by Thea Devine
This was too scary. She felt utterly numb and immobile. She couldn't find the pulse even to begin a search. This was a stupid idea. Hugo was right—she should just let Olivia rest in peace.
There was nothing to find in here; she'd just skulk back to her bedroom and forget all her grandiose notions of solving mysteries . . .
. . . And what was Emily after, racing around like that?
Emily pounced at her feet, and she was certain for one shuddering moment that it was a mouse. But it was too small for a mouse—a piece of mouse maybe . .. no, it was hard, Emily was scratching at it, and she stooped and pulled it out of Emily's paws.
Emily's dirt-encrusted paws.
It was another stone, only much bigger, in a similar rough, irregular shape, covered with dirt and dust, nosed out from under the bed by Emily.
Under the bed.
There were always monsters under the bed, waiting to jump on you, kill you, dismember and bury you.
She took a long, deep breath. Time was wasting. She had to get out of there. She rolled the stone around between her fingers. One of two that Emily had batted out from under the bed.
So? Maybe it was a bigger-than-usual mouse dropping.
Time time time . . .
She took the lamp, pulled up the carpet, and set the lamp on the floor away from her, but close enough so it shed some light downward. This was dicey, she knew it; there would be very little
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light under the bed, but probably enough so she could see the accumulation of dust drifts.
And a handful of stones scattered underneath, very close to where she lay. And blackness. As if there were something else stored under the bed.
Oh, now she needed light. And she'd never been more frightened in her life. All those funny-shaped stones. All that dust.
She reached for the blackness, which she thought was limitless under the bed, and her hand touched wood. Lightweight wood. Crumbling wood. Sawdust or something dirt-like at the base of it. More stones.
Oh God . . .
Her first instinct was to run. And to try to extricate whatever it was from under the bed. But it was too scary. Someone might come, someone might see. Someone might be checking whether she was in her room.
She couldn't do this tonight. She needed daylight and sanity, she needed not to feel this creeping sense of vulnerability, of danger.
Time to get out of the room. She grabbed a handful of the stones and eased her way out from under the bed—
—and into the sudden, complete darkness of nothingness.
******************
The sun woke her, pouring in through the window and across her face, an irritation when she was trying so hard to stay asleep, to keep her mind a blank; if she woke up, she would have to parse out what had happened last night, and she really didn't want to think about it.
Besides which, she was feeling dazed, as if her head was stuffed with cotton batting, and as if her mind was a sieve.
All right, she'd just stay in the bed then. It was probably the safest course until she could ascertain that Hugo was gone.
For certain, some other things were gone: the album, the stones, her credibility.
Her head hurt. She didn't want to move. She didn't want to see any of them, not even Kyger.
What had happened?
Owww, Emily, at the foot of the bed, curled up against her ankles.
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Let's figure it out.
Oh, the last thing she wanted to do. The last she remembered, she was poking around under Olivia's bed, she'd found the stones, and the wood dust, and something else . . .
And had planned to go back this morning to explore further.
But she'd woken up in her own bed. And she didn't remember coming back here.
Had someone else been in the room?
She couldn't remember anything after touching the wood particles.
She looked at Emily. Emily stared back at her. Yes.
Yes what? Someone else was there?
Emily's gaze was steady, unwavering.
Yes.
Oh God—someone was there? Someone saw her?
Someone stopped her.
She bolted up from the pillows, her whole body bathed in ice and sweat. Fought to stay rational and not panic. Swallowed the fear in her mouth, her gut.
She couldn't do it. Her whole body convulsed with terror. Someone had been there. Someone had stopped her.
Hugo? Kyger? Who else?
What was under that bed that Hugo did not think anyone would ever find?
She had to get out of the house. NOW.
No—no—what she had to do was act as if nothing had happened.
Really? In her state of utter, abject fear?
She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, grabbed hold of the covers, and held on hard as she expelled it. Beat back the horror. The fear.
She had to.
Mroww. You will.
Emily had such faith. All right. For the both of them, she had to calm down and think clearly, if she were going to be able to negotiate this treacherous territory.
First. Act on the assumption that someone had found her, made certain that she would not continue her exploration of Olivia's
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room, took away everything she had found, and brought her to her room.
Unconscious.
She had to have been—she had no memory of anything past the moment she'd started to back out from under Olivia's bed.
First item—check Olivia's room. In daylight. If it was even accessible. Hugo had probably locked it up forever.
Second—get out of the house.
She would tell Hugo she was tired of waiting for Lujan to come around and come home, and she was going after him.
Good. That made sense; it sounded rational, and she didn't have to pretend to be a bored and annoyed wife. She was—she'd waited long enough for him to come back home.
She could convince Hugo of that and then she and Emily— surely Hugo could spare a driver—would go to London.
All right. Now she had to get dressed, simply as possible.
It was hard even to move a muscle to get out oi bed. She forced herself, as Emily watched her every move curiously; she washed up perfunctorily, and grabbed the first shirtwaist and skirt she found.
Grabbed a brush—knocked over the stone she'd picked up in Olivia's room, picked that up, tucked it in her pocket again, went back to brushing her hair, and finally pinned it up.
Anything to keep busy, not to think.
Soon she'd have to think, to act. Now. She had to start, now.
She moved to the door, grasped the knob.
First step, and she felt panicked. What if it was locked from the outside? What if Hugo were waiting for her to open the door?
Oh God—she squeezed the doorknob and turned it. Pulled open the door.
No ghosts. No monsters waiting. Just silence in the hallwav. The discreet sound of the maids starting their morning duties on the floor below. Sun pouring in from the stairwell window, making a square-paned pattern on the floor.
Nothing threatening. Nothing frightening.
No lock on Olivia's door.
That stopped her. She was certain as stones that Hugo would have already put a lock on the door.
Did she dare—?
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Was she crazy?
She had to know. She touched the stone in her pocket. There had been a dozen of them under the bed. Maybe a dozen more to be found . . .
Oww. Emily led the way, pacing across the hall and sitting on her haunches, waiting with a patient stare.
What did Emily know?
Mrowww. Secrets.
And Emily would never tell. Jancie was shaking as she wrapped her fingers around the knob.
... Or she could just walk away, and forget everything she'd ever thought.
She turned the knob. The door opened easily—too easily?
Nothing was different. Nothing had changed between her last clear memory of last night, and this morning.
Oww. Are you sure?
Emily slithered under the bed, a clear signal that she must go down on her knees again. What did Emily know? What?
She was so loath to get down on her hands and knees again. She would be too vulnerable that way, too defenseless.
Owww. Most emphatic Emily.
She supposed she could lie flat on the opposite side of the bed, but then she'd be facing the door, and she had been counting on the light from the window to reveal whatever was under the bed.
All right. A quick five minutes on her hands and knees, and all her questions would be answered.
Or not.
She got down on her knees and pushed herself flat on the floor, and under the bed, where fingers of sunlight dimly illuminated . . .
Nothing.
No stones, no wood dust, no wood.
No dust drifts.
No mistake.
Everything—gone.
******************
"Good morning, Hugo."
Her tone was icy cool as Jancie marched into the dining room
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for breakfast, knowing that Hugo, if not Kyger, would probably be there.
More security in numbers, she thought. And she was now more angry than afraid. She was seeing for herself that Hugo was the master planner, always several moves ahead. N'o wonder he had so easily swindled her father.
He had done it to her. Last night. And now, he could accuse her of having an overwrought imagination if she ever broached the idea that he had hidden something under Olivia's bed.
He'd say her mind was playing tricks on her. That she dramatized everything, and was looking to make someone pay attention to her in Lujan's absence.
But she knew the truth. There had been something hidden under the bed. And she had the one lone, glassy stone to prove it.
Well, she wouldn't play into Hugo's hands by making outrageous emotional claims. Calm, strong, and icy cold, that was her tack. She wouldn't lose her temper, wouldn't let him manipulate her.
Couldn't lose the minuscule advantage of knowing what she'd seen, what she'd touched.
"Good morning, Jancie," he answered in kind. "Did you sleep well?"
Clever Hugo with his double-edged question.
"Excessively well, for some reason," she said, as she filled her plate with the usual eggs—shirred this time—brioche, a dish of fruit compote, and tea.
She took a seat opposite him and exaggeratedly went through the motions of salting and buttering her food and sugaring her tea. "I think the time has come for me to go to London."
"Do you? Why is that?"
She slanted a look at him. "Do you not think that Lujan has avoided me and his responsibilities long enough?"
Hugo shrugged. "I hadn't thought about it."
"Well, I'm extremely upset about it. This is the second time he's abandoned me, and that is no way to start a marriage." Yes, that sounded good, just the right indignation for an ignored and ill-used bride.
Hugo opened his newspaper. "I'll send someone."
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Oh no. Checkmate. And this was a man who had wanted to marry her.
She stolidly tackled her eggs. There had to be an argument that would hold weight with him. "I was also thinking that were I with him in London, a change of scene might be beneficial for us both."
"Were you? I assure you, Jancie, you would not want to be in London with Lujan. He'd ignore you even more than he has here. Too many temptations for a man of his bent."
Oh lord. "His bent?"
"Dear Jancie, you know what Lujan is like. Everything is about,. . what it's about. . . and it's no different in London than it is here, except there are hundreds more women willing to take him on. You don't want to witness that."
Just what Kyger had told her, she thought, fuming. They had the same stories, the same answers, the two of them.
"And you do have the distinct advantage in his having married you. Rest easy with that." Hugo set aside his paper and rose from the table. "He will return, I can promise you that."
He paused at the door. "Someday."
Her appetite fled. She'd been checked and mated. Now what?
Kyger.
She took a deep breath. Not Kyger. Kyger had become his father, and even though he'd said he wanted to marry her, he'd never been her friend.
She had to depend on her own very limited resources. Except she had no resources. Damn Lujan. Damn his family. She had no one—not even her father. She had Emily.
God, she had to get out of there . ..
How?
She took out the little odd-shaped stone that she had stepped on right by the side of Olivia's bed. She wasn't crazy. There had been more stones. At least that.
"Madam." Bingham, his voice rusty and paper-thin as ever, at the door.
She shoved the stone in her pocket. "Yes, Bingham?"
"Is madam done?"
"I am." She pushed away from the table as a thought occurred to her. "Bingham?"
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"Yes, madam?"
Bingham had always wanted to get rid of her. All she had to do was ask. "I wish to go to London, to Mr. Lujan, Today."
Did his expression change? "Yes, madam. At what time shall T have the carriage waiting?"
Ask for what you want. "Within the hour, please."
Bingham couldn't wait for her to leave; his face gave nothing away, but she knew. "As you wish."
That simple.
Why was it that simple? After Hugo's explicit refusal.
But Bingham couldn't know about that. Why was she so suspicious?
Don't look for plots, intrigues, complicity.
Hugo didn't even have to know for some hours, unless Bingham told him. And by that time, she would be long away.
Chapter Seventeen
He'd been hiding for days. Didn't want to visit his usual haunts. Didn't want to eat. Didn't want to drink. Didn't want to fuck any other woman but the one he thought wanted him dead.
He was feeling totally unlike himself, and fighting a great urgency to go back to Waybury House. Which, in and of itself, should have been enough to send him to drown himself at the nearest pub.
It was too unlike him not to steep himself in sex, sin, and stimulants when he was in Town. And God help him if he ever had a thought for Waybury, his brother, or his life.
So the fact that he was holed up in the house, watching the street and watching his back, was worrisome.
Doing nothing accomplished nothing. It got him no further in uncovering who was behind his coincidental accidents.
It kept him from Jancie's . . .
. .. and if it was Jancie . . .
Maybe that was the staggering thing—that it could be Jancie. He could hear her repudiation of any accusation now. HeM told her he wanted a body, a vessel. He'd told her that was her function as his wife: to spread her legs whenever he was home, whenever he wanted. He'd as much as told her not to love him.
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He'd been irritated when she'd become distant. A perfect setup for revenge—a woman scorned by the man she'd told she loved him.
There.
Except she couldn't have engineered his fall down the steps at the town house. . . . Unless she was in collusion with someone . . .
But they hadn't been married long enough for her to make any alliances with the servants. And certainly not anyone in the town house.
At Waybury, however—she could well have slipped something in his food, easily could have loosened his cinch. But so could anyone—Hugo, Kyger—the ever-devoted March, even.
So instead of going around in circles trying to figure out everyone's motive and where they were when, he ought to just go back to Waybury and confront them all.
However, he wasn't qu
ite ready to do that. He was still reeling from the realization that one of them might want to kill him. For some reason, he had taken everyone's loyalty to his interests for granted. Even as he was whoring around in London, he'd been perfectly certain that Kyger was tending his interests, and that his father was there, in the background, with his usual help and support.
That was a naive assumption—past childish, in light of the accidents. And with the advent of Jancie, and the fact that all three of them had wanted her so badly. Of course he had won. He had all the gifts and skills to attract and seduce any woman.
Jancie was a lovely, lush piece of clay, waiting to be molded. Too easy to twist this way and that. The reward had been beyond price: his own living sex toy.
Who had exercised her right to remove her feelings and emotions and to become exactly what he had meant her to be.
Except—he didn't.
The realization was shocking.
He wanted her, wholly and completely, with every emotion, feeling, and nuance intact.
And she wanted him dead.
Maybe.
Except it was too easy to believe. Jancie wasn't immune from reeling rage and jealousy, and she had told him his behavior was
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unacceptable. So it was all right there: a woman scorned, with two handsome, respectable, dependable men right in the house to comfort and cosset her.
God almighty—what the hell was he doing in London? And what was Kyger doing with—to—his wife .. . right now?
Jesus. And that was even with considering his father, still in his prime, three years into abstinence because of Olivia's illness, and lusting to get at some firm, young flesh.
His wife's flesh.
Her luscious, lickable, pink flesh . . .
Lord almighty—just the thought—he craved it. .. now . . . with a mad, red lust that he couldn't control. His body spasmed and spurted and there he was, hot, hard, and ready to go.
He slammed into the parlor. He had to get some resolution to this or be would go mad. Staying away didn't solve anything. Rather, it made the feelings he didn't want to acknowledge that much stronger.
And if it proved that Jancie was the perpetrator of this insane scheme, it would be that much more devastating.
Maybe some part of him didn't really want to know.