Medley of Souls

by Renee Peters

A part of him expected the rise of the darkness he knew to be selfish — and possessive — in response to the thought. But it only shifted lazily in his depths, stretching like one of her cats at its leisure. He enjoyed watching her bend the world to her mortal will.

  The chiming of a grandfather clock somewhere in the depths of the mansion galvanized the gathering around them into a rousing cheer. Lifted glasses and claps on the back were interspersed with the boldness of kisses stolen here among friends, where none would think to judge — or remember in their drunken state.

  Midnight.

  The gong echoed six times.

  He wondered what Joanna was doing to bring in the new year.

  Tonight would not be about Joanna.

  The twelfth gong resounded, and Diana cleared her throat, rising to her feet. They each turned toward her, expectant, and with her fingers wrapped around the stem of her wine glass, the widow obliged them.

  “To you, my friends, another year of happiness, and success in all that you do,” she began, and Dorian saw a flash of skin and the bareness of an ankle and her foot as she raised it behind her to hook it on the edge of her seat. “And to those who frown upon us, may it be our smiles that slay them.”

  She lifted her glass, and as if on cue, the gathering drank, and the conversation burst into riotous bloom once again. With a lazy smile, Diana settled back into her seat, her dark eyes settled on Dorian.

  By the time the clock began to toll three in the morning, Diana had efficiently and methodically sent her guests out the door and into the darkness of their waiting carriages, kissing cheeks and for the more brazen of her guests, chaste pecks to the lips.

  Then she turned to the Conde, and they were alone.

  “Do you intend to welcome the first sunrise of the year with me, Dorian?”

  He studied her from the place where he leaned against the column of the open archway between her foyer and the salon. “My intent is only not to leave, yet.” His lips curved wryly. “You make it difficult for a man to be certain of his intentions otherwise.”

  She was the very definition of a temptress — without trying.

  The widow’s lips curved a smile, but there was something more thoughtful behind the darkness of her eyes. She stepped around him, near enough that the fabric of her gown brushed his suit; much like one of her cats who watched lazily from a lounge.

  “I am to my suite,” Diana offered with a glance over her shoulder. “There are armchairs within if you have an inclination not to lean against the pillar all evening.”

  He chuffed an exhale. “I can think of more comfortable places to recline.”

  Her private rooms were as luxuriant as the public salons of the residence, though here he thought he could sense deeper evidence of her personality. The parts perhaps that few were allowed to see. It was no more lacking in various textures and gilded luxury than the rest of her estate, but there, stretched against a back wall was a towering shelf of books with spines that ranged from history to politics to — Dorian noted with some interest — Aegean lore.

  The plush depths of a loveseat beckoned, and he moved toward it shrugging out of the confinement of his evening tailcoat to lay it over an armrest. Practiced tugs on his cravat freed his neck from its bindings and he lowered himself into the chair, aware of the quiet sounds of the woman moving through the space behind him. He lifted his gaze to watch her.

  She had likewise begun to free herself of the weight of her evening gown. It fell around her ankles, and shamelessly, she worked her corset loose until she stood as bare as the goddess Aphrodite that lovers had portrayed her as. Crossing the floorboards, she dragged the sheer fabric of a muslin robe from the edge of a paneled room divider. It fluttered around her as she drew it over her shoulders, and Diana padded behind him.

  She was wordless as she swept long, soft arms from behind the loveseat to wrap around his neck, and for a moment, Dorian was shrouded in dark hair and lilies. He reached up to skim a touch over the smoothness of her arm and a warm press of her lips found his crown before she released him, gliding around the back of the seat.

  He reached out, a silent invitation and she settled like a cloud into his lap, a bloom of her fragrance wrapping around him.

  Her lips touched beneath his jaw, and her skillful fingers began to unbutton his shirt.

  Inside him the darkness stirred. Not to rise, but to tighten into a knot that betrayed itself in the subtle tension of his frame.

  “I do not know how you find the patience for my vagaries,” he said quietly. She was heavier in his arms than Joanna. With a fuller figure and heavier bones that while pleasing did not lend itself to the imagination of hours spent reading at leisure. “You could favor any with your company.” He captured her fingers in their labor and raised one hand to his lips for a kiss that lingered. They were smooth but lacked the flawless perfection of moonlight.

  Her smile was almost a smirk as she drew her hand back along with his wrist to nip the skin there. “You are pleasant company. Distracted company but pleasing enough.” She settled his hand on the full curve of a breast, larger than Joanna’s, and turned her attention to his throat to leave a line of suckling kisses.

  His brow stitched in the darkness and his fingers on the widow’s body flexed in a flinch that was something less than a caress. Her kisses were expert against the heaviness of his vein where it pulsed, and the flash of a heated memory seared him.

  Joanna’s lips. Joanna’s teeth.

  He should have let her bite him.

  Distracted. Always he was distracted.

  Because no one else was the French queen. Every scent, every touch, every sound that was not uniquely his Joanna’s only served to make him remember her — and miss her.

  He was a prisoner to her spell as much as she was to his. She had just given her bewitchment a name.

  “Diana….” His voice was husky with his regret, and he lifted his touch from her breast to cradle her head, the gentlest of pressure quieting her exploration. He struggled to find the words to speak and knew a wrenching twist of guilt for the game he had encouraged her to play.

  “Dorian,” she breathed a laugh against his skin. “Do you think you are the first married man who has determined not to keep a night’s company with me?” The widow lifted her head and leaned forward to touch a kiss to his cheek. “I am hardly surprised, dear Conde. You were pleasing company when you were not trying to convince yourself to my bed.”

  He knew a twist of frustration. In how many ways could he be foolish enough to make the same mistake?

  “You are kind to spare me the wrath I deserve,” he said quietly. “You are beautiful — breathtaking. Everything that a man should desire.” His regret shadowed his expression. “It was not my intent to be so lacking in my own kindness.” She deserved better.

  “I know I am beautiful,” she said, and laughed again. “And I know that I am everything desirable. One man too distracted by his wife will not deter my opinion of myself.” Her fingers lifted to cradle his cheeks and the widow studied him. “I think you might be happier to see the new year with your Condesa, but if you would like to stay, you are welcome to do so. Either way, I shall be abed within the hour.”

  The woman began to unfurl from his lap, drawing her dark curls over her shoulder.

  Dorian reached out before she had escaped him entirely to brush a kiss against her knuckles, then held on to guide her to her feet. He was not long in following her to a rise.

  “As much as I would enjoy watching a beauty sleep,” he said wryly, “perhaps it is time I finally explore the source of my distraction. I shall miss your company.”

  He could not in fairness to either woman, be perceived to be receiving her attention any longer. He had done enough harm to Joanna with the gossips already, and he would not be so selfish as to maintain a game that would offer the widow no rewards. “But know that I stand ready as a friend, should the need for one arise.”

  “And you have one yet in me, should you
find a need for pining hearts to be chased from your feet,” Diana offered as she drifted across the suite toward a chaise lounge.

  “Happy New Year, Dorian.”

  “And to you, Lady Wycliff,” he murmured.

  But the woman was already reclined on the lounge and had turned her attention to the cat that had slipped up the other side of the chaise to curl in, purring alongside her.

  Dorian took care to reassemble his costume before quietly exiting the suite to stand in the hallway, then with all the silence of a big cat moved like a shadow down its length to the stairwell and the exit beyond.

  His attention drifted to the west on his carriage ride home. Away from the promise of the eastern dawn and toward the forests that darkened the horizon, Anowen was nested in its depths.

  Tomorrow he would go to the castle and bring his Condesa home.

  Chapter 40

  It was not until the afternoon of the first day of January that Dorian’s carriage rumbled up the forest trails toward Anowen. The delay had in part been for the fervor with which he had scrubbed the scent of lilies from his body, and for giving William time to clean away the evidence of two weeks spent living alone. It had been a request which the butler seemed pleased to oblige, despite a pained acquiesce that had made Dorian feel somewhat guilty.

  His mind, however, was distracted by a restlessness that persisted for the duration of his journey. At first, he judged himself merely concerned for what would be the first moments of reunion with his wife. But his distraction grew into a darker awareness and an increasing sense of concern as he realized that Joanna’s music had not begun to sound any louder in his blood for proximity to Anowen.

  Foolishly, perhaps, he let himself think it was only for her hiding in the basement, but as his carriage pulled into the castle courtyard, he knew that could not be.

  She was not on the property at all.

  He all but flew across the courtyard to the home of the wardens, where a heavy blanket of grief did little to distract him from asking the elder warden where Joanna was.

  She had back moved into the castle a week before.

  The Conde did not stop to ask the man what else had occurred that was the cause for the mourning clothing he wore. He turned back to the castle without another word, walking quickly down the ancient corridors with his coat billowing behind him.

  Not in the castle.

  He followed the sound of his sire’s music to the uppermost floor that Lian shared with his Queen, and even before he lifted his hand to pound on the door, the Sovereign drew it open.

  Lian’s brows were stitched. “What has happ —”

  “Joanna is not in the castle.”

  “She told Raewyn she intended to return home.” The Sovereign stepped out into the hall, pulling at the fabric of his shirt as if he had forgotten he wore no coat to adjust. “She is not —”

  “No, she bloody well isn’t!” Dorian’s music lifted into a maelstrom that threatened to unleash the fullness of his darkness. “I have believed her safe within Anowen’s walls since I left her here. Where in the devil is my wife?!”

  Had she left him? Had his callousness driven her to a desperation that made her prefer a life unprotected by her family? How long had she been alone in the world? Bloody hell, how long had he failed to notice that the thread that bound them had been stretched to the limits of his awareness?

  “I can scarcely hear her.” Dorian rasped the words.

  Behind the Sovereign, the silhouette of the Arch Queen appeared, her elegant features shadowed with her own concern.

  “We will find her,” Lian said, his head tilted to listen to a bond that seemed to be quieter to him as well. “Find the servants and the groomsmen. We shall see if one escorted her to town or farther.”

  “And the children,” Celia added quietly. “It would serve to know when she was last seen in person. She can only travel so far for each day she has been gone.”

  “She cannot abide the sun….” Dorian could hear the strain in his voice. Of course, they knew she could not abide the sun. But they would have known if she suffered for being out in the day. “Where in the blazes would home be, if not —”

  His attention snapped to meet the gray gaze of his sire and a possibility dawned.

  Lian’s fingers lifted to massage the space between his brows. “Canterbury.”

  It was the place from which she had hailed. The place that had seen her transported in a prison wagon headed for the near certain death of a London workhouse before Lian had stolen her to what might have become a darker fate.

  “It’s a bloody fortnight’s worth of travel — if she meant to do it by stagecoach,” he said exasperated. Two weeks of hunting alone, surrounded by strangers — unprotected by her family.

  By him.

  “I am going to speak with the servants. The Grahams would not know if a horse is missing for their mourning.” Lian turned to break away, a glance shot over his shoulder as he addressed his Queen. “If you will question the children.”

  Dorian found himself torn. Everything in him wanted to turn on his heels and ride like the devil for Kent. But he could not be certain that it was where she had gone — and he could not afford the lost days of travel if they were wrong.

  “I will leave at sunset,” he bit out. “If not before.”

  With the words he whirled away, his expression grim. There would be no waiting on Celia to get the answers he needed. He would interrogate every soul in the castle himself to discover where his wife had fled. Then he fully intended to follow his wayward queen and bring her home.

  Chapter 41

  Canterbury, Kent, England, 1811

  If Joanna had thought for a moment that the nights she traveled by foot since her departure from Anowen had been a feat of endurance, it was nothing to being out in the sunlight.

  She had left the Barham inn and the children in the early hours of the morning, dressed as the Condesa she was in the mortal world. If her appearance was of any surprise to the innkeeper, then her offer to pay for the children’s extended stay at the inn had been more so. But few would argue with a Condesa — particularly one who traveled with her papers and banknotes.

  Despite the cloud cover and the shadows of the carriage she used for a transport to Canterbury, exhaustion pulled at Joanna, and the layers she had worn only seemed to drag her down like Ophelia into the water’s depths. She had worn a thick pelisse with a high collar and gloves to spare her skin. A long-brimmed bonnet and veil had saved her face, somewhat, but she felt her jaw burning, even beneath the shade of her parasol.

  It was a small blessing when she arrived at the office of Canterbury’s publisher.

  That it was New Year’s Day had not deterred one young man from sitting in the office; even if he had to unlock the door to permit Joanna entry.

  She stepped in quickly, relief in her reprieve loosening some of the tension she held as she took shelter from the sunlight.

  “Madam,” the man greeted, hesitating a moment before easing the door closed. He was not quite so young as she had first thought, but thin and with a boyishly round face behind his spectacles. The clerk was unremarkable otherwise, save for a weariness to his expression and a large birthmark shaped not unlike the English mainland that cast a red stain into his hairline.

  “May I help you?” he continued. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Oui. You can help, but I do not have an appointment.” Joanna stepped forward, extending a hand.

  He took her knuckles to kiss politely, but curiosity brimmed in his expression. “Then you are fortunate I was in the office today. How may I be of service.”

  “My name is Lady Joanna Vaughn, Condesa de Castile. I have been publishing for a few years under the name J.L. Holt. It was my maiden and first married name.”

  “Ah —” the man’s face skittered through no less than four emotions. The arched brows of surprise, a sudden surge of concern that colored his cheeks red, confusion in the knit of his features, a
nd finally settled on something strained. “My… lady.”

  Joanna lowered her valise to his desk, pulling out the portfolio with her newest book, and then digging deeper to draw free the letters between herself and her publisher and old papers that held the first drafts of her books. “I want to publish under my name. Not a nom de plume. My own. I would speak to Monsieur Frampton.”

  “Then you would speak to me. My name is Augustus Frampton… Lady Vaughn. It is a pleasure to meet you. Would you like a seat?”

  “Oui, merci,” she murmured, realizing how small the publishing house was. Lifting her veil, the woman settled into the shadow of a chair, and offered the man a smaller smile.

  “It is… not the norm that a woman publishes, my lady. Surely you know this,” he said slowly, diplomatically, and lowered his gaze to the parchment she had left on his desk.

  “But it is done.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Then it is my desire to do so.”

  Augustus Frampton lifted a hand to pull his spectacles away and massage his eyes. “Perhaps —”

  “I want it known that J.L. Holt is me.”

  He looked physically pained, but Joanna did not relent. She leaned forward to tap on her portfolio. “The final page is a biography. I claim Joanna Vaughn as my true name and the identity of the author behind the Holt books.”

  The man pressed his forehead into his palm. “That is… controversial, Lady Vaughn.”

  “Oui. But you shall sell your copies despite the controversy for having J.L. Holt upon the cover. My last book sold two hundred copies in the first quarter of its publishing.”

  Grimacing, the man leaned back in his chair, dragging the fair copy free of its portfolio with him. For a while they sat in silence as his eyes skipped over the pages and the poems that Joanna had poured her living music into. She found herself satisfied with how easily and how quickly his emotions flew across his face as he read her words.

  When he reached the last page, however, she heard him groan, and he lifted the papers to hide his face behind them.