by Quenby Olson
Ryall finally releases my arm, drains half of his glass in one swallow and lets out an exhalation I could almost mistake for a laugh. "So, Mister Chissick, is it? How long, may I ask, have you been an admirer of Thea’s extraordinary work?"
"How long?" Chissick’s eyelids lower as he ponders this question. "Years. Nearly a decade, if my memory hasn’t failed me."
"Ah! So you were a witness to our young Thea, when she was the Spiritualist prodigy, all rosy cheeks and hardly grown out of her nursery dress!"
I could take this moment to point out that never in my short life have my cheeks carried more colour than was necessary to assure passersby I was still among the living, but Ryall’s voice cuts across mine before I can push a single word off my tongue.
"And what about tonight, Thea? I’m sure—I’m absolutely certain I’m about to overstep all forms of etiquette speaking as host to guest, but would it be too much to ask for a small—really, I’ve nothing extravagant in mind!—a small demonstration? For the guests?"
"No, I’d rather not."
"Or you could do something with each person one at a time! I read an absolutely fascinating article about a woman—very much of your profession—who spent an entire evening seated behind a curtain, or shade, or… Anyhow, she would tell them secrets about their lives, without ever laying eyes on them! I could have my man set up a screen in the library—it’s quite out of the way in there—and then we could have a sort of raffle out here to decide who would be allowed to take the first turn with you, and—"
"Ryall," I say, and whether because of my harsh tone, or because of the lack of title connected to his name, he falters into silence. "I apologise, but I did not come here tonight in any professional capacity. I don’t know what Marta may have told you, but I don’t do that anymore."
He watches me with an anxious curiosity. Again, his hand returns to my elbow, and he takes a step nearer to me, his posture a blatant attempt to prevent Chissick from coming to my aid, should I need it.
"Perhaps you would grace me with a private audience, Thea. I’ve carried something on my mind, of late. And with your help…"
The hand tightens.
"I’ll give you five minutes," I say. To show his agreement, he releases my arm, presents me with a smile.
"In the library. I trust you remember where it is."
I wait until he is gone, until the crowd of guests close behind him like a curtain swinging into place, and I turn to Chissick. Poor man, he’s still clutching his untouched glass of punch.
"You’ll have to wait out here for me," I tell him, my hands at my sleeves, adjusting the crimson puffs that seem to hover over and around my shoulders, like satin meringues. "I told him he could have five minutes, but what he’ll have to say to me shouldn’t take even that much time."
"You’re going to speak to him? Alone?" His tone is incredulous. No, not incredulous. Disapproving.
"I’ve known him for many years."
"And? That’s no proof of the man’s character."
I close my eyes. "You’re right, but I assure you, no harm will come to me."
Oh, the expression that crosses his face upon my saying those words. He doesn’t believe me. But not only that. He is prepared to fight, should it come to that.
"Chissick." I could touch his arm. My fingers are near enough they would only have to unfurl a bit in order to brush his sleeve, but I hesitate—only for a second—and all of my courage drains away. "If it will give you some comfort, come along and stand outside the library door. You’ll only be a few feet away. "
He wants to protest. The slight rise of his shoulders, the cords in his neck showing themselves for a moment before disappearing again. His left foot scuffs across the floor as one of his hands takes hold of the other. At first, I’m mystified, and then I notice he’s done it only to halt whatever fidgeting had been about to overtake his arms.
"I don’t like it," he admits, so low that I can only decipher the words by reading his lips.
"Neither do I," I say, before I turn and walk away from him.
Chapter Twelve
* * *
* * *
Ryall’s first action is to offer me a glass of wine. His second, once I’ve declined the drink, is to remove a stack of books from a chair in order that I might take a seat. When I shake my head at the vacated cushion, the last of his etiquette fails him. He removes his jacket. He loosens his collar, wearing down the work of the starch with a few brief tugs. He is about to sit down himself when he glances in my direction. He must not want to sit, must not wish to put himself at any kind of disadvantage while I'm still on my feet, poised as I am so near to the door. A swear under his breath, followed by another loud enough for me to hear, and he faces me, any hint of his previous aplomb neatly wiped from his face.
"What is it that you need? Money?" He reaches into a pocket and withdraws an impressive wad of bank-notes. One, two, three of them are counted off the roll. And there they are, clasped between his fingers, at arm’s length, mine for the taking, if I will simply cross the distance between us and claim them. My own fingers twitch as I imagine the freedom that will come with those simple pieces of paper. The amount that he’s offering me, before we’ve even begun to bargain, and I wouldn’t need to beg from Marta for well over a year.
"I assure you, Ryall. I don’t want it."
A smile from him, but the notes remain out in the open. "Still unwilling to take any help from others? I would’ve thought you’d grown out of that by now."
"I’ve had more than my fair portion of charity from you over the years."
He blinks, thrown off of the course he’d set for the conversation. "I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. Believe me, it was never my intention."
This, I understand, is my opportunity to apologise. I could lower my chin, mumble a few soft-spoken words that would return him to his former state of ease. Instead, I bite my lip. The silence lingers.
"Forgive me for not inquiring sooner," he says, after a sufficient pause. "How is your health?"
"I am well enough." If he expects a more lengthy description of my current spate of ailments, his disappointment will be a keen one.
"You can’t imagine how often you’ve been in my thoughts. I made certain to receive regular reports of your progress from the doctors, and when I heard that they were considering you for release, how worried I was that you would be too fragile for such a great step forward. And when I tried to make inquiries as to your whereabouts, it was to find that you’d just disappeared."
"As you can see, I am alive and unscathed. For the most part." I move one step farther into the room, remaining near enough to the door that Chissick will still be able to hear all that I say, should curiosity drive him to press his ear to the door. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t believe he’s devious enough for such a thought to even skirt through his mind for consideration.
"Ah, Thea." He takes a step to match my own. I notice the bank-notes still pinched between his fingers, though his arm now rests at his side. "You’ve no idea how surprised I was when Marta contacted me the other day. And to think that after all this time, you were once again the main topic of our conversation."
"Should I be flattered?"
I watch as some of the colour goes out of his face, and his mouth—or, more accurately, his bottom lip— hangs lifeless, before he’s able to regain some of his lost composure. The change in expression lasts only a moment. Had I been less observant, I might not have caught it at all. But that single moment is enough. It tells me more than I could have hoped to discover over an hour’s laborious conversation.
"I wonder," I say, my words chosen with care. "What do you think has brought me here tonight?"
"Marta said—"
"No, not Marta." I take another step forward, all the while praying that the movement will be enough to distract him from the tremor in my voice. Ryall holds his ground, but I notice the shifting of his weight, a physical demonstration of the indecision that mus
t be now plaguing his thoughts. For I must seem a bold thing to him, no longer the quailing and innocent girl of old.
"I think," he begins, before a shake of his head changes his tense. "I thought that you had come to see me." He twitches, and I sense a new agitation overtaking his limbs. "Perhaps you would care to tell me about that friend of yours, hmm? I don’t know what you’re doing with the likes of him. Looks about as well dressed as a grocer."
He’s almost sullen now, is our Ryall. And with another glint of his eyes turned towards my face, I see the hurt etched across his brow. Could it be a streak of jealousy that is driving Ryall’s behaviour this evening? I touch my arm, the flesh still smarting from where his fingers had squeezed my poor elbow. And I think back to how possessive that grasp was, as if he feared Chissick had been about to spirit me away forever.
Breathing out, I spread my fingers and smooth down the front of my skirt.
"Julian Chissick came to me for help."
"Help?" Ryall echoes, one brow arching.
"The kind of help he assumed someone with my history could give."
Immediately, his face brightens. In his mind, Chissick has been demoted from rival status to something lesser and much more insignificant. "So, Marta was wrong?"
"Wrong about…?"
He claps his hands together, palms gliding across each other for a few seconds, back and forth, back and forth, until I think he might be attempting to create a spark between his fingers. "She said something about you having given it all up, your demonstrations and such. And after your attack, I really can’t blame her for thinking such a thing."
Ah, yes. My attack. I must say, I have to commend him for his phrasing. Quoted in front of any polite society, and they would be left to believe my worst affliction nothing more than a tendency to faint at inopportune moments.
"And you," I say, with a small gesture in his direction. "No doubt, were of much the same belief as Marta."
He bows his head. "How could I not be? I worried about you, Thea. I worried for your very life. You were such a beautiful creature, and to be struck down in such a way, to be tormented…"
"Yes, of course."
"…horrible to witness…"
"
I am sure."
"…I only wished to help you…"
"I know."
"…in some small way."
A beat of silence between us, and I hear Ryall release the last of what must have been a long-held breath. I don’t wish him to speak anymore. It’s not that they’re lies spilling out of his mouth. Indeed, I think he places more stock in his sincerity than any man could. But every time his mouth opens, every time his voice arrives at my ear, I’m overwhelmed by his longing, his want. It shrieks through my head at such a pitch, until I feel as if I’ve already committed every act brought to life by his imagination.
When he raises his eyes again, it’s not to look at me, but to study the few slips of paper clutched in his hand. I read the confusion on his face before he recognises the bank-notes, their crispness lost to several minutes’ worth of perspiration from his palm. A glance to me, but I shake my head. As he returns the money to his pocket, I can’t help but feel my shoulders sag as the money disappears—finally, absolutely—from sight.
"I expect you believe you’ve won some share of freedom for yourself, living out of the way as you are." He gives his pocket a pat and looks to me, as if waiting for a remark from my corner. When I offer none, he presses on. "Of course, you are still so young. I remember how it was, to feel so flush with vigour and new ideas, to believe that your worth rested solely on how well you could conduct yourself beyond the yoke of another’s protection. But you have to understand, you’re not like everyone else, like me, like Marta. You have a gift, a quality that makes you a jewel among women, and should you make a greater attempt to nurture it, to have your hand guided with better care, then there’s no limit to what you could…" To finish his statement, Ryall pulls the fingers of his right hand into a fist and throws them out like the five arms of a starfish. And with that simple movement, his vision of my future life, of my celebrity, is so vividly described.
"And when I am overwhelmed?" I ask, ignoring his hackneyed descriptions of my singular talents meant to sway me towards his side. "How jewel-like will I remain, in your estimation, if I again lose control? If I again attempt to take my own life? Or ever, should all sense desert me, the life of another?" I see him wince. He has never been one to appreciate bluntness, but I doubt I could properly convey my own thoughts and feelings if I were to dress them up in layer upon layer of flattery and nonsense.
"You have always been so critical of yourself. But how could you be anything but blameless?" Ryall says, his protest bounding off the walls before dying beneath the strange acoustics of his home. "Too much stress, you know. I have always said that it cannot be good for the nerves, and you…"
He falters into silence as his weight shifts forward and he begins to pace around the outer edge of the room. His steps lead him around the circumference of the library, past great shelves of books so neglected I wonder he doesn’t paper the walls with pictures of the leather-bound volumes and save himself—or his staff, I should say—the trouble of caring for the ancient texts. "The amount of stress and fatigue you must endure, I cannot begin to contemplate."
The fingers of my right hand twitch. They need something to hold onto, a bit of fabric or lace to keep them occupied. I touch them to my left sleeve, and they seem to find some comfort there.
"I remember how you looked after your sittings, such strain on your fair features. And when you began to fall ill...Well, they were dark days. Very dark days, indeed."
"As opposed to the brightness that inhabited my life when you first took an interest in me?" I dare to raise the line of my sight, so that he pauses in his circuit, eyes alight, while the darkness of his hair seems to almost absorb the illumination put out by the lamps set into the wall above our heads.
I hear Ryall draw in a great breath, followed by the hiss of air forced out between his teeth. He says nothing, and so I take leave to continue.
"I am well aware of the catalyst behind my initial rise to fame. A small, pretty girl. Young and slender, from a good family. Well educated. And the lone survivor of an unprecedented massacre."
He looks away from me. I suppress a grim smile at my ability to rattle him.
"A suspicious massacre, at that," I go on, warming to my topic as I witness his discomfiture at the turn the conversation has taken. "No sign of intruders. No weapons. No blood. But four dead bodies, their throats sliced open, the flesh seared." My own sight falters for a moment as an image of the young woman, her figure stretched across the length of the table, slips into my mind. And so the memories begin to mingle, the fresh and the old, twisting in and around each other, until I can no longer separate what happened a dozen years ago from the events of a few days before.
"I’m so, so sorry." His voice is a mere whisper, and yet I put up my hand, as if to block the words with my palm.
"I am sure you are. You’ve told me often enough. And yet, you used me just the same. As my mother did, as my aunt did." My smile returns, but the effort it takes to lift my cheeks into the smallest of grins is near excruciating. "She was always there, at every sitting. But I don’t think she ever found it in her heart to forgive me."
Ryall tilts his head until he peers up at me from beneath a black brow. "Forgive you? For what?"
"For never making contact with her husband, my uncle. She would push me to try harder, to extend my reach, as she so eloquently put it, but…" I sigh, soon followed by a shrug. "Now she is gone. Perhaps she is finally reunited with Uncle Roger. Perhaps she’s even gone so far as to absolve me of my former failure."
I look up soon enough to see the muscles along his jaw tighten and release. His glance flicks towards me, and for a brief second, his defences weaken, and should I wish to, I could simply slip into his thoughts, search through them with all the ease of someone th
umbing through the pages of a novel. And before my mind has made the slightest of moves one way or the other, I slam into something hard, a wall so well constructed that I feel the breath rush from my lungs at the impact.
"Thea," he says. I hear his voice, but I cannot see him. My head is a whirl, reeling in shock from his ability to keep me out, to prevent me from seeing something he does not wish for me to know.
By the time my senses return to me, I find that Ryall is now beside me, almost in front of me, near enough that I want nothing more than to turn my head away. The smell of him is almost too much to bear. It comes from his hair, from his skin, from his clothes, the pomades and the perfumes, all of it cloying and sickly, and all of it carried on the scent that is so distinctly his.
My mouth works over a puddle of saliva that refuses to go down. With the bile pushing upwards, my teeth lock against each other, nearly grinding as I battle away the urge to be sick all over the floor at my feet. It’s then that Ryall raises his hand, his left hand, one finger extended ahead of the others, to touch my cheek.
A shudder in my knees, and I think they may fail me. Not from any overwhelming flow of passion through my limbs, but because at the moment his skin brushes mine, a low whine enters my head, in fact seems to trickle in from some hiding place behind my ear, a thin stream of sound that will not grow louder, nor will it relent and allow me to regain control of myself.
I hold my breath while Ryall’s thumb traces a line along my jaw, the same jaw that is still frozen with the effort of keeping all signs and symptoms of illness from escaping. He’ll travel to my ear next, his fingers pausing long enough to tease what strands of hair have worked themselves free of the pins. And then I will feel his palm on my throat, the heel of his hand at my collarbone, the tips of his fingers dancing across my skin, so tender, so light, as if I should take a compliment from the reverence with which he touches me.
