The Wisdom of Madness

by C. J. Archer

  The change came from Eva. Seth felt her gaze flicker over him like a flutter of a bird's wing, but when he looked at her, she'd switched her gaze to Alice.

  Doyle brought in the tray of tea things, and Seth's attention followed the butler's movements and then Charlie's as she poured the tea. Seth helped her pass around the cups, but again he felt Eva's gaze fall on him. He suddenly turned, catching her staring, and he was gratified to see her cheeks flush.

  "Are you too warm?" he teased as he handed her a cup. "Shall I open a window?"

  "It's cool enough in here." Realizing she was admitting to blushing because of him, she changed her tune. "On second thoughts, it is quite warm."

  Lady Vickers agreed. "A little air would be pleasant. Gus, dear, would you throw open the windows?"

  Gus obliged and jerked his head at Seth. Seth followed, expecting to help his friend with the windows. Instead, Gus whispered, "Don't flirt with her. She's Death's sister, for Christ's sake."

  "Lincoln doesn't care."

  "Cornell might."

  Seth glanced at David, sipping tea with the ladies like a well brought up middle class gentleman. "You've got the wrong idea, Gus," Seth whispered back. "I'm not interested in Eva."

  "Then stop flirting with her, because she thinks you are. You break her heart and you'll have both her brothers wanting to break that ugly nose of yours."

  "She's not interested in me either. It was just a little harmless flirting. It doesn't mean anything." Seth threw up the sash so hard it drew everyone's attention. Good, because he suspected Gus had been about to continue. If there was one thing Seth disliked more than a lecture from his mother, it was a lecture from Gus.

  "How are your studies going?" Charlie asked Eva.

  "Well enough, thank you." Eva sipped her tea and didn't elaborate.

  "Don't lectures stop for the summer and the pupils go home?" Lincoln asked.

  "You're thinking of university," she said smoothly, her gaze not wavering from his. Seth got the feeling he was watching two fierce warriors face one another across a battlefield, yet he wasn't sure what the battle was about. "A nurse's training continues through the summer. We learn our trade in hospitals, not universities, something which I'm sure you know very well, Lincoln."

  David lowered his cup to the saucer and blinked at her. "You've been home more this last week. And the week before that, come to think of it. Why?"

  "I had fewer shifts."

  Seth watched her closely, searching for any signs of her lie. Lincoln suspected Eva was in fact studying to become a doctor, not a nurse, and Seth had no reason to disbelieve him, although he didn't know why she needed to lie at all. What was so wrong about becoming a doctor? It was a noble profession, and an interesting, progressive field of study.

  Yet if Lincoln thought she was lying, she must be. He did, after all, have an innate ability to sense when some people told falsehoods. Far be it from Seth to question him.

  "You have been working hard in the lead up to summer," David conceded. "I suppose it's only fair they give you some time off."

  Eva's lips thinned. She sipped again.

  Seth could swear Lincoln looked satisfied to have made his sister feel uncomfortable in her lie, but apart from a quirk of his eyebrows, there was no change in him. Charlie rolled her eyes at her husband.

  "I'm surprised to find you two home," David said to Lincoln. "I thought you'd be on your honeymoon by now."

  "Soon," Charlie said.

  A weighty silence cloaked them until Alice finally broke it. "Do urge them to go," she said to Eva and David. "They won't listen to me."

  "They won't listen to us," Seth countered. "They think they need to be here in case of…a situation."

  "In case the army come for me again," Alice added. "Tell them it's not necessary and that I'll be all right. The army may not come. They haven't shown up for an entire week."

  "Alice, we've discussed this," Charlie said. "It's not that we won't go, it's just that we won't go yet. We need to be here for when they do try to take you again."

  "Sorry I brought it up," David muttered.

  "I agree with Alice," Eva said. "You should go." She spoke in a rush, as if she wanted to say her piece before anyone else. Or before she changed her mind.

  Doyle entered again and announced the arrival of Leisl Cornell before bowing out. Seth and the other men rose to greet her. Lincoln kissed his mother's cheek briskly. Charlie hugged her then poured another cup of tea.

  "Where have you been?" David snapped. "You said to meet you here."

  "I am here." Leisl frowned at him. "I did not ask you to come, only Eva."

  David crossed his long legs and regarded his teacup with more interest than the Spode deserved. "I took the liberty of coming anyway."

  "And work?"

  "The office is closed today."

  "Why?"

  He shifted in his seat. "I'm not entirely sure."

  Leisl's frown deepened. Perhaps she detected a lie with her seer's senses. While that didn't surprise Seth, his heart skipped a beat when her gaze suddenly pinned him to the chair. She had an unnerving stare, dark and deep as a pit, like her eldest son. Seth felt as if the gypsy knew all his secrets, even those he couldn't bear to speak to anyone about.

  "Leisl, will you try to convince Charlie and Lincoln not to delay their honeymoon any further?" Alice pleaded. "They seem to think we need their protection."

  "You do," Lincoln said.

  "They will go." Leisl sounded as if she were repeating an answer spoken many times. "Do not worry. They will go when they are ready."

  "But when will that be?"

  "After we can be certain the army won't come for you," Charlie said.

  "They may not come."

  "They will," Eva and Leisl said at the same time.

  Charlie's lips parted. Alice paled and Lady Vickers covered her mouth with her hand. Gus sat forward, alert and ready, but Seth went still. Only his heart picked up its pace as it sank like a stone. He'd hoped the army had given up. It would seem not. The prospect of their return hung over Lichfield like a guillotine.

  He tried to catch Alice's attention, to give her a reassuring smile, but she didn't look his way. She accepted Charlie's offered hand and clung tightly to it.

  Only Lincoln seemed unsurprised by his mother's and sister's pronouncement. "It's just a matter of when," he said.

  "We don't know," Eva added. "I can't quite see…"

  "Mother?" David urged. "When?"

  "I cannot say," Leisl said.

  Seth bit back his retort but Lincoln said it anyway. "Cannot or will not?"

  Leisl sipped her tea. Seth shot to his feet but did not march up to her as he wanted. He paced the room and tried to breathe his way through his frustration. It was of no use. This was too important to dismiss so easily.

  "You must tell us what you've seen," he said, voice raspy.

  "Yes!" Eva cried. "Tell us. We have a right to know."

  We? Didn't she mean Alice? Or Charlie, Lincoln, and the other residents at Lichfield? How did any of this impact Eva?

  "Come now, Mrs. Cornell," Lady Vickers said, her voice trembling. "When will the army come?"

  Leisl didn't answer.

  "For God's sake!" Seth exploded. "This is—" He broke off as Lincoln ran from the room.

  Seth didn't understand, but he trusted Lincoln's instincts better than he trusted his own and raced after him. Gus's pounding footsteps lumbered behind. Several voices followed them from the drawing room but Seth didn't look back. They ran downstairs to the gun room. Lincoln ordered Gus to tell Doyle to keep the servants at the back of the house. As he peeled away, Lincoln and Seth unlocked the cabinets and pulled out the weapons. They quickly and quietly set about loading them and tucking them away. Seth shoved two pistols into his waist band, and held a set of dueling pistols in each hand. Lincoln slung a rifle over his shoulder and picked up another. He handed it to Gus upon his return before placing pistols and knives where he could quick
ly retrieve them.

  They were about to leave when Charlie appeared in the doorway. She was as pale as the corpses she'd resurrected, and her eyes were too big for her face.

  "General Ironside is here," she said, her voice remarkably steady. "There are at least a hundred soldiers on the front lawn and another hundred moving into formation out the back."

  Hell. They were trapped.

  Chapter 2

  Alice

  The dark stain of fear spread quickly and mercilessly through Alice. Moments ago she'd been sipping tea in the drawing room, and now she was being bundled into the tower room like a prisoner. It might be for her own safety but she still felt like the walls were closing in on her, that the bars on the windows were as much to keep her in as the army out.

  They were surrounded. She could hear the general barking orders to his men. The catapult rumbled into place, once again digging up the lawn that had not yet recovered from the last time the army arrived at Lichfield.

  Because of me.

  "Stay away from the window," Eva warned. "Don't let them see you."

  All the women were there in the tower room, like good wives, daughters, sisters and mothers. The men were downstairs, preparing to return fire. Even David, a man Alice hardly knew. A man who shouldn't even be there, according to Leisl and Eva.

  Alice regarded Leisl, who sat on the bed while the others paced around her. The gypsy woman was calm. Too calm. She lifted her gaze to meet Alice's and nodded once. That knowing nod said far more than her words in the drawing room.

  Alice gripped the bedhead to steady herself, swallowed heavily, and nodded back.

  "I'll do it now," Charlie said.

  There was no need to explain what "it" was. They'd discussed summoning the dead from Highgate Cemetery at length in the last week. In the event of the army's return, the dead were their best weapon. One army could only be bested by another. An army that couldn't be killed was even better.

  A shudder tore through Alice. All those dead bodies coming back to life. Some would be horribly decayed, others no more than bones. It would be hell on Earth. It would be wrong.

  The women had moved to the highest part of the house to keep them away from both armies. The tower room wasn't the safest place to be if the catapult were aimed at it but it would take time for the catapult to be pushed into place and yet more time for the bricks to come loose and the tower to fall. That was all they needed—time for Charlie to speak the names and order the spirits into their bodies. And a little more time for the bodies to walk from the cemetery to the house.

  Too long.

  Charlie flattened the sheet of paper on which she'd listed hundreds of names, gathered during a long afternoon inspecting the headstones in the cemetery. She drew in a breath and blew it out slowly. She did not want to do this.

  Nor did Alice. "No, Charlie. Don't."

  Charlie's head snapped up. "You are not going with them."

  "It'll take too long for you to summon enough."

  "Then let me get started."

  Alice stood, but Charlie lunged and grabbed her arm, holding her back from the door. Lady Vickers caught Alice's other arm. Seth's indomitable, regal mother had never looked so afraid.

  "Don't do this," she said to Alice. "I know we've had our differences, but please stay. You'll break Seth's heart."

  Alice gave her a sad smile. "I doubt it."

  "He'll follow you. He won't let you go."

  "Where I'm going, he can't follow."

  "He can," Leisl chimed in from where she sat on the bed.

  Alice wanted to strangle her. Lady Vickers looked as if she would cry, and a crying Lady Vickers was not a sight Alice wanted to endure. This parting was going to be hard enough without the woman she admired crumbling into a blubbering heap.

  She patted Lady Vickers's hand. "Let me go."

  "No!" Charlie dug her fingernails into Alice's arm. "Leisl, Eva, why aren't you helping?"

  Eva looked away, but Leisl did not. She sat there, unmoving yet looking a little worried. Alice suspected she wasn't worried for her but for her own relationship with Charlie. She didn't want her new daughter-in-law to hate her for not helping keep Alice in the tower room.

  Charlie's big eyes swam with tears. Alice peered down into them. "They're not helping because they know I'm going to do this. They've seen it, Charlie. They've seen me leave with the army."

  Charlie whipped around to face them. "Leisl?" she whispered harshly.

  Leisl nodded. Eva did not.

  Outside, far below, someone barked orders. They were relayed through the army's ranks, growing more distant until Alice could no longer hear the voices. She pictured Lincoln, Gus, David and Seth taking up their positions, discussing a plan, readying their weapons.

  Seth. If only he had been more himself around her, things might be different. Alice's choice might have been easier. But he wasn't the same with Alice as he was with Charlie, and she couldn't love a man who thought he had to pretend to be someone else to be worthy of her.

  Leisl had said he could go. He could follow Alice to Wonderland. Knowing how chivalric Seth could be, he would try. Hopefully Lincoln would be strong enough to keep him back.

  Charlie's fingers loosened but did not let go. "If she goes," she said to Leisl, "will she be all right?"

  "I cannot see," Leisl said.

  "Then what can you see?" Charlie snapped.

  "Many things, but they are not for you to know yet. One day, yes. For now, trust Alice. Trust her choice. It is her future, and it is for her alone to decide."

  "How is it a choice?" Lady Vickers asked, her voice reedy. "You've seen her future. It's written."

  "I see a future," Leisl said. "Not the only one for her."

  "She still has a choice," Eva assured Lady Vickers and Charlie. "No one's future is set in stone."

  Alice didn't quite believe it. There was an inevitability about it all, a sense of rightness, now that she'd made up her mind.

  A thunderous crash erupted downstairs. The floor shuddered and the whole house seemed to groan. They had begun to use the battering ram. Soon the catapult would join in the assault.

  They'd run out of time.

  "I have to go, Charlie," Alice pleaded. "Please, don't stop me."

  Charlie hesitated. A tear slipped from her left eye. "Will she come back?"

  "I do not know," Leisl said.

  "We'll see each other again, Charlie. I promise." Alice drew her friend into a fierce hug. She felt Charlie cry though she made no sound.

  The battering ram struck again. Alice picked up her skirts and ran from the room, down the stairs to the entrance hall. Lincoln barred the way, rifle in hand. Behind him, the front door bulged inward, the middle hinge broken in half, the pieces hanging from the screws.

  Lincoln's gaze slipped past Alice to Charlie. Then he wordlessly stepped aside.

  "What are you doing?" Seth cried, emerging from the library. "Alice, get back upstairs. All of you, go!"

  "No, Seth," Alice said. "I will not."

  He blocked her path to the front door, his too-handsome face set hard. She marveled at how this man could be as simple and fun-loving as Gordon the puppy one moment and so masculine and commanding the next.

  "You're not going with them," he said.

  The door shattered, sending splinters of wood and pieces of stone exploding into the entrance hall. Lincoln dove forward, covering Alice and Charlie with his body.

  When he moved to help them to stand, Alice saw that the others had flattened themselves to the floor. No one looked injured, thank God.

  Soldiers surged through the doorway, brandishing swords. Gus and Seth lifted their guns and aimed.

  "Stop!" Alice shouted. "Don't shoot! Put your weapons away." She stepped between her friends and the advancing Wonderland army, her hands in the air. "I'll go with you."

  Lincoln could have stopped her. He was close enough, fast enough and strong enough. But he let her go.

  "Alice!" Seth barke
d.

  General Ironside's big frame filled the doorway, blocking out the light and casting his face in shadow. He moved into the entrance hall, his gait purposeful and unafraid. His son, Sir Markell Ironside, followed. They were alike in stature, although the older man showed signs of age in his thickening middle and ruddier cheeks. Both sported green eyes that quickly assessed the situation, although Sir Markell's were deeper, like emeralds. Despite the rough-hewn features of the general, it was easy to see other family resemblances in the strong brows, the determined set of the lips, the somewhat arrogant way in which they held themselves.

  "Greetings, Your Highness," Sir Markell said, bowing.

  "Don't call her that," Seth spat. "She is no longer your princess. You gave her up."

  "Now it's time for her to come home."

  "To face a trial presided over by a mad queen who wants her dead."

  Sir Markell arched a brow. He and Seth were of an age, a similar height, and equally handsome but not in the same way. Not in the least. Where Seth was sunshine, Sir Markell was an ominous cloud.

  "You'll come with us willingly, Miss Alice?" the general asked. Miss Alice, not princess or highness.

  Alice nodded.

  "Good." He thrust his sword back into its sheath to the hilt. "Come." There was no pleasure in his voice, no sense of victory. Neither he nor his son looked as though they'd won.

  Alice swallowed. What was she getting herself into? "I wish to say goodbye to my friends, first."

  Sir Markell nodded. Unlike his father, he kept his sword in hand and a watchful eye on Seth.

  Alice turned to Lady Vickers and hugged her. "Goodbye, Lady V."

  "Goodbye, dear girl," Lady Vickers whispered. "Be careful."

  Alice didn't know the Cornells quite so well, but she hugged them anyway, even David. She moved on to Lincoln next.

  "I would ask you to take care of Charlie," she told him, "but I know I don't need to say it."

  His grip tightened around her for the barest moment before he stepped back.

  She turned her attentions to Gus. "Make sure he makes a better choice than me," she whispered. "And say goodbye to the orphans and your aunt. I shall miss them."