The Deadliest Sin

by Caroline Richards

  Julia tossed in her sleep, tangled in the sheets, her dreams consumed with fire. Flames danced, their tips licking at her skin, smoke clogging her throat. The paisley wallpaper with its cheerful collision of yellows and pinks mocked her. Whorls of hot mist curled the edges brown, stinging her eyes with acrid ash. If she strained and lifted herself from the pillows, she could see the top of her sister’s head, the chestnut curls tied with pink ribbon, her dark lashes crescents against her cheeks as she slept the sleep of childhood, blameless and deep.

  Julia saw the flames surrounding the crib, crackling and sparking like chestnuts on an open fire, consuming everything in their wake. Nothing could stop the inexorable hunger, an advance that was amoral in its intentions, devouring the innocent and the guilty with equal voraciousness.

  The heat stung her face, flushing her cheeks and singeing her hair. Each breath hauled into her lungs was harder than the last as wreaths of smoke filled the nursery. Her senses slowed, and her body became a heavy stone beneath the sheets as she struggled to rise. Holding her breath, she controlled the panic screaming through her mind. She could still detect the outlines of her baby sister through the bars of her crib. Unnerving images flashed through her mind, one more horrific than the next.

  The polished wood beneath her bare feet was unnaturally warm and her lungs felt like they were going to burst as she stepped across the nursery floor. The familiar rocking horse blinked at her with glassy eyes; a spinning top they had played with just that morning lay abandoned in the corner. Julia ignored the pain in her lungs, drawing each breath as though it would drown her.

  She was almost at the crib, an obstinate determination warring with pain and fear. The baby’s image floated closer, nearer, she could almost touch the white spindles. Smoke closed her throat and burned her eyes but she drew her arms away from protecting her head, moving inexorably toward the crib. The throbbing in her lungs was agonizing, unbearable, a lacerating pain that penetrated her skin, her bones. Darkness closed over her, a hot blanket, smothering and complete.

  Julia slept, suspended in a strange dreamscape, startled to discover Montagu Faron across from her, relaxing in a chair where Meredith once sat, reading to her as a child until she fell asleep. Sitting with his back against a bright sun, Faron remained maddeningly indistinct in the shadows, like a half-developed daguerreotype, but somehow lit with an inner triumph. It was a face that Julia finally recognized as her nemesis.

  “You,” she croaked, her throat lacerated by burns.

  He steepled his hands together, staring down at her. It wasn’t an evil gesture, merely languid and indifferent. “Why so surprised, Julia?” he asked. “Were you not expecting me all along?”

  She stared uncomprehendingly.

  “One day you will understand, perhaps, although I am not making promises.”

  “What is there to understand?” she asked, her eyes cutting like daggers. “Nothing could ever justify what you have done.”

  Faron laughed, a dry toneless sound. “You are nothing but a petulant child, for all your protestations to the contrary. Your aunt was always a reckless woman who should have known better and taught you to mind your place. Knowledge is a dangerous pursuit.”

  The words echoed in Julia’s mind, both familiar and elusive.

  Faron’s silhouette didn’t move, but the light of rejoicing burned brightly behind his dark eyes. “Meredith is in her own private hell and Rowena is dead,” he said simply.

  It struck Julia afresh like a physical blow, so violent and brutal she had to drag her breath upward from deep in her lungs. When she spoke it was a pained whisper. “Why? What have we ever done to you?”

  He smiled then, and even though she could not make out his features, she knew his expression to be both malignant and delighted. “Better that you do not know. That you accept the lesson life has taught you.”

  “Then what is the point to all of this? To make us suffer?”

  There was malice and resentment behind his suave tones. “If you have the courage and stamina for it, as well as an astounding lack of judgment, you may discover for yourself what lies beneath, Julia, although I shouldn’t advise it,” he added tranquilly. “As with your sister, you cannot possibly survive.”

  Julia was once again struck with stark reality. She could not help hoping that Rowena was alive despite what she had seen, the eddy of water, the dark stain of Rowena’s cloak floating toward the horizon. In the back of her mind, she’d been planning on leaving Montfort, going back to the river, to search for the sister who could not be lost to her.

  Strathmore. A thin thread of hysteria ran through her mind. The man who had deceived her, over and over again, but was her only direct connection to the specter who sat opposite her bed, exuding malevolence.

  “Do not entertain any useless hopes,” continued Faron. “Your sister is dead, quite dead. As you should be, if it hadn’t been for the incomprehensible machinations of Alexander.” There was no attempt to hide the enmity. Venom infused each word. “You must accept the facts, Julia. I can see it is very painful for you—as I had hoped it would be. Only imagine how cruelly Meredith is suffering.”

  Julia pulled a pillow over her head, trying to shut out the coolly detached but poisonous voice. But hiding didn’t help. Each syllable stabbed at her very being, a slow bloodletting, leaching her will to live. Tears resumed their flow, streaming down her face. Finally she relented, numb with grief, to a living death where walls kept out the pain. It was just a dream, she told herself, over and over again. It was just a dream.

  Two days later, inwardly frozen but wide awake, Julia sat in the hard, straight-backed chair by the mullioned window in the sitting room off her bedchamber. Someone had seen fit to open the heavy drapes and to take away the untouched broth on the tray at her elbow, finally allowing Julia the isolation she craved. If she cared to look in the cheval glass over the fireplace mantel, which she did not, she would see how mourning had sculpted her features, rendering her delicate and pale, her heavy hair falling to her shoulders, her eyes dominating her face.

  Grief had carved away any remnant of feeling and she took strange pleasure in the sense of detachment. She was a woman now, no longer the girl she had been a few weeks before. Physical intimacy and death had left their indelible mark, offering her a peculiar self-sufficiency she had lacked heretofore. Fear no longer held her prisoner because there was nothing left on the earth that could make her suffer more than she already had.

  It was difficult to determine where nightmares left off and reality began. Her encounters with Faron were the result of her own feverish guilt, she realized, and yet continued to haunt her waking moments.

  Rising to pull the curtains closed over the sunlight pouring into the room, she caught a reflection in the cheval glass over the fireplace. This specter was all too real, and she had nothing left to fight with.

  “You appear somewhat stronger today, Julia.” It was Strathmore’s deep, familiar voice. He stood in the doorway, dressed in dark wool, the velvet collar of his topcoat throwing the clean plane of his jaw in sharp relief. In the past, his presence might have engendered immeasurable joy or desire, hatred or fury, but those emotions wilted under the gaze of his cold, assessing eyes. Instead, Julia felt nothing. She sat back down in her chair, turned away from the mirror, and met his gaze calmly.

  “You have not spoken a word since our return to Montfort five days ago.” He was leaning against the door, favoring one shoulder, showing slight evidence of the injury that could have easily taken his life. The way he was dressed, Julia knew he had come to say good-bye. Her hands slid from the arms of the chair and tightened on the heavy black silk of her wrapper as if the stiff fabric would hold her upright.

  “Your aunt is worried about you,” he continued. Julia had witnessed Meredith’s haunted expression, her hollowed eyes and elegant frame bent from the burden of guilt and remorse. However, there was nothing Julia could do to alleviate her suffering. Words never did anyone much good. A worl
d of silence was far preferable.

  Her grip loosened on the silk crumpled in her hands but her heart remained cold at the sight of Strathmore. He had stayed at Montfort after all. Of course, he would want to find out as much as he could from Meredith, and from Julia, about Faron before resuming his quest. Who knew where it would take him except further away from her and closer to the man he was so intent on finding.

  Julia no longer cared to decipher the nuances of Alexander Strathmore’s character. She watched indifferently as he slowly pushed away from the door and strolled out from the shadows with his customary lithe grace so unusual for a man of his height and breadth. He stepped into the full sunshine by the window and, despite the coldness in her heart, she was struck again by his physical presence. Perhaps it was her eye, trained to the camera’s lens, that forced her to acknowledge his tall, broad-shouldered strength, the lean spareness through his torso and hips, his long, strong legs.

  Memories rushed back, lucid and searing. She rose from the chair, ready to make a motion indicating he should leave.

  As always, he was more than prepared for her remonstrations. “I’m not quite ready to make my exit as yet,” he said, easily reading her mind.

  It was inconceivable, she thought wearily. Right back where they had started.

  “Who are you punishing, Julia? Yourself?” he asked silkily, knowingly pushing her where she didn’t want to go. Shaken, she moved back a half step. He followed her, his boots silent on the carpet until he towered over her, power in every line of his body. “You are endangering yourself and Meredith by hiding,” he went on in a deliberately emotionless voice. “Shutting yourself away from the people who can help you is not the answer.”

  You would like for me to speak, to tell you what I know, she wanted to shout at him, angry tears suddenly welling into her eyes, her lips trembling. Help her? His life was a long litany of pure selfishness born of a privileged background that had allowed him to make the known and unknown world his playground. The damned source of the Nile. What did it matter except to those foolhardy men who courted hardship, illness, treachery, violence, and starvation to feed their bottomless ambition? She would never understand it and she would never forgive him. He had known that her sister had been kidnapped before he had taken Julia to his bed. And he had known of Lowther’s perverse request that he murder Rowena himself.

  Why should one night of feverish coupling make any difference? Julia shut herself off from the kaleidoscope of images that crowded her mind’s eye. She was angry that he could still affect her so, with his cool reticence and eyes like gray granite. She held herself stiffly, meeting his gaze directly. He was no longer capable of casting his spell over her.

  “Were you not the woman who was willing to take on Faron single-handedly, if need be? The woman who took pride in her learning and independence? What happened to her?” he asked with deliberate cruelty, his eyes on Julia’s pale face, contemptuous—as though his sheer will could force her to react.

  She bit her lower lip in agony. It was precisely the woman Strathmore described who had caused Rowena’s death and Faron’s resurrected interest in the Woolcott family. Had it not been for her pride, her own vainglorious ambition to have her monograph published, they would still be safe and protected at Montfort. Wiping away a trail of drying tears with the back of her hand, Julia’s look silently accused him.

  “I make no excuses for my decisions, nor should you,” he flatly replied to her silent reproach, intently reading her face. “We do the best we can in life with no assurances as to where our passions will take us. Perhaps it is my fault that I have not spoken more fully about my work, or shared with you my fascination with the mystery of one of the most magnificent regions in the world.” Strathmore hesitated, his lashes lowering. “Africa is an elusive place where nothing is as it seems. Mesmerizing.” He added quietly, “A passion of mine.”

  Why was he telling her this now? Something stirred deep within her. It was as though he was speaking honestly with her for the first time, with even more candor and transparency than when he had allowed her a glimpse into his boyhood and his father’s death. Julia grimaced inwardly. What a fool she was in the presence of such a master of manipulation.

  Turning away from him and his compelling voice, she focused on the unlit hearth, staring moodily into its charred depths.

  “Bagamoyo is a small seaside town in Central Africa,” Strathmore continued, seemingly oblivious to her disregard, as though they had all the time in the world and as though his story would make a difference to her. “It means lay down your heart. For whatever reason, I laid down my heart in that savage place. Just one example of how intently the geography and the people of the region speak to me.” He smiled briefly at his own folly. “Of course, I understand this is of no interest to you.”

  Strathmore had a heart, after all, Julia acknowledged with grim silence, concentrating on the snowy whiteness of two birch logs resting in the hearth. He was ultimately unknowable, as vast and untouchable as the pristine and unexplored wilderness of which he spoke. The irony was not lost upon her.

  She turned to see him shrugging at her silent indifference. “Faron once entertained similar ambitions, from what I have been led to understand. You will recall once accusing me of not being far different from the man himself. Perhaps you are correct after all. The source of the Nile is a great mystery that even Julius Ceasar yearned to unravel. It remains the greatest mystery of our time.”

  The nakedness of his ambition was so astonishing and undeniable and alarming that Julia felt a transient moment of fear.

  Strathmore watched the tightening of her fists on her wrapper. “All of which takes us away from the matter at hand. I should simply like you to remember that I spared your life once, which you insist on forgetting. Furthermore, despite my aspirations, I intended to find your sister. And I would have succeeded had you not interfered with your suddenly acquired penchant for adventure.”

  An expression of shock and wide-eyed affront played across her face. His arrogance and confidence in the face of tragedy were staggering. Strathmore was baiting her, deliberately attempting to prod her out of her self-enforced isolation. He raised his large, beautiful hands and applauded softly, smiling in faint derision. “You lie to yourself beautifully, Julia. Not simply about Faron and your past.”

  He paused, allowing her to fill in the silence with images she’d prefer to forget. The wide bed in the London town house, illuminated by candlelight, surrounded by exotic sculptures, darkly mysterious stone carvings, and glittering scimitars. A warmth suffused the paleness of her cheeks.

  “I thought so,” he said with a small smile. “You lie to yourself about other matters, pertaining to physical urges you would prefer not to acknowledge. Or at least, blame me for.” The words were said softly, drifting across the intimacy of the room, evoking memories of that bedchamber, redolent with the scent of desire and passion. His eyes, unfathomable, held hers for a long moment, recognizing the impact of those memories hovering between them.

  It took every effort to deny them. Steeling herself, impatient with the warmth uncoiling in her chest, Julia sank back down into the hardbacked chair, the gesture one of dismissal.

  Strathmore looked down at her, his expression neutral. “I told you something of my childhood, as you’ll recall, not to gain your trust for my evil purposes,” he said with a glint of sarcasm, “but to help you understand that we always have choices.”

  For the first time in what seemed months, Julia was tempted to laugh out loud.

  “I won’t deny that our circumstances may have been quite different,” he continued. “Clearly our responses and subsequent actions were.” He added softly, “Simply stated, I ran while you chose to hide.” His eyes were expressionless, without depth or shade. Feigning sincerity was so simple for Alexander Strathmore.

  His assessment was unfair. Monstrously unfair. He was a man, born into a powerful, titled family. While she—

  But none of it mat
tered. Julia turned her head to the reflection of two strangers in the cheval glass above the fireplace. Strathmore was saying good-bye. A thin sheen of sweat covered her body. Desolation swept over her and for a long, terrible moment, she relived the horrors of the past and anticipated the emptiness of the future.

  Strathmore’s voice brought her back. “You will never slay that demon, Julia,” he said, his words a parting gift. His image in the cheval glass glittered in a shard of reflected sunlight. “Until you slay your own.”

  Chapter 13

  A daguerreotype studio was often situated at the very top of a building with a glass roof to let in as much light as possible. A posing chair was placed on a raised platform which could be rotated to face the light.

  The upper rooms of the stables adjacent to Montfort had been outfitted for just those purposes. Dust motes danced in the air above the long table dominating the space where Julia’s camera obscura sat prominently displayed. The raised platform at the other end of the stables remained at the ready, empty and prepared for the next subject.

  Julia looked away, the heavy weariness that she carried within her only intensifying at the sight of three leather bound copies of Flowers in Shadows: A Botanical Journey displayed on the far shelf. She focused instead on the sets of iodine and bromide boxes which sat atop the mercury cabinet with the sliding legs that she and Masters had ordered from France two years ago. In the shuttered cupboards, she knew there were plate holders with clamps, additional plates, a leveling stand, and a dish for washing and hand-buffing the finished daguerreotypes.

  On the opposite wall was her coveted portrait of Louis Jacques Daguerre himself, taken by an acolyte, and a gift from Meredith to Julia on her twentieth birthday. It was a surprisingly informal image of the French artist and scenic painter who had discovered the first practicable method of obtaining permanent images with a camera. He was posed casually, the top three buttons of his vest unfastened, his head leaning quizzically to the right.