The Winter Garden

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The Winter Garden Page 25

by Kara Jorgensen


  “What is—”

  Adam raised a finger to his lips and nodded toward the parlor. Craning her neck to see over the armchair, she found Immanuel Winter sleeping under a blanket on their sofa with his knees drawn close to his chest and his hand dangling from the edge of the cushion. His jacket and tie hung over the back of the chair while a tea service sat abandoned on the end table on top of a pile of penny dreadfuls. The afghan tucked up to his chin obscured his features, but from the relaxed rise and fall of his chest, she confirmed he was asleep. For a man who was two inches taller than her brother yet gave the illusion of added height from his willowy build, he seemed incredibly small curled up on the chair.

  “Is he all right?” she asked as she hung her coat and hat on the last unoccupied hook.

  “Not really. We went to the house where he and Miss Jardine were held.” He swallowed hard and rubbed his wrist. “I went in, and he followed me. I was foolish to think he would stay in the cab. He looked so distressed on the way home that I couldn’t bring him back to James and Eliza’s house.”

  Tiptoeing past her brother, she picked up the tea tray and watched as Immanuel’s eyelids and arms clenched in time. “Poor Immanuel.”

  “He once said he feels safe here. I would like for him to believe that. Had, you should have seen him before. I thought he was having a fit. His entire body was shaking, and he was gasping for breath. I didn’t know what to do. He was so afraid Lord Rose was going to find him and hurt him again.” Following Hadley into the kitchen, he leaned against the doorway to keep an eye on his companion. “I shouldn’t have taken him there. The fear in his eyes was—”

  Hadley looked up from the dishes in time to see Adam’s blue eyes moisten. Stuffing his shaking hands into his pockets, he set his mouth into a firm line and stared at his shoes. It was still odd to see her brother display any emotion apart from anger, but it was a needed change Immanuel Winter brought into their lives. When she put her soapy hands on her brother’s arms, he didn’t pull away.

  “You cannot blame yourself, Adam.”

  “I should have known better.” He finally stepped out of her grasp and wiped at the wet patches on his sleeves. “Does Lord Sorrell ever talk about the accident?”

  “Sometimes, but losing your arm in a dirigible crash and being tortured are two very different things.”

  “I know. I only wish he would tell me what he sees when he is so afraid, so I could know how to comfort him better. From the look on his face and the scars, I know it was horrific.”

  Sighing, Hadley followed Adam’s gaze to the thin outstretched arm jutting from the sofa. “You need to have patience with him. If you push him, he will run. Remember what happened when I asked you about your inclinations? For weeks, you refused to speak to me. Immanuel will open up when he is ready.”

  “But—”

  The sofa creaked under Immanuel’s weight as he shifted onto his back and slowly sat up. His sweat-drenched shirt clung to his skin, and his collar hung open at the top of his vest. Immanuel rubbed his throat as he surveyed the room with pink, blurry eyes, unsure for a moment where he was.

  “Adam?” he called, his voice tentative and low.

  “What should I say to him?”

  “That everything will be all right.”

  ***

  Immanuel mounted the steps, his body aching and cold from the aftermath of spent fear. After sharing dinner with the Fenice twins, the tremors in his hands and legs finally subsided, but his knees still snapped and jolted with each step.

  “You look horrid.”

  At the top of the steps Emmeline stood in her purple dressing gown with her hair framing her owl-like eyes in wayward curls. With her head cocked and her eyebrows scrunched in a concerned frown, she didn’t seem like the indolent child who refused to so much as look at him only weeks ago. He knew she was staring at the sore, scalded skin around his eyes and nose and could tell he had been crying. Immanuel kept his head down; he couldn’t let the Hawthornes see him in that state.

  “I know.”

  When Immanuel moved to slip past her, she stepped in his path. “Did anything happen? When you didn’t arrive in time for dinner, I thought something happened to you.”

  “No, we—” He paused to listen for any creaking boards or voices rising from other rooms. “Where are your aunt and uncle?”

  “Aunt Eliza went to bed, and Uncle James is in the basement.” Emmeline dropped her voice. “The thing arrived today.”

  “What thing?”

  She put her finger to her lips and beckoned him to follow her into her room. Closing the door behind him, she answered, “The king’s dead body.”

  Immanuel’s eyes widened. Somehow he had expected them to go to one of the palaces to reanimate the prince consort rather than have the corpse come to them. “You saw it?”

  “Well, no, but I saw a crate arrive, a big one, and there were more men there than were needed to carry it inside. Some of them haven’t left. They have been outside the house since it arrived. Look.”

  Going to the window, Emmeline drew back the curtain. Over her head, Immanuel could make out a constable walking his beat but, much like the men at Katherine Waters’s crime scene, his uniform was far too clean and crisp for everyday use. Another man sat in the back of a dull grey steamer a hundred yards down the street with his eyes trained on the house. When the flutter of the drapes caught his eye, Emmeline pulled them shut and bumped into Immanuel as she backed away.

  “What other dead person comes with body guards?”

  “You are probably right. I will ask Dr. Hawthorne about it in the morning to be sure.” Immanuel pulled the wad of rolled up penny dreadfuls from his breast pocket. “Here, I found these at the house. I thought you might want them.”

  Emmeline stared down at the stack of flimsy novels. When she first arrived at Wimpole Street, she would have covetously devoured them, immersing herself in an adventure far, far away from the memories of what happened. To be someone else somewhere else was all she wanted during those days where she measured her life by hair pin scratches and Immanuel’s muffled cries, yet now the penny dreadfuls had lost their appeal.

  “Thank you, Immanuel.” She laid them on her vanity and sat before the looking-glass to finish brushing her hair. “How did it go? Did you and Mr. Fenice find anything?”

  He shrugged, not wanting to linger on that place long enough for his imagination to take over again. “Adam took some photographs of the cellar and servants’ quarters. After they are developed, we could take them to the authorities, but that will take some time and they aren’t exactly proof of Lord Rose’s guilt. We weren’t particularly successful.” Reaching into his pocket and pulling out the scrap of paper from the fireplace, Immanuel stared down at the name. It seemed vaguely familiar, yet he couldn’t place it. “Adam also found this. Do you recognize the name?”

  Claudia Leopold Rose. “No. Maybe it was Lord Rose’s mother. Where did you find it?”

  “In the drawing room fireplace. Adam said there were other papers burned there, but this was the only one of value he could salvage. How did your meeting with Lord Rose go?”

  “Better than your outing. I was able to sneak into his bedroom while he and Aunt Eliza were having tea, and when I was there, I found this.”

  Emmeline slipped the necklace over her head and held it out for Immanuel to see. His tired eyes widened as they ran over the delicate leaves of precious metal that grew over the now empty glass vial. Running his fingers over the letters engraved into the stopper, he couldn’t help but smile. He had never been so happy to see that ugly pendant.

  “Where did you find it? I thought I lost it in Oxford.”

  “Lord Rose had it hidden in a box.” Drawing in a deep breath, Emmeline remembered Katherine’s vacant eyes and silent pleading. “He keeps them in jars.”

  Immanuel looked up to see Emmeline’s lips tighten like Adam’s did when he was upset. “Keeps what?”

  “The people he kills. It soun
ds bizarre, but he has a crate with jars in it, and when I touched one, I saw Katherine Waters. She was begging me to free her, but I couldn’t. He would know I did it if they were all gone.” She swallowed hard. “It’s like their souls are trapped when he uses that machine, the one he used on you. Don’t you find it odd that you are still here and whole after what he did to you?”

  “The only reason I survived was because we are tied by the potion, but,” Immanuel remembered the look on Alastair Rose’s face when he began to climb to his feet with the wound on his neck still pulsing blood, how his eyes traveled from the sealed jar to his victim, “he opened the lid. Part of me would be there too if he had not opened it to make sure I was inside. Now, it makes sense. That is why when I touched Miss Waters and Miss Wren I could not see anything. He has their souls.”

  When he glanced up from fiddling with the pendant’s clasp and saw that Emmeline had no idea what he was talking about, he continued, “When I touch a dead body or a skeleton, I can see the last moments of the person’s life. It happened in Oxford with a walrus skeleton and here with a dead body, but when I touched Miss Waters and Miss Wren, nothing happened.”

  “You are a medium? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It never occurred to me to call myself that, and I did not think you would be interested anyway. Before last August, this never happened. Maybe I inherited it from you. Does this mean your powers are real?”

  “Of course, they are real,” she snapped but caught herself and watched Immanuel’s reflection in the mirror as he slipped the necklace on. “I had the same problem as you did. Lord Rose’s brother was Katherine Waters’s fiancé. He came to the Spiritualist society to have a piece of her jewelry read, but I could not see anything. I felt so guilty. He was so distraught, and I—” Emmeline’s eyes brightened as the next step in their plan suddenly became clear. “I know who can help us. Lord Montagu, Lord Rose’s brother, has much more authority than we do. If he believes Lord Rose murdered his fiancée, he will surely do something about it.”

  “But how would we convince him to turn on his own brother?”

  “I could go to him and do a reading of Katherine’s necklace. When Lord Montagu came to the Spiritualist society, Alastair wanted nothing more than to keep him and that necklace away from the mediums. He was afraid that if one of us read it, then he would be caught. We are going to do exactly what Lord Rose does not want.”

  “But you won’t be able to read it.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I have seen fakes do it all the time. All you need is a little information.”

  Immanuel watched Emmeline’s face enliven with purpose. For the first time, he felt a swell of hope bloom in his breast. “How can I help?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four:

  Memento Mori

  “You know, you did not have to accompany me,” Emmeline said as she pulled the hood of her cloak closer and kept her head down for fear of running into her aunt or Lord Rose on their way to Berkeley Square. “Pull your hat down. Your face is pretty hard to miss.”

  With a frown, Immanuel tipped the brim of his top hat to cover the upper portion of his scar. “I couldn’t let you go alone. You didn’t see him break free of two police officers like they were children.”

  “What is he going to do? Kill me?” She slowed her pace as she counted off the house numbers. “Apparently, that is impossible.”

  “We don’t know that, and I don’t want to die again. If he shot us both, we would probably die.”

  “Well, we don’t know that,” she replied in a mocking, sing-song. In front of a house with a mansard roof and tall windows ensconced in bays or beneath pediments, Emmeline fell silent. Its white stone façade and ornamental rails topping the rooflines along with the gentle glow of lamps from within took the edge off her fear. She would have to be careful with her words, but she wasn’t afraid to go inside. “This is it.”

  For a moment, Immanuel held Emmeline’s gaze. When had she gotten so strong? Those big brown eyes did not waver as she led him up the steps and pushed the bell. Eliza Hawthorne always seemed to be trying to coax Emmeline into throwing off her life of leisure to be a productive woman who could stand on her own without a husband’s guidance, yet she hadn’t needed her to do that. All she needed was a hint of success, a hint of recognition of her talents, for her to suddenly move forward. Lord Rose had been the force that nearly brought her life to ruin, and because he foolishly believed she was under his control, she was now able to outmaneuver him. By inviting her into his plot to spite her uncle, Emmeline had been given all the room she needed to seek every crack in his plan and work away at them until he crumbled. She may not have been book-smart or studious or even independent, but she was clever. Straightening her back, she held her head high and prepared herself for what was to come.

  Immanuel smiled to himself. He wished he was that confident. After all that Lord Rose had done, he had survived in spite of him and even stood up to him when he attacked him at the Hawthornes’ door, but he was still afraid. Emmeline saw their shared soul as a means to invincibility, and while he was grateful that she had kept him alive several times, it meant that should he fall into Lord Rose’s hands again, it would be an endless cycle of torture where even death would not end his misery.

  “Tell me again what her injuries were,” Emmeline whispered, keeping her eyes locked on the door. “Quickly.”

  “Killed by electricity, three-pronged wound on her neck, and four scratches across her hand where her ring was pulled off.”

  As the lock clicked inside, Immanuel fell silent. A footman in dark breeches opened the door but barely looked at either of the strangers standing on the porch.

  “The master of the house is not seeing visitors,” he said flatly, but as he moved to shut the door, Emmeline stepped in the way.

  “If Lord Montagu knows we are here, he will want to speak to us. Please, just take my card up to him.”

  With a derisive sigh, the servant allowed them into the foyer. Placing her card on a silver salver, the footman disappeared up the stairs, but within seconds, a booming voice cried out. Emmeline and Immanuel flinched and instinctively drew closer as a door slammed and heavy boot-treads echoed down the hall. The imposing man barreled down the steps and stopped, running his eyes from Emmeline’s owl-like features to the man with the cracked face and two-tone eyes. Luckily, when he reached Immanuel, there was no flicker of recognition.

  The Marquess of Montagu seemed to have aged from when Immanuel saw him at Katherine Waters’s bedside. His hair had dulled to a tarnished brass with a patch of grey growing at his temple. Set into his now bloated cheeks, his light brown eyes still flickered like hot coals as he ran a paw over several days’ growth of his grey and white peppered beard. Before Lord Montagu could speak, Emmeline gave a slow, delicate curtsey and met his gaze.

  “Your lordship, my name is Emmeline Jardine, and this is my associate from the Spiritualist society, Mr. Winter. I would like to apologize for intruding upon you while you are still mourning, but I had a dream I could not ignore.”

  “Go on,” the marquess grumbled as he glared down at them.

  Immanuel resisted the urge to blink away the burning in his sinuses as he caught a singeing whiff of spirits on Lord Montagu’s breath. Even with the massive man towering over her and regarding her with suspicion bordering on contempt, Emmeline did not waver.

  “Miss Waters came to me the other night and told me to try to do the reading again. Enough time has elapsed, and there is a pressing message she needs to convey.”

  For an instant, his eyes softened. “What is it?”

  “I do not know. I need to read something that belonged to her to make contact.”

  Lord Montagu stared at the young woman in her royal purple gown and black cloak. He could scarcely recall the day he barged into the Spiritualist society and demanded a reading, the absinthe and gin took care of that, but he remembered her. The girl had tried when the others pretended not to see him. Taking a step b
ack, he motioned for them to follow him into the study.

  The heavy drapes had been drawn against the waning winter light, casting the room in a mulberry gloom. The room had been cleaned, but the subtle signs of chaos remained. Tobacco ash was smeared down the wallpaper near the door, and minute bits of crystal still crunched as they crossed the carpet to the chairs. Across the surface of his desk were rings where wet glasses had been left too long. A gleaming amber puddle had formed under a glass of what Immanuel could only guess was bourbon or whiskey. Immanuel and Emmeline waited behind the wooden and leather chairs as Alexander Rose stood in front of the empty hearth. He stared down at a red enameled frame fitted with a picture of Katherine, running his hand over the surface of the glass and the chain that hung from it. With a few twists of his wrist, the aquamarine and pearl necklace unfurled.

  “Here, use this.” He carefully coiled the gold chain into Emmeline’s palm before sitting across from them. “It was her favorite.”

  Emmeline ran the delicate chain between her fingers, knowing that even if she focused, Katherine would never speak from beyond the grave; Alastair had inadvertently made sure of that. Silently she recited a prayer for her mother to help her, and as she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, she inhaled the familiar honey and vanilla aroma of her mother’s perfume. Rubbing her fingers against the smooth surface of the pearl like a rosary bead, she let what Immanuel told her and what she learned through bits of gossip flow. First, he had to hear what he wanted.

  “She knew you loved her very much, and she wants me to thank you for all you did for her.” Emmeline furrowed her brows as if listening closely to someone. “You want to know if she is at peace, but that is impossible.”

 

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