Sacrament

by Susan Squires

"Why do you leave London?" she finally asked, her voice trembling only slightly.

  Reluctantly, he dragged his gaze from the moon. "My business will be finished tonight."

  "Business at night is dangerous in a city where there have been twelve murders," she claimed, making conversation he didn't want. "With the one tonight, I suppose that makes thirteen."

  "Yes, thirteen," he agreed, his lips pressed into a thin line. The silence stretched between them, filled with the clatter of coaches outside, the halloa of the grooms on the Pall Mall. He dreaded his business with Magda tonight. His thoughts strayed to a time when she had seemed vibrant, fascinating, different from the others. He had been a fool. Examining Mrs. Nandalay in the dim light of the moon he remarked, "You appear to have recovered from your headache."

  "I never had one," she said, staring into the darkness in his corner with a bold look.

  He couldn't keep his lips from curving. "Are you always so honest?"

  "No," she admitted. "Only when it serves my purpose. Do you care?"

  "Not at all. Do you usually get what you want?" She didn't know the stakes of the game she played. They never did.

  "Always." Her own small smile held the confidence of those with limited experience.

  As they broke through into Haymarket Street, Julien took his cane and rapped on the wall of the coach to attract the driver's attention. "Where do you live?" he asked his guest.

  "Berkeley Square." The vehicle slowed. Julien put his head out the window of the coach.

  "Germain," he called to the driver. "Brewer Street. Then take the lady to Berkeley Square."

  "Do you not escort me home?" Mrs. Nandalay cried.

  He shook his head. "My obligation tonight is elsewhere." She wedged herself in the corner of the coach, unable to gather enough courage to ask about his business. Just as well.

  They were clipping along at quite a pace, up through Great Windmill Street, its name the only remnant of the great "moulin" or windmill patterned after the Moulin Rouge of Paris and signal to an equally tawdry area. In the alleyways, shadowy wretches lolled on the stoops exchanging mugs of Blue Ruin. Julien opened the door and stepped out even before the carriage stopped. He strode to the opposite corner. "Thank you," he heard her call, but he did not answer. He just melted into the shadows of Brewer Street.

  Silently, he made his way into the rooming house. The carpet on the stairs was worn, the banister greasy. This was not like Magda Ravel. She always stayed at the best hotels. He approached the door at number ten, trying to suppress his anger. He had thought he was long past such feeling, but he was angry at himself more than at her. The sconces in the halls flickered. He touched the doorknob almost delicately. How quaint. She had bothered to lock it. Didn't she know he would be coming for her after this evening's carelessness? Tearing metal screeched in the doorknob, followed by a snap as the lock broke. Magda called, "Come in, Julien."

  He pushed the door open, his cape swirling around him. The redheaded beauty sat on the dingy bed inside, her diaphanous shawl still clinging about her shoulders. Her eyes were sly. She thought she could handle him. Julien glanced to the other occupant of the room, whose narrow face and prominent eyes reminded Julien of a rat—the kind that frequented crypts. The rat was afraid; Julien could see it. Blood stained his fingertips.

  "I am not thrilled to see you, Julien," Magda remarked. "You intend to be boring."

  "These deaths are yours, Magda?" he asked softly. Her answer didn't matter.

  "I should say, ours." She gestured toward Keely, quivering against the window.

  She, too, had made a partner in her image. His own crime made hers possible. He flicked his gaze over Keely. "You do not know how to behave in the world at large, Magda."

  She laughed. "You have been no better. Life is easy here."

  "Too easy," he mourned. His eyes flicked again to Keely. "You shared the Companion. You know that is the one forbidden act."

  "From you I hear this?" she taunted. "You who made me what I am? Don't think I am not grateful, love. The blood is life. You gave me eternity, and I mean to make use of it."

  Julien said nothing for a moment, mastering his guilt. She had only followed his example. Her own small nature had picked an even more unfortunate recipient of the gift. "That is regrettable." The words twisted from his mouth. The silence in the shabby room stretched to the breaking point. "I have no choice but to foist you and your new creation upon Rubius at Tirgu Korva, where you cannot continue your indiscretions. The Elders will help you see your way."

  "You expect me to take the Vow?" she cried, incensed. "I will not lock myself away at Mirso Monastery. I would be mad in a week. And why should I? You are responsible, not I."

  "That is the point." He lifted his chin. "But the Vow is voluntary. You need not take it. We only require you to take time for reflection."

  "You sacrifice me to salve your conscience," Magda shrieked, pacing the dingy room.

  "My conscience is not salved."

  The woman spun to face him. "Fate is not with you, Julien. I told them you had done these murders. If you are not gone by morning, they will be upon you like a pack of dogs."

  "You know better than that, Magda."

  Keely slowly stood, shaking, beside his mistress. "Get out! You are not wanted here."

  "Our kind is never wanted, apprentice. You will learn that." Julien fixed his gaze upon the man. Keely wobbled, then gasped for breath, clutching both hands to his throat as though his body as well as his mind were being squeezed. Let him see the full power of what he faced.

  "Enough!" Magda barked.

  Julien considered, then turned away. Let Rubius deal with this. When the man took on the leadership of their kind, dealing with the likes of Keely became part and parcel of the job. Keely gasped in pain and sat suddenly down. "I thought you had better taste, Magda."

  "I do," Magda sneered. "I left you." She set her jaw. "I won't go, Julien."

  He brought a leather pouch from his coat pocket and tossed it onto the bed. "These will more than pay for your journey. Sell them to Jameson in Bond Street. He knows Roman coins. Tell him I sent you. You should reach Tirgu Korva within the fortnight."

  "Remember Lisbon?" Magda softened her voice. "Come back with me to Lisbon."

  "That was too long ago, Magda."

  "I was a babe. Now I am wiser." The woman had always known her smile was seductive. She used it now. "Besides, I think, who else is a fitting consort for you, if not one of your own kind?"

  "And what about me?" Keely raged from the corner.

  "What about you?" Magda asked, never taking her eyes from Julien.

  He shook his head. "You are too late, my dear. I am past the need for company."

  Magda examined him closely. "Then you truly are the living dead." She took a breath and fought to maintain her composure. "You know you will not hurt me, Julien. I don't want to go to Tirgu Korva. And you have no other recourse." She sat deliberately in a chair, sipped wine and looked at him over her glass.

  He fixed his gaze on her in the firelight. With a single, fluid move he raised one white-gloved hand and held it out. Magda stood and smiled. She had no choice, though she didn't know it yet. Her wine made a bloodred stain across her pale blue satin dress as the glass fell and shattered. She didn't notice but took a step forward, and another, until her hand touched his. He drew her to him, her breasts just touching the fabric of his white waistcoat. She turned her face upward. He brushed her forehead with his lips. "You are wrong on both counts, my love," he whispered.

  He saw her realize too late that it was not desire emanating from his eyes. She could not rip her gaze away. He would not allow it. So she fixed him with her own clear blue stare. For a moment, they were locked there, like two lovers in the firelight. Then her lip began to tremble. Her hand on his chest shook. Her forehead beaded with moisture at her effort.

  Julien smiled without humor. He raised his hand and touched her hair, but his eyes never left hers. "Did you think y
ou were a match for me?" he whispered. His hand stole to her white throat, his long fingers caressing her. "You are a murderer, with no sense of discretion for yourself or for your race." Julien tightened his fingers. Fear bubbled up into her gaze. Even when she began to choke and gurgle, she could muster no resistance. He could have rent her limb from limb.

  "Keely," she sputtered, a guttural, animal sound. The rat must have realized that he needed Magda to survive in his strange new world of night and blood. He dove for Julien with a growl.

  Julien did not remove his eyes from Magda's face. He tossed the smaller man against the far wall like the rodent he resembled. Keely shrieked as his head hit the windowsill. There was a sigh, as of air escaping from a sealed room, as the man collapsed.

  Davinoff lifted Magda with his hand around her throat and with one stride placed her in the room's only chair. There he released his grip. "I think that clears things up, my love."

  The woman collapsed, choking and coughing. The marks on her neck were red now, but would course through purple and blue in a few minutes. "You beast," she gasped as sense returned.

  "How ironic that it is you who say so." He waited for her choking to subside, until she stared resentfully up at him, her hands rubbing her throat. "I can find you anywhere, Magda. And next time there will be no second chance." He made his voice inexorable.

  She slumped in her chair. "I cannot live at Mirso Monastery."

  "We all end there," he said shortly. "Sooner or later we all take the Vow."

  "How can I deserve such a fate?" she cried, still railing against his will.

  Julien drained his wine and set the glass on the sideboard. "You dictated your course. Now you live with the consequences, as I do." She closed her eyes, shoulders sagging. He glanced at the still figure in the corner. The man's neck was broken. It would take some hours to heal. "Take that one with you." He drew the darkness and leaked out of the room.

  The morning after the prince's ball, Sarah lay curled in bed at the Beldons'. Her sleep had been racked by nightmares, half remembered and unsettling. An image flickered at the edge of her mind of Corina, of sun-drenched Sienna, and of forbidden feelings she thought at twenty-six she had outgrown. Yet now the hot languor of Italy contained a black stain upon it: the image of Davinoff. She sat up abruptly and pushed those thoughts away, as she always did.

  How could the man she had glimpsed at the scene of a murder, a man who might be capable of murder himself, be the very one who coveted her land? Things were far worse than she had imagined. Then there was Corina. Sarah had seen her friend's intense infatuations before. Corina was on the hunt, and she always got what she wanted. But what was she hunting this time?

  Sarah groaned and put her chin in her hands. Corina would land on her feet. Her darker nature was surely a match for Davinoff. The puzzling part was why she had suddenly fixed upon someone at least as strong as she; usually, the blonde preferred the upper hand. The rumors cycling periodically in Bath about the poor boys she entertained at Chambroke—boys who would do anything for money—were more than just rumors. Sarah knew that, though she'd never confronted her friend about her habits, not since Sienna. But Corina's wildness had a shadowy side that would shock Sir Kelston and his compatriots. Sarah didn't think it would shock Davinoff.

  She could not deny that he was fascinating. Those kinds of men always were. Sarah shook her head to clear it. She must find a way to defend the life she had made for herself, at such cost. A maid knocked, then came in with hot chocolate and a slice of bread and butter. Sarah shocked the girl by leaping out of bed, but she had to see Mr. Lestrom immediately.

  She dressed hastily in a bottle-green wool merino walking dress with a plain round collar, and asked the maid to pack her trunk. Next she scribbled Corina's direction on a scrap of paper to have her trunks sent round and raced down the stairs, past the breakfast room where she might encounter George. Then she dismayed the Beldons' butler by ordering a hackney and refusing a footman to accompany her. Any servants of George's would certainly gossip.

  As the hack transported her the city of London reeled past Sarah, a hum of activity in the daylight. She stared out the window, unseeing, wholly occupied with her predicament. Old Mr. Lestrom had never failed her. It was he who had helped sell the properties so grossly encumbered after her father's death, all except Clershing. After all her father's drifting neglect, the solicitor seemed to welcome Sarah's decisiveness. He had hardly raised a bushy brow when she took the reins of her own affairs. When she'd told him she wanted to grow potatoes instead of barley, he had not raved about tradition at all; he'd only asked if she had researched the market. She had. It was her potatoes that paid the mortgages and saved the land at Clershing. She had even begun to dream of rebuilding the house. This Davinoff was like to dash those dreams.

  The coach turned off Fleet Street and into Falcon Court. The building she sought looked stolid and impassive, not at all like the shabby yet comfortable offices Lestrom kept in Bath. Over the provision shop on Monmouth Street, Sarah had learned to associate her business affairs with the smell of sausages. She hoped the Lestroms would not abandon the offices in Bath altogether.

  It was Mr. Lestrom's son, Rutherford, who rose to greet her in an expansive office on the second floor. He was fashionably dressed in yellow pantaloons and a very high starched collar.

  His eyes were light, his hair was light, and he had a decidedly weak chin.

  "Lady Clevancy," he greeted her. "I take it you had my note. Most distressing."

  Sarah sat in one of the leather chairs. She did not have to move a pile of papers or ledgers, as she did when she visited his father. "Distressing doesn't begin to describe the situation. What is this ridiculous claim?"

  "His claim is not ridiculous, Lady Clevancy; of that I can assure you."

  "Does he have a more recent deed?" She tried to keep the panic from her voice.

  "Actually, his claim is older." Mr. Lestrom, Jr., did not meet her eyes, but rearranged some papers already stacked neatly on the desk.

  "Older? Then of course my deed supersedes it!" Sarah exclaimed.

  Lestrom cleared his throat. "I am afraid, Lady Clevancy, that we do not have your deed."

  "How can that be?" Sarah remembered Davinoff's smug sureness last night.

  "I hardly know what to tell you." Lestrom the Younger spread his carefully manicured hands. "We have torn the offices in Bath apart. I have been thinking"—he examined his nails—"could it have been in the house at Clershing when it burned?"

  Sarah stifled a gasp. She shook her head silently, but it was perfectly possible. She and her father had lost so much in that fire: a home, a heritage, a wife, a mother, everything but the land itself and the Dower House. If she could not produce the deed, what would she do? "Where is your father?" she asked instinctively. "I need to talk to your father."

  The young man before her leaned forward. "And so you shall. But you mustn't be disappointed if he doesn't seem as sharp as he once was. It is difficult for him to know when to retire from the lists. But have no qualms; I have taken a personal interest in your affairs."

  Sarah drew her brows together. She had seen Lestrom the Elder less than a month ago. He didn't seem to have lost a whit of his edge. Indeed, they had begun arguing about how to use next year's returns. "What can be done?" she asked.

  "Perhaps very little. I have written to your agent, Josiah Wells. Perhaps he knows something about the deed. He and his father before him have been paid by Davinoff's family to keep an eye on Thornbury Abbey."

  Sarah grimaced. "Mr. Wells acts for this… this interloper? I never heard that anyone owned that old ruin. How do we know he owns it?"

  "My father reviewed the deed. It clearly includes what is now Clershing."

  Sarah shuddered. To be at the mercy of a man such as Davinoff! What could be worse? "We need my deed," she murmured, chewing her lip in thought. "Is there nowhere else to look?" He shook his head. She rose and began to pace the office. The house in Laura P
lace? She didn't think so. Her father's desk was her own, and Sarah knew its every nook and cranny. There was no need for a locked cupboard with the offices of Lestrom & Son so close, and the house itself was Georgian, long past the time of priests' holes. Lord, she was beginning to sound like a Gothic novel! They had never kept important papers at the Dower House. Still, she could leave no place unsearched. "When can he take the land?" She needed time.

  "When he likes, I suppose."

  "Can I challenge his rights to delay him at least?"

  Lestrom looked startled. "Fighting the claim would be costly. I should not like to see your affairs dragged before the magistrate in a public court." The young man looked for her agreement.

  "If you think to throw yourself on his good graces, I would refrain. He is a formidable man."

  "I have seen him." The prospect of a humiliating courtroom announcement of her destitution was daunting. She would lose the house in Laura Place without Clershing to support it. What then? Go for a governess? And what would happen to those who depended upon her?

  "The Bath magistrate sits in five days. We should settle the matter before that."

  She had five days. Lestrom stood. She picked up her reticule with a trembling hand.

  "Don't worry, Lady Clevancy. If there is anything to be done, we will do it." Lestrom the Younger smiled. He had perfect teeth.

  At that moment, Mr. Lestrom, Sr., chugged through the door still huffing from the stairs. He glanced up in surprise as he peered about the room and found it occupied. "You here early for once, Rutherford?" he asked. He was as thin as ever, his hair almost transparent, his spectacles still perched upon his nose at the wrong angle. His eyes squinted a bit more, perhaps, and his skin seemed looser somehow. But she could not say he looked addled.

  "Sir, I was just discussing with Lady Clevancy the most unfortunate development at Clershing," his son said hastily, motioning to Sarah.

  The elder Mr. Lestrom turned as if seeing her for the first time and took both her hands in his. His eyes were mournful. "I am so sorry, my dear," he said and kissed her cheek. "I cannot think how we do not have the deed. We seem to have everything else."