by Zekas, Kelly
“Oh, they are lovely—dear old friends from Melchester,” I said, praying I wasn’t describing real people. “It’s a rare occurrence to find them in town, so I do hope to get the chance to introduce you if there is to be a party.”
“I don’t believe I know of them,” Lady Kent said, folding her hands on her lap. “Chiefly because I don’t believe they exist.”
I barely knew how to respond to that. “I . . . uh, I’m sorry, did—”
“This morning,” she continued, her words stampeding over mine, “I heard some distressing news about your recent . . . activities at the Argyll Rooms.”
Hang it. Sebastian and Mr. Kent had warned me. My mind cycled through hundreds of potential excuses: I had a twin; another Evelyn Wyndham was attempting to ruin my name; I had mistaken the place for a dressmaker’s shop; I had visited multiple rooms of a church on Argyll Road, which must be the source of all the confusion. Dear God, nothing would work.
“Perhaps their vision—”
“Spare me the excuses and pretenses,” Lady Kent replied with infuriating certainty. “I don’t have the time for a story about another delightful family. I knew it was a mistake to let my daughter near you, but still, I was persuaded to invite you for dinners, even let you stay as a guest, and this is how you repay a kindness? You stay in my home while you visit brothels, travel unaccompanied with unmarried ruffians, and even . . . attend to them privately at their home! I knew you had come for some man, but I hadn’t anticipated even your behavior could be so wanton and disgusting!”
A gust of wind noisily rattled the windows and whistled through the cracks. Bloody hell. How did she know all of it? I stared down at the ugly brown rug, urging my mind to think of something. There was nothing I could say on such short notice, except the truth. I prayed that Lady Kent could remain discreet for once.
“My sister has been kidnapped,” I confessed. “I came to London to try to find her. We’ve avoided telling—”
“After countless lies, you try to feed me another?”
“It’s the truth. Laura will tell you.”
“Laura can barely tell her life apart from a novel.” Lady Kent raised her head authoritatively. “Now, was this, as you say, ‘kidnapping’ before or after your sister started working at the brothel, as well?”
“That wasn’t her—”
“You admit it, then. You visited the vile place.”
“It was a dancing room, and I know it may look indecent, but I had no other choice. Everything I did was to find my sister,” I replied, wincing at how bad it really did sound.
A terrible silence fell upon the room. Lady Kent shifted her gaze to the window as she gathered her thoughts. The firelight flickered across her face, and it seemed to soften, relax.
But then she spoke: “You will pack up your belongings and leave immediately. We can no longer have you as our guest.”
I waited for the clacking laugh. It was a horrible, ill-spirited joke, surely. But no amusement broke through those cracked lips. She wanted to throw me out in the middle of the night because the truth was too unbelievable? I hadn’t even mentioned the powers.
“You—you must believe me,” I pleaded. “I need to find Rose.”
“That should be quite easy if you get your story straight. She’s with your aunt and uncle or at this brothel. A number of people have identified her without a doubt,” Lady Kent spat out.
“I wish that was my sister, but it was someone acting in her stead. I have no idea where she is! That is why I need your help,” I pleaded, rising to my feet in desperation before plopping back down in the chair in the same movement, so I wouldn’t seem threatening.
She grimaced and rubbed hard at her knees. “You’ve involved us in your disgusting scandal, and you have the nerve to ask for help? All of London is already talking about it—heaven knows how much damage you’ve caused to Laura’s marriage prospects by staying in this house. The sooner you leave, the sooner this can be undone.”
“It would be just as easy for you to explain the truth—”
Against all odds, Lady Kent’s stern face managed even less sympathy than ever. “Miss Wyndham, I’ve seen girls like you and your sister for years—it never changes. You all think yourselves so clever, so pretty, and so entitled that you believe the rules of society don’t apply to you. That you’re free to do whatever you wish while the rest of us have to struggle and suffer and sacrifice to get what we want the right way!”
I barely had it within me to argue. It would only further hurt my chances of staying.
“No one cares to ever look beyond appearances. Society prefers it to be simple. And you spend years reaping the benefits, and suddenly, when it no longer works for you, everyone must change then, is that right?”
Meekly, I shook my head and took the abuse, resisting the burning desire to shove the woman into the fire.
She readjusted her position, gritting her teeth and giving a firm nod. “Of course not. Now, ask Tuffins to send someone for your trunk, and leave quietly. I must see to my guests.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go . . .” I said.
Her veiny hand gave me a dismissive wave. “I’m sure your parents will take you. Or some convent.”
“. . . or anyone to help me.”
“Your sister will keep you comp—company,” she said, her speech veering off as she strained to keep the pain down.
As I stood up, though, a wild, desperate idea came to me at the sight of her grimace. The answer. I’d cure her illness in an instant, and there’d be no way she could refute that evidence.
Hurrying around the low table, I reached over the arm of the settee and grasped Lady Kent’s wrist.
“What in—what are you doing? Get off!” she gasped.
Just five minutes. It’s all I needed to convince her of everything. To convince her to let me stay. “Relax, Lady Kent, please. I can heal you and remove the pain, just—just give me a few minutes.”
She wouldn’t stop feebly squirming and shoving as she attempted to wriggle across the cushions, away from me. “Don’t touch me!” she wailed. “Get your hands off—”
I stretched out farther, struggling to keep balance. “I can help you! Sto—”
“Tuffins!” she screeched like a banshee. “Help me! Someone! She’s gone mad!”
“I’ll fix everything—it’ll be all ri—”
And a stinging blow tore across my cheek. The unexpected welt sent me recoiling, and I let go of her as she nearly collapsed out of her seat.
While I stood, still frozen in shock, she staggered up and managed to make it to the door, where Tuffins appeared with a concerned footman and Mr. Kent.
“I was under the impression the party was in the other room,” Mr. Kent joked. His smile vanished the moment he saw his disheveled stepmother and me.
“S-see that Miss Wyndham is gone immediately,” Lady Kent choked out to Tuffins, before turning to Mr. Kent. “And you! I have had enough of this silly infatuation you seem to entertain. If you speak one more word to that wicked girl, consider yourself cut off from this family!”
She disappeared down the hall and up the stairs. It took seven uncomfortable steps to leave the drawing room and three more to reach Mr. Kent in the hall. Behind him, guests spilled out of the music room to see the commotion.
As I passed him, I urged him silently: Tell her the truth. Say anything. Please.
But his head stayed down, and he refused to meet my eyes. I could swear that I heard a slight murmur of my name, but then he mustered up a polite smile for Tuffins, gave him a curt nod, and retreated to the music room, steering the crowd back in with him.
“Where was I? I was just starting or finishing my list of France’s virtues . . . oh well, either way, we’ve come to the end,” he said, the door shutting behind him.
Tuffins gave me a look of sympathy, told the footman to fetch a cab, and led me up the stairs. My knees followed, but my mind was entirely blank, shocked, and unable to make any plans. H
ow could everything fall apart in a matter of minutes?
Slumped against what used to be my bedroom door, Laura waited for me, her face red and raw from crying.
“Oh, Evelyn! I’m so sorry!” she cried, clasping on with a hug. “I tried to explain it to her, but she wouldn’t listen! She never listens to me.”
“She didn’t believe me, either,” I said, managing to unlatch her person from mine.
She shuffled into the room behind me. “She—she said it was not possible. Someone in Mrs. Verinder’s house staff said they saw everything you did. And your sister.”
I pulled out my trunk from a closet and stuffed my clothes inside. No point in folding them. “Oh, for God’s sake, it’s Miss Verinder, of course. She set this all up! Why—how could this even happen? We’ve told the truth, and they believe her fabricated tale!” I exclaimed.
Laura shook her head, fresh tears streaming down her face. “Even Nick won’t try to convince Mama! I refuse to talk to him.”
I shook my head, trying to shut my trunk. Overloaded, it wouldn’t close. “Don’t do that—he’s your brother.”
“And I hate him. I hate everyone! I just want to run away from home . . . or set it on fire. Or set Miss Verinder’s house on fire! Oooh, we should do that, Evelyn!”
“No, you must stay here, and I will leave. It’s too late. There’s nothing left to do but hope the damage will not be so bad.” Bless her little heart. The longer I drew this out, the more upset she was going to get.
I knelt down, pushed all my weight onto the trunk, and secured the rusted clasps. Then I gave Laura one last hug. “Thank you, Laura. Just listen to your brother, and everything will be well here. And I’m truly sorry about last night with Mr. Edwards.”
She sniffled. “Hang Mr. Edwards. After what he said yesterday, I’ve already added his to the lists of houses to be set ablaze.”
As the footman dragged my trunk down the stairs, I told him to keep an eye on the house’s supply of matches.
I half regretted that warning, though, on my way out. There was no alternative but to pass by the music room, which I could swear hushed to a painful silence as I hurried past. All of Lady Kent’s perfect guests were undoubtedly aware of all my dalliances and crazed assaults on defenseless, kindhearted hosts.
Downstairs, the only other person in that house I wanted to wish good-bye to waited for me. “Thank you, Tuffins,” I said when my cab was loaded. “Thank you for being so eternally efficient and pleasant and gracious. If you ever want to work for a human being, instead of a machine, please find me.”
His lips made the smallest quiver as he bowed, and I turned to head out the open door when her twitter came down the hallway after me. “Miss Wyndham!”
Miss Verinder glided in front of me with a beaming smile. “Leaving so soon?” It took everything within me to refrain from dragging her out the door by that blond hair of hers and hurling her down the stairs.
“So you really did have nothing better to do with your time than to have me spied on?” I said.
“Actually, every little piece of evidence miraculously happened to fall into place right before my eyes,” she calmly rejoined. “And I would have been just as guilty of indecency if I had allowed it to continue. I had a moral responsibility, a duty. It’s what society demands.”
“No, all of this was your doing.”
“Most definitely not.” Her countenance turned deathly serious. “You and your sister are the ones to blame. You did this to yourselves, and, in the process, you almost dragged the Kents down with you.”
“Then your aim in all of this was what? To render yourself irresistible to Mr. Kent by comparison?”
She laughed. “You do have quite the talent for making anything sound petty and frivolous. Even when we were first introduced, all you did was complain about the season, make snap judgments, and act like you were better than it all. Better than me.”
“Anybody is better than you.”
She laughed and seemed to savor her words as they dripped off her tongue. “And now you are a nobody. You never deserved a single glance from Mr. Kent. You’ll be lucky if a street sweeper deigns to look at you.”
Her arms wound around me before I could move, enveloping me in thick, cloying perfume and the world’s worst hug. “Goodbye, Miss Wyndham. There’s no need to thank me. You made your disdain for society very clear, and I simply thought to liberate you, so that you might pursue those lofty and thrilling goals of yours.”
With a giggle, she flounced away and disappeared back up the stairs toward the warmth and the laughter.
I went the other way.
MY CAB RUMBLED forward, though I barely cared where it was taking me.
How pathetic. I shouldn’t have cared about my reputation or society—my sister was missing! But the crawling snakes in my stomach were impossible to ignore as I thought about the choices left to me. I may not have known what I wanted to do with my life, but I had always pleasantly assumed that I could make my way. Tonight would hardly be the worst of it. Now our friends would avoid us. Society would slam every door in my face. Even if I rescued Rose, we could never return to our normal lives.
I stared out the fogged window, watching the desolate street and the glowing houses. All I wanted was to find a comfortable bed and end this horrible day. No choice now but to steel my skin and become that improper single woman wandering London for lodgings late at night.
I slid open the cab’s rear hatch. “Where are the closest lodgings?” I asked.
At that moment, the driver stopped. “Right here, miss. This was the address your footman gave.” He hopped down, let me out onto the unfamiliar street, and handed me a small envelope. “He also asked I deliver this upon your arrival.”
Inside was a short note from Mr. Kent:
The old bat said nothing about writing you another word. Please wait for me, I’ ll be home shortly. Feel free to save Robert’s life if you’re bored.—Nicholas Kent
Sure enough, when I knocked on the door to Mr. Kent’s home, his maid, Miss Gates, welcomed me into an entrance hall that surprised me as much as his invitation. Anytime Mr. Kent had mentioned his own home, I had imagined it a sprawling mansion filled with ornate decorations and hundreds of portraits of himself covering the walls, eyeing guests wherever they went. Instead, this home was small (nowhere near the size of his parents’), well kept, and modestly furnished for comfort rather than show. Miss Gates led the way upstairs into a cozy bedroom with not a thing out of place, save for Robert’s unconscious body sprawled across the bed.
“When did Mr. Elliot . . . arrive?” I asked.
“Before Mr. Kent left for his dinner. Not two hours ago,” she said. “He appeared at the door quite out of sorts.”
“And he’s been sleeping since then?”
“We tried to feed him, but he would not eat a single morsel. And he . . . he purged himself twice.”
“I see. Thank you,” I said, and she gladly left me to him.
I pulled a chair by the bedside and seized the damn fool’s hand. He doesn’t hear from Rose for a few days, and he drinks and cries himself into a stupor? Perhaps I should have told him everything. But if this ridiculous behavior was his reaction to vague suspicions and anxiety about Rose’s well-being, I shuddered to imagine what the truth would do to his delicate constitution.
For ten minutes, I sat with him, listening to his snoring, healing his sickness, wondering if I could replenish the Wyndham fortune by restoring drunks to full health the morning after.
The bedroom door creaked open behind me.
“Will he live?” Mr. Kent asked, leaning against the doorjamb.
“Yes,” I replied. “Very fortunate, saved from the brink of death.”
“Was he awake? Did he explain anything?”
“No, he still seems to need rest,” I said, setting Robert’s hand back on the bed. “Did you speak to him when he arrived?”
“Unless you count his melancholy mutterings about your siste
r a conversation, no, I have not.”
“I presume he knows something is wrong with Rose. I just don’t know what to tell him when he wakes.”
“It may as well be the truth. It will be better than any rumors he hears.”
“Ah, yes, the truth. The strategy that worked so well on your stepmother.”
“Please forgive me . . . or, well . . . please forgive me twice— no—three times. First because I must be serious for a moment, and I know how unsettling that may be, second, regarding what happened with the old bat . . . I must apologize—”
“There’s no need,” I interrupted. “I’m surprised you even invited me here after her threat.”
“I don’t care one whit about her threat. We will keep this a secret and deny it. Heaven knows she’s done enough of that.”
A breeze drifted in through an open window, and I shivered. “What do you mean?”
“I find it amusing when the most ardent and vocal defenders of propriety and morality are often the ones who’ve most heinously transgressed those values. Maybe they’re atoning for their behavior, trying to keep others from making the same mistakes. Or they’re scrutinizing and accusing others simply to divert suspicion from themselves. Do you think one needs to cross the line to be able to properly understand and defend it?”
“No,” I found myself answering. “That sounds like an excuse.”
“And excuses are nothing more than . . . neatly packaged reports on the messy, unknowable truth. My father had plenty of them. That he and the old bat had suffered and struggled with their forbidden love for years. That my birth mother was mad, mercurial. That everything was done for the good of the families.
“But the story I saw was of two selfish people carrying on a secret affair, while my sick mother languished in Ireland until she learned the truth and lost the will to live.”
I sat there in disbelief. Mr. Kent had never discussed such personal matters with me before.
“You knew this was happening?” I asked.
“I only found out a few years later. After the funeral, the mourning period, the wedding, and living with them.”