Night Falls Darkly

by LENOX, KIM

  Elena smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I grew up elsewhere and only arrived in London—well, not so very long ago. Since then, I’ve resided at only one address, outside of Whitechapel.”

  A simple explanation for a complicated span of months.

  “Odd. I could swear you were the girl, one and the same.” Mrs. Eddowes scrutinized her face. “I remember those eyes. One brown and one blue. So different. I’d never seen anything like them before.”

  Elena’s smile faded. She’d never met anyone else with eyes like hers either.

  But Mrs. Eddowes had to be mistaken. Elena had grown up on the Ivory Coast with her widower father, a missionary physician. She had traveled to London only after his death to live under Lord Black’s guardianship.

  Not that she remembered any of that firsthand, of course—not since the carriage accident that had cruelly stolen her memories. She simply knew them to be true because . . .

  Lord Black had told her so in his letter.

  Archer crossed the narrow gangplank. Water, black and fetid, slapped against the embankment below, a reflection of his dark mood. Behind him, a dense wall of storm, tangled up with the night, bore down upon the Thames, moments from engulfing the city.

  Impatience left him ill-tempered. Another Reclaimer’s incompetence had forced his premature return to England, when he ought to be on the far side of the earth bringing his own assignment to a successful end.

  His dark-skinned captain stood beside the custom-house officer, the Corinthian’s leather-bound logbook in his hand. “I shall await word at Tilbury, my lord.”

  “Two to three days, Charon. A week at the most.”

  He stepped down, onto the dock. A discarded newspaper rolled toward him and wedged against the narrow toe of his boot. Its headline read, THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS. The first few drops struck the cobblestones and dampened the shoulders of his greatcoat. Archer closed his eyes and breathed in the amalgam of scents from the city. Too dirty. Too complex. Rain would cleanse the air and quicken the hunt.

  The other members of his party waited off to the side, amidst twining strands of fog: his secretary, Mr. Leeson, and Selene, with her raven’s-wing hair rippling over her shoulders. Their umbrellas spread above them like large, black toadstools.

  His town coach rolled into view, its silver, artisan-hewn harnesses boasting four black, perfectly matched Hanoverian geldings. Powerful muscles bunched beneath their gleaming coats. A footman leapt down to open the door. Leeson marched forward, his eye patch a dark spot against his skin. His arm extended toward the vehicle, an invitation for Archer to proceed.

  Lord Black, he bellowed in silence, in a tongue so ancient that even if overheard, no one but Archer would understand. Welcome home to England.

  Chapter Two

  Rain drove against Elena’s third-floor windows in pulsating waves. Although a chill hovered in the dark corners of the room, Mary Alice had lit a warming blaze. Elena thought wistfully of Lizzy and Mrs. Eddowes. It didn’t seem fair she was here, not only safe and warm, but surrounded by sumptuous comfort, while they spent another night in the worst of human conditions. At least she could feel better knowing they wouldn’t be on the street tonight, not with the money she had given them.

  On any other night at Black House, she’d just be settling in to indulge in the stacks of medical and physiology texts, on generous loan from Dr. Harcourt’s personal library, scattered about her room. Yet to her surprise she truly looked forward to an evening out. Perhaps she had allowed the afternoon’s frightening episode outside the hospital to affect her mood too greatly, for she really didn’t wish to be alone tonight.

  She seated herself on the upholstered bench in front of her dressing table. She wanted to wear her locket, but couldn’t see jabbing its rusted pin through the lovely peacock blue silk of her gown. The round front plate had been dented in the accident, but the delicately etched piece remained her most treasured possession. While she had no memories to confirm the belief, she suspected the locket had once belonged to her mother.

  Mrs. Hazelgreaves, the society matron retained by Lord Black’s solicitors to act as her companion, had explained to her that nearly everything else had been stolen by ruthless street thieves in the moments after the omnibus crashed into her hired hansom. The accident had occurred as she’d been traveling to Black House from St. Katharine’s Pier, where her steamship from Africa had docked.

  She opened the locket’s tiny metal clasp and peered into the eyes of the man memorialized inside in ambrotype: Dr. Phillip Whitney.

  “Wish me luck tonight, Father.”

  Odd, how the face of a veritable stranger could give her such reassurance. She missed him terribly—even though she couldn’t recall what, exactly, she missed about him. There were odd chunks of memory . . . impersonal things such as a knowledge of medicine, languages and music, but as of yet, her mind refused to recall the more personal details of her life.

  Dr. Harcourt assured her that one day soon her remaining memories would return in a blazing rush of color and detail. She clung to the hope, but as of yet that hadn’t occurred. Her work at the hospital had provided a very welcome distraction, and she looked forward to the exciting months ahead when she would begin her more intensive training at medical school.

  Elena slipped the locket into its faded velvet pouch and placed the small bundle in the drawer of her dressing table. There, her glance touched upon the letter—the only letter she’d received from the Marquess Black in all these months. She ran her fingertips over her name, Miss Elena Whitney, written in his dark, precise script. The envelope was stamped Cairo, and dated a full fifteen months before.

  Not a single portrait of her guardian hung upon Black House’s walls. Mrs. Hazelgreaves assured her most Mayfair families kept family portraits in their country homes. Unfortunately, when she tried to picture him in her mind, her subconscious inevitably substituted the same image she saw in the locket—that of her father. Without any true remembrances of either man, her mind continually attempted to merge them into one. Partly out of respect for her father, she wished with a burning fervency that Lord Black would return to England and provide her with a clearer definition of himself.

  She had written letters to him, and even dispatched telegraphs, hoping additional details about her circumstances might trigger something within her. But between St. Petersburg and Burma and the other foreign locales, her communications had apparently never reached him. Eventually she’d given up trying, and approached Harcourt about a position at the hospital. There came a time when one must carry on.

  A knock sounded on her door.

  “Yes?” she called.

  “Mrs. Hazelgreaves asks that you meet her downstairs, miss.”

  “Thank you, Mary Alice. I’ll be right there.”

  The clock on the mantel chimed a quarter to ten. She took one final look into her gilt-edged mirror. Two different colored eyes peered back at her. In June, as she’d stood in St. James’s Palace in her elaborate court dress, waiting with forty-some other young women to be presented to Prince Albert Edward and Princess Alexandra, she’d overheard a whispering matron describe her eyes as “peculiar.” Her tittering companion had agreed, adding the descriptor “unnerving.” Elena had to admit that, despite her “peculiar” and “unnerving” eyes, she felt rather pleased with her appearance tonight. With a hot curling iron and a handful of pins, Mary Alice had transformed her mane of streaky-blond hair into an elegant coiffure.

  As Mrs. Hazelgreaves had declared, peacock blue just might be her color.

  Gathering up her black lace shawl from the settee’s rounded bolster, Elena left her room. Gilt wall sconces in the shape of upturned acanthus leaves lit the narrow hallway. Though the manse boasted thirteen private bedchambers, only two of them were presently in use. Until recently, Mrs. Hazelgreaves had occupied the room beside hers, but upon September’s arrival she had pronounced the chambers drafty, cold and “an affront to an old woman’s rheumatism,” and
had ordered her belongings moved to a set of rooms at the far end of the hall.

  As she passed the pillared doorway of the master suite, she paused. The door was open. Other than the rooms utilized by herself and Mrs. Hazelgreaves, the rest of the manse lay shrouded in dust cloths, except during routine cleanings by the skeleton staff employed in his lordship’s absence. Inside, two housemaids pulled dust cloths from the furniture. The scent of lemon oil emanated outward. Elena stole a glimpse of the cavernous room, filled with hulking, dark furniture, and continued on.

  At the center of the house she descended the staircase, a massive marble structure that twisted up from the earth like a gleaming black leviathan. A flash of lightning illuminated the shadows through the domed skylight above. Reaching the ground floor, she looked about, but Mrs. Hazelgreaves was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the chamberlain, Mr. Jarvis. Indeed, the hall lay shrouded in darkness as if the staff and the house had long ago been put to bed. Only a pair of small lamps, at either side of the wooden doors, lit the cavernous hall. She hoped Mr. Jarvis hadn’t forgotten they were going out tonight. She walked to the bay window and pushed the curtain aside to see if, by chance, the carriage might have already come around from the mews. The long, circular drive extended toward the street, empty and wet.

  Odd, but the high iron gates were open. Usually the staff kept them fastidiously locked.

  A cool draft permeated the panes and sent chill bumps over her skin. She drew away, intending to summon Mr. Jarvis with a ring of the table bell, but a glimmer of light caught her eye. A narrow shaft speared out from an antechamber that preceded the study. The room had never been in use since she’d lived at Black House. Indeed, she had never seen the interior because the door had always been locked. Perhaps she would find Mr. Jarvis or even the hall porter therein. She crossed the anteroom, careful not to bump into any of the darkly upholstered furniture. . . .

  Furniture normally covered in ivory linen.

  She knocked. “Mr. Jarvis?”

  No answer. She pushed the door a bit, just enough to see inside.

  On the far side of the room blazed an immense and intricately tiled fireplace, tall enough for a man to walk through without bumping his head. The fire’s warmth touched her face. There were trunks and cases everywhere, some of them open, some still bound with leather straps. A soft shuffling of papers sounded from within. Her heartbeat quickened.

  A traveler had come home.

  A large potted palm obscured her view of the desk. She ventured inside. True to her prediction, a man sat at the desk.

  Lord Black.

  She clasped trembling hands together. He was everything she’d hoped he would be, and blessedly, very different from the picture of her father. Elegant, mustachioed and gray, he pored over a ledger with a frown of concentration and a critical eye. Yes—an eye—for the other was covered by a black patch! Fascinating. She could not wait to hear the story of how he’d lost it—perhaps to Bahamian pirates or a tribe of unruly natives.

  For eighteen long months, she’d waited for this moment. Finally, her curiosity would be satisfied. Finally, her questions would be answered. She took a deep breath and approached.

  “Lord Black?”

  He did not move. He merely continued to ponder the documents. He even took up a pen to scribble a quick notation. Could it be that her guardian was hard of hearing? She searched the desktop for an ear trumpet, but saw nothing of the sort.

  “Lord Black,” she said a bit louder.

  This time, the man looked up. A perceptive, intelligent eye perused her up and down. He smiled.

  “Your lordship.” She smiled warmly and sank into a curtsy. “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to finally make your acquaintance.”

  He continued to smile.

  Thunder boomed above, and wind rattled the expanse of windows that formed the far wall of the room. After a rather extended period of smiling and staring, Elena began to feel altogether foolish.

  “Lord Black, I—”

  “He is not Lord Black,” a man’s voice announced from behind her, so low and smooth that the words brushed against her skin like a lover’s breath.

  The older gentleman’s amused gaze rose up to a space above and beyond where she stood.

  Elena turned. Her eyes widened.

  Flickering lamplight revealed the outline of a man standing in a small alcove off the study. A tall, naked man, save for the narrow swath of linen he clasped against a tightly corded hip. His skin glistened damp and golden, except for the defining shadows that clung to each tautened sinew. Behind him sat an enameled hip tub.

  A sudden vision assailed her, that of a dark angel poised for terrible violence. The image disappeared from her mind, forgotten as quickly as it had appeared.

  “I am Archer, Lord Black.”

  If she had been drinking tea with Her Majesty the Queen at that very moment, she would have spewed a mouthful across the carpet.

  “Oh . . . indeed?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Welcome home, your lordship.”

  “Thank you.” He leaned against the door frame, a move that brought him into the light. Humor lit eyes that she suspected might, under other circumstances, appear a cool and distancing gray.

  Mortified, Elena found herself pinned to the spot. He, on the other hand, did not appear the least bit mortified. The barest hint of a smile teased the corner of his sensuous lips.

  From what she had been told, her guardian claimed no direct heirs. Surely she would have received a letter, or some sort of formal notification if her Lord Black had perished in his travels during the past year and left his title and estates to a distant and younger relative. Yet how could this be her Lord Black?

  “You are not at all what I expected,” she managed to say.

  “What did you expect?” Dark hair was slicked away from his face, emphasizing the masculine slant of his cheekbones. Though she could not perceive its exact length, it appeared unfashionably, and intriguingly long.

  “I—ah, had assumed you would be much older.”

  “Oh, yes?” A narrow stream of water glimmered upon his skin, drawing her eye as it descended in a slow, teasing path down his neck, collarbone and chest.

  “And I did not expect you to be so . . .”

  She couldn’t stop herself. Her gaze drifted even lower, down the lean and well-defined length of his body.

  “Naked?” Smoky eyes contemplated her with such intensity, she felt as naked as he.

  “That too,” she whispered, dry of mouth.

  Heat swirled up from the pit of her belly, and curled in delightful tendrils through her entire body. She felt the urge to fan herself with her hands, or better yet, to run out into the rain to allow the downpour to cool her skin, peacock blue silk be damned.

  Instead, she tore her gaze away. “I am truly sorry. If I had known you were here, I wouldn’t have imposed.”

  “I thought that was precisely why you imposed. Because you knew I was here.”

  Again, their eyes met. “Yes, but only when I saw you . . . I mean him, there, at the desk. With his clothes on.”

  Their conversation, while riveting, grew more absurd with each passing moment, but she had a thousand questions to ask him. Already her mind placed each one in queue, the first being how he had known her father.

  The slightest shift in stance, and the muscles of his abdomen flexed. “I’m afraid I neglected to telegraph ahead, so my traveling party and I have caught the staff completely unawares. Chambers are only now being prepared, yet I’ve somewhere to be tonight and didn’t wish to go smelling like the Thames.”

  Elena nodded. “I should go.” An understatement, to be sure. “We can talk when you are not—”

  “Otherwise occupied?” a woman’s voice interrupted.

  Elena twisted toward the sound. An elegant brunette in a rich, garnet-colored gown stood in the doorway, framed by shadow. She stared at Elena with mocking, catlike eyes.

  The blood drained fro
m Elena’s face, and the thrill of meeting her guardian summarily evaporated.

  “Archer,” the woman said, “perhaps you should introduce us?”

  Her words carried a slight, but noticeable accent, one of Mediterranean origin if Elena were to venture a guess.

  Lord Black’s expression transformed into a scowl, and he strode toward one of the open trunks, leaving a trail of damp footprints on the carpet. In an illhumored tone, he muttered, “Introduce yourself, why don’t you?”

  Archer snatched up a precisely folded shirt from the collection of others within the trunk and shook out the creases. He had not remembered Elena to be so intriguingly lovely. That night—a mere blink in time ago for one of his immortal existence—she had been pale with terror, bruised and thin, nearly unrecognizable from the young woman who now stood at the center of his study, her face aglow with vivacity, and her platinum-streaked hair twisted into a glossy mass of curls.

  He had known many beautiful women. There was something different about Elena. Something warm and luscious and intoxicating that radiated from her person, from her very soul, that captured and held his attention. The same elusive “something different” he had sensed on the roof that night, and forced himself to forget.

  “Lady Black—” She smiled, too brightly.

  Archer clenched his eyes shut. What an altogether unfortunate assumption, one that he knew would feed Selene’s vanity immensely. His ward continued on with her misguided greeting.

  “Welcome home. I must apologize for this intrusion on your collective privacy. I had not realized—”

  One of Selene’s silky dark brows arched up. “Don’t apologize to me.”

  “Pardon?” Elena’s cheeks flushed.

  An irrational urge to touch her luminous skin, to soothe the heat away, seized him with unexpected force.

  “She’s not Lady Black,” he interjected.

  Selene’s gaze shifted possessively toward him. “He’s a tad stubborn that way.”

  The older man at the desk chuckled. Suddenly the whole exchange took on a tawdry hue. He could only imagine the sordid conclusions Elena must be drawing.