by Megan Chance
“Do you think I don’t know the schedule I set for them? I can avoid them.”
I shook my head. “It’s too risky.”
“What other choice is there?” She went still, studying me as if I’d suddenly become something strange, the same way those women at the charity ball had looked at me, and I felt this little shiver of fear. “Do you want to abandon this?”
And my decision was made, just that quickly. “No.”
She gave me a short nod of satisfaction and rose, grabbing for the dress hanging from the tent post. “It’s early yet. I have time to get to the house before he leaves.”
“I don’t like this,” I said.
“You’re afraid I can’t do it? I thought you said I had talent?”
“It’s not about that. It’s—”
“It’s my risk to take, Bea, and I’m willing to take it,” she said, a little coldly. “Please don’t forget how much I have at stake. Or what you hope to gain.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Good.” She smiled. “Now all you must do is find Penelope’s next step.”
“Easier said than done,” I said wryly.
“I have faith in you.”
And I hated to admit it, but you know, the way she said it, so simply, as if there was no question I could do it, got into me like a splinter you keep worrying until it gets deeper and harder to dislodge, and my exhaustion suddenly disappeared. Suddenly I was ready to do what needed to be done.
“Be careful,” I said.
She gave me this purely luminous smile. “It will be worth it, Bea. Think what a prize we’ll have when it’s done.”
And I knew the prize she meant.
Sebastian.
Chapter Thirty-three
Geneva
I dressed and left the tent as quickly as possible, dodging among the other tents on the grounds, ignoring the people bustling with the morning, too busy with their own lives to trouble mine. I was so intent on the task at hand that I didn’t feel the hunger that had become my constant companion. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Nathan.
Bea’s news that my father was on his way both distressed and emboldened me. There was a beauty in it, actually, a wonderful irony in the fact that my father would soon have no choice but to admit that it was his son-in-law who belonged in an asylum instead of the daughter he had nearly committed. And then I would step forward, pleading amnesia—a plot right out of a melodrama, Bea would no doubt say—and take up my place in Papa’s affections again. With my husband out of the way, I would be able to show my father how well he’d been lied to. I would be able to mount the defense I needed.
I was more determined than ever to see this plan through.
It took me longer than I’d thought to reach the house, and I was sweating when I reached the rhododendron in the side yard. I hid within its glossy green leaves and glanced at the sky—it must be nearly nine. Given the night Bea said Nathan had had, he would no doubt be only just rising. Bonnie would be serving breakfast, and then she would go upstairs to make beds and tend to the bedrooms. The cook and Anna, the scullery maid, would be cleaning the kitchen. The iceman would be coming around soon, to the back door, where the cook would meet him and complain about the price, and they would speak idly together for a few minutes. Now was the perfect time.
I crept around the side, past the parlor doors. I kept to the wall until I reached the single window of the dining room, measuring the distance I would have to run if Nathan decided to give chase—only a few yards.
Slowly, I peeked into the window.
He was there, as I’d predicted, the paper folded at his side, unopened. He was in his shirtsleeves, elbows on the table as he leaned over his coffee cup, stirring it like one half-dead, his hair unmacassared, falling forward into his face. He paid no attention to the window at all.
I withdrew again, safely out of sight, and then I called, “Nathan.”
The windows were thin; I did not doubt he could hear me. I waited. Nothing. No sound, no discernable movement.
Again I said, “Nathan,” and this time I drew it out, long and haunting, the kind of sound a ghost might make, turning his name into a dirge.
This time I heard something drop.
“Nathan,” I said, and then I stepped into the window.
He was staring toward it, his face white, his eyes hugely round. At the sight of me, he jerked back so hard his chair screeched upon the floor. I saw him make a sound, his lips formed my name, but it must have been a whisper, because I couldn’t hear it.
More than that, I didn’t wait to see. I withdrew again, and this time I ran to the other side of the rhododendron, my heart racing, trying to quiet my nervous breathing. I waited for him to come racing out. I waited for the scream of my name.
There was nothing.
It was not what I’d expected, and that made me nervous. Cautiously, I peeked through the leaves of the rhododendron. He would have had to go to the parlor doors, the nearest ones, but I saw no movement there at all. I eased around the edge of the tree, holding my breath. I could not see the dining room window clearly—it was at too much of an angle, but what I did see made me scoot back into the protection of the leaves again. Nathan, his hands pressed against the glass, his posture tense with what could have been terror or anger or both; I could not tell.
But he had not tried to come after me. Why not? Because he truly thought I was dead? Because he was convinced I was a spirit? Or was there some other reason?
I didn’t dare go to the dining room window again, but neither was I ready to leave this place. I glanced around, my gaze lighting again on the fence of our neighbor’s house, the large maple there. If I could appear to him once more as he left … It was a risk, I knew, but one worth taking.
Quickly I dodged from our yard. The neighbor’s fence was not tall, three feet only, but it was enough to hide me if I crouched very low. I glanced at the windows of that house—the drapes still drawn. The man who lived there owned one of the shipyards; he was rarely home, and I’d met him only once. Just now the house seemed still as a corpse and just as empty. I hurried down the path that broke the fence, to the right of the maple tree, jerking my too-long skirt after me when it caught, and then I knelt in the lee of the fence, waiting for the carriage to come around for my husband, glancing nervously to the house behind me, hoping I was right and that Mr. Anderson, who was so seldom home, was not so today either.
There was not even a rustle in the drapes, and so I turned my attention back to my house, and Nathan. It seemed to take a long time; long enough that I began to wonder if Nathan intended not to go into the city today. He hadn’t slept well; his office was no longer. Perhaps he meant to stay at home—
But then I heard a carriage coming around the block, and I peeked to see—ours, with the emblem gold upon the door, coming from the back stables, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It stopped before the house.
My thighs were burning from the position I held, but I dared not move. Only a few more moments, and ah … there it was. The front door opening, the driver hastening to open the carriage door for my husband, who wore a suitcoat and a hat now, but who glanced about nervously, as if he expected to see a ghost.
He spoke something in a low voice to the driver, and then climbed inside. The driver closed the door and went quickly to his seat, taking up the reins. I rose, clinging to the tree, and then, at the right moment, I came around, stepping into view, and I saw Nathan’s face in the carriage window, the jerk of his head. Our gazes met. Deliberately, I filled mine with hatred and rage. I saw his pure fear in response, and then the carriage was past, and I melted back into my hiding place until it was out of sight.
It had worked. I had done it, and I had not mistaken the expression on his face. Nathan was afraid. Whatever Bea had said to him last night had worked. He truly thought I was a ghost, and he truly believed I was there for vengeance.
It was all I could do not to leap from the tree and run back to the tent
, to tell her what had happened, how well it had gone. But I forced myself to wait, to be certain Nathan had not told the driver to turn around, and when I knew he had not, I went back to the road and hurried away from this neighborhood. No one was about other than one or two gardeners, a maid emptying chamber pots, the iceman on his wagon. They all glanced up at me and then away again, uninterested, as if I were below their notice. I could not blame them. My hair was loose, my gown burned and filthy beyond recognition; I was not the Ginny Langley I’d been, and yet how much more alive I felt now. I knew that was something Bea would understand, because I knew she felt it too, every night upon that stage, as she bowed to laughter and applause—and for a strange, disorienting moment, I felt her thirst for it, as if she were somehow inside of me, and I knew that was part of my giddiness now, the realization that she and I were together in this, that it was something we shared that we would always share. No matter what happened after today, whether this plan worked or did not, Penelope Justis belonged to us. We had not written it or devised it, but we had made it live, and I knew it would stay, something bright and luminescent and perfect. As if somehow, despite ourselves, we’d created our own star.
Beatrice
So … keeping Sebastian from asking questions. That was my first goal of the day, and don’t think I didn’t know how impossible it was going to be, because after what I’d said yesterday, and the fight we’d had, he was going to want to talk. It was inevitable, and any other time I would simply have avoided him. But that brought us to my second goal of the day, which was to discover the next step in our little plot. I suspected he’d spent last night—no doubt late into the night—revising Penelope, and I needed those scenes. Ginny had gone up to the house—a bad idea, no matter how you looked at it, and too damn risky—but that wasn’t going to be enough. We needed more, and that more was in Sebastian’s fertile brain.
Two more contradictory goals you couldn’t find, and on the way down to rehearsal, I tried to think up some way to have them both. By the time I reached the Phoenix, I felt strung tight, which was never good, and worse still when it came to the troupe. They would sense it, and I would be in for no end of teasing, which I wasn’t in the mood for, not the least bit.
I was early again, surprisingly enough. Lucius was there, and he and Mr. Geary and Sebastian were busy conferring over some scene while Jackson was lying on the stage, reading the newspaper. Jack glanced up when I came inside, and he must have sensed my mood straight off—and really it was amazing how good I was at predicting things like this—because he said, “Ah, my beauteous Bea! ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry—’ ”
“Shut up, Jack,” I interrupted irritably.
“Ah, my sweet girl, why so snappish? Ah, I have it: ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ Am I not hit upon it?”
I opened my mouth to say something nasty, but before I could, Sebastian said, “Don’t be an ass, Wheeler,” which surprised all of us, and Jack especially, because his mouth snapped shut like a fish trapping a fly.
“My, my, aren’t we all foul-tempered this morning,” Jack said sullenly, turning back to his paper. And then, beneath his breath but still loud enough for us all to hear, “God save me from true lovers.”
I glanced at Sebastian, who looked at me with a question in his eyes that I could read as if he’d said the words. We need to talk, Bea.
I turned away, uncomfortable, wondering again how I would manage, and just then, Aloys came in, his dark face darker than usual, as if some shadow had crossed it, his brow furrowed.
I said, “You look as if you swallowed a lemon, Aloys.”
His frown grew. “Has Langley been here?”
I glanced at Sebastian, who was watching, and said, “Nathan? Why would he be?”
“He’s all the talk this morning.”
I thought of Ginny going up there alone, my feeling that it was a bad idea. I hadn’t thought I could get strung much tighter, but I was wrong. “Why? Why happened?”
Aloys said, “Apparently, he’s seeing ghosts again. Or that’s the talk, in any case. When he went into the city council meeting this morning, he was off his head, shouting about how he had to find his wife’s body, et cetera, et cetera. Quite a scene, I take it.”
“How do you know this?” Sebastian asked.
“I was accosted on my way here by several people who’d witnessed it themselves. They know of our association with him, of course. I told them he must have been reading our new playwright’s Penelope. Nothing like a little publicity, you know, and God knows the play’s enough to give anyone nightmares.”
“He hasn’t read it.” Sebastian glanced at me. “Has he?”
I felt his suspicion, but at least Aloys had said nothing of Ginny, and that was a relief. “Has anyone? You haven’t even finished the new version.”
Lucius glanced up. “How does that go, by the way? I hope your efforts with Much Ado have not derailed it unduly.”
Sebastian did not take his gaze from me. “No. I’m nearly finished. I’ve had plenty of time lately.”
I felt a little flare of excitement. “Are you past the séance scene then?”
“Séance?” Lucius clapped his hands together. “Ah, excellent, excellent! Everyone loves a séance. I suppose, as a grave trap is impossible for the time being, we could set secret doors into the flats for the spirit to emerge through. There is a spirit that appears, isn’t there?”
“Oh yes,” Sebastian said with a grim smile. “A quite bold one. It even appears in Barnabus’s bed.”
I went still. Impossible. How the hell were we to effect that?
Jack rolled onto his side. “In his bed? Now that would give the bravest man nightmares.”
“Well, let’s hope Langley doesn’t hear of it,” Aloys said. “God knows he doesn’t need more to imagine.”
“Has he seemed off to you, Bea?” Jack asked me.
“Has who seemed off?” Brody asked as he came in.
“Langley’s gone half mad,” Jack informed him.
“Has he? Well, that don’t surprise me, I guess. What with his wife going missing in the fire like that and the whole city burning down around him.”
“It burned down around all of us,” Aloys said. “And most of us remain quite sane.”
Jack said idly, “Yes, well, you aren’t missing a rich wife, are you? Well, Bea? Should we call the asylum men if he shows up here again?”
I felt them all looking at me, Sebastian’s gaze most of all, and I avoided it as I said, “He was very distraught last night.”
“No doubt it took all your skill to soothe him,” Jack said with a little grin.
“I never did manage it. He isn’t himself, that’s true enough.”
“As long as he keeps the money coming in, eh?” Lucius said. “Enough talk, children. Go on now, and give me act two, scene one.”
Obediently, we did as he directed, but I felt Sebastian’s eyes on me throughout, and that unspoken question hanging in the air only adding to the other ones I knew he wanted to ask. At least I’d discovered the next part of the play—though how that was going to happen, I had no idea, and I didn’t like the thought either, of her being close enough for Nathan to touch. But I also saw how the thing Jack had said was true. It would be enough to unbalance most men, and Nathan was on edge. A little more than I’d expected, but if Ginny and I could manage this …
My mind was spinning with how, so the end of rehearsal came as a surprise, and I was distracted enough that I didn’t race out the way I should have done, and there was Sebastian waiting, and I was trapped.
Still, I tried. I hurried to the opening of the tent, dodging outside, into little clouds of dust that made me choke, but I didn’t get far. I’d got only a few tents away before he was there, beside me. “Where are you off to so quickly?”
“To the relief tent,” I lied, because the truth was that I didn’t think I could swallow anything just now. �
�I know you have to write—”
“There’s plenty of time for that later. There are things we should discuss first.”
Like the fact that I’d told him I loved him. I swallowed. “Not now,” I managed. “I’ve things to do.”
“Like what?”
“I—”
“Come with me, Bea,” he said softly. “Talk to me.”
“There’s no point,” I said, a little meanly too, and I knew it. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Some things have,” he disagreed. “Like the fact that Langley’s dashing about like a madman and saying he’s seeing his wife’s spirit. Things like that don’t happen overnight. Is that what your séance was about?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What plan are you hatching? Why won’t you tell me?”
He was looking at me so intently that the urge to tell him came over me like a fever. I bit it back.
“I don’t want you to go to him again,” he said.
“Don’t be absurd, Bastian.”
“He’s unstable, if what Aloys said is true. He could be dangerous.”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Bea, I mean it. Stay away from Langley.”
I met his gaze. “I can’t. You know I can’t. I need him.”
“You don’t need the things you think you do. Your talent—”
“Was wasted until Nathan Langley came along,” I said sharply. “I’ve already told you, I have to be practical.”
“You said you loved me,” he said. “Was that a lie?”
There it was, the thing I’d been waiting for. “No,” I said, and it was a damn whisper; there was no strength to it, and I couldn’t find any, and it would have been better to lie. Why the hell hadn’t I? “But it doesn’t matter, does it? Loving you doesn’t put food on the table, and it doesn’t protect me from Lucius’s games. Only Nathan can do that.”
“What if you’re wrong?” he asked. “What if I can do those things for you?”
I laughed. “Then I’d say you’re a damn magician.”