulness, but sometimes it frustrated her, too, as if they were afraid any upset would break her. She wished they had more faith in her courage.