by Liz Carlyle
He drank it down, knowing, of course, that the absinthe had already affected him, and that what seemed a brilliant insight was little more than the ramblings of a madman’s mind. But he scarcely cared. In time, the bottle became half empty, his carafe of water the same, and Lazonby had no memory of the glass which followed—or the one after that.
When he did not go down to dinner, a servant brought up a tray, which sat forgotten. Vaguely he recalled hearing a clock strike midnight. He must have gone to bed thereafter, for at some point he began to reemerge into pitch darkness, caught in the tentacles of an all-too-familiar dream.
He was on the gallows again, the noose growing tighter and tighter. And this time there was no brace beneath his collar. No trick knot to slow it. He realized in a panic that Sutherland was not there. That the priest wore instead a hooded cloak, eyes burning like the coals of hell. He fought to force his lungs to work and failed. He felt death slip nigh.
And then the noose softened, relented, and became something else altogether, and he was floating above, looking down at himself. He lay naked across a bed, caught in a tangle of sheets as he stroked himself. The rough rope had become a silken cord. Coldwater lay naked beside him, his hand slowly drawing down the knot, watching Lazonby’s face almost lovingly as he choked the breath of life from his body. And yet there was no pain, but only the sense of an extreme, blinding pleasure. A pleasure not unlike sexual release, and yet it shimmered all about him as his vision began to darken.
It was le petite mort at its most literal.
At its most exquisite.
And then he could not breathe, and true death was upon him, and Lazonby knew that he had been tricked. Enticed. That Jack had finally seduced him and taken his revenge. . .
On a guttural cry, Lazonby came bolt up in bed, clawing desperately at his throat.
His cock was so rigid and the room so black that for an instant Lazonby believed himself dead; that this time Jack had finally found what he’d so long sought. But when his hand came away from his throat, Lazonby clutched only the silk tie to his dressing gown. The death-erection was just an ordinary cockstand, and the rest of the garment was entangled about his knees.
Strangled whilst frigging himself.
And by his own robe, no less. An ignominious death indeed.
But he was not dead. The hollow sound of his breath sawing in and out of his chest reaffirmed it. Flinging off the robe and linens, Lazonby rolled up onto his elbows, eyes darting about in the gloom. The windows. The shadows. All were just as they should have been.
Aye, he’d cheated the hangman for yet another night.
Still, he worried about himself. He truly did. In a thousand lifetimes, he would never have guessed that a life of hard living and licentiousness could leave a man so jaded. To dream such things. Sometimes night after night . . .
And why was Jack Coldwater always mixed up in his nightmares of execution and eroticism? Good God, he was sick to death of thinking of him. What was it about the man that obsessed him so? He could feel the malice radiating from the man’s every pore—that much Lazonby did not mistake—and yet when he was near the man, he felt a sick, twisted, almost sensual awareness.
And he feared others saw it. That Anisha saw it. That it had given her a disgust of him.
Suddenly hinges squalled and a bright, wavering light cut across his face.
“My lord?” The whisper belonged to his new valet. “My lord, are you quite all right?”
Yanking up the sheets to cover his waning erection, Lazonby lifted one arm to block the light.
Good God, he must look like a madman, sitting thus in the dark.
“Yes,” he finally managed. “Thank you . . . Horsham, is it? Quite all right. Just a bad dream.”
Horsham cleared his throat sharply. “It’s the absinthe, sir, if you’ll pardon my saying,” said the valet. “The devil’s in that green bottle.”
“Aye.” Lazonby’s breath was calming now. “Aye, I think I met him tonight.”
The servant still held his lamp aloft.
“Thank you, Horsham,” Lazonby rasped. “You may go.”
There was a moment of hesitation. “Sir?”
“Yes?” Lazonby said a little impatiently.
To his dismay, the fellow came fully into the room and set the lamp down on the night table. In the flickering shadows, consternation was writ plain on the man’s face. He reached out as if to touch Lazonby.
Lazonby drew away. “Damn it, Horsham, don’t mollycoddle,” he said gruffly. “I’m a man of bad habits. Said as much when I took you on. Go the hell back to your bed.”
Horsham shocked him then by seizing his wrist and lifting his hand from the tangle of sheets. “But sir, your hand is bleeding.”
“The devil!”
Then Lazonby looked down. Horsham had forced his hand over to reveal a gash from the base of his ring finger straight down his palm. Lazonby turned to see his bolster slip streaked with blood already going brownish-red against the freshly starched linen.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered.
“Probably, sir.” Horsham let his hand drop. “And all the sooner if you bleed to death.”
“Hmm,” said Lazonby. “An honest man. I like you better and better, Horsham.”
But the valet had vanished below the edge of the bed. Lazonby leaned over to see the man on his knees, picking glass out of the Turkey carpet. “You crushed it, sir,” he said, the thick wool muffling his voice a little. “You must have gone to sleep holding it, and suffered a nightmare.”
“The devil,” Lazonby said again.
But Horsham was right. The empty bottle lay on its side by his night table. The silver sugar bowl was upside down, the lid and spoon nowhere to be seen. Only the stem of his glass lay intact.
Horsham picked it up, and the lamplight caught it, sending shards of light through the room. It was antique Venetian cristallo—another of his estate agent’s luxuries—and he had crushed it. Ruined it, just as he had every beautiful thing in his life.
I daresay you would do nothing but disappoint . . .
Thank God, he thought. Thank God she had sense enough to know it.
But the terror of the dream was fading now, and the memory of Anisha’s hot black gaze was stealing over him as the lethargy seeped back in.
He remembered no more until he woke to a shaft of morning sun edging through the draperies and the chatter of an annoyingly cheerful bird somewhere beyond his window. Lying flat on his belly, he dragged a hand down his face, only to realize it had been bandaged with muslin.
Horsham.
On a muffled curse, he rolled over, dragging his arm over his eyes to block the blade of light that threatened to slice into his absinthe-pickled brain.
Just then, someone in the depths of the room cleared his throat.
Lazonby rolled up on one elbow, his bandaged hand coming up to shield his eyes. A man sat in the shadows by the window, a saucer in one hand and a teacup pinched delicately between two fingers.
“Ah, good morning, Rance!” The teacup clicked softly onto the saucer and was set hastily aside. “Back amongst the living, I see.”
Forcing his eyes to focus, Lazonby dropped his hand. The contrast between the black wool and white cleric’s collar told him at once the identity of his uninvited caller.
“A dangerous lady, this.” The Reverend Mr. Sutherland pinched the empty bottle by its neck as if it were a snake that might strike—which perhaps it was. “The Green Fairy, they are calling her in Paris. ’Tis said she causes madness.”
“Balderdash,” Lazonby managed, dragging himself half upright, the sheets pooling round his waist. “Keeps the malaria away.”
“Hmm.” Sutherland set the bottle away with a hollow clunk. “But absinthe isn’t just spirits, my boy. Dr. von Althausen theorizes the wormwood makes it chemically similar to cannabis. It’s hallucinogenic.”
Lazonby scratched his chest absently and said nothing. But after last night’s dr
eams, he was beginning to wonder if perhaps he and Madame la Fée weren’t done for.
“By the way, we missed you last night.” Sutherland had gone to the draperies and was throwing them back on rings that shrieked with appalling volume. “Von Althausen was demonstrating his latest experiment in galvanization and its effect on the senses.”
Lazonby grunted. “I have no appetite for watching Dieter and his twitching amphibians,” he said in a thick morning voice. “Who let you in, anyway?”
“The new chap. Horsham.” With that, Sutherland threw up one of the sashes and leaned out into the street, breathing deeply. “I believe he feared you dead—and who better to deal with that sort of unpleasantness than a clergyman? They’re forever sending us round, you know, after it’s far too late.”
Somehow, Lazonby sat fully upright and waited for the room to stop spinning. Cold spring air was flooding into the room now. He dragged both hands through his unruly hair, resisting the urge to toss his visitor out on his ear.
Sutherland was an old friend of his father’s and had long been an important Preost—a high priest—within the old Fraternitas. He had played an important role in resurrecting and reorganizing the brotherhood, and had taken on the duty of reconstructing the old genealogies so that they could ensure no one who might possess the Gift was lost or left unprotected.
Sutherland, perhaps better than any of them, understood the organization’s long and murky history. Moreover, Lazonby respected him. Loved him, actually.
“Have you another cup there, Padre?” he said more amiably. “If so, take pity and fetch it here.”
The Preost did one better and carried the entire tea tray to Lazonby’s night table. “I’ve had a letter from Ruthveyn,” he said, tipping the pot over the empty cup.
Lazonby blinked. “Aye? From whereabouts?”
“Majorca,” said Sutherland.
“Making slow progress, isn’t he?” Lazonby took the proffered tea, the cup chattering a little dangerously upon its saucer. “Should have thought he’d be halfway to Gibraltar by now.”
“I believe they were detained in Paris,” said Sutherland, pulling his chair nearer. “Lady Ruthveyn wished her new husband to meet her uncle, Commandant Gauthier’s brother.”
Henri Gauthier had been Lazonby’s superior officer in the Maghreb, and one of the finest men he’d ever known. Gauthier’s only child, Grace, was one of Lazonby’s few true friends outside the Fraternitas. But now, through a strange twist of fate, she had married Ruthveyn.
“So you’ve come to tell me what was in his letter,” Lazonby muttered.
Sutherland chuckled. “You’re very astute, Rance, even when scarcely sober.”
“It’s a simple enough deduction,” said Lazonby. “Ruthveyn isn’t one for writing. And you never turn up unless you wish to chide me or send me off on some mission. So what was in the letter?”
The Preost seemed to sag a little in his chair. “I fear Lord Ruthveyn has caught wind of Bessett’s adventures in Brussels.”
“But he sat at the table whilst we devised the entire thing,” Lazonby argued. “Half of it was his idea.”
The man lifted a weary gaze. “I meant the part about de Vendenheim’s daughter.”
“But he knew that, too. He agreed Miss de Rohan might go along.”
Sutherland merely stroked his graying beard with his thumb and forefinger. “But something happened between them in Brussels,” he said vaguely.
“Ah, that something.” Lazonby threw up both hands. “Yes, Bessett fancies himself in love with the girl. I’ve had the whole story already.”
“So have I.” Sutherland picked up his teacup almost absently. “I met them in Harwich, you know, as they returned. And to be honest, they are quite perfect for one another. But what of Lady Anisha? It troubles me, Rance.”
“Oh, she knows.” Lazonby snorted with disgust. “Ever the perfect gentleman, Bessett told her at once. And frankly, I think she was relieved.”
Sutherland lifted his gaze a little incredulously, then he, too, sighed. “Well, Lady Anisha may be relieved, but I rather doubt her brother will be. Already, he grows suspicious. He senses something, or has seen something—you know Ruthveyn; the Gift is strong in him—and he won’t be well pleased with this turn of events. Bessett pressed his luck by merely asking to court the lady. To now throw her off . . .”
“Aye, Ruthveyn might tap old Bessett’s claret when he gets back,” Lazonby admitted.
Sutherland seemed to consider it. “No, I think not. Ruthveyn is not as rash as you, my boy. He seeks to maintain this new façade—the St. James Society—at all cost.”
“At the cost of his sister’s happiness?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps the happiness of one person is trumped by the importance of the good we do. Indeed, have we not all of us made sacrifices?”
Lazonby gave a sharp bark of laughter. “I’ve made damned few,” he admitted. “This St. James business, the formal reorganization of the Fraternitas across Europe—all of it was Ruthveyn and Bessett’s idea, concocted whilst I was behind bars waiting for the rope.”
“Again,” said Sutherland dryly.
Lazonby’s smile was bitter. “Aye, and if they’d got me on the gallows a second time, no trickery on earth would have saved me,” he said. “From the moment those gendarmes seized me in Morocco, I fully expected to die.” He stopped and dragged a hand over his face. “I thank you, Sutherland—you and Father—for persuading Henry East to recant on his deathbed. For had you not . . .”
“The Fraternitas looks after its own, my boy,” the Preost advised. “Stop thinking of it. ’Tis over. And by the way, you do sacrifice—sometimes more than any of us. Do I not recall it was you who volunteered to lead Jack Coldwater off our trail the night we were planning that mission to Brussels? And led him a dangerous chase through the rookeries, I might add, merely to keep him from our business.”
“But I am Coldwater’s business,” Lazonby protested. “Though his reasons are beyond me. Still, there’s no denying that my story has brought the full light of the Chronicle’s lantern shining down upon the St. James Society. That’s my fault—so it falls to me to fix it. To lead him off our scent.”
At that, Sutherland reached out and laid his hand over Lazonby’s. “Oh, young Coldwater is nothing but a meddling young radical, I expect. Some of them hate the aristocracy. This has less to do with you, perhaps, than the Chronicle’s politics.”
Lazonby’s hand fisted. “A part of me thinks if I could just unmask Peveril’s killer—if I could clear my family’s name—all this would end,” he said. “Yet I’m thwarted at every turn. No one knows anything. Most won’t even receive me. Scotland Yard refuses to open their files. I’m free—and deeply grateful—and yet I’m still convicted.”
“As to that, my boy, I pray the truth will out. You’ll settle it in time.”
“I wish, honestly, I believed that,” Lazonby grumbled. “In any case, what are you going to tell Ruthveyn about this little romance?”
“Nothing, I think.” Sutherland relaxed into his chair again. “It’s not my place to do so, is it? It is Bessett’s. And he is, as you say, ever the gentleman. Most likely he has already penned the letter.”
Lazonby grunted, took a long sip of his tea, then set the cup away and turned to sit on the edge of the bed, drawing the sheet along for modesty. “In all the great hurrah yesterday,” he said, bracing his elbows on his knees, “I forgot to ask if Bessett and Miss de Rohan got the Gift safely out of Brussels.”
“Indeed, the child has gone to her grandfather near Colchester. I’ve appointed a new Guardian.”
“Aye? Who?”
“Mr. Henfield.”
“Ah.” Lazonby had met Henfield once, when he had come to London to be studied in Dr. von Althausen’s basement laboratory. Von Althausen had confirmed the man hadn’t a hint of the Gift himself, but he was from an old Fraternitas family, and a stalwart country squire of even temperament and common sense. Henfield would wat
ch over the family and ensure that the child’s special gifts remained hidden—for her own safety.
Sutherland rose and drifted to the window by Lazonby’s wardrobe, where Horsham, ever the optimist, had laid out fresh clothes on a chair. “You have not been entirely given up on,” Sutherland said, glancing down at them, “unless this was what Horsham meant to bury you in.”
“And lo, here is the gentle lark, weary of rest!” Lazonby quoted, grinning. “Best roll out before he sends down to the Strand for the undertaker.” He stood, dragging the sheet about him as he went. “Yank the bell there, won’t you? I require a bath rather desperately.”
Sutherland did as he asked, then said, “I’m off to the Traveler’s Club for luncheon. I’ll wait if you care to join me?”
“Thank you, no,” Lazonby said. “I’ve plans for the afternoon.”
“Oh? Of what sort?”
“I’ve a call to pay in Upper Grosvenor Street.”
“Lady Anisha?”
“Aye, I’m in her black books again.”
Sutherland’s expression turned solemn. “There was a time, Rance, when I hoped you and she might make a match of it,” he said. “Are my hopes entirely dashed in that regard?”
Lazonby felt something inside him still. His heart, perhaps. “Entirely, sir,” he finally replied. “I’m sorry. I beg you won’t bring it up again.”
“But Lady Anisha is such a fine young woman,” said the Preost, pensively stroking his beard. “And I know you are deeply fond of her.”
“Deeply fond, yes,” said Lazonby tightly. “Too fond, sir, to burden her and her children with my reputation. You know that I am right in what I say.”
Sutherland looked sad. “Aye, Rance, but she’s fond of you, too. And you’ll settle this business. I have faith. Perhaps . . . perhaps the lady will wait?”
“I cannot ask it,” said Lazonby, heading for the bathroom. “I won’t. But I do find myself owing her yet another apology for being boorish. After that I’m down to the Quartermaine Club.”
“Rance, I do hope you know better than to gamble.” The Preost’s chiding voice echoed through the open door. “Quartermaine’s is hardly the sort of place for a man of your—well, let us call it ill fortune.”
