Mesmerized

by Candace Camp

  “Miss Moreland, welcome to Blackhope.” He extended his hand to her as he came forward, taking the hand she held out to him. The same sort of jolt ran through her as it had the first time he had taken her hand, a sense of heat and something more, a sort of recognition.

  Olivia didn’t understand it any more than she had the first time it happened, but she could not deny that she liked the feeling. “Lord St. Leger. Thank you for inviting me. You have a beautiful home.”

  She did not mention the flash of vision she had had of the old castle; that was exactly the sort of thing that had given her family its common epithet. The sort of thing her grandmother had talked about that had always frightened Olivia as a child.

  “I’m deuced glad you came,” Stephen confided in a lower voice, his hand still curled around hers, his gray eyes gazing into hers. “I was afraid you might decide not to.”

  “Nonsense. Of course I came,” Olivia replied quickly. It occurred to her that her voice sounded much too eager, and she continued pragmatically, “I am looking forward to this investigation. It isn’t often that I have such an opportunity.”

  “Yes. Naturally. I am fortunate you feel that way.” He sounded more formal now, and Olivia regretted her words. Why was she always at such a loss socially?

  “Allow me to introduce you to my family. They are quite looking forward to meeting you.”

  He offered her his arm and led her up the stairs and along a gallery to the double doors of a formal drawing room. There were several people in the room, and all turned toward them with an air of eager curiosity as Stephen and Olivia entered. For a moment, in Olivia’s natural shyness, there seemed to be a crowd, blurred and overwhelming, but as Stephen introduced her, they resolved themselves into individuals.

  “Mother, allow me to introduce you to the Lady Olivia Moreland. Olivia, this is my mother, the Dowager Countess St. Leger.”

  His mother, Olivia saw, was a pretty middle-aged woman, her dark hair having turned almost entirely white. Pleasant and plump, she wore the black clothes of mourning, including a black cap, its severity relieved a little by a row of black lace. Lady St. Leger greeted Olivia with a smile, her blue eyes lively with interest. It occurred to Olivia that St. Leger’s family must have the same sort of suspicions about his inviting her to this house party that her own family had, and she blushed a little as she returned the countess’s greeting.

  “My brother’s widow, Lady Pamela, the Countess St. Leger,” Stephen went on flatly, indicating the woman sitting on a chair just beyond Lady St. Leger. She was a marked contrast to Lady St. Leger, her dress cut in smart lines and of the pale gray color indicative of reduced mourning, decorated with bands of black lace, and her face coolly beautiful and unlined with pain or sorrow. She was a blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty, the sort of woman who made Olivia feel clumsy and plain, and Olivia could not help but wonder why Lord St. Leger had not mentioned this woman before. She did not seem the kind of woman who would slip one’s mind.

  “Lady Olivia.” Lady Pamela’s voice was cool, and there was a look of amused disdain in her eyes. Olivia colored faintly under her gaze, acutely aware of her own travel-stained state.

  “And this child jumping out of her skin in eagerness is my sister, the Lady Belinda St. Leger.”

  “I am not a child,” Belinda protested, directing a look of mock anger at her brother. Dark haired like her brother, she had bright eyes of a dark gray-blue, and she smiled merrily, fairly vibrating with youth and high spirits. She turned to Olivia, taking her hand and saying candidly, “I am so happy to meet you. We’ve all been dying to see you.”

  “Belinda!” her mother said reprovingly. “Lady Olivia will think you have no manners.” But the doting smile she turned on her daughter took any sting out of her words.

  “You know it’s the truth,” Belinda responded irrepressibly.

  “Allow me to introduce my dear friend Madame Valenskaya to you,” Lady St. Leger said, turning toward the woman who sat beside her on the couch.

  “I am ferry happy to meet you,” Madame Valenskaya said, inclining her head regally to Olivia, her voice surprisingly deep for such a small woman, and thickly accented.

  Olivia responded, her eyes taking in the woman with interest. Madame Valenskaya was short and stocky. Sharp, button-black eyes, small inside the fleshy face, peered out at Olivia, and Olivia had the impression that Madame Valenskaya was sizing her up just as much as Olivia was analyzing her.

  “And this is Irina, Madame’s daughter.” Lady St. Leger indicated a small, colorless young woman sitting in a chair somewhat removed from the others.

  The girl gave Olivia a brief nod and an unaccented “Hello,” then glanced away. Olivia was unsure whether Irina was shy or simply rude.

  “And Mr. Howard Babington,” Lady St. Leger said, smiling toward the man standing beside the window.

  He had turned toward Olivia as she entered the room, and he gave her a polite smile and greeting now. This, Olivia knew, was Madame Valenskaya’s sponsor into society. Olivia did not know him, which was not unusual, as she did not go out much, but when she had asked Kyria about him, her sister had not heard his name, either, which meant that he was certainly not a member of the upper echelons of London society, if he was even a gentleman at all and not just a pretender like Valenskaya herself.

  Mediums commonly had such sponsors, people who invited them into their homes and introduced them to their friends, who allowed them to conduct their séances in their houses and under the aegis of their good name. Some such sponsors were merely dupes, as fooled by the mediums as their other victims. Others, Olivia knew, were accomplices of the mediums, aiding them in perpetrating their frauds. She had no idea which Mr. Babington was.

  A slight man of medium height, he had a pale, narrow face made even thinner by a pointed goatee. His hair was a light brown, as was his beard, and his eyes were hazel. He was, in general, a rather nondescript-looking fellow, neither handsome nor plain, and when he spoke, his voice was as nondescript as the rest of him. He was the kind of man, who, whether through intent or simply by nature, was easy to ignore and even easier to forget mere moments after one saw him.

  “Such an honor,” he murmured, taking Olivia’s hand limply and letting go almost immediately.

  “I am sure you must be tired after that long ride from London,” Lady St. Leger said kindly. “No doubt you would like to go to your room.”

  “Thank you, my lady.” Olivia accepted the offer gratefully.

  “I’ll show her to her room,” Belinda said cheerfully, popping up from her seat. She led Olivia out of the drawing room, then along the gallery and down another hall.

  Belinda linked her arm companionably with one of Olivia’s and, leaning in, confided, “We were all agog to meet you. I hope you won’t take offense at our curiosity. You see, it is the first time that Stephen has asked a woman to the house. Well, I mean, since—well, since he’s been home this time.”

  Olivia felt her cheeks flush hotly. “Oh, no, you mustn’t think—I mean, Lord St. Leger and I are merely friends. There is nothing to—well, to warrant any particular interest in me.”

  She felt embarrassed by the St. Leger women’s assumption that Stephen was interested in her as a female and guilty that she was lying to them, or at least hiding knowledge from them. Yet she could tell them the truth about why she was here even less than she could have told her own family. Lady St. Leger would be horrified and insulted by Olivia’s real reason for visiting.

  “Of course, Stephen has scarcely left the estate since he returned. He says he has too much to do, learning all the estate affairs.” She grimaced. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’s a little uncomfortable here. He was in America for almost ten years. But, then, no doubt you know that. How did you meet him? We’ve all been wondering like mad. It must have been when he was in London to fetch us, I suppose. But I didn’t think he went to any parties. He positively refused to go with us. It must have been romantic.”

  �
��Oh! Oh, no, it wasn’t—we are merely friends,” Olivia repeated lamely. “We—uh, I met your brother through my brother, Reed. Lord St. Leger came to call on him, and I happened to be there.”

  Olivia thought to herself that she would have to remember to tell Lord St. Leger about their chance meeting. It had been foolish of them not to have dreamed up a story in advance. Naturally his family would be curious—and would not be distracted so easily, as her own family had been, by a diversion into the issue of equality for women. There were definitely advantages to having a liberal-thinking—and vague—group of relatives.

  “So you see,” Olivia went on, “it was more prosaic than romantic. Lord St. Leger invited us both, but Reed could not come.”

  Belinda looked at her assessingly, and Olivia thought that she was not completely dissuaded from her romantic notions by Olivia’s story, but then she shrugged and said, “Oh, well. At least it put Pamela’s nose out of joint.” She smiled a little at the thought.

  “Lady St. Leger?” It was Olivia’s turn to look at her companion curiously. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh! Well…” Belinda hesitated, then finished, “I mean, just that she’s used to being the lady of the house. You know, the most important female. And you’re the daughter of a duke, so of course you outrank her.”

  Olivia, looking at the young woman’s guileless countenance, had the definite suspicion that Belinda’s explanation had not been her original thought. However, she could scarcely press her about it, so she merely smiled.

  Belinda stopped at an open door. “Here is your room, my lady.”

  “Oh, please—I do so dislike titles. I usually go by Miss Moreland,” Olivia protested uncomfortably.

  The girl’s eyes widened, “Oh, but I could not call you that! Mama would be furious with me if I were so rude.”

  “Well, then, perhaps just Olivia?” Olivia suggested.

  Belinda goggled even more. “Truly?”

  “Yes, of course. To tell you the truth, I do not feel much like the daughter of a duke.”

  Belinda’s smile flashed across her face. “You are not high in the instep at all. I knew I would like you. I just felt it!”

  Olivia chuckled. “The feeling is mutual.” It would be, in truth, hard not to like the girl’s fresh and candid manner.

  If possible, Belinda grew even sunnier, and she gave Olivia’s hand a quick squeeze. “This is your room. I hope everything is satisfactory. If not, Mama would be happy to change you around.”

  “Oh, no. It is a lovely room.” It was indeed a pretty place, spacious and elegant, with a set of windows on either side of the bed looking out on the rear garden.

  Belinda left soon afterward, closing the door behind her, and Olivia sank down with relief onto a chaise longue. It was more tiring to play a part than she would have imagined, she realized. Nor could she completely stifle a twinge of guilt over the fact that Stephen’s mother and sister assumed her to be a woman for whom Stephen had feelings. Well, she had done her best to set Belinda straight about that, she reminded herself. She could not make them believe differently.

  There was a knock at the door, and Joan bustled into the room, followed by Tom with her trunk. Joan set about unpacking the trunk and putting away Olivia’s clothes, while Tom and Olivia held a low-voiced conference. He was, he assured her, settled into the servants quarters, and he had great hopes of soon being in the know of all the gossip. He had already heard that neither Madame Valenskaya nor her daughter had brought a maid nor Mr. Babington a valet, which caused St. Leger’s servants to hold them in disdain.

  “I’m not sure that the lack of a maid is something we can hold against them,” Olivia commented.

  “Aye, well, the maids as are ’avin’ to do double duty hold it against ’em.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “Yeah. Two of the upstairs girls were arguin’ somethin’ fierce over which one of ’em had to go help the Valenskayas dress for dinner.” He sighed. “Makes my job harder, too. I was ’opin’ to get some gossip from their maid.”

  “Well, perhaps it’s an opportunity. What if you were to volunteer to act as Mr. Babington’s valet?”

  Tom looked none too pleased at the idea at first, but as he thought about it, his expression brightened. “Aye, that’s a cunning thought, miss. He might let somethin’ slip to me, and it’ll set me up right with the lot downstairs, too.”

  Tom went off with renewed eagerness, and Olivia turned back to help Joan unpack. Joan, however, looked clearly affronted by Olivia’s offer. “It’s resting you should be, my lady. Dinner is at eight, so we shall have to do your hair and dress in another hour or so. You lie down while I get the wrinkles out of your dress.”

  Olivia gave in, too tired not to, and she awoke thirty minutes later feeling much refreshed. She arose and washed up just in time for Joan’s entrance with her dinner gown, freshly pressed. It was her own emerald-green satin gown on which Kyria had lowered the neckline to what seemed to Olivia a scandalous degree by ripping out the lace trim above it. Still, she had to admit, when she was in the dress, her hair artfully arranged into curls by Joan’s nimble fingers, that she did look, well—rather pretty.

  Her pride in her appearance lasted only until Lady Pamela St. Leger swept into the dining room after all the rest of them had gathered there. There was no way she herself could compete, Olivia knew, with the woman’s narrow waist and the smooth expanse of white chest and bosom revealed by the low-cut black gown. Why, she wondered, looking at Pamela, had she ever worried that her own gown revealed too much bosom?

  Subdued by the other woman’s blond beauty, it took Olivia some time to notice that the widow’s flirtatious comments seemed to fall on deaf ears where Lord St. Leger was concerned. He looked, if anything, bored, and for much of the rest of the dinner, Pamela directed most of her words and glances at Mr. Babington.

  Halfway through dinner, the Dowager Countess St. Leger said, smiling, “Madame Valenskaya, I hope we can persuade you to honor us tonight with a sitting.”

  Lord St. Leger stiffened and shot a glance at Olivia. She turned interestedly to the Russian woman, who had spent most of the meal silently plowing her way through her food.

  Madame Valenskaya paused now and looked at Lady St. Leger. “Da,” she returned in her guttural accent. “It is you who honors me, my lady. But, as you know, spirits are not always, how you say, ready.”

  “Of course,” Lady St. Leger agreed eagerly, her face alight with enthusiasm. “But it would be so good of you to try.”

  “Da, da. I will try. For you, my lady.”

  Lady St. Leger turned to Olivia. “Madame Valenskaya is a gifted medium, my lady. I do not know if you have any experience in such things….”

  “I have long been interested in matters of the spiritual world,” Olivia told her pleasantly. “If you are about to hold a séance, I would very much like to join you.”

  Lady St. Leger beamed. “That is so good of you, Lady Olivia. It is just splendid. Stephen? I hope you, too, will join us.”

  “Of course.” Stephen nodded shortly. “If you wish.”

  So it was that, after the meal, the group gathered in the smaller, less formal dining room, grouped around the table. There was an empty chair at the head of the table for Madame Valenskaya, who had excused herself to go to her room to “attune” herself to the spiritual vibrations of “the other side.” Irina, so far so quiet that one would hardly know she was in the room, spoke up to arrange the rest of the seating. She put herself on one side of her mother, Olivia noticed, with Mr. Babington on the other. She put Stephen’s mother next to Babington and Pamela next to herself, with Belinda beyond her and Stephen at the opposite end of the table from Madame Valenskaya. Olivia had little doubt but that Lord St. Leger’s position farthest from the medium was quite deliberate, buffering the medium from him with her followers. Olivia herself was placed opposite Belinda, and between Stephen and his mother.

  Madame Valenskaya swept into the room and crossed to
the head of the table, hands clasped at her waist and eyes turned downward as if in deep thought. At a look from Lady St. Leger, the attending footman left the room, closing the door after him.

  The room was quiet as Valenskaya took her seat. A kerosene lamp sat in the middle of the table, casting a soft circle of light around them. Olivia cast a quick glance around the room. Stephen’s features might have been set in stone, his gray eyes cool and watchful. Lady St. Leger’s face, unlike her son’s, was filled with anticipation. Belinda, too, looked excited, but Pamela’s expression was more bored than anything else. Irina’s face, at the opposite corner from Olivia, was partially in shadows and difficult to read. Babington’s countenance, however, shone with something close to adoration as he gazed at the medium beside him.

  “Now we will join hands to complete the circle of energy, and open our hearts and our minds to our visitors from the other world,” Irina explained in a quiet voice. “Then I will turn out the light.”

  “Darkness is more conducive to the spirits,” Lady St. Leger explained in a whisper to Olivia, reaching out to take her right hand.

  All around the table, they joined hands. Stephen’s firm hand slipped around Olivia’s, and she clasped it, hoping to hide the sudden quiver that had run through her flesh at his touch. Irina reached out and turned down the oil lamp until they were encased in velvety darkness. There was no sound except the soft susurrations of breath around the table. Olivia was vividly aware of the feel of Stephen’s skin against her own. Warm and firm, slightly callused, his hand engulfed hers. Her breath came shallowly in her throat; her hand felt hot and tingly, a feeling that was inexplicably spreading up her arm and down into her torso, twisting through her chest and abdomen.