Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  “Worse than you could imagine,” he said slowly.

  What was it about? She wished for him to continue with every fiber of her being. Was it about these … secrets? But he lapsed into silence.

  “I was wrong,” he said at last. “She ran from my presence. I pursued, but … ” He shook his head. “I tripped. While I lay there on the floor in a stupor, too drunk to give chase, someone followed her onto the balcony and broke her skull.”

  Her involuntary cry checked the brutal flow of his speech. She put the brandy on the desk before it could slip from her nerveless fingers. It was hard to look at him. Someone had broken Phillipa’s skull. Smashed the life from her. If he could bear this revelation, so could she.

  For a moment, his gaze gentled, responding to her shock and horror. It was amazing to her that he could spare her a look of such compassion, before his own torment again marked his features.

  “I wanted the world to believe Phillipa’s death was an accident. I encouraged that interpretation. A suicide—it would have destroyed her family. If an inquest had discovered more … ” He stopped. She glimpsed it again—the man he might become. Grim, lined, haggard. His beauty the beauty of a ravening wolf.

  “I thought I was protecting her,” he said flatly. “Instead, I was protecting her murderer.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she murmured. Her heart thudded in her chest. She realized he could say anything, make any demand, and she would consent. She was giddy with the peril and with the power she felt. He thought she could help him. Isidore Blackwood, so large, so strong. He had hands that could break her in half. He needed her help.

  “I want you to enter my service as a private medium.” The irony of the situation made his lips quirk despite the blackness brimming his eyes. Then a rueful, crooked smile spread across his face. “It’s deuced inconsistent of me. I suppose I should apologize.” The smile transformed his features. And stopped her heart. Heaven protect me from that boyish grin. It made her want … That was it. Plain and simple. It made her want.

  “It’s not necessary.” She averted her face. “Nothing is consistent in this world. Some things we can more or less rely upon. The sun rises in the east. We wake with a roof over our heads. Our loved ones are with us as they were the day before. We think things will be the same tomorrow as they were today. But one day, we wake … and everything is different. One day, we don’t wake at all.”

  Her wandering gaze settled on a row of wooden figures on the mantelpiece above the fire. In the low light, they were a menagerie of shadows. Animal shapes. Relics, perhaps, from Egypt.

  “You are philosophical for one so young.”

  She looked back at him. He wore the look that most disconcerted her. No mockery. Just an earnest, avid interest. His eyes were considering. Curious.

  “I had few amusements in the country,” she said. “I was often reading books with my father.”

  “A cloistered life,” he said. His lifted brow was quizzical. “Were there no opportunities beyond the library? Perhaps you lived with your father in a hermit’s cottage deep in Exmoor forest?”

  “You are whimsical, my lord, for one so grim.” She feared she had overstepped herself, but his other eyebrow shot up and he laughed.

  “It’s true the hermitage I imagined was excessively picturesque. Thatched roof. Briars of blooming rose along the stone path. A lantern burning in the window.”

  “It wasn’t a hermitage.” She smiled at him, beguiled by the image. There would be linnets chirping in the thatch. The roses would climb the walls. “But it might as well have been.” The question she read on his face forced the lie. “My father was an invalid.”

  Understanding flared in his eyes. As though she had given him a piece of a puzzle.

  “That must have been difficult,” he said, and his sympathy only deepened her shame. He must have seen in her face that she could endure no further questioning. He pushed back his chair, unfolding his long body with that fluidity that characterized all of his movements.

  “You have come from your country cottage to the city of shadows,” he said. “And here you will help me apprehend a murderer.” There was regret in his voice. The way he described it, it sounded like a fairy tale. She was like Rhodopis in the city of the fire god. Ripped away from everything she knew. But there would be no miraculous resolution. In real life, eagles didn’t speak to pharaohs. Strawberries didn’t bloom in the snow. A dead brother never reappeared, alive, in a cloud of smoke. He knew it too, that there was no such thing as happily ever after. She couldn’t help him bring Phillipa back. The love of his life. She hated herself for the jealousy that gnawed at her.

  “Who is he?” The murderer. The idea of him didn’t produce terror so much as a welling sadness. He had ended Phillipa’s young life and warped so many others. Man was the cruelest beast. No other creature would kill a female of its species for pleasure. Or in rage.

  She too rose, without grace. Her body never moved fluidly, all of a piece. Her limbs were too ungainly. He had drawn his brows together. A deep crease scored his forehead. He was looking at a point above her head.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, low and thick, voice like a black cloud. “But I know things about him. He’s a friend. An acquaintance, at the least. He’s young. Handsome. Rich.” That smile he wore, so full of loathing, seemed the precursor to an act of violence. He seemed to have forgotten she was there.

  “How do you know?” she asked, a trifle breathless. “Young, handsome, rich?”

  He blinked at her, returning to himself. He rocked back and forth on his heels. “He was at a party at St. Aubyn’s.”

  “Ah,” she said. But his answer didn’t satisfy. It could have been the butler. Or a footman who’d long since left St. Aubyn’s employ. Or some ugly, penniless aristocrat. God knows there were plenty of them. Young. Handsome. Rich. What made him so sure? Phillipa’s secrets. He kept them from her.

  “I want to use his guilt, his fear, to flush him out,” he said. “Who could have more interest in what Phillipa Trombly might utter from the tomb? Who could have more dread? Every word you speak will be a dagger in his heart. He’ll reveal himself. He’ll give some sign, and I will be watching.”

  The distant look was back. He was flexing his hands. The glint in his eye was murderous. He too was capable of violence. She could see it all unfolding. Violence begetting violence begetting violence until the destruction of the world. Bards had been singing of exactly that for millennia. She looked down at the carpet, red and blue, a Turkish pattern.

  Then he said: “I will pay you, of course.”

  Her breath rushed out. She needed money. Why should his offer of payment wound her?

  “I’ll double Mrs. Trombly’s wages. When it’s over, I’ll see to it that you find the position you seek. As a governess. As whatever you like. Will you help me? Ella?” At the sound of her name, she looked up. She hadn’t gotten used to hearing those syllables on his lips. Her name sounded husky when he said it, laced with dark promise. He circled the desk. Nothing stood between them but a foot of supercharged air.

  She nodded jerkily. All at once, she wanted to cry. For the pity of it all. For the promises unfulfilled. She turned in a rustle of skirts and approached the fireplace. She held out her hands.

  “Are you cold?” He was by her side, nearly brushing against her. “I can ring for more coals.” The concern in his voice—she couldn’t bear it. His kindness made the tears push out the corners of her eyes. She lowered her lids to trap the moisture in her lashes.

  “Thank you, I’m not cold.” She strove for composure. “I wanted a closer look at these figures, that’s all.”

  “Do you like them?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She moved closer to inspect them. That low, sinuous curve of dark wood was an alligator. Those birds—ibises. She smiled at the braying donkey. “I can almost hear that donkey.”

  “Everyone in Italy could hear that donkey.” She heard an answering smile in his voice.r />
  “This donkey was known to you personally?” She turned toward him. He had folded his arms across his chest. He looked too nonchalant, too disinterested. Suspicion kindled.

  “You carved these, didn’t you?” She turned back to the mantle. “They’re beautiful.” Beautiful wasn’t quite the right word. Some of them seemed purposely crude. Totemic. Each seemed to hold some essence of the creature it represented. And of the wood itself.

  “This deer … ” Her fingers hovered over the curve of its neck. It was alert, poised to spring from its base if she made a sudden movement. She curled her fingers.

  “I’m afraid I might startle it.” She almost laughed. “It’s so alive.” She felt him move closer. He reached over her shoulder. If she turned her head she could rub her cheek against it, the muscle swelling beneath the thin fabric of his shirt. His scent enveloped her, that complex mixture: coffee and pine and his hot, hard flesh. He adjusted the carving, shifting it so the deer faced her.

  “I knew a man … ” she began. She felt him vibrate with sudden tension. She stopped. She shouldn’t say anything more about her past.

  “Go on,” he said. His voice was soft. The heat emanating from the fireplace warmed her front, and his body so close behind her warmed her back. It felt so good. She felt so safe, exactly there, where she stood, gloved by these two different kinds of warmth.

  “A hunter,” she said. “He would have loved to shoot a creature so lovely.”

  “That’s hardly unusual,” he said. “Every man in England hunts. Foxes. Pheasants. Deer.”

  Suddenly, she wanted to make him understand.

  “For him, it’s different. It’s not about meat or even sport,” she said. “It’s more than that. He lives for it. He comes alive when he takes life. His study is filled with heads. Sometimes, though, he leaves carcasses to rot. He kills so many animals the party can’t carry them all back.”

  “You don’t like this man.” It wasn’t a question but a statement that prodded for more.

  “I hate him,” she whispered. There it was, violence surging, even in her. She hated Alfred. She would hurt him if she could. In these lovingly carved figures, she saw an alternative to destruction. She focused on the resonant forms.

  “You respect this creature.” She touched the slope of the deer’s back lightly with the pad of her thumb. “You didn’t have to kill it to understand something about it.”

  His hands closed on her shoulders. He turned her around to face him. His thumbs stroked once along the tight muscles then settled near her collarbones. The weight of his hands awakened the ache in her body even as it soothed.

  “Did you run away from him?” His eyes were infinitely gentle.

  “He wasn’t my husband, if that’s what you think.” It would be too easy to tell him everything. Tell him about Papa, about his love for her and his mistaken trust in Alfred. Tell him how Alfred wanted her locked away, erased from the family record. Tell him how she had fled, friendless and frightened, and that she had never meant to foist herself upon Mrs. Trombly. She had never stolen what wasn’t hers to take. But she would have to explain why Alfred loathed her. Why she couldn’t marry. Why she could never hope to lead a normal life. She would have to quote Mr. Norton. There are anatomical abnormalities in my brain. She would have to tell him that she was the invalid. Papa had stayed at home for her, not the other way around.

  His face would change. Revulsion would replace the tenderness. He was looking at her as though she were a woman. What if he knew she turned into something else? Not even human. Hideous.

  “My cousin.” She couldn’t remain silent with his coaxing eyes so close. “I was his dependent. He turned me out.”

  She broke his hold and walked the length of the small room. The walls were dark—polished mahogany panels. The light of the oil lamps didn’t reach into the corners. The window was shuttered. She stopped by a low table. A large case rested on it, leather-covered, studded with gold nails.

  “A violin?” She understood, suddenly, the calluses on his fingers. She imagined those fingers sliding over the strings, changing the pitch with the finest modulation of pressure, the angle of his touch. “May I?”

  “Please.” He came toward her as she opened the case, revealing the red-velvet interior and the varnished wood of the instrument. She glanced about for a plaque inscribed with the name of the workshop.

  “I learned how to make violins when I was in Naples.” Her eyes flew to him. He was smiling, a smile she’d never seen, almost shy. “That’s when I met Geppetto.”

  She raised a brow.

  “The donkey,” he clarified. “He belonged to a man named Rocco. Rocco is not a famous luthier by any means. His workshop is small. Just him and a brother, his son, and a few nephews.” His voice was warm with remembrance. A pleasant memory of a pleasant time. She wondered how many pleasant memories he had.

  “You too have a love for music,” he said.

  An image of that first meeting hung for a moment between them, she frozen at the harpsichord, he a storm of black energy rushing toward her.

  “Yes,” she said simply. She closed the violin case. “There were times when it was my only solace.”

  “The sonata you played … ” The light in his eyes was difficult to interpret. He started again. “You played it well.”

  “It’s one of my favorites.”

  “Ah,” he said, still with that odd light in his eyes. “And so you don’t always play so well?”

  It would be ladylike to agree. Oh yes, she should say. That was one of the few pieces I’ve mastered. I am only an indifferent player.

  She said: “Often I play better.”

  He laughed, surprised. Not unpleased by her arrogance.

  Her lips twitched in return. “My mother used to read music the way other women read novels. She could hear the music in her head.” She had grown up with her mother’s collection of sheet music. Some of the manuscripts were very old, hand-written scores passed down through the generations. Alfred had them now. Her chest tightened.

  “I didn’t know her,” she said. “She died when I was born. My father told me.

  He loved music too.”

  “My mother also played.” The corner of his mouth turned down. “Until my father smashed her violin.”

  She exhaled, wanting more than anything to brush away the lock of hair that had fallen over his eye. To stroke the crease from his brow.

  “That’s when you decided you would learn to build them?” Her question hung in the air. He moved his jaw from side to side, releasing tension.

  “Yes, I suppose it was.” He spoke slowly. “I never thought of it quite like that.” Something had ignited in his eyes. They were brighter. Burning through her. He pushed the hair away from his eyes, and the disordered black locks stood up around his head. He looked wilder. He belonged in an enchanted grove, not a staid, paneled study in a terrace in Pimlico.

  “Ella,” he said, the timbre of his voice dropping lower.

  “Yes.” She meant to make it a question. Yes, my lord? But it emerged as a throaty assent to a question he had not asked. Or had he? He closed the distance between them as though her response was exactly what he was waiting for. His hands slid over her shoulders, pressed into her back. She had no choice but to step into him. The fullness of her breasts flattened against the hard plane of his chest, forcing the air to rush from her mouth in a gasp. His fingers dug into her spine. They moved up and down from the curve of her neck to the small of her back, unlatching her. She was spilling forward, melting into him. He moved his hand around her throat, wrapping it, so that she felt the slight constriction as she swallowed. Then his fingers were sweeping along her jaw, tilting up her face.

  “Do you know how often I’ve thought of exactly this?” His voice was gruff, his thumb tracing her lips. She wanted to make some disbelieving noise, but the blue intensity of his gaze fringed by lashes black as night transformed the protest into a sigh. She strained against him, lifting onto h
er toes, and moved her fingers through his hair, felt the shape of his skull. She pulled his head down to hers. The shock of his lips made her groan. The heat of his breath, his tongue, radiated through her. She kept her eyes open, watching the bronze skin, the black brow, until the proximity made her vision smear, blur, disappear, and she shut her eyes, not to escape but to sink more deeply into her body. To feel the sensations rippling through her.

  She slid her hands down his back. The heavy slabs of muscle in his shoulder blades shifted as he wrapped her tighter in his arms. Tentatively, she kneaded the muscles in his back, moved her hands lower. She felt the dramatic curve of his buttocks, hard as rock. When she cupped them, he made a low noise, shifting his mouth to kiss her jaw, her neck. She lifted her hands away, abashed, but he reached behind him, caught her wrist, and brought her hand down again, trapping it for a moment in place. She gripped him. He was kissing down the line of her throat, undoing the buttons of her high-collared gown. He worked his hand inside. Only the thin linen of her undergarments separated her skin from his hand. She shuddered as his hand grazed her nipples. His fingers closed on her breast; the sensation centered in the nipple. The flesh puckered, tightening. This was the pain she craved, the sweet agony he inflicted upon her. She kissed his chin, running her tongue through the cleft, nipping beneath his jaw; his stubble abraded the delicate flesh inside her lower lip. Sweet agony. She wanted more. She was always so restrained, always holding herself in, keeping vigil over her body lest a moment of inattention permit her disease to gain ground. Now she felt abandoned. Greedy with the possibilities.

  His other hand stroked her backside through her skirts. Suddenly his arm was beneath her buttocks. He was sweeping her off her feet and depositing her in a leather chair. He never took his mouth from hers. He followed her down, dropping to his knees before her.

  “You’ve bewitched me.” He spoke against her lips, voice ragged. “I don’t care if you were sent to me by the devil himself.” He pushed her skirts over her knees. His hands were sliding up her legs, over the knees, up to her garters. She clapped her knees together, and he parted them easily. The strain in her muscles as she tried to close her legs, pushing against his hands, dear God, it only aggravated the shivering tension in her inner thighs, the sweet throbbing in her lower belly that he seemed intent on reaching. His fingers brushed the very tops of her thighs. His thumbs slid lower, slid over the bare skin, then delved into her linen drawers. He delivered one stroke to that most private region of her body. She bucked. Gasped. Shot back in the chair, her head and shoulders sliding up the smooth leather.