As soon as Ellingham resumed his seat, eager hands shot to the planchette. Mademoiselle Bastien waited for Daniel to place his fingers on it, before she put hers next to his.
The warmth of her hand touched Daniel through his glove. He liked her fingers, not too delicate, but long and strong. He had a swift image of those fingers unbuttoning his shirt, peeling it from his body, running across his exposed skin . . .
Daniel shifted in his seat, hot and suddenly hard.
“Are you ready, Mr. Mackenzie?” Mademoiselle Bastien asked him. God help him, Daniel hoped he wasn’t blushing. “This can be quite daunting for the novice,” she went on. Her dark blue eyes held a light that said she was ready for his challenge.
And I’m damned good and ready for hers. “Carry on, lass.”
Mademoiselle Violette took another of those bodice-lifting breaths that left him dizzy and said, “Very well. Spirit, do you have a message for anyone here?”
Candlelight brushed the polished wood of the board, the gloved hands of the gentlemen present, and Mademoiselle Violette’s bare fingers, so feminine and beautiful amidst the sea of masculinity.
The planchette was only so large, so several of the men, including Mortimer, got left out. Mortimer didn’t seem to mind. He sat back and watched, his dark gaze planted on Violette’s body, his ratlike face not hiding his lecherous thoughts.
Beneath Daniel’s fingers, the planchette wobbled then started to move. Ellingham drew an excited breath.
The planchette stopped, rocked again, and moved in the opposite direction. After a few seconds it changed once more. Every hand trying to drag it where the gentleman wants it to go.
Daniel relaxed his fingers, waiting to see what Mademoiselle Violette would do.
She called softly into the darkness, “Spirit, do you have a message for us?”
Any spirit hearing Mademoiselle Violette plead to it in that sensual, contralto voice should spring forward and agree to do whatever she wanted. Daniel moved in his seat, trying to still his rising fantasies. He was as bad as Mortimer.
The planchette trembled, then made a rapid but smooth move to the word Yes.
A collective sigh went through the men present. Difficult to believe that a few hours ago, they were hardened gamblers trying to win packets of money at poker.
“To whom is the message directed?” Mademoiselle Violette asked the air.
The planchette fanned back and forth among the letters, seeking. Finally it stopped at the letter M.
“Mortimer?” one of the gentlemen asked.
The planchette nearly ripped itself across the board to the word No. It then backed away to a neutral area, as though apologizing for its rudeness.
“Will you show us more letters?” Mademoiselle asked.
The rest of the gentlemen leaned forward. Daniel had no doubt that those with M’s in their names—including him—silently begged, Please, please, let it be me.
The planchette traveled slowly across the letters again and stopped at C. It moved on to K, then to E, N, and Z.
“Mackenzie!” Ellingham shouted. He jerked his hand from the planchette, and it stopped.
Of course the thing had spelled out Mackenzie. Or at least McKenz. Daniel shot a glance at Mademoiselle Violette, who studied the board with a serene look.
Little vixen. His estimation of her rose again. She knew bloody well that Daniel knew she was a charlatan, and she was going to play on him every trick she could.
So she thinks.
Violette asked the air in her smooth voice, “Do you have a message for Mr. Mackenzie?”
The planchette said Yes.
Mademoiselle Violette was very good, but Daniel was good too. “What message?” he asked.
Ellingham joined them on the planchette again, and it started to move. Around and around it went on the board, back and forth, sliding toward a letter only to slide away before it could stop. Daniel felt Violette’s subtle but steady pull, and he subtly but steadily pulled back.
Mademoiselle kept her countenance absolutely still. If the spirit’s indecision vexed her, she made no sign.
The planchette at last halted at the letter F. Ellingham said excitedly, “Someone should write this down.”
A gentleman obligingly drew a small notebook and pencil from his coat pocket and wrote F.
The planchette moved again. It stopped at U, paused for a time, then slid innocently to the letter C. After another pause, it began a rapid journey toward the letter K.
Mademoiselle jerked her hand back, and the planchette stopped dead. The room filled with snickers and chortles.
“Well,” Violette said, turning to fully face Daniel. “The spirit seems in a mischievous mood tonight.”
Her eyes sparkled like candle flames on a frosty night. They looked at each other, neither offering to glance away first. Mademoiselle’s cheeks took on a faint flush, but other than that she sat as still as marble.
Damn, but she was beautiful, and defiant too. No simpering miss in her first Season, hoping to snare the wealthy Mr. Mackenzie, one of the most eligible bachelors in Britain. Why the hell young women were taught that pretending to be frail should make men fall madly in love with them, Daniel didn’t understand. The frail act made Daniel want to suggest the lady eat robust food and take plenty of exercise until she felt better.
This young woman could walk five miles in a storm, brush off her skirts, and comment offhand that the wind was a bit brisk today. Then in the next breath she’d tell someone like Daniel and all his money to go to the devil.
Mademoiselle Violette’s lips parted. The moisture between them beckoned. Daniel wanted to send Mortimer and his irritating cronies out into the cold and have Mademoiselle to himself, to ask her to perform for him alone. No layabouts of the English ton watching, no Mortimer. Just Daniel and this lovely lady, a candlelit room, and time.
“Enough of these parlor games,” Mortimer broke in angrily. “I told you, Mademoiselle, Mackenzie came here to see the whole show. So give it to him.”
Daniel had to turn away from Violette’s beautiful eyes, and for that, Mortimer would pay. “Shut your gob,” Daniel said. “She’s done enough for tonight, and you still owe me two thousand quid.”
Mortimer was halfway out of his chair. “I’m paying for a show, and by God, I want one.”
Daniel started up himself, ready to go over the table to him, but Mademoiselle raised her hands, her voice cutting through the impending tempest.
“The spirits are here! Now!”
A freezing wind swept through the dining room, extinguishing the candles in one go. The room plunged into darkness. In the middle of the table, where the candles had burned, a pale, luminescent blob began to form and spread.
Before Daniel could sit down, a heavy grip seized him by the arms, and someone very strong dragged him up and out through a door and into a pitch-dark room. The door shut, cutting him off from the wind, Mortimer, and the enchanting Mademoiselle Violette.
Chapter 3
Daniel twisted and swung around, his punch contacting flesh in the dark. A man grunted, then an answering blow landed on Daniel’s face before he could spin out of the way.
More blows came down. Daniel fought back. His punches landed on a gut like a brick wall and an iron-tough jaw. Giant fists hit him in return, on his eyes, face, chest. Finally Daniel’s punch contacted a solar plexus, and the man grunted again, wheezing bad breath over Daniel’s face.
Daniel shoved the man away and steadied himself on his feet. He couldn’t see a damn thing, and his first step led him smack into a table on which things clattered and clinked. A heavy thud and hoarse breathing told Daniel where the gentleman had fallen, but there was no telling how long he’d stay down.
The short fight had been brutal, the man deadly strong. Daniel shook out his right fist. So much for not hurting his ha
nds.
Daniel took another step forward, this time connecting with a chair. Good enough. He sat down and stripped the gloves from his stinging hands.
“If I can’t finish my motor in time, I’m blaming you,” Daniel said, pulling a box of matches from his pocket.
“I only want the money,” the man on the floor said between gasps.
“You’re the bloke who’s been following Mortimer tonight, aren’t you? What does he owe you?” Daniel struck a match against his boot, and a spark flared to life.
“Five thousand.”
Daniel gave a short laugh. “The idiot. And he owes me two.”
“I’ll have it out of him. I’ll have it out of you. You took all his money.”
“No, I won it fair and square. What he owes you is between him and you.”
The light from the match showed Daniel a table beside him loaded with trinkets. A hurricane lamp waited in the midst of the clutter, and Daniel lifted its chimney to touch the match to the wick.
The glowing light fell over the hard-faced man who lay stretched out on the floor. He looked less intimidating with his arm over his stomach, his face sickly green.
“I can’t go back until I have it,” the man said, struggling to breathe. “It’ll be my life.” He had a London workingman’s accent.
“Hired hand, are ye? What’s your name?”
“Simon. Matthew Simon.”
“Nice and biblical. So it’s kill me or go back and be killed, is that it? Brutal times we live in.”
“That’s the size of it,” Mr. Simon said grimly. “Sorry and all that. But don’t really see a way around it, sir.”
The man did sound regretful. But not apologetic. He had a job to do, and he would use any means to get that job done.
“Tell you what, Mr. Simon, why don’t you come and work for me? Right now. You won’t need to run back to your master empty-handed. You can stop beating on me for the cash, and I’ll pay ye a decent wage.”
“Work for you?” Simon gave Daniel a long, suspicious stare. “Doing what?”
Daniel shrugged. “Lifting and carrying, keeping an eye on things, helping me with my engines when I need it. What do ye say? If ye have another go at me, I guarantee, I’ll do my best to make sure you crawl home.”
Simon’s breathing was easier, but he made no move to get off the busily patterned carpet. “No man’s ever knocked me down before. I thought I was too big.”
“There’s a trick to it.”
“Ye know about fighting.” Simon sounded admiring. “Dirty fighting.”
“I was raised by men who fight dirty. Rules are for the polite. How about it, Mr. Simon?”
The man went silent. Daniel could almost hear the gears turning in Simon’s head as he went through the possibilities open to him. Finally he heaved a long sigh. “I’m your man.”
“Good,” Daniel said. “Now, how did ye get into the house? Ye didn’t hurt that poor little maid to do it, did ye?”
“Naw, I just scared her a bit.”
“Hmm. I think she needs a rise in wages.”
From the dining room, Daniel heard excited voices—Did you see that? Ellingham, it’s behind you!—but in this room all was calm.
Daniel looked thoughtfully at the kerosene lamp amidst the trinkets on the table. He saw by the lamp’s light that, as in the next room, a gaslight chandelier hung overhead, unlit, and gas sconces adorned the walls. Yet Mademoiselle Violette and her mother kept kerosene lamps in here and candles in the dining room. For the ambience? Or because the gas had been shut off?
Simon sat up and drew a long breath. “You have a mean punch, Mr. Mackenzie.”
“You know who I am then?”
“Everyone knows who you are. Me and me mates always have a little flutter on your dad’s horses. Sir.”
“Wise of you.”
Daniel looked around at the wood paneling that covered the room, which was much older than the furnishings. He put the house as built in the last century. In those days, covering the walls with raised panels outlined with molding had been common, and much more tasteful than the garish wallpaper that adorned most people’s houses these days.
The paneling was also convenient, because it could hide any number of things. This sitting room was in the front of the house, the dining room behind it. But the dimensions of both rooms did not match the length of the hall that ran from the front door to the back of the house. Daniel, who could keep calculations in his head to the nearest inch, had noted that immediately.
He rose and made his way to the wall that divided the sitting room from the dining room. Not an easy journey, because the room was crammed with potted palms, potted ferns, side tables, sofa tables, rugs on rugs, and bric-a-brac of every size, shape, and color.
A narrow door through which Simon had dragged Daniel, closed now, led to the dining room. Daniel ran his hands over the wall panels next to it.
His fingertips found a catch. Working it, he pried open a panel about five feet high and a foot and a half wide. Behind this lay a shallow niche full of thin ropes and wires attached to gears. Two metal levers a little below Daniel’s eye level controlled a couple of the wires, but the rest of the ropes and pulleys ran up into the wall as far as Daniel could see.
“Oh, you clever, clever lass.”
“Wha’ is it?” Simon asked, still on the floor and not very interested.
“The secret of Mademoiselle Bastien’s success.”
Simon grunted again, which Daniel took to mean he cared more about his immediate circumstances than unraveling secrets of fraudulent mediums.
Daniel craned to look upward, wishing he had better light. Whoever had set up this rig had taken advantage of the bell system—ropes and wires woven through the house so the lady upstairs could summon a maid from the depths of the servants’ hall without bestirring herself too much.
The bellpull systems were sophisticated enough that a specific servant could be hailed from a specific room. Daniel had delved into the paneling in the walls in the house he’d purchased in London to put in pneumatic speaking tubes, so he’d be able to communicate instantly with his staff—whenever he got around to hiring staff.
Daniel closed the panel and made his way back through the overstuffed parlor to the door to the hall. Simon heaved himself up and followed Daniel, rubbing his bruised face. Daniel took pity on him and told him to rest himself on the hall bench while he explored.
The housemaid was nowhere in sight. Daniel ran lightly up the stairs, which were lit only from a glow from above. He found another kerosene lamp burning in the upstairs hall, set on a table between two doors. Another flight of stairs continued upward, but Daniel was fairly certain he’d find what he sought on this floor.
The first door in the hall opened to a dark and empty room. No furniture, no people, nothing. But that room was over the parlor. The room next to it lay above the dining room where Mademoiselle Bastien held court.
Daniel opened the door of the second room. It too was bare of carpeting, although it contained a few pieces of furniture pushed against the walls. Two kerosene lamps on one table lent their glow to the housemaid, who was kneeling in the middle of the floor. Several floorboards had been lifted away, and the maid was gazing into the opening, her hands on something inside.
So intently was she focused on her task, she never heard Daniel until he walked around her and crouched down in front of her.
The maid lost her hold on a lever with a little cry, and stared at Daniel, her eyes round. Below Daniel heard Ellingham say, “What the devil happened? Where did it go?”
Daniel glanced into the opening. Beneath a series of levers, a square spy hole opened into the dining room ceiling, right through the chandelier—probably one reason the gas was not on. The chandelier swayed a bit from residual motion, but the otherworldly wind and noises had vanished.
“Oh, sir,” the maid whispered, face paling. “You ought not be in here.”
“Neither should you. Get on up to bed, and leave the theatrics to me.”
The maid’s mouth popped open. She was about thirty years of age, pretty, with dark hair under a white starched cap, her accent putting her from South London. “To you, sir?”
Daniel gave her his warmest smile. “You must be exhausted, lass, with Mortimer tramping in with his friends in the dead of night. You go up and make sure your mistress is well, and go to bed. I’ll take over for you. I know a bit about manipulating machinery.”
“But you can’t . . . I can’t . . .”
“It’s all right, love. Your mistress sent me up. Let me give this a whirl.”
The maid eyed Daniel in sharp suspicion. “Did she? Where did Miss . . . I mean Mademoiselle Bastien find you?”
“Oh, lying about.” Daniel winked. “Her secrets are safe with me.”
The housemaid came to a decision. She truly did look exhausted, wanting the relief of sleep. “Well, get a move on. She’s needing a bit more down there.”
She climbed to her feet, shook out her skirts, and left the room. Daniel noticed that rather than shoes, she wore soft slippers, which made only the faintest of noises on the board floor.
Once the maid had closed the door behind her, Daniel lay flat on his stomach, stripped off his gloves, and looked through the opening to the dining room below.
The room was in darkness now, the gloom relieved only when Mademoiselle lit a single candle in the candelabra. The candle’s light fell over the openmouthed faces of the gentlemen and haloed Mademoiselle Violette’s pale face and ringlets of dark hair.
She spoke in soothing tones, though she sounded a bit breathless. “Sometimes the spirits go suddenly, just like that. The ether closes, and the connection is lost.”
“Not entirely.” Ellingham pointed upward at the chandelier, which started to sway again, its facets tinkling.
Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie Page 3
