The Midnight Hour: All-Hallows’ Brides

by Kathryn Le Veque, Meara Platt, Scarlett Scott, Mary Lancaster, Maggi Andersen, Chasity Bowlin, Sydney Jane Baily, Violetta Rand

  In fact, it was closer to half an hour before he joined them, but at least he had removed most of the paint from his hands and covered his painted shirt with a coat. Plus, he exerted himself to be pleasant, and from the warm handshake he exchanged with Captain Durham, he was genuinely sorry to see his friend go.

  Madeleine and Louisa Durham embraced like old friends. Then the captain kissed her hand. “Look after this reprobate,” he said lightly, although there was intense seriousness in his eyes. He, too, was uneasy. “For some reason, he is dear to me.”

  “And to me,” she said with a quick smile. “I shall do my best. You two must look after each other, too! Write to me, Louisa!”

  They waved them off in their carriage, and Madeleine was glad to feel Roderick’s arm at her waist. She leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “You like my friends,” he observed.

  “Very much. They must come again.”

  “Soon, I hope,” Roderick said.

  They turned back into the house. Roderick’s arm fell away. With a quick, gentle brush of his knuckles against her cheek, he returned to the sitting room.

  During the afternoon, Madeleine wrote letters in the library. Sonya, across the room, was engrossed in a book from which she was taking copious notes.

  The sound of hooves in the gravel outside made her glance up at the window. She had hoped it would be Roderick finally extracting himself from his painting in favor of fresh air and exercise. But it was Daniel, mounted on one of Roderick’s fine horses.

  “Sonya,” she said thoughtfully. “Did Daniel give you any clue how long he means to stay at Usher?”

  Sonya glanced up over the spectacles she used for reading. “No, but I’m surprised he is still here. I had the impression he wished you to be left in peace to fall into your new role of wife and lady of Usher House.”

  “Really?” Madeleine said in surprise. “That sounds very…thoughtful for Daniel!”

  A smile flickered across Sonya’s face. “I thought so. I was surprised when he brought up the subject. He even suggested I travel to Russia for a few weeks before the winter.”

  “Did you not want to go to Russia?”

  “Not so soon after I had just left it! But we agreed, I should stay in the background and not be in your way.”

  Madeleine blinked. “You are never in my way.” She glanced back at the window where Daniel and his mount were receding toward the hills. “Neither is Daniel. But given his views, I don’t understand why he is still here.”

  Sonya hesitated, then, “It is probably concern for you. He believes your husband to be…unpredictable.”

  “I suppose he is,” Madeleine replied. “It’s one reason I love him.” Another possible reason for her brother’s presence crossed her mind, related perhaps, to the unfinished letter in her room. My dear Love… “You would not miss him if he left?” she asked casually.

  Sonya looked so surprised at the question, she laughed and changed the subject.

  Daniel returned in time for tea in the library. Roderick strode in a little later, drank a cup on his feet, and left again.

  “What ails the master of the house?” Daniel asked lightly.

  “He’s just caught up painting,” Madeleine replied.

  Daniel didn’t look convinced, but he waited until Sonya left the room before he returned to the subject.

  “Are you sure he’s quite well?”

  “Quite,” Madeleine said firmly. “As am I. Daniel, I am always pleased by your company, and you are always welcome here, but I know perfectly well you would rather be elsewhere being much better entertained.”

  “Throwing me out, little sister?”

  “Releasing you from torment,” she retorted.

  He laughed, but as his smile died, she saw that he was serious. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay just a little longer. If you want to know the truth, Maddy, I’m afraid for you.”

  She stared at him. “Afraid?” That was rather more than mere concern. “Why on earth would you be afraid for me?”

  “Damn it, Madeleine,” he burst out. “What hold does Usher have over you? You must see that he is quite unstable!”

  She flushed with anger. “Lower your voice, if you please. I would not like the servants to hear such insults coming from my own brother. Especially while he lives in their master’s house.”

  Daniel waved that away with impatience. “I’ll pay my way if that’s your anxiety. My anxiety is your safety.”

  She jumped to her feet. “You are being ridiculous! I am at no risk whatever from my own husband! I thought you had got over your opposition to my marriage.”

  “Oh, Madeleine, this is more than opposition,” Daniel said intensely. “It’s fear.” He flung up one hand. “No, no, don’t bite my head off. I understand your affection and your loyalty, but you must promise to be careful and to keep your mind open.”

  “Open to what?” she demanded furiously, then wished she hadn’t, for it gave him the opportunity he’d been waiting for.

  “Other opinions than your own,” he said at once. “And mine. Look, I stayed here for a little while you were abroad. I also talked to people both in Scotland and in London. Everyone agrees there is madness in the family.”

  “Oh, fustian!”

  “No, it’s the same strain that runs through Verne’s family, and it’s dangerous. You must see that. I know they seem charming but dash it, Maddy, even you must see they’re a very odd bunch.”

  “Uncle James is merely old,” Madeleine objected.

  “He has that excuse. Robert Usher didn’t, and neither foes Roderick. Madeleine, the whole country knows Roderick came home more or less crazy.”

  “He had reason,” Madeleine snapped. “And he is better now.”

  “Is he?” Daniel paused, dragging his fingers through his short hair. “The fire that damaged the house, the way Robert died? These incidents alone—on the same night!—prove something is very wrong here. Do you know what is said about that night?”

  “I know what happened,” Madeleine said. “Roderick told me.”

  “Well, I have two versions. I daresay Roderick has a third. Do you want to know what I heard?”

  “No.”

  He told her anyway. “One theory says Robert set fire to the house and then killed himself. The other that Roderick set fire to the house and then, when confronted by Robert on the roof, killed his brother.”

  Madeleine’s eyes widened in horror. “Of course he did no such thing!”

  “Either way, what were either of them doing on the roof when there was a raging fire about to consume their home and their family? Oh, don’t look at me like that, Madeleine. I know rumor is not fact. I just want to establish that the family is not…”

  “Stable,” Madeleine said impatiently. “I understood you the first time, and I still don’t agree.”

  “I know he can be charming, and he obviously was all the time you were abroad. But he’s home now, and it seems to me he’s worse again. And he knows it. Have you looked into his eyes?”

  Madeleine blinked. “His eyes? Of course.”

  “Look again. Do you see nothing strange? Are they not more bloodshot than before? Are his pupils not enlarged?”

  “What would that signify?”

  “Addiction to opium,” Daniel said bluntly. “The cook told me he used to take it for the pain of his wound and had difficulties in stopping. I think he knows his mind is going again, and he’s trying to dull it with more opium.”

  “No. You’re wrong.”

  “According to the servants, he keeps a full bottle of laudanum in his cabinet drawer in his bedchamber. I’ll lay you any odds you like it’s not full anymore.”

  “You are ridiculous,” Madeleine said coldly.

  “I wish I was. I’m sorry Madeleine. I just want you to be safe. Please take care,”

  “I shall,” Madeleine said, walking impetuously to the door. “But I don’t believe a word of this.” About to close the door,
she paused and looked back at her brother. “Why did you try to send Sonya away?”

  “For her own good,” Daniel replied. “But I knew I wouldn’t be able to persuade you easily, especially while all seemed well. And so, I stayed,”

  “But all is well, Daniel.” Madeleine closed the door on his frustrated face, and from sheer instinct, went to talk to her husband.

  He was still in the sitting room, painting busily at a different picture. Again, as soon as she entered, he covered it and turned to face her with a hint of impatience. “Yes?”

  “I was just passing, and thought you might like to come up early to change for dinner.”

  More than once he had enticed her to bed in the middle of the day with this thinly veiled excuse. But there was no acknowledgement in his eyes now. He merely said, “Yes, of course, I’ll come up in a little while.”

  Not a little hurt, for he had never before ignored, let alone spurned, her slightest advance, she could only leave him and go up to her own bedchamber.

  All is well, Daniel. Was it? Was it really?

  When she had first stayed here, before her marriage, Graham had seemed to imply the house had hindered rather than helped Roderick’s recovery. Madeleine found herself wondering if that were true. If they should go away again and stay here for shorter periods. For there was no denying Roderick was not as he had been in Europe. Nor even before they were married. He had always been abrupt and inclined to his own world, but after her brother’s warnings, she began to fear he was losing himself in whatever was going on inside his head. He was distant with her, distracted.

  After dinner, she sat with him a little, idly playing at the pianoforte. He picked up his paint brushes and began working feverishly on the third picture. Obviously, he was not in the mood for music.

  After an hour, she said. “Shall we go for a walk, Roderick? It’s a beautiful evening.”

  “No, no. You go. Take Sonya.”

  She didn’t go. Instead, she read for a little and then went to bed. He didn’t seem to notice, apart from a curt good night in response to her own.

  As always, she left the lamp burning in both her chamber and his, and the connecting door stood open. But she could not sleep.

  It wasn’t that she truly believed Daniels’s fears or rumors. She knew Roderick would not hurt her, and she knew he had not hurt his brother—not deliberately, at any rate, whatever the true consequences of leaving him on the roof had been. But something had changed in him.

  She resolved to talk to him in bed where there were no other distractions. Except love, and she would not object to that. For one thing, it only brought them closer and made it easier to speak of difficult things.

  She was just nodding off when she heard him enter his own chamber. Come through here. Please, come to my bed…

  Despite her longing, he didn’t. She heard the rustle of his clothes coming off, the splash of water as he washed, and then the distinctive creak of his mattress.

  Well, he probably thought she was asleep and was reluctant to be disturbed. He needed to know she was always happy for him to disturb her.

  With a fast-beating heart, she rose and walked through to his chamber, burrowing under his bed covers to fit herself at his shoulder. The mere touch of his hard body aroused her, flooding her with memories of the joy it had brought her. She slipped her arm invitingly over his naked waist.

  “For God’s sake, Madeleine,” he said harshly. “Do you have to follow me everywhere?”

  If he had struck her, it would have hurt less. She snatched her arm back as though it had been burned. After a stunned, silent moment, she slid out of his bed and crept back to her own.

  In the morning, tired but more resolved than ever to talk to Roderick about the changes in him and to help him re-find his equilibrium, Madeleine rose and dressed. As she did, she could hear bumping and cursing coming from Roderick’s chamber.

  She and Mercer exchanged baffled glances. As soon as her gown was laced, she walked through the connecting door and found Roderick straightening his easels under the window. All the paintings were covered.

  He glanced over his shoulder with a quick grin that gave her hope. “I thought it was long past time I took these out of the way. Now you can have a proper sitting room without fear of paint getting everywhere.”

  “I never minded in the slightest,” she assured him. In fact, if he brought his work up here, she doubted she would see him all day. “Of course, you must paint wherever you want in your own home.”

  “Best here, I think.” He turned more fully toward her, a faint frown tugging at his brow. “You should go and eat. You look a little under the weather.”

  “I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep well.”

  He frowned, and she wondered if he was remembering their painful encounter last night. At least discussing it would be a starting point. He shook his head. “The evenings are too warm. I don’t sleep well either in the summer. Awful dreams as well.”

  She took a step nearer. “Really? What about?”

  His frown smoothed. “I don’t really remember. Confusing. Anyway, go and eat. Maybe we could go for a walk later.”

  “I’d like that,” she said warmly.

  Since he hadn’t come to find her by midafternoon, she went upstairs to change her dress and drag him off with her. He had closed the connecting door to his bedchamber.

  Trying not to make too much of it, she changed into an old, comfortable walking dress and then tried the connecting door. To her relief, he had not locked it.

  She knocked and went in to discover him just placing the inevitable cloth over the middle painting. “Ah, have you just finished for the day? Excellent. Shall we take that walk now?”

  “Maybe later,” he said vaguely. “I have things to do.”

  “Such as what?”

  He frowned.

  “Surely nothing that can’t wait,” she wheedled. “Come with me.”

  “I can’t always go with you,” he said irritably. “I have enough responsibilities without acting as your nursemaid, too.”

  She covered her hurt with anger. “Yes, you have many responsibilities,” she retorted, “but I’ve yet to learn that one of them is to paint yourself to exhaustion, which is all you have done for days. You sent your steward away, left me to deal with—”

  “Don’t lecture me about responsibility!” he said furiously. “You have one! To give me an heir, and you’re showing no signs of it!”

  Her mouth fell open. A hundred thoughts and realizations tumbled into her mind. “An heir?” she said, playing for time. “We have never even spoken about children. When did this become so important to you?”

  He threw down the brush he’d been holding. “Don’t be naive, Madeleine. It’s always been important, of first importance. My house is dying. I’m the last Usher.”

  “Your house is dying?” she repeated. “Roderick, you are thirty years old and we have been married little more than two months.”

  Confusion flashed through his eyes. “My house has always been dying,” he muttered. “We’re cursed. You should never have come anywhere near us.”

  Abruptly, he brushed past her, snatching up his coat, and left his chamber by the main door to the passage.

  Is that it? she wondered. Are we going out for a walk now?

  It seemed not. By the time she descended the stairs with her cloak, he had gone on his own, and no one had noticed which way he went. So, she trudged off alone, too, glad of the exercise and the space to think over the many bizarre things he had said.

  Reluctantly, she remembered, too, Daniel’s accusation of opium addiction.

  Abruptly, she turned and walked home by the quickest route she knew. She even entered by the side entrance closest to their bedchambers and ran up the backstairs to her own room. The connecting door was still open, but he wasn’t there.

  She walked in, her heart pounding. What she was about to do went against every courtesy and honor she had been taught, but beside her husb
and’s safety, none of these things mattered.

  She strode to the cabinet, opening each drawer in turn until she found what Daniel had described. A dark bottle. It was even labelled Laudanum. With trembling hands, she picked it up and shook it. She even pulled out the stopper and turned it upside down to be sure.

  It was empty.

  She closed her eyes in grief. My poor lost husband…I’ll bring you back, I will…

  When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring not at the cabinet but at the three easels lined up by the window. Without hesitation now, she marched up to them and tore off the covers, one after the other.

  A cry of fear rose into her throat. She sank to her knees, unable to take her eyes off the terrible paintings.

  They were all, unmistakably, portraits of her. Her face and hair, her eyes, even the gown she had worn the night he had first kissed her. But the skeleton beneath poked through in various places, bloody, horrific, ugly.

  “Dear God, he is mad,” she whispered. “Or he hates me. Or both. How in God’s name do I help him now?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Roderick was terrified.

  He’d known almost since their return home that something was wrong. And it was getting worse. He was having difficulty telling dream from reality. He couldn’t remember things, like arranging to go for a walk with his wife, and instead of just apologizing, he hid it with shame and resentment, and heard all the nastiness and accusation spilling out of his mouth.

  It was his worst nightmare, worse even than the terror of being buried alive again… Or perhaps that was part of it, too. He had lost control. And it wasn’t the first time. It had happened before, surely around the time Robert died.

  There was a dreadful familiarity to all of this, and quite suddenly, as he stared at his wife, listening in horror to his voice berate her and hurt her, he knew what it was.

  Opium.

  He bolted from her. Very little was clear in his brain. The house, his cursed, beloved house seemed to be folding in on him, holding him in its prison when it was the worst place he could be. Its walls were tumbling, crumbling, threatening to bury him alive. And not just him, all the people left that he had to care for, that he loved.