Dark Season

by Joanna Lowell

  He shook his head. “I should see to the dining room.” He lifted a brow, as though wryly amused. “The chandelier still wants its cerement. Brinkley promised me he’d transform the table into a catafalque. I must make sure a zealous footman doesn’t spoil the effect with place settings.” This heroic display of humor deserved a reaction. She laughed, and the room gave the laugh back to her from every corner: thin and false.

  They looked at each other as the echo went on and on, lasting longer than seemed possible.

  “Do you like Blackwood Mansion?” he asked softly.

  “It’s … ” She searched for the right word. Dreary. Doleful.

  “Drafty,” she said. He tilted his head. His eyes raked over her body, and she fought the urge to shiver, to give him an excuse to step closer. He had proven himself so adept at warming her with caresses. His tongue was hot as a brand. She swallowed. Even his furtive glance—speculative, covetous—sent a heated wave rushing through her. “I’m not cold.” She spoke quickly, avoiding his gaze. “But I noticed the draft. In the hall, of course, but also in the library. A numbing patch of air. Clammy, as though it wafted from an uncovered well. I attributed it to the Blackwood ghost.” She curled her lip, striving for a light, mocking tone. I too can be coolly ironic under pressure.

  No appreciative chuckle. He looked at her blankly.

  “Lady Berners mentioned you had a family ghost.” She felt a peculiar thrill, making a joke at Lady Berners’s expense. She hadn’t enjoyed her forays into London society, but she had gained insight into his world, his circle. There was something pleasing in alluding to a shared point of reference. “To hear her talk, you’d think they came with the coronet.”

  Now he did bark a laugh, folding his arms across his chest. “The ghost is at Castle Blackwood. She’s Scotch. Wouldn’t be caught dead in London.”

  “So to speak,” she murmured, registering the width of his forearms. For the hundredth time.

  Fool, she said to herself. Ella, you’re a fool.

  “My illustrious ancestor took her as a spoil of war, and she defied him by dying. Did Lady Berners tell you that?” His eyes had narrowed.

  “Something like.”

  “Morbury Blackwood. He rode with the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden. He killed a hundred clansmen that day and carved his monogram into their chests with their own claymores, or so the story goes. There’s a rusting claymore on the wall in the gallery, at least, alongside Morbury’s sword and musket. He’s the pride of the family.” His sneer was a sneer for the ages, for generations of the damned. “The great Blackwood butcher. Every firstborn son takes his name. Isidore Morbury Blackwood. Tradition.” He injected the word with scorn.

  “Isidore Morbury Blackwood.” She said it slowly. Why did it sound wrong?

  “At your service.” He straightened, expanding his chest, exaggeratedly martial in his bearing. “A Blackwood never bends.” Suddenly it seemed he couldn’t catch his breath. His face twisted, and he pressed a fist to his forehead. He stared over her shoulder, but she didn’t turn. She knew what he saw. The three Blackwood wolves, their watchful heads molded in black-painted plaster, staring back at him.

  “What am I doing, Ella?” His voice rose in pitch, and the walls whispered it over and over. She could feel the blood pounding in her head. She moistened her lips. He’d sounded wrathful in her presence, sorrowful, anguished, desperate even, but never uncertain, never helpless.

  “Louisa’s coming,” he said, brows pulling together. “I just had her note.” His hand went to his waistcoat as though to produce it then dropped, empty. His breath hissed out. “I am about to subject her to a humiliation she never dreamed of.”

  “Don’t let her come in.” She feared that she too might cry out and tried to modulate her voice. “Bar the door to her. If—”

  “She’ll hear of it,” he interrupted. “Everyone in London will hear of it. Tonight or tomorrow … What difference does it make?” His jaw flexed. If she put her ear to his cheek, she would hear the teeth gnashing. “I lay awake all night, trying to think of another way.”

  She flushed. She had lain awake all night as well, waging a war with herself. Right before dawn, she’d lost. She’d risen to go to his bedchamber. The sight of her thin, white hand reaching out to turn the doorknob stopped her. She saw herself, rotted from within, wasted by disease, skeletal, clinging to him, an albatross around his neck. She crept back to the bed and watched the darkness divide into meshes of gray as morning broke.

  His eyes were still locked on the wolves. Beads of sweat now stood out on his forehead. She touched his sleeve.

  “Come upstairs with me and sit,” she said. She recognized the physical signs of acute psychic duress. His composure was close to cracking completely. “Come.” She led, and he followed, although she didn’t know her way. Panic made him tractable. A glance behind her confirmed that he had no will but hers. He walked with his fingers running along the wall. Afraid he would lose his balance. She linked her elbow with his and took him firmly by the wrist with her other hand. He didn’t lean on her, but she heard him take a deep, shuddering breath, and they ascended the stairs together.

  “Left,” he said when she hesitated at the top step. His stertorous breathing had quieted. “Here.” She opened the door to a sitting room. He’d had the house opened, but the third story had yet to be properly aired. The room was stale and cold and dark. They sat in front of the fireplace on chairs with claw-and-ball feet and shield-shaped backs. He put his elbows on his knees and rested his face on his hands. His back was rigid.

  “We don’t have to go through with it.” Her voice sounded muffled now that they no longer stood in that vast, echoing ballroom. “Say I fell ill and call it off. Say I’m a fraud. Say whatever you like.”

  “No.” Isidore lifted his head. His color was coming back and with it his self-command. “He must be discovered. He must be punished.” His smile was so bitter she felt her throat squeeze. “I wish to God I didn’t have to expose her like this. But I’ll do it. I can’t give up this opportunity.” He was convincing himself. A new and dire conviction made his eyes flame. “There’s no other way,” he whispered. “It’s the one thing you can say that will prove to him that Phillipa speaks through you. It’s the one thing he thinks no one living knows.”

  She nodded jerkily.

  “Very well,” she said. The séance would go on. She would sway and stagger and scream with a ferocity that would put Miss Seymour to shame. She would claim she’d made contact. And then she would do exactly as he’d coached. She would look out at the audience members, and she would wail in a throbbing voice.

  A murderer sits among you.

  She would say that he stood accused. By Phillipa.

  And by his unborn child.

  Come forward, she would howl. Or drop where you sit into boiling blood and fire.

  His hands closed on hers.

  “Thank you,” he said. “In the ballroom … I wasn’t myself. You steadied me. Calmed me.” His throat worked as he released her. He leaned back in his chair. “Your father was lucky in you.”

  Her father. The invalid. She could not bear to be praised as a nursemaid. She could not bear to be reminded of her lies. She dropped her eyes. There was a silence. Then he spoke.

  “I swore to myself that after … this … all of this was over, I’d make it all up to you. What I put you through.” She could tell he was staring at her. She could feel his gaze. She always could. Her skin was sensitized to it. A touch that wasn’t a touch. It fluttered on her and in her. “I swore I’d erase the bad with the good. It doesn’t work like that, does it? In life, a negative and a positive don’t cancel each other out. Tell me.” His soft voice had a raw finish. “Tell me, my dear philosopher.”

  She looked at him and saw his expression, the one he wore when soliciting her opinion: earnest, inquiring, intensely interested. She couldn’t resist it. It called to her. She spoke slowly, carefully, thinking her answer through.

  �
��If actions canceled each other out, we’d always stay right where we are. Nothing would move forward.” She fumbled for how best to express the idea. She knew how her father would have explained it.

  “Think of a bow,” she said. “The string and the wood. You pull the bowstring back, and the wood curves in the other direction. The movements don’t nullify each other. They create tension. It’s what allows the arrow to shoot forth.”

  “Love’s golden arrow.” His gaze slid down. It shot through her breastplate and drove straight into her throbbing heart. His lips turned down as he shifted his eyes toward the fireplace. Wood had been laid there. A tidy pyre, unlit. “Death’s ebon dart.” He tipped his head, chin jutting forward. In silhouette, the black angles of his face and throat looked rough-hewn. Crude.

  “They’re in the same quiver,” he said. “I feel both barbs. Each wound bleeds. Ella, I don’t think I can save you. I don’t think you can save me. But we can live more fully together …” She thought for a moment she’d hallucinated his low, urgent murmur. But she hadn’t. He was looking at her again, but the darkness whittled his face; she saw only his eyes.

  “Limning the shadows with light,” he said. “Breathing the same air as the flames that consume us.” He took a quick breath, and in that pause she tried to defend herself, but she had no armor against these words. She was pierced. Dear God, she was leaking out of herself, flowing toward him through a thousand ruby holes.

  “Sometimes I see you, and your beauty is like a sickle moon, a mowing scythe. Sometimes I see you, and the fullness of your beauty pulls my blood in swells. It’s the rhythm of life itself. Ella—”

  She sucked in her breath. “Please.” Warning him. Begging him. “Don’t.”

  “Ah.” With that simple sound, he fell silent again, lifting his hands, palms up, fingers open. He contemplated them for a long moment. Thinking, most like, of what the night might bring.

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not the time to speak. But Ella, there will be time. Afterward. There will be.” He wanted her confirmation, wanted her to tell him, Yes, yes, there will be time, but even this yes was more than she could give. He thought time would be a boon. But to her, time was a bane. Every passing moment hastened her disintegration, her descent into living death. Time wouldn’t treat with them equally. When it became clear that she would offer nothing, not a word, he sighed. “After this is over … this macabre piece of theater … ”

  The curtain of the final act was about to lift.

  Ella Reed, she thought. Medium. Tragedian.

  He stirred in his chair. “If you could summon a spirit … ” He sounded thoughtful. “Would you summon him? Your father?”

  The question caught her off guard. She bit her lip hard. To hear Papa’s voice … really hear it … . Her eyes stung. But she shook her head slightly.

  “He’s with me already,” she said. “Not just in my thoughts. Sometimes I catch myself thinking his very thoughts. Sometimes I see things through his eyes. We were so close.” The lump in her throat made it difficult to speak. She lowered her head. “He would have liked you.” She didn’t look up, but she felt his small movement.

  “I would have liked him too,” he said, voice clotted with emotion. “A man with ink on his hands.”

  Instead of blood. He didn’t say it, but she heard it in the glottal tick that choked off the phrase.

  “A man who raised a fairy for a daughter,” he continued. She heard the smile in his voice. “And taught her to value kindness.”

  “I would summon Robert,” she said and risked meeting his eyes. They were brilliant with emotion as strong as her own. “My brother. He drowned when I was twelve. His friend’s father had a small schooner, and the two of them decided to sail it. They wrecked at Gore Point, not far from Porlock Weir.” She wiped at her nose. Silently, he handed her his handkerchief. “It’s been so many years. I’ve grown up, and he hasn’t. I’m so much older than him now. It makes him feel farther away.” Trying to stop the tears from falling made it worse, made her chest burn and her throat clog. “I’d just like to say hello,” she whispered.

  She pressed the handkerchief to her face, inhaling deeply. A piney smell. No more gardenias. She remembered the faint, floral odor of the handkerchief she’d found in Phillipa’s reticule.

  Her mouth went dry. She spread the handkerchief open on her knee, ran her fingers over the embroidery. IMB. Isidore Morbury Blackwood. But Phillipa’s handkerchief had read IHB.

  “Some day you’ll tell me about Robert,” he said.

  “Isidore.” He must have heard the change in her voice for he looked at her questioningly.

  “What is it?”

  She traced the I on the handkerchief. “Who else of your acquaintance has a first name that begins with the letter I?”

  He didn’t hesitate.

  “Ben,” he said. “Bennington. His first name is Ivor.”

  Ivor Bennington. “His middle name?” It emerged a dry whisper.

  “Heathcote.” Confusion lined Isidore’s brow. “Why do you ask?”

  IHB. The handkerchief in Phillipa’s reticule belonged to the exquisite Mr. Bennington. Young, handsome, rich Mr. Bennington.

  “Bennington.” She rose from her chair, mouth opening and closing soundlessly. She gasped, stuttered. “Bennington. Bennington killed her.” She waved the handkerchief as though this would explain it to him, her tongue thickening in her mouth. Isidore dug his fingertips into his jaw looking up at her. There was compassion in his look, and a weary patience. He gave no credence to her outburst; she could read it plainly in his face. He thought perhaps she was trying to spare him, and herself, the ordeal to come by pointing the finger at random. She hadn’t made her case. She tried to frame a coherent account … the evidence, her intuition, her sudden certainty that Bennington was Phillipa’s lover. The room swirled around her. He had to believe her.

  He cut her off before she could really begin, gentle but firm. “Bennington wasn’t there,” he said and regarded her with resignation as she gaped at him.

  Not there? But everything fit so perfectly.

  “Sick,” he said. “Bennington gets terrible headaches. Has to take to bed two or three times a month. It’s always been like that, ever since I’ve known him.” He stood, faintly apologetic.

  “The Wheatcrofts”—he consulted his pocket watch—“will knock on the door within the minute. Or I’ll eat my hat.” He attempted a grin. “Hat-eating. What would the Romans say to that?”

  She couldn’t smile back. Not now. She was wringing the handkerchief, mind working frantically. “Bennington and Phillipa were friends?”

  Isidore’s brow creased again. “They liked each other well enough. Phillipa and Daphne were friends.”

  “Daphne?” Her voice emerged unnaturally high.

  “Bennington’s wife.” Isidore cocked his head, listening. “That was the front door.” He stepped toward her, stroked her cheek with his callused thumb. “They’re here.” He bent and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  “Soon,” he said, softly. “We’ll know soon. Brinkley will come for you when we’re ready to begin.” The rough pad of his thumb traced her lip. “Until afterward,” he said.

  • • •

  She paced until Brinkley opened the door. Her palms were sweating as she followed him down the stairs. All of the gaslights in the hall had been turned off. Brinkley held a lamp, and when she looked away from it she realized that she couldn’t see the floor beneath her feet. She might have been floating. She might have been falling. Brinkley stopped outside the dining room. The door was propped open. Rustles, murmurs, creaks came from inside. She entered silently behind the rows of chairs. So many chairs. So many people. So many pairs of eyes that would fix upon her. She hesitated. No one had heard her enter. She could turn and run.

  She walked forward. Two girls flanked the aisle that ran through the center of those chairs, each holding a candle. She nodded, and the girls turned and preceded her up the aisle
, marching with their candles held aloft. She walked behind—slow, she told herself, stately—and whispers rose as people shifted in their chairs to watch her pass by. The room was pitch-black, no light save for those two slender flames. Again and again those flames caught the wet gleam of eager eyes. Her legs felt weak.

  She knew the shadowy structure up ahead was defined by a dozen suspended rugs. They formed a tent enclosing the table, no the catafalque, at the front of the room. A makeshift spirit cabinet. The girls reached the tent and pulled open the flaps. An eight-branched candelabrum stood on the draped table, throwing shadows. She climbed onto the table and lay down on her back. Even draped, the table felt unyielding. Her tailbone ground against it, her shoulder blades, the back of her skull. She tucked in her chin and folded her arms across her chest. Entombment is different than sleep. The final bed is not soft. It had been her idea to begin like this, to assume the posture of death, but as the girls dropped the flaps, every particle of her being protested. She didn’t want to be interred, closed away, divided from the hopes and cares of ordinary men and women. Even though it wasn’t real, she wanted to sit up, to push her way out.

  Alfred is here. The thought made her blood congeal. Her veins turned to wires, tightening around her arms and neck. If he were in London, if he’d heard of the gathering, if his curiosity was piqued … why wouldn’t he come? Doors opened to Baron Arlington. He’s here. He’s sitting in the dark. He will see me.

  Suddenly, leaving the tent seemed as impossible as remaining inside. She would step out holding the candelabrum, and Alfred would send up a cry. Thief! Madwoman! Savage!

  She breathed a deep breath to calm herself, but the thick smell of smoke and wax made her cough. She covered her mouth with her hand, lest the sputtering be heard. She felt as though the world were tipping over; she was going to slide off the table. She tried to find a focal point in the dim, swimming light. She couldn’t make out the patterns of the rugs, only glimpses of color as the shadows moved: indigo, periwinkle, rose, green. She heard one of the girls call out.