Teeth in the Mist

by Dawn Kurtagich

  But he is gone.

  Chapter 9

  DR. MAUDLEY

  Later that morning, the breakfast table is set for five.

  “Do you think he’s bringing a guest?” Seamus asks.

  “There were four places set yesterday when there were only three of us,” Roan reminds him. “Maybe it’s some kind of tradition to set an extra place?”

  “A place for a ghost?” Seamus says, grinning.

  “Who cares?” Emma grumbles. “Mrs. Goode and all her talk of breakfast at eight o’clock precisely. By the count of my stomach the old crow is running late.”

  “She can be later for all I care, if she brings any of that foul meat in here again,” Roan mutters.

  Emma almost smiles and gives a little shrug. “It wasn’t bad.”

  “Well. You can have my portion—”

  Roan’s words fall away when Mountain Man steps into the room. She’s vaguely aware that her mouth is hanging open, but when she tries to close it, she cannot. Who is this man before them? What happened to the heathen?

  No longer the loose-haired, ax-wielding ruffian she had called cretin, brute, or worse. Here stands a… a gentleman. In appearance, at least. Hair tied back, shirt crisp and white, jacket black and formal, his cravat a startling jade green, which brings a dash of color to his eyes.

  “Cretin?” she manages.

  He regards her. “Miss Eddington.”

  Her attention is pulled away, however, by the man who follows.

  Roan is certain that this man is Dr. Maudley.

  She stares at him, unable to avert her gaze. Here is the man who controls her life. Here is the man her father willed her to. Here is the man of whom she knows so little, and who knows more of her than she does of herself. And of all the men she might have imagined, this one before her—so eccentric, hair so dark, and eyes to match, dressed in impeccable, expensive velvet and satin with a flair in his hair—is not what she had expected. Yet she is certain—as certain as day follows night—that he is exactly who he is.

  “My dears!” Maudley cries, throwing his arms wide. “How delighted I am to see you all together!”

  His waistcoat is a brilliant magenta and it catches the light.

  “Ah!” Maudley says, seeing Roan and Mountain Man standing so close together. “Excellent. You’ve met my son, Rapley?”

  She blinks, confounded, and for the moment, speechless.

  “Your son!” Seamus grins.

  “Adopted son,” Mountain Man says, voice low. “You must be the new wards.” His eyes drift over them, and then focus on Roan and Emma. “Two girls,” he adds. “Imagine that.”

  Dr. Maudley comes toward Roan, holding out both of his hands and smiling from ear to ear. Like Rapley and Andrew, Dr. Maudley is strikingly tall. Roan raises her hand, and he takes it and gently kisses the back.

  “Roan. Dear, dear Roan. Please, sit down.” He turns to the others. “Emma and Seamus. Wonderful! And Rapley, dear boy. Good to see you. Sit, everybody, sit.”

  “Well,” Emma says, eyeing Roan once they have taken their seats. “When did you two meet, exactly?”

  Roan turns to—what was his name? Roland? “I believe,” she says slowly, “it was when”—he called me direct and dumped me at the servants’ hatch—“he showed me to the house upon my arrival.”

  “Good, good. Well, Rapley, since you have already become acquainted with Roan Eddington, here are Emma and Seamus O’Brien.” He leans over to them and whispers in a conspiratorial tone, “I am certain he has not come off his mountain since last I went away. Doesn’t like to be confined, our Rapley.”

  Rapley. What a peculiar sort of name.

  She is acutely aware of him beside her. The words he spat at her early this morning still ring in her ears, as does her own response. She has not known many men, yet this one seems to bring out her wildest nature.

  Curse him. The brute. She would just as soon he remain out there on his precious mountain, tearing into rabbits with his bare teeth, or by whatever manner he chooses to survive.

  Yet here he sits, his table manners impeccable. He had simply chosen to ignore polite and civilized convention, then. A thrill of delight runs through her. Good. She need not expend the effort on him either.

  “I apologize, most deeply, for not being here to greet you when you arrived,” Maudley says, while Jenny dishes up sausages and scrambled eggs. “I had to make certain everything was in readiness, which, ironically, meant I had to be away. How do you find the house?”

  “Much larger than I expected,” Roan admits. The smell of the sausages is turning her stomach, so she takes a sip of her scalding tea.

  “Biggest house I ever saw!” Seamus bursts. “Like a castle!”

  “Indeed!” Maudley laughs. “When first I saw it, I thought much the same. And I fancied I would be the heroic knight to protect it.”

  “Or the king to rule it,” Seamus offers, piercing a sausage with his knife and biting into it without thought. “With a million servants!” he adds, mouth full.

  Maudley laughs. “Delightful!”

  “Did you inherit it?” Roan asks, cutting through the noise. “Or perhaps you purchased it?”

  “It was my father’s,” Maudley says, suddenly solemn. “It still is, in point of fact.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He does not come here often. Which suits me. I like the mountain air; he does not. But I aim to make many improvements to the house and the land, besides. Perhaps it will be worthy of my father then.”

  “Andrew mentioned something about installing ramps,” Roan says carefully. “I think it would be a suitable adjustment. Would that appeal to you, Master Seamus? You may wheel yourself out of doors, in that case.”

  “Bah!” Emma bursts. “He’ll do no such thing.” She looks at her brother. “You’ll go rollin’ yeself down the mountainside.”

  Seamus scowls. “Will not.”

  “Will too. Bouncing off all the rocks on your way.”

  Maudley laughs, a loud and unself-conscious sound. “Very good!”

  Seamus folds his arms, pouting, but Emma’s slow, cheeky grin draws out his own soon enough.

  “Decided to eat with the civilized,” Roan mutters under the boisterous conversation around her, pointedly not looking at Rapley.

  “That is one opinion,” he retorts, barely audible.

  “Whatever drew you away from your ax? It couldn’t be that you must behave like a civilized man, now your father is home?”

  Rapley slams the table so fast and forcefully that they all jump. “You know nothing of it.”

  They all stare at him, except Roan, who suddenly feels her appetite rear its head. She bites into a scone and smiles. Slowly, conversation resumes.

  “There are horns and skulls in a room upstairs along my corridor. Have you been to Africa?” Seamus asks, leaning forward in his chair and placing both elbows on the table.

  “I went once, some ten years ago,” Maudley says. “They have the most peculiar insects!”

  “Oh! What sort?”

  “I had opportunity, on a few very rare occasions, to observe the dung beetle…”

  Roan lowers her voice once more. “Well. Dr. Maudley exerts a great deal of control over you.” Rapley stiffens and she feels a perverse trill of pleasure. “Good. You need it.”

  She can feel him seething beside her… a rising pressure likely to burst without much more coaxing. And so what of it? she thinks recklessly. He is a child playing a game whose rules he knows not. She continues to smirk.

  Emma mutters something scathing beneath her breath. She still has not touched her food.

  “Are the eggs not to your taste, Emma?” Maudley asks. “I could ask Mrs. Goode to prepare an alternative.”

  “I like them fine,” she snaps, snatching up her spoon and shoveling eggs into her mouth without pause. “Just fine,” she adds, flecks of egg flying from her lips. Another unintelligible mutter.

  Maudley places down his cutlery. �
�I expect you are all wondering why you are here.”

  “You expect rightly,” Emma says. “Why us? Why Seamus and me, when there were hundreds of others in the workhouse back home?” She leans forward. “What payment do you expect?”

  “It is a delicate matter. I am most happy to talk to you about it in private. You and Seamus—”

  “Speak openly. I have nothing to hide.”

  Maudley regards her for a moment. “Very well. Emma, Seamus. Given the circumstances of… Well, how do I put this delicately? Given the circumstances your mother found herself in—”

  “You mean how she was a whore?” Emma asks defiantly. “How she sold her body to keep us alive? Is that what you mean, Doctor?”

  Maudley wipes his lips with his napkin and places it slowly on the table. “Given that she ended up in a very poor and precarious situation, it may surprise you to know that I was once a dear friend to her. When we were children, we played together, she and I. I spent some time in Ireland as a boy.”

  Emma snorts. “You? In Ireland?”

  “I assure you, it is true. Fianna O’Brien was a great favorite amongst the children at Saint Patrick’s, and though she was older than I, we all took to her like ducklings to a pond. I heard of her passing when I went back to Kerry last month. I did not know she had had children out of wedlock, but once I learned… I couldn’t very well do nothing, could I?”

  Seamus wipes surreptitiously at his eye and Roan pretends to be eating her own eggs, though she simply cuts them into smaller pieces and pushes them around her plate.

  Emma has fallen silent, but the anger still burns in her eyes.

  “An old friend I ought to have done more to help when I could have,” Maudley adds quietly.

  He glances at Roan. There is a question in his eyes. Do you want to know? But now that it comes to it, she finds that she does not want to know. Not now, not like this. Not in front of Emma and Seamus—and especially not while Rapley is here.

  “These eggs are marvelous,” she says, forcing joviality into her voice. How tedious to have to perform the act of happiness daily.

  “Mrs. Goode is an excellent cook, is she not?” Maudley says, the question gone from his eyes. “I must commend her once more. Eat your fill. You are home now. We are all home now.”

  Beside her, Rapley stiffens again almost imperceptibly, but they all eat on in silence.

  “Come,” Dr. Maudley says once they have finished breakfast. He claps his hands. “I can wait no longer. I have a surprise for you all.”

  Emma glances at Seamus skeptically, but Roan is intrigued and stands right away. Unused to so much free time, any distraction is welcome.

  Dr. Maudley leads them at a brisk pace back into the entrance hall where a large box stands upon a pedestal in the center. The doors have been thrown wide.

  “What is it?” Roan asks, stepping forward to touch it.

  “A camera obscura. It is a machine capable of capturing images, like a painting.”

  “I have heard of such a thing,” Seamus says, wheeling himself forward. “How does it work?”

  “Ah,” Maudley says, grinning. “To make the image, we polish a silver-plated copper sheet to a high shine.” He leans closer to Seamus, as though sharing a coveted secret. “Like a mirror. We then expose it in the camera here, after which we fume it with mercury, resulting in a latent image.”

  “May we try it?” the boy asks, almost bouncing in his chair.

  “Of course, young man! This daguerreotype is my own, though I have kept it in storage some five years. I am well trained in its use. You shall be the first model. Now, position yourself there, against the wall, and we shall use science to capture your likeness.”

  A niggle of doubt itches in Roan’s ear. “Is there any danger?”

  Maudley smiles. “I assure you, it is perfectly safe. I am well trained in the use of mercury.”

  “To have your likeness captured seems dangerous to me,” Emma says. “Some kind of witchcraft.”

  Jenny’s words return to Roan, and she shudders. To this day, folk hear the witch’s screams on the wind, a reminder that this house—this mountain—is cursed.

  “Only science,” Maudley says. “I assure you.”

  “I leave you to your games,” Rapley says suddenly. He turns to go, but finds Roan in his intended path. They exchange a look full of—what? Roan can hardly say. Then he is striding past her, nothing said and yet much suggested.

  “And we can see ourselves?” Seamus asks, wheeling himself to the spot Maudley indicated.

  Maudley laughs, clapping his hands together. “Indeed, yes! The image will appear on the silver plate… just like a jewel. It is fragile, so I must secure it in one of these display books before I allow you to touch it.” Maudley indicates three little rectangular velvet-lined books—two silver frames, which closed together like the covers of a book—sitting beside the camera. “The glass will protect the image so you may look at it as often as you please. Now, watch closely.”

  Dr. Maudley puts on a pair of white gloves, and then removes a polished silver plate from a soft bag. He opens the daguerreotype box and places the plate facedown inside it. “Ready yourself, and hold still.”

  It is several hours before Roan has opportunity to speak with Maudley alone, Emma and Seamus finally having gone away to look at the daguerreotypes of Seamus and the one Maudley insisted on taking of Roan, Emma having crossed herself and flat-out refused. She finds the doctor in a small room off the East Wing ground-floor corridor.

  “Come in, come in,” he says when he sees her, gesturing with his hand, his smile genuine and bright.

  Roan cannot help but stare. The walls, each and every one, are lined with bookcases, full of tomes so beautiful she cannot fathom at their collective fortune. In the center of the room, taking up much of the space, is an enormous partners desk, very like the one in her father’s study, only the leather top is a burgundy red rather than her father’s forest green.

  Maudley gestures to the seat across from the desk and Roan sits, still peering around with undisguised delight.

  “This room…” She gestures helplessly.

  “My sanctuary,” Maudley says, looking around fondly. He lets the silence draw out, companionable as it is, and then sits back, looking at her. “I have sensed that you wish to talk to me.”

  Roan nods. “I don’t want to be impertinent or ungrateful, but—”

  “You are dissatisfied with something. Come, tell me.”

  Roan lowers her voice. “That room. The blue one. It was meant to be mine.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Why?” Her voice is sharp.

  Maudley frowns. “I’m not certain I know what you mean.”

  “Why did you choose that room for me specifically?”

  Maudley’s brows release and he smiles. It has a softening effect on his peculiar gaze. “I thought that might be obvious. Perhaps not. Blue. It was your mother’s favorite color.”

  “My… my mother? You knew my mother?”

  Maudley takes both of her hands into his own, and she is so stunned at his revelation that it doesn’t occur to her to pull away.

  “Of course, dear girl. Your parents were most dear to me. Their passing was… is… Well. And now you are here, and you are dear to me as well.”

  Roan pulls away, pressing both her hands to her bodice, the warmth of his touch unwelcome on her icy skin.

  “I don’t know you, and Father never mentioned you.”

  “Your father was a peculiar kind of man. He divulged very little and kept much to his chest.”

  “How did you meet?”

  He pulls free his pocket watch and checks the time. “It was at a fair, I believe. A science fair. In London.”

  “A science fair?”

  “I believe so. It was a long time ago.”

  “Why do you think he never mentioned you? If you were so close, I mean?”

  Maudley sighs. “My dear, you would have to ask him yourself. I do
not know what his intentions are… were.” He turns away. “I am sorry. I am fatigued. Perhaps we could talk further another—”

  “Why did he send me here?” Roan cuts in. “I saw a letter. A contract, of sorts. And you knew I was coming before he had died.”

  Maudley turns back to her. “I am sorry to be the one to… and he should have… but, here we are. Dear, your father was sick. He knew that he would not live much longer. I was there for him. And I am honored he chose me for your guardianship. More than that, I cannot say. Only this: he loved you.”

  And now she knows he is lying.

  For all the things her father was, a loving man had never been one of them.

  “And what of me?” she asks, dropping her voice and glancing casually around. “Did he talk to you about me?”

  There is an infinitesimal pause.

  “Ah. You are worried, perhaps, that he confided some terrible behavior to me? Some faux pas?”

  Roan waits.

  “He spoke of you most fondly, as any father would. Now, I must bid you good afternoon, Roanita.”

  He bows stiffly before abruptly leaving the study.

  lies

  upon lies

  upon lies.

  The knocking sounds like thunder in Roan’s half sleep. Endless storms batter the barren, desolate mountain and the hallowed, hollow house upon it. The knocking continues, gets louder, more urgent, and the noise filters into the waking part of Roan, and she stirs.

  Roan puts on her dressing gown and cap, heading down the corridor to find the noise. What is real? Even this banging may be in her mind. Can she still be dreaming?

  Andrew and Dr. Maudley are already downstairs when she arrives.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Maudley demands, heading for the gatehouse. He is impeccably dressed, as always, and Andrew looks as though he has not slept at all.

  She follows in Maudley’s wake; voices rumble beyond the door, a yell, and then another knock,

  louder.

  “Open!” a male voice calls.

  Maudley unlocks the inner door and opens it enough to peer out, but then stumbles back when a large man pushes through. He is followed by a disheveled, rain-soaked Rapley. Behind them, the storm is more violent than Roan has ever seen.