But he couldn’t.
He’d spent too many years revealing the truth behind the most cherished lies. He did not have faith; he needed proof.
“Will you tell me something?” He heard his heart in his throat.
She did not hesitate. “If in doing so I do not betray a confidence entrusted to me.”
“I can’t think that would be the case here.”
“Yes. Then yes.” It was a vow.
“In London. In Mayfair six years ago,” he said, “how did you manufacture the sound and sensation of what others described as angel wings in”—he hesitated, unable to bring himself to say your husband’s—“in Brown’s séance parlor? What brushed so many of your clients’ hair and cheeks?”
She actually shivered, briefly closing her eyes against his question. When she opened them, sadness filled them. For a long moment she looked at him, her gaze traveling over his features with a sort of hungry resignation reserved for a man embarking on a voyage from which he knew he would not return.
“Fanny?”
She sighed. Her shoulders lifted in a little apology. She smiled unconvincingly. “Bats,” she said. “There was a colony in the chimney.”
He regarded her in disappointment. “You can’t train bats.”
“No,” she whispered. “You can’t.”
“Then how…?” He let the question hang unfinished between them.
She lifted her hand in a gesture of entreaty, looked at it, and let it fall. She laughed and it turned into a soft sob. “What shall I call it?” she muttered aloud. “What word will make it palatable for you? What word will allow you to accept it? Accept me?”
“Fanny. What are you talking about?” he asked, profoundly concerned.
“Magic.”
“Magic,” he repeated. He could not believe she was saying this to him. He waited for her to explain, laugh, roll her eyes. She did none of these things.
“Magic,” he repeated. “You are saying you conjured the bats?”
“Conjured? No. I simply called them to me. They…felt my purpose, I suppose.”
Her gaze fluttered about the room. Whether she was seeking escape or inspiration, he couldn’t tell. She looked on the verge of tears.
“Not just bats,” she went on. “Every animal. If I feel something very strongly, if I feel the need of something very badly, they react. They answer that…inner communication.”
“Dear God,” he murmured.
A tear slipped from her eye.
He stared at her helplessly. He could not understand why she would do this. “Why are you saying this, Fanny? Why would you seek to provoke me this way? Knowing how much I loathe this sort of thing. Is it because I love you?”
“No.” She shook her head violently.
He did not stop. His heart was breaking. “Is it because you have decided that anything further between us is impossible? That you wish to send me away without a shred of hope? Is that it?” A horrible thought occurred to him. “Is this, perhaps, your version of kindness? Because if it is, I beg you, be unkind.”
“No!” Her voice was choked and hoarse. “It is because I do love you. Because you asked for the truth and I swore I would tell it to you.”
He sighed deeply, wearily Whatever her reasons, she was not going to give them to him. “You are empowered with supernatural gifts?”
“Gifts?” Her laughter hurt to hear. “A curse. Yes.”
“You have some sort of empathic relationship with animals?”
“Yes.”
“You called the bats from the chimney in Brown’s parlor to simulate the presence of spirits?”
“Yes.” She nodded, a flicker of eagerness brightening her black eyes.
“Then call them now.”
Her body jerked as if he’d suggested she shoot him.
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can’t.”
“You don’t understand,” she cried plaintively. “It was never something I cultivated. Only those few years with Alphonse, and I never mastered it. I could call the bats, but only because they were so near already. It took every bit of my concentration to hold them there, and as soon as I let up, they vanished back up the chimney.”
“Convenient.”
“Grey, please. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t seek this thing. I don’t want it, and I have spent the last six years trying to suppress it. It isn’t like whistling for a dog.”
“It happens only when you are overwrought.”
“Yes, yes!”
“Then it’s too bad you can’t manufacture up a bit of emotion, isn’t it?” he said, gazing at her sadly.
For a second she stared at him, and then she tipped back her head, her eyes squeezed shut, her expression agonized. “It doesn’t work that way,” she whispered.
He took a step toward her. He couldn’t help himself. She was so sad and so lovely, and she was everything he’d ever love and was fated to lose. It didn’t matter whether she believed in this fantasy she’d spun or was simply trying to deceive him. Either way, she represented everything he could not believe in and everything he had fought against for his entire adult life.
He wished he could be angry. He couldn’t. He’d felt similarly toward his father, wanting to despise him and being incapable of doing so. He didn’t have the capacity to despise one whom he loved. It was his weakness; it was what made him vulnerable. He’d tried to protect himself, to hide the vulnerability beneath cynicism and caution. He’d done so well.
Until Fanny.
What hubris he’d possessed, thinking he could choose whom to love and when. But she’d swept into his imagination and then his dreams and finally his life, laying waste to all his self-assurance and peace of mind, destroying what he thought he knew and leaving him in a shambles.
“I love you, Fanny,” he said, tenderly brushing a lock of black hair from her damp cheek. She trembled. “But I cannot betray who I am, even for you.
“There is no magic, just magicians. And amongst their stratum, my beloved, you are unquestionably without peer. I am utterly enchanted. I doubt I shall ever recover.” He tried to smile. Failed.
“Grey… There is magic. I am sorry. I am so sorry. But there is.”
“Hush.” Gently, he cupped her face between his palms and lowered his lips to hers. Softly, sweetly, lingeringly, he kissed her. And when he finished, he rested his forehead lightly against hers until a shudder passed through him. He forced himself to step away and let his hand drop from her damp cheeks, tenderly bestowing a last caress as his fingertips fell from the soft curve.
“Tell Hayden—” He swallowed, looked away. “Tell Hayden I will wait for him until this afternoon, but I intend to be in Flood-on-Blot before dawn. I can’t stay here. I can’t. But if he chooses to stay, tell him—” He cleared his throat. “Tell Hayden to hold tight to his illusions. They are worth far more than reality. Good-bye, Fanny.”
He did not look back.
Chapter 38
So much for truth, Fanny thought, and started laughing and then sobbing and then laughing again. She dropped down onto a stack of books beside the hall table and buried her face in her hands.
A fresh onslaught of tears shook her to her very core. Grey had gone. He’d kissed her good-bye, and it had taken every ounce of willpower not to wrap her arms around him and beg him to stay. Thank God she’d managed to restrain herself. He already thought she was either mad or moronically committed to her own lies.
But in a short while, Donnie MacKee would drive him in his pony cart to Flood-on-Blot, and she would never see him again. She tipped her head back, and somewhere high on the mountainside a female fox wailed, Amelie’s pony kicked in her stall, and a flock of starlings chattered at the windowsills.
“Oh, yes,” she said through her tears, “now you show up. Where were you ten minutes ago?”
But what would have changed even if they had appeared? Grey would simply see a flock of birds, hear the results of a bee stinging a horse in its s
tall, and hear a vixen emitting a spring mating call. Nothing more. He was a professional skeptic.
She began weeping once more.
She had to stop this. It was accomplishing nothing. And it was important to accomplish something. Why? Because…? She shook her head. There was no reason to accomplish anything more. She’d done quite enough for one day: lost the man she loved, lost Amelie
She stilled. Amelie. Where was Amelie? And Hayden? Like Grey, she didn’t for a moment think they’d eloped. They had to be around here somewhere, relieved that Grey had left without further pressuring Hayden to accompany him or staying to glower at his nephew over his perceived idiocy in trusting a lying, deceitful woman.
Youth. Hearts’ desires were not that easily come by.
There would be obstacles, not the least of which would be Hayden’s father, especially after Grey reported Amelie’s deceit. It would be far better for the couple if Hayden left with his uncle. At least he would be able to present a case for Amelie to Collier.
Fanny rose to her feet, wiping away her tears. If she stayed focused on the here and now, the jeering specters of the past and the pipe dreams of an impossible future could not find her, and she could buy some time to learn to live with regret. She would find Amelie and Hayden and convince the boy that he did more for his suit by leaving than by staying.
It would be nice to have some help looking for them, but Violet was still tending Grammy Beadle, who was still sick. Miss Oglethorpe was still in Flood-on-Blot delivering her monthly report on the dire doings at Quod Lamia to her brother. But where was Ploddy?
She hadn’t seen him since yesterday afternoon, when he’d put the carriage away. She frowned, going to the kitchen and calling his name. There was no answer, so she climbed the back stairs to the servants’ quarters. Ploddy’s room, as befitted a former batman, was neat and tidy. The bed had not been slept in.
Was no one sleeping in this house but Fanny?
A touch of concern chased her back to the main floor. “Ploddy!” she called, looking in rooms and poking her head out windows. There was no answer.
Sometimes, when Ploddy was having a bad streak, he hid in the carriage house, in the loft above where they stored hay. But Ploddy hadn’t been having a bad streak. A little setback here and there, but it had been months since he’d been so inebriated he couldn’t function. And it had been at least a week since he’d even tippled and she’d found that bottle and upended the contents down the privy and then found Donnie MacKee and promised she’d be visiting his establishment with her golf club if he sold Ploddy one more bottle.
Still, there was nowhere else to look. She headed into the carriage house, where the big old feral tom greeted her with a sidelong glance of affront. “Yes, yes,” she said distractedly. “I waved a blanket at you. You weren’t mortally injured.”
The cat abandoned his pose of indifference and came to her, twining around her legs. She hauled the huge creature up into her arms, burying her face into his dense, scarred pelt. Here in the safety of the carriage house she needn’t fear being seen cuddling the savage animal.
Several small females appeared, members of the tom’s harem, meowing questioningly. She set the tom down and brushed her hands lightly over their arching backs. She then found the rope that worked the trapdoor leading to the loft and tugged it until the door swung open and the ladder dropped down. Leaving the cats behind, she climbed up the steep rungs and poked her head into the loft’s dust-mote-spiked atmosphere.
Ploddy lay flat on his back on a pile of loose hay. A half-empty bottle of whiskey—carefully corked—had rolled from his outstretched hand, the neck pointing accusingly at him.
“Oh, Ploddy.” She hoisted her skirts and climbed into the loft, going to stand over him as he snored gently away.
She nudged him with her toe. “Ploddy. Wake up.”
He grumbled and turned away from her, a line of spittle running down his chin.
“Wake up.” She used her foot to roll him onto his back.
“Ow!” he complained, finally opening his eyes. He peered up at her from eyes the color of cranberry jelly. His lips were cracked and caked, and the tongue he swiped over them looked just as dry and white. He groped with his free hand for the whiskey bottle.
She kicked it away.
“Tha’s mine,” he protested. “I earned it.”
“Earned it, did you?” She would eviscerate MacKee when she found him. What had he talked Ploddy into doing? Sweeping out his bar?
“Misser M’Gowan gib it to me,” Ploddy mumbled indignantly. The wretch was still drunk. “Now, there’s a g’enlman!”
McGowan? Fanny scowled. Bernard knew about Ploddy’s drinking problem. He knew what a struggle it was for the old man to stay sober, and how hard they’d all fought to help him, Bernard included. Ploddy had to be lying to protect his cohorts.
“Are you sure MacKee didn’t give this to you? Or one of his cronies?” she asked darkly.
“Nah,” he sneered, trying to struggle to his elbows and failing. He gave up and flopped down flat on his back. “Pack of cowards. Scared shitless of a black-haired biddy. Not a pair o’ balls amongst the lot of ’em.” He flapped a hand at her. “Go ’way.”
And with that, his eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth dropped open. In a second, he was snoring.
There was no reason to wake him again. It would be hours before he was lucid enough to navigate the ladder.
She picked up the whiskey bottle and was about to empty it out of the loft window when its label caught her eye. Fanny did not know a great deal about liquor, but she did know enough to realize the bottle she held came from the Lowlands. She could not imagine anyone in Little Firkin importing whiskey.
Except Bernard.
Why had Bernard given Ploddy a bottle of whiskey? Once asked, the question would not leave her alone. She dropped the bottle and descended the ladder, her thoughts racing. The only reason would be because Bernard had wanted Ploddy drunk. And the only reason he would want Ploddy drunk was so that Bernard could be sure that Ploddy was incapacitated.
She stood outside the carriage house, a choir of barn swallows chittering in agitation as they tumbled through the air above her. Where had everyone been yesterday soon after Bernard’s train had left? Hayden and Grey had been confronting her, Violet had already left for Beadletown, Miss Oglethorpe was gone and…and Amelie was down by the riverbank, where she claimed someone had shot twice at her. Someone who knew her habits and that she often went there alone. Someone like Bernard McGowan.
Anxiety churned in her stomach. But why would Bernard want to hurt Amelie? It made no sense. He’d been courting the girl.
But Bernard had known Sheffield’s plan to leave Little Firkin, and he had witnessed Amelie’s reaction to it. It would not take much imagination to deduce that after such a disappointment a heartbroken girl would flee to her sanctuary to be alone. The perfect place to stage an ambush.
She could stand here wondering why Bernard would do such a thing, or she could act on her fear that he had. She decided to act. She swung around, quickly realizing that the first step was that she had to find Grey—
Grey was gone. So were Hayden and Amelie. Where were they? Panic sizzled through her thoughts, sparking dire scenarios in her imagination. Had Bernard— No. She would know if something had happened to Amelie. She would know it. She clung desperately to that belief. They were somewhere; she just had to find them.
Where would they go? She pounded her temples lightly with her knuckles, trying to focus, to put herself in Amelie’s shoes.
Amelie was shot at, and was certain it was Bernard, but when she told her best friend and guardians what had happened, no one believed her. For all intents and purposes, Fanny had locked herself in her room, leaving Amelie alone, unguarded, and afraid. Then perhaps Hayden arrived and was convinced, as Fanny should have been convinced, of Amelie’s sincerity. What would they do? Where would they go?
To find some proof to convince others
of Bernard’s treachery. At Bernard’s house.
But that would be insane. Bernard’s house was guarded by two ferocious monsters—she inhaled on a hiss—that Amelie was convinced would never harm her, because she had a “connection” to all animals, wild or tame.
There was no time to go for help. No one to go to. No one who would believe her.
A shudder raced through her and she started down the drive, first walking fast, then trotting, then bursting into a dead run, her skirts held high. If anything happened to Amelie, if those dogs attacked her, it would be Fanny’s fault. She’d been so intent on establishing herself as “normal,” she hadn’t done enough to dissuade Amelie from taking seriously what she believed was her recently discovered affinity for animals.
She flew along the road, barely aware of her burning lungs, her aching side, the cutting pain of the stones beneath her thin leather soles. Behind her, unnoticed, dozens of ravens slowly fell into formation in a long, wavering line, trailing her like a black banner in the sky. In the ditches, rabbits darted in frantic confusion, while ferrets streaked nervously through the woodland verge and foxes slunk anxiously amongst the shadows of pine and oaks.
She arrived at Bernard’s house to the sight of an open gate. Heart thundering, she ran up the drive to the house and grabbed the knob, twisted it, and rammed her shoulder hard against the portal. It fell open without resistance, and she stumbled into the hallway. The first thing she saw was blood.
On the floor, against the wall. Amelie’s blood?
A terrible sound filled her ears, and she swung toward it. It was the dogs, Caesar and Brutus, crouched beneath the stairs, their massive heads low, panting harshly. Dried blood caked the side of Brutus’s neck and shoulder.
“No,” Fanny whispered.
Brutus whimpered in response.
She didn’t blame the dog. Brutus was simply a tool, fashioned by a far greater monster than himself to be a weapon.
So Enchanting Page 30