Treacherous Is the Night

by Anna Lee Huber

  “Has it made me respectable?” Sidney asked me as he settled into his seat.

  “Not in the least, darling.”

  The twinkle in his eye told me he’d been expecting me to say just that.

  Ignoring him, I leaned toward Freddy. “How is Rachel and, of course, your darling baby girl?”

  His hazel eyes softened with affection. “Rachel is doing well. Not sleeping much. Finds it impossible to let the nanny do her job. But Miss Pettigrew assures me that’s normal. Says all new mothers are the same.”

  I nodded to the waiter as he offered me wine. “And Ruth?”

  “Ruthie is sweet as can be. Takes after her mother, fortunately. Though don’t tell Mother that. She insists the baby is the spitting image of me as an infant.” He shook his head. “No one else sees it.”

  I shook my head after we placed our orders, marveling at the changes in my brother. “I never would have believed it. All those years of your incorrigible antics, of dashing about the country. But you really have become a family man.”

  Freddy flushed, trying to laugh off my comments. “Well, we all must grow up sometime.”

  From his pointed stare, I wondered if this was supposed to be a jibe at me and Sidney, but I wasn’t about to let him make me feel guilty for not towing the traditional mark. “Mother must be pleased as punch. A decorated medical man and a doting father. What more could she wish for?”

  I knew my voice had become snide, and I lifted my glass to drink, angry at myself for allowing my own frustrations with our mother to color my interaction with Freddy. The truth was, I couldn’t help feeling a bit betrayed. Freddy had always been even wilder than I was, though as a man he was given a great deal more leverage. Boys would be boys, after all. But now that he’d turned reputable, my high-spirited lifestyle and tumultuous marriage must seem all the more scandalous.

  “I’m sorry,” I said into the silence that had descended as I set my glass back on the table. “That was uncalled for. I’m happy for you. I truly am.” I sighed, pressing a hand to my temple. “I’m just a bit out of sorts today.”

  Freddy continued to scowl, his eyes scouring my face. “Are you certain you simply haven’t overindulged?”

  I narrowed my eyes at his obvious disapproval. “Actually, no. But perhaps I should be sipping tepid water instead. Would that be more suitable?”

  Sidney stepped in then to ask about my brother’s medical practice, as well as some mutual friends of theirs from their days before the war. I should have been grateful he’d distracted Freddy before we started a row in the middle of the Savoy, and I was, but I was also irked he hadn’t defended me. My headache, bleary eyes, and irritability were courtesy of the hours I’d spent in the library poring over Belgian and French newspapers from the past three months, and Sidney well knew this for I’d just told him.

  None of the papers had mentioned La Dame Blanche, or a midwife, or anything else connected with the intelligence network. But I had found several articles about my and Sidney’s exploits on Umbersea Island, which each included a photograph reporters had snapped of us about London following the incident. Which could have explained how Emilie or any of the others might know my identity, though I was still certain Emilie was not dead.

  I sipped my wine and studied the people around us as my temper cooled, only half-listening to the men’s conversation. Five years ago, when Sidney had been courting me, I would have listened with rabid interest, devouring and memorizing everything they said. My how things changed.

  However, my attention immediately shifted after a lull in the conversation when Sidney drawled, “So, what has Mrs. Townsend sent you to find out?”

  Freddy nearly choked on his drink. “She hasn’t sent me,” he managed to splutter.

  Sidney’s gaze met mine before fastening on him with skeptical amusement. “Come now. We know why you’re here. My mother-in-law certainly didn’t take great pains to hide it by arranging the dinner herself.”

  If it wouldn’t have been unseemly, I would have launched myself across the table and kissed my husband then and there. For Freddy would handle being interrogated by his old school chum far better than by his little sister.

  “Don’t tell us she didn’t harangue you into coming,” he added when Freddy still held his tongue.

  He lifted his eyes heavenward. “I told her to let me handle matters.” He exhaled resignedly. “I’m not here purely at her bidding. I am meeting with some medical colleagues, and I had planned to ring you up and invite you to dinner. But . . .” He grimaced. “She did ask me to speak with you.”

  “More like she wants the scoop on me and Sidney. After all, she’s so certain I’ll botch things up.”

  Sidney glanced at me in surprise. I’d not shared that lovely bit of criticism.

  Freddy fidgeted with his serviette. “Yes, well, she’s concerned about you, Pip,” he murmured, using the shortened form of Pip-squeak, the nickname my older brothers and their friends had always called me.

  “She has a funny way of showing it,” I muttered dryly.

  “Perhaps. But you make it difficult for her to show it any other way.” His brow creased in worry and his voice softened. “You haven’t been home since almost the beginning of the war. Not even after Rob died.”

  I looked away, unwilling to continue to meet his gaze. It was easier to feign indifference, even if I wasn’t completely convincing. “You know how it was. The shortages and delays.” Most of the trains were being used to transport troops and supplies back and forth from the coast, so travelling north as far as Yorkshire could take days if your luck was rotten. “And there was my war work.”

  “Surely your position in that shipping office and at the canteen wasn’t so important they couldn’t give you leave for a few days,” Freddy protested, not unkindly. It was evident he was trying to understand.

  Except he didn’t know the true nature of my war work. None of my family did.

  My husband sat silently through this exchange, leaning back in his chair at ease. But I could see the shrewdness in his eyes as he considered the ramifications of all he was learning. We’d not broached the subject of Rob or my family at large. Just as I’d not asked him how he felt about his parents rushing back home to Devon after only two days.

  “You would think,” I answered Freddy, being purposely vague. “But it wasn’t that simple.”

  He frowned and lowered his voice even further. “You should have at least come home after Rob died. For Mother’s sake.”

  I felt a pinch in my chest, a throb of pain and guilt. “Yes, you’re probably right.” I inhaled past it and shifted my gaze to scan the other diners, lest the emotion inside me find its way out.

  It had been rather rotten of me. But much as I’d accepted Rob was dead, there was still this black veil between myself and the stark reality of that truth. It was the same veil I’d drawn between myself and the loss of Sidney when I’d still believed him dead. Going home would mean I would have to face that.

  I knew I couldn’t avoid it forever. But just a little longer. At least until I knew whether Sidney and I were going to make a go of this marriage or not.

  “Go easy on her, Freddy,” Sidney murmured. “The war was hard on everyone, not just those of us at the front.”

  I looked up into his eyes to see them glistening with a compassion I wasn’t certain I deserved. Especially when he learned all of the truth.

  “Yes, that’s true,” my brother replied falteringly, and then with more confidence. “I just know Mother has been concerned with some of the things she reads in the newspapers . . .”

  “You can’t believe everything they print in the papers.” Sidney’s hand stole across the table to clasp mine. “Half of it is sensational rubbish.”

  I couldn’t tear my shocked gaze away from his, feeling utterly foolish. I’d thought with Sidney overseas hunting down a traitor during the months after his supposed death that he hadn’t seen our London newspapers. In the weeks since his return, he hadn
’t once mentioned the gossip surrounding me and the society pages in which I’d appeared from time to time—as attending this party or that nightclub, sometimes on the arm of one gentleman or another with whom I’d been linked. Dolt that I was, I’d never even considered that my husband might already be aware of some of the high jinks I’d been up to.

  “And the other half . . .” Sidney shrugged. “How do you think you would have behaved if you’d believed you lost Rachel?”

  Freddy’s mouth curled into a humorless smile. “Given my rather . . . boisterous past, I suspect you already know. But I take your point.”

  Sidney stared down at his thumb where it brushed across the back of my hand. “Try as they might, I don’t believe our parents can truly appreciate our circumstances.”

  For all that they shared in our grief, the older generations couldn’t understand what it was like to have one’s youth ripped apart by war. Not when it had been a hundred years since a conflict of even close to this magnitude had occurred. To watch our friends, brothers, fiancés, and husbands march off to battle, and return shadows of their former selves—broken in body and mind. Or worse, never to return at all. Leaving gaping holes in our lives where our loved ones should have been.

  Instead of spending our time at dinner parties, picnics, and afternoon teas, we young women were sent off to work in hospitals, and offices, and factories. To bind ghastly wounds, and type morose correspondence, and build guns and bombs. Just when our lives seemed to start, they were snatched from us—all for the sake of a cause we believed in less and less with each passing year, and each roll of casualties, until the reality of what a cruel joke had been played upon us had sunk in. And then when it was finally coming to an end, to have tens of thousands more snatched away from us by the Spanish influenza.

  Was it any wonder we scrambled to find respite and pleasure wherever we could? That we’d chosen to drown ourselves in gin and dance a frenzied tarantella to blot out the pain of the present. Just for a moment to forget our black, yawning future.

  On this gloomy note of pondering, our dinners arrived. As the only female at the table, I rallied myself and shifted the topic of conversation to something far lighter. In time, the stiltedness of our interaction faded, as I’d known it would. After all, Freddy was my brother. We’d seen each other knee-deep in mud, and screamed at each other for one slight or another more times than I could count. I’d lied to keep Freddy out of trouble for canoodling with a neighbor girl in the barn, and he’d bloodied more than one boy’s nose for teasing or trifling with me. And Freddy and Sidney had been friends since their days at Eton, long before I’d ever met the roguish boy Freddy had spoken of at dinner.

  Before long we were laughing together as we reminisced about old times, and chuckled about our younger brother, Tim and his foibles, and about Grace, the baby of the family, and her struggles with Mother. I cringed hearing about some of the rows my sixteen-year-old sister and Mother got into. I couldn’t help feeling I should be there to help mediate, but I was also glad I was far away from the confrontations. It was frustrating enough to contend with Mother’s disapproval from such a distance. I knew full well how much worse it would be if I lived closer.

  It seemed the evening would end on a happy note until I noticed the expression on Sidney’s face. Something, or rather someone, across the room had arrested his attention, and much of the light and frivolity had drained from his features leaving him pale. I tried to follow his gaze, but in such a crowded room it was difficult to tell who he was looking at.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a minute,” he said stiffly, before pushing back from his chair to cross the room.

  I followed his progress, watching as he stopped next to a table near the middle of the floor. He bent over to speak with the man seated there, whose eyes stared vacantly toward the dance floor now filled with couples. The fellow looked up at Sidney, almost in startlement before extending his hand for him to shake. It wasn’t until Sidney dropped into the chair next to his that I realized the other man was in a wheelchair.

  I turned away, seeing that Freddy had observed the exchange as well.

  “Are you truly all right, Pip?” he asked, his voice soft with concern.

  “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?” I replied with forced insouciance.

  His eyes searched mine. “You do know you can tell me anything. I might understand better than you think.”

  I studied him in return, wondering more at his troubles than truly considering taking him up at his offer to be my confidant. Perhaps his marriage to Rachel was not as content as it would seem. Perhaps they had their own troubles. Perhaps all the couples whose husbands had been caught up in the war were struggling to adapt to one another.

  I lifted my glass of golden wine, studying its amber depths. “The war is over, my husband is returned from the dead, and I no longer have to toil my days away. What more could I wish for?”

  Freddy didn’t reply, but I could tell he wasn’t fooled. Just as I wasn’t when Sidney returned to our table and pretended he wasn’t troubled. Whoever the fellow was he’d spoken to, his presence had upset him in some way. And I couldn’t help but remark on it when we climbed into a taxicab to return home.

  “Who was that man you went to speak to? The one in the wheelchair?”

  He sank into the dark corner of the seat, turning his head to stare out the window. “A young corporal from my company. He was invalided out in the autumn of ’15.”

  That Sidney remembered when the man was injured said much. Though he didn’t speak of it often, I’d swiftly realized he seemed to be able to recall every soldier, from private to lieutenant, who had served under him, who had been injured or killed. The names of hundreds of maimed or slain men were trapped in his brain. Whether he had done this by choice or he simply couldn’t forget, I didn’t know. I hadn’t asked.

  “Was this the first time you’ve seen him since he left for Blighty?” I prodded gently.

  He glanced up, perhaps surprised by my choice of words. I’d spent a large portion of the war surrounded by soldiers, in the canteens and nightclubs, as well as those at work in the Secret Service who had been invalided out of the trenches. I’d heard my fair share of trench talk.

  “Yes.”

  I nodded, trying to appear only marginally interested lest he notice the importance of his sharing this with me and fall silent again. “Was he surprised to see you?”

  “He read about my return from the dead in the newspapers. Said he had little better to do,” he muttered almost under his breath as he turned away again.

  “Where does . . .”

  But before I could finish my question, he cut me off. “I forgot to tell you. I spoke with another former soldier of mine who happens to work for Scotland Yard.”

  He had known this would distract me, and I let it. “Oh?” I asked, sitting taller.

  “Rawdon confirmed that the fire set at Madame Zozza’s house was, indeed, suspicious. Said the fire had burned so hot on the upper floors where the bedrooms were that they believe some sort of accelerant was used.”

  I pressed a hand to my mouth, feeling ill. I prayed the medium was overcome by the smoke and fumes before the fire ever reached her. “I suppose there wasn’t much left to say for certain whether Madame Zozza had been intentionally trapped?”

  He reached out to take my hand. “I’m afraid not. But based on the evidence available, it appears so.”

  Though I’d alleged as much, having my suspicions all but confirmed rattled me more than I wished to admit. Someone had ruthlessly gone about ensuring she would remain silent. While I had no proof it was because of the information shared with her, so that she could pretend to channel Emilie—I couldn’t help feeling deep in my gut, in my bones that I was right. There were too many unsettling coincidences for it not to be so.

  Even Sidney seemed to accept it. “He also mentioned that while they’ve had reports of mediums being threatened and blackmailed, as it seems to go hand in hand with
the shady nature of their business, no Mystics or Spiritualists have been killed for it. Until now.” He frowned. “So let’s hope your friend Bentnick has some answers for you.”

  I nodded in agreement. “I’m meeting George tomorrow.”

  I elected not to remind him that Max might be the one who uncovered the truth for me, for I doubted he’d forgotten the information I’d asked Max to find out. He simply preferred to keep the shadow of his presence from between us, though I could still see it in his eyes as he turned away to gaze out the window once more.

  CHAPTER 10

  I wasn’t sure what woke me. I rarely was. The flat was dark and quiet, the drapes drawn to block out light and sound. But when I rolled over, it was to find the other side of the bed empty. Stretching out my hand, I could feel the sheets were cold.

  I stared at the depression on the other pillow where Sidney’s dark head had lain. Though I had initially resisted taking him back into my bed, once the traitors he’d been pursuing had been caught and he was able to resume his old life, that hadn’t lasted long. After all, he was still my husband, and I’d never stopped loving him despite the tangled mess we’d made of our marriage. He’d tried to be patient, to restrain himself, and to give me the time and space I needed, but I could tell he wanted me. And when he pulled me into his arms, it’s what I wanted, too.

  The truth was, we’d always been well-matched physically. When words had failed us—during those few nights after our wedding we’d had together before he departed for the front, and during the too-short days of his leaves—at least we’d always been able to depend on that connection. The feverish heights of our couplings and the glow in his eyes had said more than any pretty speech, and had left a far greater impression through the long, lonely nights that followed. So it only made sense that we should fall back on our passion to help us find our way back to each other again.

  Except this time was different.