The Winter Garden

by Kara Jorgensen

  “Emmeline!”

  As she exhaled, the vision was gone, and all that remained was the artificial void of the blindfold and the piece of metal. With a trembling hand, Emmeline tugged away the silk and sat up on the chaise. Her aunt and Lord Rose stared at her expectantly from their seats across the room, but she could not meet their gazes. In her hand was a charred spike inlaid with bits of jet. She closed her eyes against the burning and only to see the searing flames as they crept up her mother’s dress. One breath came a little quicker than she expected followed rapidly by another. Sobs poured out as Emmeline covered her face with the piece of her mother’s crown clutched in her hand and shielded her eyes. An arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her petite frame closer until it came to rest against a soft cheek. Emmeline looked up expecting to see Lord Rose when her eyes met the green-eyed gaze of Eliza Hawthorne. Her aunt rubbed her shoulders and hugged her to her breast as she wept with childlike abandon.

  “What did you see?” Lord Rose asked flatly from his chair near the door.

  Eliza glared up at him as she smoothed Emmeline’s dark locks from her face. “How can you ask her that when she is—”

  “I saw mama,” Emmeline replied through tears as she straightened and stared down at the point of her crown. “I saw her at Headington Hill in the middle of a fire. She— she was looking for me, but she couldn’t find me.”

  “Why would you make her see that? Why would you give her something like this to read?”

  He drew near and put out his hand to retrieve the artifact. “It is hardest to read from someone who is so close to you, but she passed the test.”

  “I want to keep it.” The girl held the piece near her heart and refused to meet his amber eyes. Him seeing how red hers were would be the final humiliation. “She was my mother, and this is from her crown.”

  “Fine. Mrs. Hawthorne, I would like to work with Emmeline at least once a week. That way she will learn to do readings for others and hone her skills as a medium.” Seeing the twinge of betrayal in her eyes, he added, “Nothing will be as upsetting as this time. If I had known, I would not have given it to her. I expected her to see Lady Jardine during happier times.”

  Emmeline looked up at her faltering aunt with pleading eyes for her answer.

  “If that is what Emmeline wants and as long as she continues her studies at home, then I will allow her to continue.”

  Alastair’s eyes glinted. Emmeline had done better than he expected. Her reading confirmed she still did not recognize him as her captor. If she had, he would have simply told her that he rescued her but lost her in the commotion. Leading the women back to the foyer, he smiled at his good fortune. Eliza Hawthorne proved to be much more cooperative than her husband, and if he could control the child, her aunt would fall in line. More importantly, Emmeline was a real medium, which was what the London Spiritualist Society was lacking, but even better, she was a suggestible one.

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Hesitation

  When the doorbell rang, Immanuel darted down the steps but hesitated with his hand only inches from the knob. What if it was that man again? He had come once, and he could always come back. Immanuel pulled back the curtains beside the door and caught a glimpse of unmistakably red hair. With a relieved sigh, he stepped aside to allow Adam Fenice into the foyer. His companion’s eyes ran over Immanuel’s form, immediately noting his downcast gaze and wrinkled clothing. Something was amiss. He looked as he did outside the museum after he calmed down. The terror had passed, but now the guilt of fear remained in each crease and darkened feature. But what had scared him so this time?

  “I received your letter when I arrived home from work and came as soon as I could. What did you want to talk about, Mr. Winter?” Adam asked as he followed him into the front parlor but heard not a single voice in the house apart from his own.

  Immanuel stared past Adam’s head as his eyes stayed fixed on nothing but a blank spot on the wall. “I don’t know if I can talk about it now.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Inviting you here was a mistake. I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Mr. Fenice, but,” he drew in a breath and exhaled slowly before resolutely tightening his mouth into a straight line, “no one should hear what happened.”

  “But why?”

  The white of his ink-stained eye glistened. “Because it is too horrible.”

  “Then, I must hear it.”

  Immanuel’s eyes shifted onto Adam’s face and pierced behind his sockets. Holding him there, he probed for honesty, for the readiness to grasp the gravity of what had occurred, and for the understanding that wounds leave more than misaligned fissures of gnarled flesh. It didn’t take long to find them within Adam Fenice. He had already seen the scars on his soul. The intimate glimpse had occurred in the museum when reality had been ripped from Immanuel’s feeble grasp. He had not judged or pushed him back in line as the others might have. He led him outside, and while standing only inches away, he asked if he was all right. All Adam wanted was to know what was going on inside Immanuel’s mind, and his loyalty had finally gained him admittance. Immanuel’s gaze broke from Adam’s brow and roamed to the street that lay just beyond the pane. This was not a conversation for front parlors or drawing rooms.

  “Let’s talk upstairs then.”

  Adam followed Immanuel up the two flights of stairs and down the hall to his bedroom. The nightstand sat askew a few feet from the bare bed with the curtains behind it drawn against the afternoon sun. A solitary cushioned chair in the corner faced the wall, but as the redheaded man pulled it closer to Immanuel, he noticed the edges of a pillow and blanket peeking out from under the bed. His companion sighed as he took several sheets of paper off his dresser and studied them before dropping onto the edge of the mattress. Without looking up from the typed page, he pushed the bedding further under the bed-frame with his foot until he was certain Adam could no longer see it.

  Immanuel swallowed hard. “How much did Mrs. Hawthorne tell you about what happened to me?”

  “Just that you were—” Adam rubbed his wrist. “You were tortured.”

  Immanuel smoothed the page he copied from the doctor’s records. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t bear to relive all that he went through. To say it was to acknowledge all of the pain and humiliation during those two and a half months in hell. How could he have thought he would be able to tell Adam what happened? The man was staring at him, watching the beads of perspiration collect on his forehead. At least Mrs. Hawthorne had already told him the gist of it. Even if he couldn’t understand it first hand, Adam would know why it was so hard for him to speak of it. If the word barely came from his mouth, how could anyone expect him to be able to recount it?

  “We do not have to speak of it if it upsets you.”

  “I want to.” His eyes gleamed as he blinked away the burning behind his lids. “I have to, but I do not know how. Here, read this.”

  Taking the papers from Immanuel’s trembling hand, Adam scanned James’s account of Immanuel’s injuries on the night he arrived. He had seen the bruise and long wound that bisected his features when he was ill and he knew of the pneumonia, but how he received the injuries was worse than he could have imagined. Bruises, broken ribs, and infections were spelled out in clinical detail. A dislocated jaw. Adam watched Immanuel chew on the edge of his lip. How could something like that even happen? The amount of brutality needed to fracture three ribs or break his eye socket was unfathomable. Covered in offal. He flipped to the next page and swallowed hard. On his back over his right shoulder blade are twelve perfectly circular burns, presumably caused by the application of a cigarette. There was a whole other page of his treatments, all laid out in gory detail. Midway down, he froze. Febrile seizure followed by cardiac failure. Death lasted roughly one minute.

  Adam shut his eyes, banishing the image of Immanuel’s lifeless body, but the tremor in his voice remained as he asked, “Why did they do this to you?”

 
“I do not know.” Immanuel fell silent as his hand trailed to where the gold and silver necklace once was. Would Adam really believe what happened? At least he could tell the beginning. “This all started in August, you know. I was drawing plants for one of my classes the day I saw Emmeline fall into the Thames. When I pulled her out, she was dead.” The words tumbled out before he could stop them. “When I left Germany, my mother gave me a necklace that had been in our family for centuries and could be used if my life was in danger, or so she said. It had the instructions ‘mix with blood’ at the top, and when I saw her dead, I used my own blood. You will probably think me mad, but at the moment I gave her the elixir, my heart stopped. I felt it. I was certain I was going to die when suddenly her eyes opened and my heart began to beat normally again. I don’t know why they want it, but that potion my ancestors created was the reason I was kidnapped and tortured for two months. He wanted to know what it was made of, but I didn’t know. I don’t know.”

  A gentle hand rested on his arm, and for the first time since they came upstairs, Immanuel raised his eyes to meet Adam’s wetted gaze. “But you escaped. That is what you need to remember. You are all right now.”

  “I am not all right!” Immanuel leapt from the bed and stood before the dresser near the closed door. Holding either side of the cabinet, he stared into the mirror as he did every day, but rather than fixing his gaze on his hair or what lay behind him, he lingered on the face he scarcely recognized. “He altered me so wholly. Not only did he fracture my soul but my body too, and neither have healed properly. Look at what he did to me! I don’t even look like me anymore. In one blow, he broke my nose and shattered my eye, leaving me with this!” he cried as he pointed to the crack that passed from forehead to cheek, severing his eye. “He blotted out my vision, and I will never get it back.” Immanuel hung his head, his chest rocking with each ragged sob. “I don’t think I will ever stop being afraid now.”

  Adam sprung to his feet and stood beside Immanuel as he dissolved into tears, afraid to touch him. Despite standing where his companion could not see him, he wrapped his arm around his shoulders, and Immanuel relinquished his hold on the dresser, letting his body sag against him. The bones of the German’s shoulders pressed into his companion’s chest as he walked him back to the edge of the bed and lowered him onto the mattress. As his cries tore into coughs and loose hyperventilating, Adam’s lightly patted his back and ran his hand over his shoulder blades and spine until the air finally returned to his lungs.

  “I am here to listen, Immanuel. Tell me why you are afraid. Maybe— maybe I can help.”

  He shook his head. “You cannot do anything. I thought I was free of him. I thought I would never see that man again, but he was in the house.” Staring up at Adam with pleading eyes, he continued, “Dr. Hawthorne knows him. He knows who he is and let him in the house.”

  “Did you tell James?”

  “No, I can’t. They are working with him, and Emmeline went to visit him today. If I tell, they will all be in danger. I cannot do that. I will always be under his control even if he never knows I am here. I just want to die. How can I live knowing he could be lurking around every corner?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You don’t understand. I have nothing to live for. I don’t know if I can go back to Oxford and continue my studies, and I can never go back to Germany. I have nothing. No plans, no prospects, nothing. I would be better off dead, but I don’t know if I could die even if I wanted to. He took everything from me. What do I have, Adam? What do I have?”

  Without thinking, Adam held him by his arms. Immanuel stiffened in his grasp, but he refused to let go until he raised his gaze to meet his. “You have me. I want to help you. I would do anything to help you, but you will not tell me how.”

  Immanuel stared into Adam’s soft, blue eyes as the pent up frustration flowed through his arms and seeped from his fingertips into the aether. He had never had someone care for him like that, but there he was only inches away. One hand released his arm and came up to his face to wipe away the moisture that clung to the point of his scar. Holding Adam’s eyes, the tears stopped flowing, but the heat from his companion’s body radiated out as Immanuel allowed himself to be drawn closer. When he closed his eyes, it was as if they were back on the ice again with the electricity coursing between them, and as he squeezed them shut against the sticky dew still clinging in the corners, Adam pressed his lips to his. A flush of vigor washed over them, infiltrating every cell of their bodies with the ebb and flow of their heartbeats. Drawing a breath in harmony, their bodies enmeshed as they sighed and deepened their hold. The warmth spreading within Immanuel’s breast chased away the fear and grief for his past life as he cupped the back of Adam’s head, lingering in the softness of his hair. With a final tremble of breath, Immanuel drew back with hooded eyes.

  Adam Fenice’s eyes flew open, and he froze. His body had acted without his mind’s permission, yet his companion had not pushed him away. What had he done?

  “I— I need to go,” he stammered as he ran his thumb and forefinger across his lower lip and dislodged his body from Immanuel’s slack grasp.

  “Adam, Adam, wait! I can explain!”

  Immanuel bounded down the steps after him, tripping over his feet when tears clouded his vision. “Please, let me explain.”

  Adam shook his head, putting on his coat as he slipped out. “I have to go.”

  Tears burned the backs of Immanuel’s eyes as he lingered at the threshold, watching Adam disappear into the bitter December gloom. He was about to shut the door when he spotted a pair of dark gloves lying on the side table. Darting back upstairs, he stuffed the slip with the Fenices’s address into his pocket and emerged onto Wimpole Street in one of James’s hand-me-down coats. Immanuel Winter looked toward the direction the redhead had gone when he disappeared and hoped he had headed home. He smoothed the paper on the front of his leg. Where was Baker Street? As he stood at the corner of Wimpole and Weymouth, he wished he had grabbed a map from the study. Studying the houses in either direction, he sighed.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. Sir!” he called as he spun, trying to catch a passerby, but the citizens of London paid the man with the cracked face no heed. “I just want to know—”

  “Are you in need of assistance?”

  “Yes.” Immanuel turned to find a young man on a bicycle and wearing a Norfolk jacket regarding him with grey eyes and a crooked smile. “Do you know how to get to Baker Street?”

  “Turn left. When you get to the second major intersection on Weymouth, turn right. You will need to take Paddington Street next, which will be the first intersection on your left. Follow that road until you hit Baker Street.”

  He tried to commit the directions to memory but knew he would need to ask at least one more person for help along the way. “Thank you so much, sir.”

  “You are welcome. My fiancée lives there, so I am well acquainted with Baker Street,” the stranger grinned as he pedaled away, but as Immanuel’s eyes followed him, he noted that one hand was of flesh while the other was of metal.

  ***

  Standing outside of 124 Baker Street, Immanuel took a deep breath and checked the slip of paper Eliza wrote that morning for the eighth time. His heart pounded as he finally rang the doorbell and waited, hoping his friend wouldn’t slam the door in his face the moment he saw him on the porch. The door creaked open, and Immanuel blinked in disbelief as a female version of Adam stood on the other side. Her hair was cropped short and covering her legs was not a gown but a pair of dusty trousers. She wiped the sweat from her brow with a paint-splotched hand and stared up at him.

  “May I help you?”

  He opened his mouth but pulled out the pair of black gloves left back at Wimpole Street instead. “Is Mr. Fenice home? He forgot his gloves.”

  Hadley studied his face, running her gaze over the smudge of brown in his left eye. “He just arrived home. Come in.” As she stepped out of the doorway to allow him to
pass, she added, “You must be Immanuel Winter. Adam has told me so much about you. I’m Hadley, his sister.”

  “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Fenice, but I do not want to keep you. I just wanted to drop these off.”

  Noting the sag of sadness hanging at the edges of his features, she led him toward the stairs. “Adam is upstairs if you would like to speak to him.”

  Her eyes saw past the man’s meager excuses as she ushered the blonde man to her brother’s room. Adam had come home only a few minutes earlier obviously upset, and she knew his friend’s arrival coupled with her brother’s inability to talk to her about what had transpired must have been connected. Hadley’s soft tread tapered away as she headed back to her studio, leaving the men alone. After taking only a few steps into the hallway, he could make out Adam sitting pensively at his desk, staring at the wall. Adam Fenice looked up with a start as his gaze fell upon the thin scientist gripping his best pair of gloves.

  “You forgot these.” Immanuel tossed them onto his desk. Adam shifted in his seat before finally looking directly at him. “You kissed me, yet you left like I did something wrong. What did I do?”

  “Nothing. You did not do anything. I should not have— I should not have done that. Let’s not mention it again. It should not have happened.”

  “Stop.”

  Adam met Immanuel’s gaze as it bore through his eyes again. Tears threatened to spill out again, rattling his form as he fought to hold them in.

  “You said I would always have you. Don’t say anything to me you don’t mean. I am tired of being played with! Do you know why I had to leave Germany? I kissed another boy, and he panicked. He told his parents, and they went to the police. My uncle was caught doing the same thing, and he and his lover both went to jail. He died there from typhoid, and my mother couldn’t bear the thought of her only son sharing the same fate as her brother. She sent me to England before they could lock me up, and here I finally met someone who feels the same way I do. You do not see me as some abomination, yet you push me away because you cannot come to terms with your own feelings.” He paused as he thought for a moment. “Does your sister know?”