by Megan Chance
The carriage slowed to a stop. When I looked out the window I saw that we were before the Bennett house. The gray of the rain seemed to soften its edges; the windows were lambent and welcoming, and I thought how that house was like everything else in my life, how nothing about it was as it seemed. I waited for the driver to open the door; when he helped me out, I realized the rain had grown heavier. The black feather on my hat drooped to brush my cheek. I stood there on the walk, staring up at the house, at the window I knew belonged to Dorothy’s bedroom.
“Ma’am?” the driver asked.
I smiled brightly and gave him my hand.
The house was quiet when I entered, though the lights were blazing, the heat rising from the vents along the floor. When I gave my cloak and hat and gloves to Lambert, I asked, “How is Mrs. Bennett today?”
“Quite well, ma’am. Mr. Jourdain is with her now.”
There it was, that little flicker of jealousy. I refused to feel it. I was relieved he was with her; it meant I would not encounter him on my way to my bedroom. Still, I lingered on the stairs. I did not want to see him, not at all; yet I was disappointed when I reached the safety of my bedroom without meeting him.
He could have killed them both. He had the motive for each of the murders: for Adele, because she had become difficult, and Peter, because he was in the way of the adoption, because he had drawn up commitment papers for Dorothy—
I paced fretfully to the fireplace. There was always a fire lit, whether I was in the room or not. I supposed because the central heating was not strong enough to reach well to the third floor; the heat was like the flutter of a fan, the air warm when you were close to the vents, insubstantial when one stepped a few feet away—
The truth is not always what you want to believe.
The thought winged through my mind, as if someone had sent it there. I looked to the desk, where the notebooks containing the spirit writing were on top, neatly laid out by Kitty. It had been some time since I’d looked at them. I went over and picked them up and took them to the chair by the fire, and then I opened them, poring over the words.
Liars will lead you astray. Do not be tempted.
Tempted by who? Who was the liar? How could I tell?
Trust those sent to guide you.
But if someone had been sent to help me, who was it? Who did the spirits mean? Adele? Michel? Benjamin? Dorothy?
Go farther than you will and be satisfied.
I slammed the books shut and shoved them onto the floor. They were as much a mystery as ever. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself, to clear my mind.
“Peter had not seemed himself these last months.”
The words came to me like a scent memory—the sudden whiff of a long-ago perfume caught in a breeze, an entire childhood told by the musky sweet tang of fallen apples in the sun. There, not there, a memory left dangling.
“I lost my love for him in that moment. I thought we were confidants.”
I realized that I had forgotten one thing in my quest to solve Peter’s death: his life. I had been—as Michel had so mockingly told me—willingly blind. I had not wanted to face the looming failure of my marriage, and so I ignored anything that might show the cracks. Peter’s disappearances. His distraction. The truth was as I told Ben: I had not known my husband as well as I’d told myself I had.
But someone else did.
28
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ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
I did not want to wait to speak to Dorothy. Lambert had said Michel was with her, and that meant he’d given her the cordial—soon, she would fall asleep, if she hadn’t already, and my questions would have to burn within me ‘til morning.
I went directly to her room, knocking softly upon the door.
Charley opened it. “Why, there you are, Mrs. Atherton! Mrs. Bennett’s been asking for you all day.”
I heard a muttered imprecation, and then Michel stepped past the screens. He wore no frock coat, and his vest and shirt were open—he’d obviously been tending to Dorothy. The worry in his face was replaced quickly by relief when he saw me. He started toward me, as if he meant to take me into his arms. Then he checked himself. “Madame, we were worried. You left no word.”
“I had an urgent errand,” I said.
“So urgent you couldn’t tell Lambert?”
“I’m sorry if I distressed Dorothy. Or you. But I assure you it was necessary.”
“Had Rampling something to do with it?”
I said, “Might I speak with Dorothy?”
He stepped back, but not enough to let me pass easily, and I knew it was deliberate and he was angry. I had to compress my skirts to get by him, and even then, he was so close my hand brushed his trousered thigh. I did not look at him as I went into the bedroom.
Dorothy’s eyes were closed, and she looked very peaceful. I went to the chair and sat down, which put me even with her face. Gently, I touched her hand, which peeked from the bedcovers. “Dorothy,” I whispered.
“Oh, I can hear you well enough, child. I’m not asleep.” Her eyes opened. “Where’ve you been? I wanted to talk to Johnny this afternoon.”
“You must forgive me. I had an—”
“Urgent errand. Yes, I heard.”
“I didn’t mean to neglect you. But I’d be happy to tell you of it”—I threw a glance at Michel—“in confidence.”
He hesitated, but he inclined his head and put his hand on Dorothy’s shoulder. “Madame wishes me to leave, ma chère. I’ll return when you’ve finished your tête-à-tête, eh?”
She snaked a naked arm out to reach for his hand, clasping his fingers and bringing them to her lips. “Don’t go far, dear boy,” she said, releasing him.
I couldn’t read his expression. Still, his displeasure was obvious as he left.
I waited until I heard the closing of the bedroom door, and then I said, “I’ve a question to ask you, Dorothy. It might be quite important.”
She frowned at me, and then she closed her eyes. “You discovered something today?”
“Yes.”
Dorothy sighed. “About Michel?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. There’s something I must know about Peter. I’ve been thinking about the commitment papers. It’s puzzled me from the start, why Peter would do such a thing.”
“He wanted to protect me.”
“By ruining you? It doesn’t seem like him. It seems frankly cruel. I thought the two of you were friends. You said yourself that you were confidants.”
“Yes, child, we were.” Dorothy’s voice was very soft.
“Then if he truly believed Michel to be a mountebank, why not punish him? It seems he was willing to sacrifice you, to leave Michel untouched, which makes no sense at all—”
“Oh, I understood it, my dear. I understood it.”
“Then perhaps you could explain it to me.”
“Oh, my dear child.” Dorothy gave me a strangely sympathetic look. “You’re so bright that sometimes I must remind myself how young you are. Where did he find you? In your father’s office? Did you ever wonder why he married you, Evelyn?”
“He told me he was tired of the girls in society. He said I made him laugh.”
“Good reasons. But do you really think they were good enough that he should take on his family and the upper ten for them? Ah, I suppose you were like any girl in love. Thinking of your fairy tale. Never asking the right questions.”
“What questions would those be?” My voice was barely there.
“He never courted anyone but you. When he was a boy, he used to run with these other young bucks, the way boys do, but Peter never outgrew it. Always had these young men about him. And then he met Michel, and… Oh, my dear boy does cause his share of trouble, doesn’t he? Such a pretty face. Such a voice. And there was that Tommy Miller too. That’s who you should talk to, child.”
“I don’t understand. Who’s Tommy Miller?”
Dorothy closed her eyes.
A lit
tle desperately, I said, “Did Peter return here that night after the circle? Did he see Michel?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t come here.”
“Perhaps he did, and you didn’t realize—”
“Michel never left this room, child. Not that night. I’m not wrong about that.” Her eyes opened wearily. “Peter went to the waterfront. You go see Tommy Miller. He’ll tell you Peter knew the risks he was taking, going down there, but he didn’t care.”
“Why was he down by the river that night?”
“I suppose it’s no wonder, given how often he went down there.”
“Talk to those men who were Peter’s friends, Evelyn. That’s all I’ll say. Now, will you call Michel? I ache so.”
She clearly knew more than she was telling, but it was obvious she intended to reveal nothing else tonight. I rose. “Of course.”
“I’d ask you to bring me my boys, but I’m so tired. But Evelyn—tomorrow? Tomorrow, you’ll call them for me, won’t you?”
I looked back at her, lying so feeble and small on the bed, waiting as she did for my lover, begging for my favor, and I hardly knew how to feel. Whether I should feel anger for what she was keeping from me, or jealousy over what I must share with her, or gratitude for the protection she’d offered, or even satisfaction at her dependence upon me. They were all there, jockeying for place.
“Tomorrow,” I told her. Then I went to find Michel.
WHILE KITTY UNDRESSED me, I thought of my husband. I remembered how Michel had taunted me with the fact that Peter must have known what would happen to me when he left me his family’s home, his mother’s things. Though I felt certain he would not have expected I would be accused of his murder, that too felt like a final reproof, a censure from the grave—as if he couldn’t forgive me for trying to love him, for trying to be the wife I thought he wanted.
But that was a lie too. I had married Peter because I wanted more from my life. The truth was that I had hidden in the role of the devoted, blind wife, the grieving widow, because it was easier to pretend than to admit that I had made a wrong choice, that I was unhappy.
We had both been miserable. No wonder his spirit had never returned to console me, or to guide me—
Except that he had.
I frowned in the mirror as Kitty unfastened the crinoline. I realized suddenly that Peter had not visited me for some time. Not since Michel and I had become lovers. Not since that first night. “Don’t trust him,” he had said. Over and over again. But then, when I found myself in the arms of the man he had begged me not to trust, Peter’s spirit had suddenly vanished.
Why?
Dorothy had told me to look for answers in the men Peter had befriended, in the places he’d frequented. Places near the river. Peter had not gone back to Dorothy’s house that night, though if it was Michel he’d meant to question, as Ben had supposed, why not return here? Why make the trek to the waterfront? And how would I find this Tommy Miller to ask?
“Kitty,” I asked quietly. “Do you know what happened to Cullen after the Athertons released him?”
She clucked as she stripped off my chemise and pulled my nightgown over my head. “A pity, what they did to him, ma’am. After him being Mr. Atherton’s driver for twenty years.”
“Where did he go?”
“He was lucky enough to find another situation, ma’am, though he’s working for a tradesman—not quite the gentleman Cullen’s used to, but he says he’s happy enough.”
“If I gave you a note to give to him, do you think you could find him?”
“Oh yes, ma’am. I know right where he is.”
As she took down my hair and brushed it, I penned the note. When she left, it was with the missive tucked securely in her pocket.
“Take it first thing in the morning,” I told her. “And please, tell him how anxious I am to see him.”
Then I waited. But it was a restless hour. I knew he delayed to punish me, but I also knew he would come, and finally, he did.
The knock was perfunctory. He came inside nearly the same moment, closing the door again behind him. I turned from where I stood at the fireplace, pulling my dressing gown more closely about me, feeling suddenly too vulnerable, too uncertain, watching him turn down the gaslight so it began to flicker, almost low enough to snuff out.
He stepped over to where I stood. Then he took off his vest, which was still undone, and his shirt, and laid them neatly over the back of the chair.
“I hardly know whether to strangle you or make love to you,” he said, taking the few steps to me. He lifted a curl of my hair from my shoulder, rubbing it between his fingers. “I find it a familiar feeling of late.”
“I wonder that I should be the source of such confusion. Perhaps it’s your own ambivalence that creates such a paradox.”
“No doubt.” His smile was small. “Where were you today?”
“I told you. I had an errand.”
“Ah, oui. An urgent one. Occasioning not even a word to Lambert. Or to me.”
“I would explain if I could.”
“You don’t trust me.”
I pulled away. The strand of hair slipped from between his fingers. I looked into the fire. “I can’t think why you should be surprised.”
“I thought we understood each other.”
“I don’t know that I will ever understand you.”
“Why do you torture yourself this way, chère?” His voice lowered. He touched my shoulder. “Come to bed with me.”
“How good you are,” I said, trying to make my words as cold as I felt his manipulation to be. “What am I to do now? Tell me so I know your intention—is this when I run mindlessly into your arms? When I stop asking questions? Is that how it’s always worked before?”
I felt his sudden stillness, and I caught my breath at the danger. I wanted reassurance; I wanted him to tell me something I could believe. But I expected to feel the strength of his fingers about my throat. How had Peter died? And Adele? Had they gasped for a last breath? Or had the first thing they’d felt been the hot slice of a knife in the soft flesh beneath their ribs?
My vision wavered, soft and blurry now with tears. And then I felt his hands at my hips, pulling me back against him. He wrapped his arms around me, burying his face in the hollow of my shoulder. His hair tangled with mine.
“I’m falling in love with you, Evie,” he murmured against my skin.
I couldn’t tell—was it true, was it not; in that moment, the two things seemed the same. I began to cry in earnest; I was pliable as a babe as he turned me to face him, as he kissed me—my cheeks first, and then the trail of my tears, and then my lips, and I stumbled against him so that he bore all my weight and it seemed no trial for him at all.
The next thing I knew, we were on my bed, and he was undressing me slowly, lingering over my skin as if he meant to impress every inch upon his fingertips, and I let myself go mindless and cared nothing for whether or not it was his intention. I ignored what I believed he was and what I thought he had done, as I allowed myself—for one small moment, and perhaps only this once—to love him.
29
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WHO WOULD BELIEVE ME?
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1857
THREE WEEKS AND THREE DAYS BEFORE
EVELYN ATHERTON’S TRIAL
We didn’t speak of it in the morning. Before dawn, he woke, and I roused sleepily as he kissed my shoulder before he got out of bed. I watched him pull on his trousers and gather his clothes, and at the door he turned to look at me. I knew he saw I was awake, but he said nothing, and when he was gone I fell back into a sleep so full of dreams and images that it was scarcely sleep at all.
But the dreams were my own. Adele did not visit me again. Nor did Peter. It seemed the spirits had left me to discover the rest on my own.
Which was exactly what I meant to do. The answers that would save me were there, just beyond my reach. Today, I meant to find them.
When I was fully awake and dressed
—by the upstairs maid, Molly, because Kitty had gone on her errand to find Cullen—I went to the library to wait. Michel was with Dorothy, I knew, and I could not stay in my room, where memories of last night intruded. I went to the large window overlooking the backyard and tried to put such things aside. I could not think of them now; perhaps I would never think of them again.
It was nearing noon when Kitty returned, breathless and red cheeked, to find me.
“He says he’s off at six, ma’am. He’ll come to you then.”
Six o’clock. Dear God, it seemed an eternity. A hundred things might happen between now and then. How was I to spend the hours?
Dorothy sent for me soon after. I walked into her room to find Michel still there, seated in the chair on the other side of the bed. He rose politely when I entered, but his expression was carefully blank; he might not have been the same man who had confessed his love for me last night.
“I want to talk to my sons,” Dorothy told me as I sat. “I’ve kept Michel here to help.”
“I’d hate to keep him from his other tasks. I think I hardly need him.”
Dorothy said, “Well, we’ll find out. Child, close the curtains.”
I rose to do her bidding. At the same time, Michel turned down the gaslight and lit a candle on the bedside table.
“Shall we hold hands?” I asked.
To my surprise, Michel shook his head. “Let’s try it without, eh?”
I nodded and closed my eyes. Dorothy began to sing a hymn, and Michel joined along, and I tried to let myself drown in the words, in the melody. But my mind kept spinning to the things I knew, the puzzles that twisted and turned. I thought of Cullen, and my planned visit with him tonight, and what more I might discover. I was growing close, I knew. Very close. All I must do was put the pieces in order—
“Is there a spirit come to talk with us?” Michel asked softly.
