Lessons After Dark

by Isabel Cooper

  “What did?” Olivia asked, not knowing whether he meant the drawing room or Englefield as a whole. She wasn’t sure she cared. The tension in his long, lean frame was obvious. Observing it was sending waves of desire through her body. If conversation would help, she’d grasp whatever she could of it.

  “I had questions,” he said and cleared his throat. “About the forest.”

  “Did you?” It would be sensible to look away, back at the piano or over at the door or anywhere besides Gareth’s face.

  That would also be backing down. Running away. He could avert his eyes, if he wanted to. He didn’t.

  “Yes,” Gareth said and swallowed. “Questions about danger. About the…origins of the place. About many things.”

  Olivia lifted her eyebrows. “If I thought we needed to do anything about it, or could, just now,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady and ignore the curve of his mouth, “I would’ve said so. And I don’t know. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Yes,” said Gareth again. He reached for her a second time. This time his fingers skimmed the line of Olivia’s throat, tracing a band of fire from behind her ear to just above her collar. She caught her breath. “I realized that a moment or two ago.”

  “Only then?” Olivia moistened her lips. “Pity. You could’ve saved a trip.”

  The hand on her neck moved lower, down over her shoulder, fingers caressing her skin through the thin cloth. “I should agree with you there,” said Gareth. Somehow he’d settled himself beside her on the bench. There was really no mystery to it. “But oddly enough, I can’t regret my presence here just now.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said Olivia. Then Gareth’s wandering hand found the upper slopes of her breasts. She had to close her eyes for a moment, and she shifted her weight in a vain attempt to ease the pulsing ache between her legs.

  “Of course,” Gareth continued, leaning forward now and sliding his other arm around her waist, “if I’m intruding, or unwelcome…”

  There was a little too much triumph in his voice for Olivia to ignore, even half dizzy from lust. She opened her eyes, steadied herself as best she could, and shook her head.

  “No,” she said, “you’re not intruding at all.” She reached out her hand, settled it on his leg just above his knee, and then stroked upward. Gareth’s breath went out in a rush, and he held very still.

  She’d surprised him, then. Among other things. Olivia couldn’t resist smiling, but she couldn’t stay smug for very long either. The emotion drowned in sensation, heat and rigid muscle beneath her hand with only a layer of cloth between her skin and Gareth’s, and a look on his face of barely restrained hunger. Without thinking, she leaned toward him, into his touch, and liquid heat spread through her.

  It seemed she couldn’t tease him without tormenting herself as well. Perhaps she should have regretted that. She didn’t.

  Breathing again, though somewhat raggedly, Gareth drew his hand away from her breasts and back up toward her collar. Olivia bit her lip. She would not protest, she told herself, and she certainly wouldn’t let herself make any disappointed noises.

  “This is probably very unwise,” said Gareth, his breath hot against her ear. “You do know that.”

  His fingers unfastened the button at her collar.

  “As well as you do, I’d imagine,” Olivia managed. “And yet here we are.” She let her hand glide farther upward, though not inward. Not yet. She brought her fingers to a rest just below his waist, looked into his eyes, and smiled. “Fancy that.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her then, his mouth quick and seeking. Olivia wound her free arm around his neck and pulled him toward her, seeking the friction and the heat she remembered…and then the piano keys clanged dissonantly as her back hit them.

  They sat forward quickly, but they were laughing as they broke the kiss. Gareth hadn’t taken his hands away from Olivia’s shirtfront, and one of her hands was still at his hip, the other grasping his shoulder. A month ago, they’d have broken off for much less interruption.

  Now he was undoing her second button.

  She felt she should reciprocate—she rather wanted to reciprocate—and she was trailing her free hand down Gareth’s chest, feeling his firm body beneath the irksome layers of shirt and waistcoat, when she felt air hit her bare skin. Gareth had managed a third button. Now the opening of her shirtwaist was large enough for his hand to slip through.

  He brushed his fingertips against Olivia’s breasts, and this time she couldn’t help moaning, just a little. Gareth swallowed hard when he heard the sound. The response clearly wasn’t one-sided.

  Even so, Olivia made herself speak. “There are. Umm—” Gareth dipped his fingers beneath the edge of her corset, and she briefly forgot what the next word was going to be. “Better places.”

  “Probably.” Gareth muttered. He brushed his fingers over one hard nipple, and Olivia arched helplessly into his touch, not caring where they were or what he was saying as long as he didn’t take his hand away. He didn’t, but he did pause, wretched man, and looked at her with half-lidded eyes just long enough for her to regain a little coherence before he said, “If you’d like to cry off now…”

  In answer, she lowered her hand and traced her fingertips over the hard ridge that strained at the front of his trousers. The organ in question leapt at her touch, and Gareth made a thoroughly satisfying noise in his throat. So she did it again, lightly at first and then more firmly, finally cupping her hand over his erection and stroking the length of it through the fabric.

  Some years had passed since Olivia had touched a man, so she was aware, briefly, of a hint of uncertainty she’d never have admitted to Gareth. His response banished it both quickly and thoroughly in any case. He gasped and thrust himself against her palm, and the hand on her breast tightened most enjoyably.

  “God,” he said, a quick hoarse whisper, and caught at her fingers, though he showed no inclination to remove her hand from its current location. “You can’t…I won’t…I need…”

  Olivia would have laughed, but in all honesty, she didn’t think she could have managed to be any more coherent just then. His meaning was clear enough, and she squirmed just thinking about what was to follow.

  “The couch,” she said. Desperate or not, she had no wish to be taken on a piano bench or the floor.

  They rose in the same moment. Gareth put a hand on the small of Olivia’s back, as if to guide her, and while she needed no such urging, she welcomed the contact. It took the better part of her self-control to walk instead of sprinting.

  Then midway across the room, Gareth stopped. Olivia turned to look at him, puzzled and halfway bracing herself for another chilling comment…

  But the look on his face wasn’t sardonic. It had nothing to do with arousal either. He looked like a man who’d taken a blow to the head.

  Olivia took hold of his shoulder to steady him now rather than to inflame. She would have plenty of time to be frustrated later. For the moment, she shoved desire to the back of her mind. “Gareth?”

  “Something’s wrong,” he said, putting a hand to his temple. “Something close. Don’t ask how I know, but…”

  There was a loud crash from somewhere nearby. Then someone screamed.

  Chapter 26

  For the second time, Gareth hurried from the drawing room to meet some form of disaster. He had no idea what he’d find this time, but it would likely be worse than Miss Donnell’s power. The disturbance throbbed sickly in his head like a rotten tooth: not simply pain, but a feeling of…wrongness. Something was twisting. Something had broken or was breaking.

  He managed to walk. He even managed to walk quickly and to focus on the hallway in front of him.

  “Can you tell where?” Olivia asked from beside him.

  Gareth shifted his focus, the way he did when he prepared to heal, and then winced. The disturbance was much stronger to his left, and much more painful to examine on the spiritual plane. “Ballroom,” he said
between gritted teeth. “That direction.”

  “All right.”

  Olivia said another of those twisty, more-foreign-than-foreign words, and the hand on his shoulder suddenly felt cool, even through the fabric of Gareth’s shirt. The pain and the twisting feeling didn’t vanish, but they retreated.

  That was good enough for him.

  As they turned into the corridor that would lead to the ballroom, another scream split the air. Female, Gareth thought with the detachment that had let him calmly ask for sutures and make diagnoses in the midst of blood and sand. Terror, at the moment. Not pain. That was good. That was something, at any rate.

  Nevertheless, he dashed the last few yards, not caring how much his leg would make him pay for it later. He was half-conscious of Olivia at his side, holding her skirts out of the way, and the thought crossed his mind that he should be doing something to protect her.

  Then they stepped through the ballroom door, and the notion seemed absurd.

  Disconnected images flicked before Gareth’s eyes. Violet, screaming, huddled against the wall with the ruins of a tea tray on the floor in front of her and her hands held out in a vain gesture of aversion. Fitzpatrick and Waite stood in the center of the room on opposite sides of a circle whose chalked symbols were glowing a lurid red. In the center…

  In the center was a shape as high as a man that glowed the same bright red as the symbols. Some veil yet lay over it, or perhaps it wasn’t fully formed yet. Gareth couldn’t make out details, but he saw enough.

  The thing in the circle was not human. From the neck down, it might have been. The proportions of its limbs and torso were slightly off, in a way Gareth couldn’t quite understand, but it might have been a deformed man below the neck.

  But it had three heads, and only one of them looked anything like a human head. The others were horned. All three had red eyes.

  Now he heard a humming in the room, not quite like the sound bees or flies would make. More unified. Less animal. Less natural, or less natural to the world Gareth knew. It blended with Violet’s screaming, making a sick counterpoint, and the feeling in Gareth’s head twisted again.

  Spirits and demons, Olivia had mentioned in the forest. Archangels and gods. The thing in the circle looked like no angel Gareth had ever heard of, but…

  He would have sworn, but he didn’t know what the words would do.

  “Everyone hold still,” Olivia snapped in a voice miles away from its normal silky quietness. There was ice and iron about it now. “And keep quiet.”

  Violet shut her mouth then clapped a hand over it to be sure. It would have been funny at any other time. The humming kept up, though. It might even have been a little louder.

  Olivia turned to the maid. “Get me a candle and matches, some salt, and something silver. Anything. Run.” As Violet scrambled to her feet, Olivia turned toward the circle.

  Gareth took a step toward her then caught himself. She knew what she was doing, and he had only the vaguest idea what was happening here at all. Anything he could do would only make matters worse. He knew that, and yet it was almost physically painful to stand and watch as Olivia stepped closer and closer to the circle and to the thing that was coming through it.

  The veil was a little lighter now. Gareth could see one of the non-human heads was that of a bull, the other that of a ram. All three had fangs.

  Halfway between Waite and Fitzpatrick, Olivia stopped. The shape towered over her. It was taller than any man now. Shadows flickered and danced in the red light of its body. Olivia held up one hand.

  A word poured out of her mouth, twisting and sinuous, and Gareth saw her free hand clench at her side as she spoke it. The shape spun toward her then, and sullen light flared out around it.

  “O thou spirit,” she said, and now her voice filled the room. “Thou hast diligently answered unto all commands. Now I do here license and abjure thee to depart. Go now unto thy proper place—”

  All three heads opened their mouths and roared. Gareth felt heat brush past his face, and the stench of sulfur was very strong.

  “Unto thy proper place,” Olivia continued, her body rigid against the onslaught, “without causing harm or danger unto man or beast. Let the peace of the greater order and the powers that serve it be upon thee, insofar as thou may receive such blessings, and let there be no debt or enmity between thee and me. Depart then, I say, in the name of—”

  More words. Gareth could understand none of them, but they seemed to strike the thing in the circle like darts, and then like arrows. It writhed and snarled, twisting its form around. For a moment, it rose up almost to the ceiling.

  And then it shrank down, man-height again, and smaller, and smaller still. The veil fell back over it, making it a shape and then a shimmer of red light. Gareth saw a shadow stretch out from behind it. It might have been a part of the demon, but it didn’t look quite connected. A tail? Another arm? A tentacle? Then again, he could barely see straight.

  The twisting in Gareth’s head lightened and began to make sense at the same time, as if he’d pulled back far enough to see a picture rather than splotches of paint. Now he saw the hole in the world the thing had come through, saw it the way he saw wounds and illnesses in the human body. It was closing even as the thing retreated, knitting up behind it with remarkable ease.

  Smaller. The shape Gareth had seen was gone now. Perhaps it had never been there in the first place.

  Smaller.

  Gone.

  Violet came dashing back in, breathless, with a candle, a shaker of salt, and a silver fork, all nearly falling from her hand. “Ma’am…I…”

  “It’s all right,” said Olivia, stepping back from the circle. She was breathing heavily, and her forehead was wet. “It turns out they weren’t necessary. Thank you.”

  “You should sit down for a little while,” Gareth said. This, in any case, was something he could handle. “Have some tea, yourself, and a little brandy in it. You’ve had a nasty shock.” He looked at the girl, who was white and wide-eyed but didn’t seem in any danger of fainting. “I’ll walk you back to the kitchen, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” said Violet, shaking her head. She eyed Gareth and Olivia with much-warier respect than Gareth had ever seen on her face. “I mean, no, thank you. Thank you. I’ll be going now.”

  In her haste to leave the room, she forgot to curtsy.

  Watching her go, Gareth wondered if he’d actually done anything to frighten the girl. The pain in his head might well have found expression on his face, but perhaps it was enough that he’d come in with Olivia. Perhaps it was enough that they were connected to the thing in the circle, if only by dealing with it. Violet wouldn’t have been the first to make such an association.

  He glanced back to Olivia, several questions on his mind, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was studying the no-longer-glowing chalk circle instead, a detached and somewhat scholarly expression on her face.

  The door clicked closed behind Violet. Olivia looked up, not at Gareth but at Waite and Fitzpatrick, still standing rather dazed on each side of the circle.

  There was nothing detached in her expression now.

  ***

  “Balam.” Olivia folded her arms across her chest and looked from William to Arthur. “An interesting choice. Were the two of you after invisibility or prophecy? I couldn’t let myself hope for wit, however clearly you need it.”

  The room filled up with silence for a minute. Olivia didn’t let it last any longer. If she didn’t keep talking, she thought she’d start shaking, either with fear or anger. “Mr. Waite,” she said, “I was not talking to hear my own voice. What were the two of you seeking?”

  He met her eyes, but his face was flaming. “Invisibility, ma’am,” he said. No muttering either. Someone had taught the boy manners at one time. “Thought it’d be a lark.”

  “Of course you did,” Olivia said. She turned to look at William, who was staring off ahead of him. “Calling up dark powers is precisely
the way to amuse yourself on a dull afternoon. I’m surprised it’s not in the Boy’s Own Paper.”

  From behind her, Gareth made a noise suspiciously like a stifled laugh. Olivia ignored him. Best not to think about either his presence or what the summoning had interrupted. Thank God she’d managed to button her shirtwaist on the way.

  “Can either of you,” she asked, “give an account of this matter that involves anything but complete and utter stupidity? Mr. Fitzpatrick?” William began muttering at his shoes. “So we can all hear you, please?”

  He jerked his chin up. “They’re not really demons. Not really. Summoning them doesn’t make you bad. Mr. Grenville said so, and so did you.”

  Olivia closed her eyes for a second. She was going to have a world-beating headache when all of this was over, she knew. “Yes,” she said, putting every ounce of patience she possessed into her voice. There wasn’t much. “That’s true. I did say that, unlike the case with other beings, it was possible to deal with the Ancient Lords and retain both your mind and your soul. Possible. Did I, at any point, say it was safe?”

  “No, ma’am,” Fitzpatrick admitted.

  “Did Mr. Grenville?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I can’t speak for Mr. Grenville, but I seem to remember saying exactly the opposite. In case I was mistaken about your presence at the time, let me make myself clear now.” Olivia took a deep breath. “The Ancient Lords have no love for humanity. They respect power and will. They have no mercy for inexperience or weakness. They will trick you if they can. They will kill you if they can. They’ve done both to older and wiser men than you. Am I clear, Mr. Waite?”

  He swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You do not call them up for a good time, for idle curiosity, or for anything less than dire need. Especially not here.”

  “Here?” Fitzpatrick asked.

  “You’ve heard about Michael. This place is…different. I don’t suppose you thought about that either.”