“Elijah, he smiles,” Michael offered. “That’s quite a change.”
“I…I fear for them,” Rebecca said softly and winced.
Josephine’s heart went out to her. Surely everything Rebecca said would be tinged by her particular closeness to the matter. The slight flush on the headmistress’s high cheekbones was a bloom of shame atop her cool and efficient exterior.
She continued, “While they are”—she swallowed—“besotted with each other, that does not erase character difficulties. She so timid, he adamant. For us to succeed, I fear they must become the true partnership destiny demands. We all need to become one, else we court failure—betrayal, even.”
The group looked at one another warily.
“There are forces keeping our hearts closed,” Michael said. “These confound us. I’m as guilty of it as any.” His eyes flickered to the object of his adoration.
Rebecca studied the room. Jane turned away, her knee jostling the table and making brown-tinged flowers tremble in a vase. Josephine’s bosom burned with a thousand things she wanted to say, but instead she felt her face twist into a grimace. Looking at the fading posies, she plucked the wilting stems free and moved to toss them in the basin behind the bar, ruing that she was behind on the most simple tasks of her café duties. That spoke to her own faltering heart, which was similarly tinged brown on the edges.
“Two people can love each other dearly,” she said, storming around to pluck fading bouquets from other tables. “But anxiety, fear and silence can keep them apart. Percy and Alexi, of all people, cannot afford distance. None of us can.” She dared glance at Elijah before looking away, feeling ill. This was not the time to speak of broken promises, but her patience waned. Elijah surely knew. At the table he’d grown nearly as fidgety as Jane, whose reason for anxiety was anyone’s guess.
“We must support them,” Michael rallied, “and stand up for Percy if she needs it. And ease the tempest that is our leader, if he needs it. We’re all Alexi has; she’s all he has, and he’s constantly aware of that. Think how close he’s come to losing her. Considering its Alexi Rychman we’re talking about—”
Elijah snorted. “Dear Percy’s all the more of a saint.”
“It isn’t our business to discuss their marital dynamics,” Rebecca hissed, absently dissecting a biscuit with her fork. “We must be sure we’re no longer at odds like we once were in this very room. No more of that!” she said. “Our circle will never have faced such strain as I feel is to come. We need to be whole.”
Josephine set her jaw. If the men they loved couldn’t help their hearts be whole, what could be done? The women in the party couldn’t just be whole on their own with a snap of one’s finger. They were humans, with needs, and those needs were not without labour.
Her grimace must have showed, for Elijah’s eyes widened with boyish helplessness. Squaring her shoulders, Josephine brought wine to the table for everyone but him. He could fend for himself.
It was not long before they dispersed. Elijah led the charge, darting out the door with such swiftness that it was a dagger into Josephine’s heart. Left alone with the café’s frequent haunts, she wept freely as she rinsed wineglasses clean, fancying she was rinsing away the blood of a broken heart. But when she turned, she started. She would have dropped the glass in her hand had not the General, a ghost dressed in century-old military regalia, managed to shift it to settle dangerously but unbroken upon the bar.
Lord Elijah Withersby stood frozen, a box on one arm, a corsage of fresh roses in an outstretched hand.
Josephine glanced around the tables. While she’d been crying behind the bar, he’d quietly replaced all the faded posies she’d so angrily discarded. Fresh red rosebuds elegantly filled each vase. She swallowed. Elijah did small deeds of incredible beauty. He always had, for her. Damn him, for those small acts kept her heart cloven to him.
He set down the empty box, and his oft-harsh features were soothed by the golden glow of the gaslight. She let him approach and pin the corsage upon the broad lapel of her blouse, but did not offer him a look of apology when, with a yelp, he pricked his finger and sucked upon it.
She folded her arms and stared at him. He began speaking with his index finger in his mouth. “Thith damned Work hath kept uth from leading anything rethembling a normal life,” he began. She reached up and impatiently withdrew his finger. While she’d long ago fallen in love with his antics, this wasn’t the time. He began to pace the room. “Josie. You know why I’m hesitating.”
“Dis moi,” she said.
He sighed. “I find most of my class disgusting, and I’ve said so numerous times. Still, I resent that I’ve never been able to…be a part of it. I’ve used my gifts to hide for the majority of my life. I am a stranger to my family, to my class—one that none of the rest of you would have been welcome in, but rightly mine. I float between, a ghost.”
“There are worse things than to be a wealthy man with no responsibility.”
Elijah’s eyes flashed. “No responsibility? Do you and I lead such different lives?”
Josephine thought about saying that he was plain lazy, unable to handle the least responsibility, and that’s why he’d gone off and abandoned The Guard ten years prior, but he had paid dearly for that time; only Josephine knew how dearly. No matter her feelings of anger or betrayal, she could not pick at that particular scab.
“The name Withersby means nothing to me,” Elijah continued with a pleading tone, “but for the rest of my family it means everything. Identity is a strange beast. I suppose I just want to know who and what I am before I make another sacrifice.”
“Oh, je suis un sacrifice,” Josephine said through clenched teeth. “Years of exhausting farce keeping our tryst a secret and now I’m a sacrifice.”
“Josie, we agreed long ago that to be the lone couple amid this damned group would be bloody awkward and more miserable than our exhausting farce.”
“It was just an excuse.”
“No, it wasn’t! We truly acted for the sake of balance, considering our delicate group dynamics. Josie, you always agreed with me. If you’ve been resenting it all these years, you needed to have told me.”
“I assumed you’d keep your promise.”
“And I…want to.” He stopped pacing, his coat of many layers and frills stilling as his body did. “Josie. You know how much I love you. And I know I’m being selfish. But life isn’t fair, and while I resent society for its impositions, I cannot change the fact that if I marry you, I’ll be shunning it for good without ever truly having known it. That isn’t fair.”
“Staring at Rebecca, who has always loved the man who just married another, I’m yet reminded of what is and is not fair. You ought to consider yourself lucky.” She fought back tears, her nostrils flared, her head tilted back, defiant. “Once you told me I could charm the royal family itself, that society would love me and forget my station in an instant. Mon Dieu. That it wouldn’t matter! When did that sentiment vanish—with age? I’ve faded, perhaps. That’s it. Not the flower of youth anymore, am I?” She wrested his corsage off her blouse, tearing the lace, and threw the small buds across the bar where they slid through the General’s drooping, transparent head.
“Josie, good God! You’re still our Helen of Troy—”
“Indeed? Well, if I’ve still the face that could launch a thousand ships, would you bloody set sail already? Haven’t you heard a war’s coming? That’s what people do: they marry the ones they love before they go off to maybe die. Your exclusive invitations to seasons, balls and fetes be damned, you’re a superficial coward and I’m a fool!”
She tossed her apron behind the bar and stormed upstairs, slamming the door behind her. Elijah sighed, rubbed his face with his hands and locked the café door behind him. Then he went off to be an empty, unremarkable stranger in his vast estate, no closer to feeling at peace.
If someone had been praying in the Athens chapel at midnight, they might have noticed the thin trail of ash trickling from behi
nd the white altar, a misty line snaking up and out through the chapel doors. The smoky particles slid inconspicuously out of Promethe Hall, gliding down the steps to the courtyard more like an unending insect than a snake, now, tumbling forward inch by inch on millipede legs, finding the shadows and lingering. It slithered on, across the cobbles, paying no heed or reverence to the angel fountain; it was sniffing something out.
Up to and under the door of Athene Hall, the ladies’ quarters, and past the drowsy matron at the desk, silently the ashes sniffed one way and then the next, beginning an ascent up the wooden stairs. It stopped at door number seven, at a familiar scent. An enemy scent. She was here…
No, she had been here. Now, she was in their protection. But there was still a way. The ash trickled on, continuing its hunt.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Percy’s calling hours at the Rychman estate began with a visit from a man of the cloth.
“Hullo, Percy!” Michael said at the door, sweeping his cap off his head.
“Hello, Vicar! Pleasure to see you! I assume you’re here for Alexi? He’s just gone into Athens.”
“Ah, but it’s a vicar’s duty to call upon the ladies of his congregation, and while I know you’re not a member of my Anglican parish, you’re a member of my far more exclusive assembly.”
Percy smiled. “Do come in. I daresay Mrs. Wentworth cooked up enough treats for an army.”
“And I always have the appetite of one!”
Once settled in the sitting room and plied with the afore-mentioned delights, the clergyman was quick to the point. “I don’t suppose it’s a surprise your husband is fraught with worry. It isn’t easy, you know, for a man to deal honestly with the heart.”
Percy eyed the vicar, daring to turn the tables. “Oh?”
Michael waggled his mustache. “You’ll not get gossip out of me, young lady.”
“Fine,” she retorted. “But I’m not used to talking about my own particulars. It’s unsettling.”
“You’re the centre of a maelstrom, bound to cause discussion.”
“But…what if I really do have to go into the spirit world because duty demands it? I don’t want to go. Alexi doesn’t want me to. But what if I must go without his permission? He’ll never forgive me, never trust me…”
“If indeed you must go, we will be there to support you—and to support him when the appropriate time comes. But the both of you must not worry about tomorrow—”
“ ‘Sufficient for the day is its own trouble,’ ” Percy murmured, finishing the scripture. “Now, I rightly knew what I was getting into with him, Michael. I knew he was a brooding man. But I’ve never known him to be mercurial.”
Michael shrugged. “Love makes a man mad.”
Percy narrowed her eyes, curious. “How have you managed to keep your wits?”
He raised an eyebrow but remained unruffled. “Secrets of the trade. Alchemy of the heart—most profound magic of all. But I’m not here for my sake.” He leaned in. “I beg you realize Alexi’s absolute adoration for you has turned everything on end, so have patience. If I know him, you’ll need a lifetime supply.”
Percy chuckled. After a moment, however, she was again bold: “When, Vicar, will you set patience aside and tell her?”
Michael made to act innocent.
“A war is coming,” Percy continued. “We shall need all the love we have.”
The vicar rose, giving her a dawning look. “Why, that’s a most sensible thing to say, Mrs. Rychman. Most sensible.” He kissed Percy on the cheek and allowed her to see him quietly out the door.
While Percy assumed she’d see Josephine before anyone, it was a surprise that Jane was next. The Irishwoman sat alone and uneasy in the parlour that afternoon, and Percy donned her tinted glasses to protect her eyes and opened every shade; the full light seemed a more inviting environment for company.
“Aodhan,” they chorused after a tense silence.
Jane sighed. “I suppose I’d best tell you about him.”
“I don’t mean to press you, but it may—”
“Help, yes. Thank you for telling me his name.”
“My pleasure.”
Jane took again to the tea she’d been brought, but could delay no longer. She entered an almost trancelike state as she related her past. “Our Work was a gift. I was a girl caught out of time, thrust into a world advancin’ too quickly, growin’ too broadly and losin’ all magic. I understood why I was chosen, but…there was somethin’ more.
“Useless to my family, I was turned out at eighteen. Your husband bought me my Aldgate flat, and I was never so lonely. I know The Guard loves me, but I’ve not the beauty of Josephine, the efficiency of Rebecca, the confidence of Alexi, the wit of Elijah or the joy of Michael. It didn’t help that it took time for my talents to manifest. Initial victims suffered more than they should. I needed help, but no one knew how. Then, one night, there came a terrible sound on my doorstep.
“Outside lay a mass of white and red—a cat, terribly mauled. I can’t bear to see a creature in pain. A cold draft came in as I took the creature to lie upon my table. The cat looked at something, fixed-like. It was a man floating by my side, his hand upheld. Nameless to me, but beautiful. So beautiful. I pressed my palm to his cold mist and felt newfound strength. My hand glowed, and I suddenly understood why others’ pain causes me such misery.
“I laid healing hands on the creature, and the skin beneath the fur began to mend, the spilled blood rolling away like mercury. Aodhan…touched my face and took the tears from my cheeks. I gained both love and Marlowe that evening.”
She stopped, and Percy took the cue to refill her tea, patient with the silence and not looking twice at Jane’s fierce blush. Finally Percy said, “It’s an incredible story. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Jane smiled, pleased. “Feels good to tell it. When we could spare it,” she volunteered after another silence, “we went healing. I practiced with him, in alleys where the sick and dying lay untended, in sad, dim wards where the only light was our combined illumination.”
“And The Guard never knew?”
“Elijah, having once accidentally brushed me with his touch, saw what I’d been up to the night prior. He pledged to say nothing if I’d now and then take him along. We never said a word, only smiled at each other when all was said and done, enjoying our secret. Now and then Michael would let me into his parish children’s ward, too.”
“Brilliant.” Percy grinned.
“Aodhan keeps me company, see. Now and then I’ll play fiddle and we’ll dance a reel—a piece of common heritage. I never told the group, for fear they’d think it ‘fraternizing’ with the opposition. Not a single word. Gentle spirits are no enemies, but are we to love them?” Jane asked, blushing. “And I do love him.”
A popping noise resounded through the room and a black portal appeared over the tea table. Both ladies’ hands went up and they jumped to their feet. Their visitor was the very spirit in question. His palms were outstretched in a gesture of peace, and his broad shoulders took up the portal’s full width. Jane went red, but Percy smiled.
“I cannot help it,” Aodhan explained to Percy. “Now that she knows my name, I must come when she calls. Do tell her how much I love her, my lady, will you?”
Percy beamed at the ghost and then Jane. She related the man’s message, and watched tears flow down Jane’s cheeks. Jane didn’t bother to dry them.
“And I you,” she said to Aodhan. “Though you’ve heard me say it before. It’s good to hear the same from you. Thank you,” she added, turning to Percy.
“My honour.”
Jane’s tear-stained face became thoughtful. “Loneliness has long been my burden. Before I ever saw a ghost I felt them—felt like one, myself. I’m sure you must understand.”
Percy nodded but said nothing.
“I’ve never spoken about my names,” Jane confessed. “The rest of The Guard assume it’s some Catholic trapping. My Christian name is Jan
e. When I was very little, before we came to England, we lived beside a graveyard outside Dublin. I’d go there every day and visit two graves—two ill-kept graves separate from the others and on opposite sides, entirely isolated. Alone. Lucretia Connor, Marie O’Shannon…barely thirty years alive. The father of the parish must’ve given them a marker out of pity, a small comfort of little use in death…”
Jane shifted her gaze between Percy and Aodhan, who floated, rapt, at the portal. She went on. “I wondered if those young women had ever had a love. Surely they’d no family. Even in death they’d no one around them, even in the cold ground. My heart hurt for them, so separate, shunned, failures. I was terrified I’d turn out just the same—or worse, never have a marker, like so many families, perhaps even mine. I don’t even know what happened to them,” the Irishwoman murmured, her tearful eyes wide. Percy thought about her own mother’s grave, similarly sorrowful, and took Jane’s hand.
“My family disowned me, like what surely happened with these lonely women. But those lasses live on in me through their names, and I pray I share some of my blessings with them. Because I do feel blessed. If not for The Guard, I’d have turned out the same as them. Without Aodhan, I’d have gone into the ground never having loved. Even though my family is this inexplicable ragtag force against the restless dead, and my love is one that can never be requited, both things are a blessing. I fancy taking their names brought these two souls peace.”
“Never requited?” Aodhan whispered. “We are two beings of one heart. A heart so big it can hold a grander family than she possibly knows, and all the great mysteries of the universe. What more is there?”
As Percy relayed his words, Beatrice suddenly popped into view behind him. “You could join him, you know,” the ghost said to Jane. “End your fleshly existence, follow your lover into this undiscovered country…”
Aodhan turned in horror, but Percy nonetheless relayed what the female spirit said. Jane went red, flustered, her accent never so thick. “It’s a sin to do so! To take yer life by yer own hand?” she cried. “Don’tcha think I’ve thought of it? I’d have done it already, to be with him, but…And there’s work to do. I’ve The Guard, I’ve a duty—”
The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Page 21