“Stop it!” Ward snapped. “Stop blaspheming—there are ladies present! And stop calling me by my given name in company. For goodness’s sake, show a little decorum!”
Nicholas froze and fell silent, his expression stunned.
The echo of his own words reverberated in Ward’s mind, and immediately he wished he could call them back, knowing with sudden, sick certainty, there was nothing—not one thing—he could have said that could have been worse.
“Nicholas,” he said hurriedly, “I’m sorry—”
But already Nicholas was stepping back, putting distance between them.
“I’m sorry. I truly didn’t mean that,” Ward babbled. He held his hands out, his palms outstretched, as though pleading for calm.
Bryant had risen to his feet now too. “I realise that your people have erratic ways, Hearn,” he said snidely. “But I cannot tolerate this sort of hostile behaviour at my séances. I must think of my other guests and ask you to leave.”
“Well said, Mr. Bryant,” Mrs. Harris piped up, and Mr. Wallace nodded his agreement solemnly. Mrs. Peasland fingered her gold coin bracelet, her pretty mouth set in a fractious line.
Nicholas had adopted that oddly neutral expression he wore sometimes, all emotion masked. Suddenly, Ward hated that expression. When Nicholas opened his mouth to reply to Bryant, Ward spoke over him, desperate to show Nicholas that Ward was on his side.
“We will be leaving together, Mr. Bryant,” he said. “We will trouble you no longer.”
Bryant’s face fell. “Oh, there’s no need for you to leave,” he said hurriedly.
“No,” Nicholas agreed icily. “No need for you to leave, Sir Edward. And no need to answer for me either, thank you. I’ve a voice of my own and can speak for myself.”
He turned on his heel and stalked out the room.
Ward stood there, paralysed, flinching as first the parlour door, then front door slammed behind Nicholas. His mind raced. Should he run after Nicholas or leave him to cool down? He wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened, but he knew with complete certainty that he had wounded Nicholas badly.
“And stop calling me by my given name . . .”
Christ. He’d pulled rank on Nicholas, hadn’t he? Knowing that was the sorest of all sore spots for him. And God, but he was regretting it now.
More words returned to him.
“Don’t you know how to behave?”
“You should be ashamed of yourself!”
He closed his eyes. He knew with horrible certainty that Nicholas would not easily forgive him for this.
Into the silence, Bryant said, “Well, now that Mr. Hearn’s done the decent thing and removed himself, shall we resume the proceedings?”
Ward blinked and looked up to find the others all watching him with curious expressions, all except young Miss Harris who was staring straight ahead.
“I think I had better go,” he said, and his voice sounded distant to his own ears.
He felt oddly dazed, his mind already racing ahead to what came next. He’d go straight to the Fox and Swan—surely that was where Nicholas would be—and he’d apologise, profusely. Everything could be put right—they could get back to the way things were last night. That perfect night. Surely they would get that back?
They had to.
“Oh, come now, Sir Edward! Stay till the end of the séance at least,” Bryant said. “I felt sure we were getting somewhere before Mr. Hearn’s outburst. There was—” he made a swirling gesture with his right hand and looked upwards, as though searching for words to explain, or perhaps waiting for divine assistance “—if not quite a presence yet, certainly a sense of something approaching.”
Ward actually shivered. The theatricality of the man in that moment seemed so suddenly very wrong. Before he could respond though, Mrs. Peasland, who had been staring at Bryant with an enraptured expression, turned to Ward, clasping her hands at her bosom, and said, “Oh, yes, please stay, Sir Edward! Please do let us make the circle again and try to contact your loved one. Do not let your friend’s lack of faith in the spirits prevent you from gaining the comfort of communicating with your dear departed again.”
Mr. Wallace made another of those mumbling noises that signified agreement, and Mrs. Harris and Mr. Peasland added their voices too, all of them urging Ward to stay.
Only Miss Harris was silent. And then, quite suddenly, in the middle of that cacophony of voices, she rose from her chair and left the table. She walked over to the other side of the room and . . . stared at the wall.
“Mathilda?” her mother cried. “What on earth are you doing?”
Mathilda Harris didn’t answer, just stretched out one hand and ran the tips of her fingers down the wall. It was the oddest thing—till quite suddenly, Ward realised what had her so transfixed.
There was an edge sticking out.
It was, Ward realised as he peered, the edge of an almost invisible panel, the sides of which were designed to cunningly follow the pattern of the striped wallpaper.
A panel that happened to have been left the tiniest bit ajar.
“Miss Harris—” Bryant said hurriedly. He tried to get out of his seat, but he was hemmed in by the ladies on either side of him, and though both Mrs. Peasland and Mrs. Harris obligingly shifted their chairs to let him out, he was too late to stop the girl from sliding her fingertips down that errant edge and tugging the panel open.
The space behind was big enough—just—for a person to stand upright in.
And someone did. A young woman holding a bell in her hand.
From The Collected Writings of Sir Edward Fitzwilliam, volume I
The year that followed my brother’s death was a difficult one. Six weeks after the news arrived, my father suffered an apoplexy. It was his second in as many years, but this time he was paralysed after, and died a few days later. My poor mother, having lost both her eldest son and her husband in a matter of weeks, was distraught. It was some months after my father’s death that she heard of an American woman who had arrived in London, a Mrs. Haydn, who claimed to be a spiritualist medium. Mrs. Haydn was holding séances throughout the city at that time, and gathering quite a reputation. My mother begged me to take her to one of these séances, and so I did, and spent an extraordinary evening watching as Mrs. Haydn summoned numerous departed spirits who identified themselves by giving the dates of their deaths and accurately answering questions posed by their grieving relations. The spirits’ responses were given by rapping noises, the origin of which were a mystery to all present, some sharp, some dull, and seeming to come from all about the room, even under the floor. There was a message for me, from George: All will be well. I wept to hear those words again, the same he’d used to me that night, months before, on the Archimedes.
When Ward got back to the Fox and Swan, Nicholas was not there.
Ward settled down to wait for him. He opened one of the journals he’d brought with him to read in the coach, but couldn’t concentrate on the contents. His eyes slid over the words, unable to take them in. His mind was drifting elsewhere, his ears primed to hear the slightest approaching noise. He kept getting up to look out the window.
But Nicholas did not come.
Hours passed and he did not come. Eventually, at one in the morning, Ward retired to bed, only to lie there, awake and fearful, wondering where Nicholas was. If he’d tracked down that Gabe fellow or, worse, if he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere.
It wasn’t until dawn that Nicholas finally returned.
Ward had fallen into a fitful doze, but his eyes opened at the scrape of a key in a lock and he sat bolt upright, not quite awake, yet somehow aware that this was important. Then memories of the night before flooded his mind, and he scrambled out of bed, looking for the source of the noise. It came from the other, smaller room.
Ward crossed the floor and pushed the connecting door open. Nicholas was in the act of closing the door that gave onto the corridor, apparently as quietly as possible. He turned at War
d’s entrance, and his expression of dismay made Ward’s gut wrench.
“I thought you’d be asleep,” Nicholas said. “I’m just here to get my bag. The stagecoach leaves in an hour.”
“The stagecoach,” Ward repeated. “What do you mean?”
“I’m going home,” Nicholas said calmly. He reached for his valise.
“You don’t need to take the stagecoach, Nicholas. I have the carriage. If you wish to leave earlier—now even—we can do that.”
Nicholas ignored him. He wadded up a discarded shirt and shoved it into his bag.
“Nicholas,” Ward said, “please. I want you to travel back with me. We have things to discuss.”
Nicholas looked up. “And I want to leave on the stagecoach,” he said flatly.
For a moment, their gazes held, then Nicholas looked away, resuming his packing. It didn’t take long. Within moments he was buckling the strap.
“I’ll get going, then,” he said, once he was done.
“Nicholas, please—” Ward’s rasping voice was desperate. “I’m sorry about what I said at the séance. You’re angry with me, and I’m sorry, truly sorry.”
Nicholas turned. His expression was furious, silver eyes glittering. “I’m angry with myself,” he bit out. “I’m angry that I was actually beginning to believe you saw me as an equal and not as someone who’s here just to serve you. I’m angry because I know better than that. I know what your sort are like, and sure enough, you showed your true colours today in front of Gabe and again tonight.”
The furious hurt in those words took Ward aback. “I do see you as equal,” he whispered. “I really do.”
“No, you don’t,” Nicholas snapped. “You told me you wanted me to call you Ward, but the moment you thought I was getting above myself, you changed your mind. You only want to listen to me when I’m saying something you agree with. Otherwise, I’m to stay quiet and biddable.”
“No—” Ward protested.
Nicholas’s silver gaze was cold. “Yes. In your eyes, you are the master and I am the servant. That’s how things started between us, and nothing’s changed.”
“No,” Ward repeated, shaking his head. “That’s not how it is at all. Christ, Nicholas, I let you inside me—how can you think I want to master you?”
Nicholas’s lip curled with disdain. “You think that makes a difference? Because I fucked you?” He gave a harsh laugh. “I put my cock in you because you told me to put it there. It doesn’t matter which one of us has a cock in his arse. What matters is who decides what’s to happen—and that’s always been you.”
Ward stared at him, stung.
“I was a fool to let my guard down with you,” Nicholas went on bitterly. “I’d actually begun to believe you truly saw me as a friend—a lover. But tonight I realised that’s just how you treat me when I’m doing what you want. The rest of the time you expect me to know my place and hold my tongue.”
“That’s not true!” Ward protested. “Friends don’t always get along, Nicholas. Sometimes they argue, like we did tonight. Tonight you interrupted that séance at a point when I believed, truly believed, that I might be about to communicate with George. So yes, I lashed out at you. And I’m sorry for it—it wasn’t fair and I’m not proud of it, but I wasn’t pulling rank on you!”
Nicholas’s lip curled again. “No? What about when you told me I should be ashamed of myself? That didn’t feel like a man speaking to his equal. You were scolding me, Ward. Telling me off like a naughty child.”
Ward’s cheeks heated at that memory. “I regret my words, I do! I wish beyond anything I could take them back. But can’t you understand how I felt? I was so sure that George was there, and I’ve waited so long to speak to him. This last year, I’ve risked everything—thrown away my very reputation—in pursuit of this, and then tonight, just when it seemed he might be near—” His voice gave out.
Nicholas was silent for a long moment.
At last, he said, very quietly, “Your brother is dead, Ward. At some point, you need to accept that.”
“I know he’s dead!” Ward cried. “Jesus, Nicholas, what do you take me for? An imbecile?”
Nicholas said evenly, “You haven’t accepted it, though. This obsession of yours is testament to that.”
“I’m not obsessed. I’m gathering evidence for my studies—”
“Was that what you were doing tonight?”
Ward opened his mouth but couldn’t make any words come out.
“You told me you were coming to Truro to see if Bryant would make a good subject for your work, but the truth is, you just wanted to go to that séance to see if he could contact your brother. You were so caught up in that, you weren’t paying the slightest bit of attention to what the man was actually doing, never mind studying him. If you had been, you’d know he’s a fraud. Not even a very good one. Christ, my mother was better!”
Ward stared at him. “She wasn’t—”
“Clairvoyant?” Nicholas laughed harshly. “No. She did what she did for money, because we were poor, and she had no other way of earning. She knew how to read people, how to manipulate their emotions. Mostly, she made them feel better, I think, but it was all lies.” He shook his head. “So you see, I really wasn’t the subject you were hoping for.”
Ward couldn’t understand why he felt so gutted. He’d already guessed that Nicholas’s mother wasn’t a medium—hell, Nicholas had disclosed he thought she was a fake with that comment about her mind-reading—but somehow, having it so bluntly stated was different. It was like that moment in Bryant’s parlour all over again, when Mathilda Harris had prised open the panel in the wall, revealing the woman standing inside.
“I was foolish tonight,” Ward croaked. “Gullible. But I won’t let that happen again. No more looking for mediums—what I need to do is concentrate on re-creating the conditions I experienced on the Archimedes and—”
“And what? You achieve that and you’ll be able to speak to George again? So what if you do? What can he possibly tell you that will benefit you, or anyone else for that matter? What is all this for, Ward?” Nicholas threw up his hands, exasperated. “Can’t you see how absurd this is?”
Ward felt like he’d been knifed.
“Absurd?” he echoed, disbelieving. “Absurd, am I? You’ve got nerve, criticising me, Nicholas. What do you think I am? An idiot? For Christ’s sake, I’ve got more education in my little finger than you have in your whole—”
He stopped himself just before he finished the rotten, mean-spirited thought, but it was already there, between them. The silence rang with the final word of that unfinished sentence, and when Ward dared to meet Nicholas’s gaze, the other man’s expression was disconcertingly level.
“Nicholas,” he said. “I—”
“It’s time I went,” Nicholas interrupted, lifting his valise in his hand. “Past time, in fact. Safe journey home, Sir Edward.”
Ward searched for something to say in response, something that would breach the yawning gulf that had opened up between them, but he couldn’t think of anything.
And then Nicholas was gone, and he was left staring at the closed door.
From The Collected Writings of Sir Edward Fitzwilliam, volume I
Several days after I attended Mrs. Haydn’s séance, I spoke of what I had witnessed at a gathering of a number of scientists of my acquaintance. With the benefit of hindsight I can see how very raw my grief was then, but at the time I thought myself perfectly rational. When several of the gentlemen questioned Mrs. Haydn’s abilities, I defended her with a passionate fervour that was quite unlike me—I was then and am still now of a generally even temperament, but that evening I was beside myself. The whole debacle ended with me storming out of the house in which we had met.
The debate prompted two of the gentlemen to attend the next séance held by Mrs. Haydn for themselves. They subsequently penned an article supposedly exposing her as a charlatan, to which I responded with a letter of rebuttal. My letter was
published by the same newspaper, as were a half dozen replies from men of science I knew and respected, including the man I had considered my mentor, Professor Kenneth Arnold. Each of them expressed their astonishment at my naïve credulity and disapproval of my public support for Mrs. Haydn.
For five years I had been working and writing ceaselessly in my chosen field and in so doing, had built an enviable reputation for a man of my years. Now that reputation had been publicly savaged, not by one of my peers but by six of them. The episode rocked me to the core. The only comfort I could find was in my vow to prove them wrong.
8th July 1853
“I don’t understand this,” Godfrey said, scowling. The lines on his forehead seemed deeper than before. He had aged quite suddenly this year, and for the first time in Nick’s life, the old man looked frail.
“It’s very simple,” Nick said. “I’m going to find my mother’s family. I may even travel with them for a while, if they’ll let me. If not, well, I’ll see about that when it happens.”
Godfrey sat back in his leather wingback chair. “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life!” he snapped. “You live here. You belong here!”
It was an effort, but somehow Nick managed to keep his expression neutral. Words, though, were beyond him. He could not agree with that final statement and anything he did say would be far too betraying.
“What about your duties?” Godfrey demanded.
“You’ll find someone else. All you have to do is advertise the position.”
“You’re not giving me enough notice!” Godfrey replied angrily. Then, pettily, “I’ll have to hold back the wages owing to you for that.”
Nick had grown so used to Godfrey’s threats over the years, he didn’t even blink. “Well, if that’s what you want to do, I can’t stop you.”
Godfrey’s fury seemed to boil over at that. “I cannot fathom your ingratitude,” he spat out. “I gave you that position! I gave you Rosehip Cottage—”
“You own the cottage still,” Nick pointed out evenly, “so it’s yours to do with as you please once I leave. As for the position: you’ve had my labour in return. The salary you paid me was the same as anyone else would’ve got.”
A Gathering Storm (Porthkennack Book 2) Page 21
