by Liz Carlyle
A sound. There had been a sound.
Rising and jerking on the robe Claire had left across her chair, Anaïs snatched the blade she kept sheathed beneath her pillow, then moved soundlessly toward the dressing room. She was fully awake now, her every sense alert.
There. She heard it again. A subtle, almost mournful sound. And yet something not quite human, either, like the flow of an underground river. She went through to Geoff’s room, and entered without knocking.
Sheets pooling about his slender waist, he sat bolt upright, already half out of bed, the pale moonlight casting him in an eerie white glow. Despite the chill, both windows were flung wide. The sound came again, like the sough of the wind, but her entire focus was upon him.
“Geoff?” Anaïs hastened across the room, dropping the knife into her pocket.
He thrust out an arm. “Stop!” he rasped.
But she stood at the edge of the mattress now. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.
“It’s the water,” he murmured, his eyes focused not upon her, but somewhere in the depths of the room. “The water. Can’t you see it?”
He was dreaming.
She perched on the bed, one leg tucked beneath. “Geoff, wake up,” she said, reaching out for him. “There’s no water. It’s just a nightmare.”
“Hush,” he whispered, his palm still held outward. “That’s it. Do you see? The water?”
A faint breeze seemed to stir through the room, rippling the curtains. She set a hand to his cheek, wondering if she should wake him. “Geoff, there’s no water.”
“The darkness,” he rasped. “The sand. It’s in her shoes. She feels it.” This time he seized Anaïs by her upper arms, dragging her to him as if she were weightless. “Good God, why doesn’t she see?”
She landed awkwardly across his lap. “See what?”
“The moon is bright,” he said, wrenching her arms hard enough to bruise. “The waves are calm. She can’t—she can’t . . .”
Anaïs set a hand to his cheek. He was shuddering as if with cold, but his skin was feverish. “Geoff, who?”
“It’s too late.” The choked out the words. “It’s too dark. Tell him it is too dark.”
Vaguely frightened now, Anaïs forced Geoff’s face around and into the white moonlight.
Later she could not have said the moment at which she grasped the fact that the chill in the room was not just a chill. That Geoff was not asleep, that he was not even present. Or at least, a part of him was not. His lupine eyes burned down into her, wild like nothing she’d ever seen or could even have imagined. And despite the gloom, his pupils were like tiny shards of onyx, glittering and multifaceted.
As if he saw through the eyes of another.
And he did, she realized. Dear God, he did.
“Geoff?” Her voice was thready. “Come back. Please.”
Suddenly, the air surged about them in surreal, unpredictable currents. The sheer draperies, already tossed by the breeze, began to float. There was a low sound, like wind roaring in a distant tunnel followed by a loud thwap! Anaïs looked around to see that L’Art de la Guerre had blown from the desk. It lay upon the floor, its pages ruffling back and forth like a wheat field in the wind. Then the papers in his traveling desk lifted and began to spin about the room in a cyclone of foolscap.
Anaïs cast her eyes about the room as a lock of her hair whipped across her face. “Geoff, what’s happening?” she cried, clinging to him now.
His grip on her arms tightened, if such a thing were possible. “She is going to die,” he whispered. “She is going to die. He is pushing her under. Holding her. Killing her.”
“Who?” she cried. “Charlotte? For God’s sake, who?”
“Charlotte,” he murmured. “Poor Charlotte. She did not see . . .”
Then Anaïs felt his grasp go slack. Geoff fell back against the headboard, his chest heaving like bellows, Anaïs tumbling over with him.
For a moment it was as if time held suspended. As if no one breathed. Then the roar receded like a vanishing train. A deathly stillness settled over the room. The draperies fell limp against the sills. The cyclone of white flew apart, the scattered papers hitching up against furniture legs and wainscoting like so many dead leaves.
“Grazie a Dio!” she whispered, setting her forehead to his shoulder.
“Anaïs?” The word was all but silent.
“Geoff?” she managed. “Are you . . . here?”
For what seemed an eternity, he said nothing. But she could feel him slowly returning to himself. Then, his breathing rough, Geoff’s arms came around her, wide and strong, and she knew that he had returned to the present.
She clung to him, burying her face against his neck, half afraid and trembling inside.
When he spoke, it was as if the words were dragged from him. “It will be soon, Anaïs,” he said, still gasping. “We are out of time.”
Anaïs pushed herself up and he let her go. His eyes were his own again, and filled with grief. “Are you all right?” she whispered, searching his face for reassurance.
His breath was steadying. “Aye,” he finally said. “Well enough.”
A shock of his dark hair had fallen over one eye. Gently, she pushed it back. “What just happened?” she whispered. “Can you tell me? Can you even explain it?”
He shook his head, and set the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Not really.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I was just . . . trying to see. I’m sorry. Did I frighten you?”
“Not in the least,” Anaïs lied. “And you didn’t try to see. You did see. Something. The water. The sand. Do you remember?”
He dropped his hands as if resigned. “Oh, aye,” he murmured. “I found Giselle’s toy. That, and the handkerchief. The letter DuPont brought. I used them.”
“To try to open the door.” She cast her eyes round the disordered room. “And it looks as though it worked rather well.”
He shook his head again. “Not at first,” he said quietly. “But you see how it is. It’s . . . it’s like a sort of madness comes upon me. I hate it. It frightens people.”
Anaïs thought it was rather more than that. “It doesn’t frighten me,” she said again.
He gave a sharp, exasperated laugh. “When I was a lad, I hid it from my mother when the spells came,” he said. “She was terrified. The doctors . . . they told her I had a mental disorder. That eventually she would have to put me away.”
“Good Lord,” said Anaïs. “Surely she did not listen?”
He was quiet for a moment. “No, she took me to someone who was not a doctor,” he finally answered. “A . . . a sort of governess who had trained in Vienna, and who worked with children who were thought mentally disturbed. Mad.”
She laid a finger to his lips. “Stop using that word.”
Geoff watched her for a time, his eyes smooth as blue water now. “Your mother,” he said quietly, “she is a sister to the Earl of Treyhern, Sutherland said.”
Anaïs dropped her hand. “Yes,” she murmured. “Why?”
His gaze fell. “It was his wife,” he said. “She was the governess.”
“Aunt Helene?” Anaïs was amazed. “But . . . but they have been married ages.”
“My mother did not know they had married,” he said. “She thought to buy her away from the earl. To offer her more money. Mamma was desperate, you must understand. It was that, she believed, or an asylum.”
Anaïs laughed. “I should have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation,” she said. “But Helene does have a gift for dealing with children—and uncommon good sense.”
“It was the latter which saved me,” he said. “She told my mother I was perfectly fine. To let me be, and ignore the doctors.”
A memory stirred in the back of Anaïs’s mind. “And then you found your mentor,” she said. “In Scotland, yes?”
His smile was wistful. “Ah, that is a very long story,” he said. “Another tale for another night, perhaps.”
But Anaïs w
as not sure they would have many more nights.
She pushed away the thought. “Well, you have the Gift,” she said. “And all that matters is that you’ve learned to deal with it.”
“Aye, until I need it,” he said, his expression bleak. “And then it’s like calling up the devil. But the devil can’t help Charlotte Moreau, can he?”
She threaded a hand through his hair again. “So tell me,” she encouraged. “Tell me exactly what happened tonight. You took the dog, and the other things. And then what?”
He lifted his broad, bare shoulders. “Nothing came,” he said. “Nothing but that awful darkness. It’s haunted me, Anaïs, since we got here. But nothing came so I tried to sleep. It happens that way sometimes, just as the conscious mind begins to slip away . . .”
“And you fell into that odd little crack between sleep and wakefulness, didn’t you?” she murmured. “I think everyone feels it to some extent. But for you it is—well, you know what it is. And you are all right now?”
“Yes, but Charlotte is not,” he replied, grasping her arms again. “Anaïs, think. When did she say they were going on holiday?”
“The day after tomorrow,” said Anaïs swiftly. “Why?”
Geoff closed his eyes. “Lezennes is going to drown her,” he whispered. “He means to lure her out—a moonlight walk by the sea—and plead his case one last time.”
Anaïs jerked upright. “Oh, Geoff. No.”
But his gaze had turned inward. “But she . . . she rejects him,” he went on. “He all but knows she will. And he is prepared. That is why he is taking her away. Away from the house and the servants. Her priest. Even you, perhaps.”
“My God, it would be so easy!” Anaïs whispered. “In the dark, in her skirts and crinolines—she would not have a chance in the water.”
“He will say she tripped,” Geoff whispered. “That a wave came out of nowhere. That they were wading and he could not save her.”
Anaïs clapped a hand to her mouth to still her gasp.
“A romantic walk, hand in hand.” Geoff’s eyes were closed now. “He . . . he holds her under. The surf crashes over them. It does not take long. She is so small.” He stopped, and swallowed hard. “So small and tired. After all she has been through, she has so little fight left in her.”
“But—but that’s monstrous!” Anaïs cried. “We must tell—”
Just then, the clock in the stairway struck four, the sound doleful in the gloom.
Anaïs squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Geoff!” she whispered. “This is Friday! This is already tomorrow!”
“Aye, it is that.” He sat up, and set her a little away. “Anaïs, we must make ready to leave. We must take them with us in the night. It’s the only way.”
“Yes.” Anaïs rose and went to the window to stare across the street at Lezennes’ house “Yes, it is the only way. But first I must go and warn her.”
“Will she believe you?”
Anaïs turned, the hems of her wrapper whipping round her ankles. “I shall do my best,” she said determinedly. “I know—I shall ask her to go with me to confession this morning. She won’t think it odd. And once we get to St. Nicholas’s I’ll tell her everything. I can show her my mark if it comes to it.”
“Aye, now that she’ll recognize,” said Geoff, unfolding his long, lean, and very naked body from the bed. “It might do the trick. At the very least, I don’t think she’ll tell Lezennes what we’re up to. But somehow you must convince her that she is safer with us than with him. Still, I cannot like it. I have not gained her trust—and you may not have done, either.”
“Then we resort to ladders and laudanum,” said Anaïs grimly.
“So you managed to unlock the windows?”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Good girl,” he said, snatching up his drawers.
“Oh!” she said witheringly. “I do wish—”
He froze, and flicked a glance up at her in the gloom. “What?”
“I do wish you did not have to put those back on,” she blurted, then snagged her lip in her teeth. “Ah, but now is not the time, is it?”
And if she were wise, there would never be another time . . .
Was she? Was she going to be wise this time?
His mouth twisted. “Afraid we must press on, love,” he said, shoving a leg in. “Wake the house. I want everything packed, loaded, and on the way to Ostend by midmorning. Petit must go along, and tell Captain Thibeaux to make ready. We sail for England tomorrow.”
Promptly at half past ten, Anaïs stood on the Vicomte de Lezennes’ doorstep in her most demure dress, her prayer book tossed into the market basket swinging from her elbow. To her surprise, one could not actually hear her knees knocking.
The door was opened by a gray-garbed servant whom Anaïs recognized vaguely as one of the downstairs maids. She bobbed a curtsy but did not open the door very wide.
At Anaïs’s request, she shook her head.
“Très sorry, madame,” she said in stilted English. “But Madame Moreau is mal de—de—”
Fear stirred in Anaïs’s chest. “She is ill?”
“Oui, merci—ill, and not to receive the callers.”
“How very dreadful.” Gingerly Anaïs pushed a foot over the threshold. “She seemed quite the thing last night.”
The maid bobbed again, and cast her gaze down. “Désolé, madame,” she said again. “It was—how do you say—oui, quick? She will be well soon, it is to be hoped.”
She moved as if to close the door, but Anaïs did not extract her foot, and in fact managed to wedge an elbow against the door frame. “Oh, but if I could just see her a moment,” she pleaded. “Just long enough to assure myself that it is on no account my fault! Oh, but this is frightful. We kept her up late—playing the pianoforte to entertain us, no less! How thoughtless we were. I feel quite horrible about it now.”
“Non, madame,” said the girl, her voice a little unsteady now. “It is the wish of His Lordship. Madame is not for disturbing.”
Anaïs put the other foot over the threshold, and wedged her basket in as well. As she’d hoped, the girl finally backed up a pace. “The vicomte, then?” she said, left with no alternative. “Might I speak with him? Just to reassure myself?”
The girl flicked a quick gaze up—almost a warning shot across the bow—then, after a final moment of hesitation, threw the door fully open. “Bien sûr, madame,” she said. “If you will just take the chair?”
Anaïs sat as instructed, and looked about the entrance hall. A longcase clock by the stairs. An umbrella stand by the door. A very fine rug. All appeared perfectly normal. For a moment, she closed her eyes and tried to move through the house in her mind. This was not the first time she’d done it, either. And she might well have to do it in the dark tonight.
Eyes still closed, she tried to relax. Perhaps something would come to her if she tried to open herself to the void. Some snippet of meaning, or hint of what Lezennes was thinking.
It was no use. Nothing came—not that she had really expected it would.
In short order the girl returned, eyes still downcast, and motioned for Anaïs to follow.
Anaïs rose and trailed after the maid, counting off her steps, mentally noting the distance from hall to stairs. The number of steps. Two paces across the landing. Six more steps.
Lezennes met them at the top of the staircase, and bowed smoothly. He wore an elegantly embroidered banyan over his white shirt, the sleeves folded back to reveal a band of black satin, and had not put on a cravat.
“Madame MacLachlan, you have returned,” he murmured, his gaze running almost clinically up her length. Perhaps seen in the light of day—and absent the lubrication of fine wine—Anaïs’s actions of the previous evening seemed suspicious to him now.
“Oh, Your Lordship!” she said, setting a plaintive hand on his arm. “Do tell me how poor Charlotte goes on. Do, pray, reassure me. Oh, I am just beside myself at the thought we may have overtaxed her or overset
her in some way last night?”
He smiled thinly, and gave one of those airy, elegant waves of his hand. “Not at all,” he said. “Do set yourself at ease. It is nothing—a little headache. I merely wished her to rest.”
“Well, thank heaven,” said Anaïs. “I had hoped she and I might walk to church together this morning.”
“I’m afraid that is out of the question,” said Lezennes.
Anaïs tried to look wide-eyed and innocent. “Might I go in to see her, then?” she begged. “Just for a moment? Perhaps I might bring her something. A little calf’s-foot jelly, perhaps?”
He hesitated, a sort of smirk upon his face, then Lezennes gave a little bow. “You are all kindness, madame,” he said. “A brief moment will not hurt. But you will see that all is well. Please follow me.”
It was on the tip of Anaïs’s tongue to tell him she knew quite well where Charlotte’s room was, but she suspected at once that the vicomte did not mean to let her from his sight.
She was to be proven right. They strode through the passageway and past Charlotte’s room to a door at the very end of the hall. Lezennes opened it to reveal a small, elegantly furnished sitting room with additional doors to either side—a connecting room, she realized, between Lezennes’ bedchamber and Charlotte’s. The man was utterly without shame.
Charlotte reclined upon a divan by the windows, the door to her bedchamber open. “No, Louisa, the red shoes, please,” she said, motioning to someone beyond Anaïs’s line of sight.
“Look, ma petite, who I have brought you,” said Lezennes, striding into the room.
Charlotte’s head turned slowly. “Anaïs!” she said, moving as if to rise.
“No, no, you mustn’t get up!” said Anaïs. “I know you are unwell, and I can stay but a moment.”
A ghost of some inscrutable emotion passed over Charlotte’s face. “Lezennes wishes me to rest,” she said. “Tomorrow we travel. But how lovely to see you. Do sit down.”
“Only for a moment,” said Anaïs, glancing up at Lezennes as she sat. “Perhaps the vicomte will join us? We promise not to chatter about bonnets or ribbons, sir, if you will? And then you will see that I mean to keep my promise. I will stay but briefly.”
