A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (Dark Matters)

by Claire Robyns

  “Wait here,” he called up to Neco, reasonably sure gentlemen did not pay house calls with their manservant in tow.

  The door to number twenty-six was opened by a reed-thin man of middle to late years. Greyston handed over one of the fancy calling cards he’d recently acquired and was immediately admitted into a narrow foyer.

  “Please excuse me, Lord Adair,” the butler said, “I will see if anyone is available to receive you.”

  Greyston didn’t wait for permission to remove his hat and shrug out of his light wool coat. He hadn’t come this far to be thwarted by a little matter of unavailability. In any event, the butler returned shortly to see him into the drawing room. The room was a clutter of delicate Rococo wing back chairs, frail settees upholstered in flowery pastels and walnut side tables with fluted legs. The mantelpiece top was lined with a collection of silver, glasswork art and porcelain frames. Curious, Greyston walked over and stooped to look closer at the miniature portraits set inside the frames.

  Beatrice Ardington was easily recognisable, although the woman had traded an almost pretty smile for an extra chin since the watercolour had been painted. Next was the usual cherub face of a baby girl who could have been anyone, then a portrait of Lady Lily that must have been done quite recently. The artist had been generous, giving her hazel eyes a spark of fire and adding a stubborn tilt to her chin, capturing a presence of spirit the real article clearly lacked. Lady Lily was pleasant enough to look upon with her neat features and slender figure, but the face in the portrait projected beyond physical beauty. The slanted eyes promised wicked pleasures and the curve of full lips tempted thoughts of slow kisses. The determination set in her jaw challenged the whole damn world.

  He moved onto a second portrait of Lady Lily and immediately saw his mistake. This Lady Lily’s cheeks were slightly broader, the eyes wider and less slanted, the lashes thicker and darker, lips thinned over a placid smile, her throat longer, the shape of her shoulders slimmer. His gaze shifted to the other portrait. He’d only snatched a glimpse of her mother all those years ago, but the essence of the lady throwing open the carriage door and alighting before the footman had even hopped down from his platform at the rear, the tilt of her head as she’d marched across the stone courtyard, was there in every stroke of the artist’s brush.

  A blur in the gilded mirror above the mantelpiece caught his attention.

  “We’ll take a tray of tea, thank you, Halver.”

  Greyston straightened and turned to see the butler, Halver, closing the door behind Lady Lily.

  “Lord Adair,” she greeted, picking at an errant drape on her dress, a darker shade of green to the one she’d worn last night, as she walked deeper into the room. Her hair, a rich, chocolate brown, was pulled back into a complicated knot involving pearl hairpins and curls escaping at her nape. “What an unexpected…delight.”

  “Not inconvenient, I hope?”

  Her smile was polite and no more. “Please, do be seated.”

  He glanced at the closed door. “We are alone?”

  “You’ve just missed my aunt.”

  He deliberated between a look of surprise and disappointment. Since he was neither, he went with a simple shrug. “Perhaps you should call for your celludrone to act as chaperone. You do have one? I’m sure I’ve heard mention of it, a female companion or lady’s maid of some sort?”

  Her eyes widened. “Why, my lord, are you afraid I’ll compromise you?”

  Now that she mentioned it…but no, her cheeks were devoid of blushes and she wasn’t bumbling about with out of turn curtseying. There was also no hint of humour in her smile. His roguish behaviour last night had done its job.

  “For the sake of propriety,” he insisted.

  “Celludrones are not considered adequate chaperones.”

  “Given our limited options, the celludrone will do.”

  “There is a third option, my lord.” Her brow notched high.

  “I could simply leave,” he interpreted. So, there was more to the lady than the timid town mouse who hid behind the pot plants at balls. “Aren’t you interested in the reason behind my visit?”

  “I’m very interested. If you’re offering explanations, my lord.” She moved to a settee and sat down. “Why not start with what you were doing watching my home yesterday morning? From there, we can go on to why you followed me to Lady Cheshire’s ballroom.”

  Greyston lost his mental footing for a moment. He was spared by the door opening. It was Halver with the tea, delicate china tinkling as the man pushed the trolley over the lip of the rug. A silver stack held plates of marzipan cakes, finger sandwiches and scones. Not a measure of whiskey, brandy or anything tolerable in sight.

  Greyston’s fingers went to his throat, tugging on his neck cloth for an inch of extra air. Lady Lily wasn’t nearly as vapid as he’d assumed. Damn it all, his razor sharp intuition was as off-kilter in society ballrooms and drawing rooms as the rest of him was.

  After dismissing Halver with instructions to send for Ana, whom he presumed to be the celludrone, Lady Lily busied herself pouring the tea. “One lump or two?”

  Greyston had no idea. “Two?” he guessed.

  She smiled that polite smile again.

  For the first time, he wondered what hid beneath. He took the cup and saucer she offered and placed it on a side table. “Is this your mother?” he asked, crossing to the mantelpiece.

  “Yes.” Her frown lingered on the miniature he pointed at. “What do you want from me, Lord Adair?”

  He delivered the blatant lie without a blink of conscience. “I knew Lady d’Bulier.”

  “I see.” Her cup rattled in its saucer for a few seconds before she set both on the trolley and folded her hands in her lap. The frown cleared from her brow. “I imagine my mother had many acquaintances. She was well received in society.”

  “What do you know of her death?”

  “I was fourteen, Lord Adair,” she said, her voice hardening. “Old enough to remember every detail.”

  “Shortly after your fifteenth birthday, you mean.”

  “It was approximately six months before my fifteenth birthday,” she corrected.

  “Impossible.” Was she deliberately misleading him? Reading people had kept him alive these last six years, but he’d already misjudged her at least once today.

  “Are you implying I’m too muddled in the head to recall my age?”

  “I’m saying you may have suffered some distress at the time.”

  “May have? As opposed to what? Giggling with delight when my aunt arrived at my doorstep with the tragic news?”

  “You are being purposely obtuse.” He rubbed at his jaw irritably. “I’m merely suggesting grief can bring about periods of confusion, that it is not unusual for one to lose days, weeks, even months.”

  “You know nothing about me, and certainly not enough to pass judgement on my state of mind, then or now.” She shot to her feet. “I’ve allowed you into my home. I’ve tolerated your impertinent and personal questioning.” Her hands went to her hips, then dropped limply to her sides. Her gaze, however, was as haughty as her tone. “Please leave, or I’ll have you thrown out.”

  A half grin snuck out despite his effort to keep a neutral expression. He’d finally fractured her composure and that beanstalk of a butler was no match for him. “Don’t you want to know how your mother died?”

  “A gas explosion.”

  “Why she died?”

  “An accident. Apparently Castle Cragloden had gas piped through all the chambers for heat and lighting. My mother was a victim of circumstance; wrong time, wrong place.”

  “What she was doing at Castle Cragloden that night?” he persisted.

  “A weekend hunting party.” She blew out an exasperated sigh. “Now will you leave?”

  “Cragloden sits on the Firth of Tay. Did you know that?”

  She glowered at him.

  “That’s a far way to travel,” he said dryly, “considering The Baston &
Graille Dirigible Company didn’t provide a public service to Edinburgh until 1850. You never wondered what might have enticed your mother all the way up there for a weekend?”

  “I already told you.”

  “You are not one of those analytical machines, Lady Lily, you can do better than spewing out whatever rubbish has been fed into you.”

  “Another insult, my lord? So terribly innovative of you.”

  He looked at her a long moment, seriously contemplating rattling an honest answer loose from her slender shoulders. As if seeing straight through his guarded gaze to his intentions, she took small steps away from him, edging toward the door.

  A few loose-limbed strides placed Greyston between her and escape. “I’m trying to understand how you can be so placid and accepting.”

  “How quaint of you.” She changed tactics and direction, scooting around the settee to stand with her back to the bay window. “I gave up trying to understand you and your motives five minutes ago.”

  A lick of courage and she would have tried her luck at the door. Hell, he might even have let her slip by. “Why didn’t you accompany your mother that weekend? Were you ill? Unable to travel?”

  “My condition was far worse than that.” She twitched aside the net curtain and glanced outside. Her profile made the form of a scraggly ‘h’ with her tight corset, flat stomach and small bustle. “I was still in the schoolroom.”

  He supposed he should reassure her that he had no intention of harming her. That would be the proper thing to do. But then, Greyston had never overly concerned himself with doing the proper thing. “Meaning?”

  Her chin tilted up at him. Not stubborn defiance. Just a tilt. “I’d not yet entered society.” When he looked at her blankly, she clarified, “I wasn’t invited.”

  Greyston was ready to give his own version of an exasperated sigh when the celludrone slipped into the room, barely making a sound as the door clicked open and closed behind her. She stood there, her hands clasped in front, her gaze on her mistress as she awaited further instruction. A perfect example of everything a celludrone should be, if one discounted the superb cut of her grey broadcloth dress and the fine quality of her celluloid skin and what he could see of the blonde hair peeping from beneath a white bonnet.

  “You’ve been with Lady Lily since birth, have you not?” he demanded of her.

  Ana gave no indication of having heard. She stared straight ahead with that expressionless face. Her smooth skin held no trace of being lived in. There were no laugh brackets around the mouth from the occasional smile, no crowfeet at the eyes or wrinkles worrying the brow. Nothing more or less than an analytical machine buried in the chest that interpreted vocal instruction and computed the highest-ranking response using a probability equation. A thousand tiny gears operating the steel skeletal frame on a relay system of zeros and ones. The eyes were made of a fibrous glass and attached by a spring system. He had no doubt that when she opened her mouth, he’d see implanted ivory teeth instead of the usual shallow cave.

  “You’re not familiar with celludrones,” Lady Lily said. “They don’t possess the powers of deduction required to analyse questions and formulate an answer. They must be addressed by name and issued an unambiguous instruction.”

  He couldn’t decide whether her tone was one of amusement or condescension. He appreciated neither.

  “Allow me to demonstrate,” she went on. “Ana, please come over here. There’s also never any reason to be less than polite,” she added to him.

  Make that condescension.

  Greyston reached down swiftly as Ana started toward her mistress. He’d intended wooing Lily d’Bulier’s trust over the coming weeks. His fingers slid beneath the left leg of his trousers and unsheathed the dagger strapped to his calf. Apparently he’d overestimated his patience. Ana was no ordinary celludrone and there was one sure way to prove it. He took aim as he came up, judging the distance and angle with lightening speed. Lady Lily’s face stretched in silent horror as her gaze froze on the steel blade.

  Ana’s head whipped around.

  With a tight flick of his wrist, the dagger flew toward Lady Lily in a perfectly executed arc. Ana didn’t hesitate. She hurled herself straight over the settee in a flying leap. The blood-curdling scream Lady Lily had finally got around to, cut off in a blunt ‘oomph’ as Ana connected with her and they both went down. Ana was on her feet again within seconds. She cricked her neck one way, then the other. Then she came at him.

  “Wait.” Greyston backed away. “I would never hurt your lady.”

  A soft groan snagged the celludrone’s attention. She paused, tilting her head so that one spring-loaded eyeball could remain on him while the other checked on Lady Lily pulling herself up behind the sofa.

  “You threw a dagger at me,” gasped Lady Lily.

  Her fingers clenched the back of the settee, her elbows locked in as if to keep her sagging body from hitting the floor again. She was pale enough to worry Greyston. Maybe he’d gone too far.

  “You tried to kill me,” she said with less conviction, as if the idea was too preposterous to entertain despite the hard facts.

  “A small demonstration of my own,” he said. “I don’t recall you politely asking Ana to leap over the settee to protect you.” The colour of guilt glazed Lady Lily’s cheeks. “So let’s stop chasing circles around each other and—”

  “—start throwing daggers?”

  She was a dog with a bone. Greyston let out the sigh that had been building since the beginning of this conversation. “Ana has been with you since birth. She was assigned to you for protection. I know all about—”

  “Protection?” Her body seemed to get some solidity back into it. Her fingers slid from the settee and out of sight, probably fluttering around the havoc he’d caused with the perfect pleats of her dress. “Protection from what?”

  “I knew Ana would jump into action if your life was in danger.” He folded his arms and tried his best to keep the smug grin under control. Well, maybe not his best. “My point proved itself, I’d say.”

  “And would you say that’s a fair trade?” Her voice was squeaky and breathless. “My life for your point? What if Ana hadn’t pushed me out of the way quick enough? What if you’d been wrong about her and me and everything? What if—”

  “You were never in any danger.” He cocked an eye at the curtain pallet behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder, and up. Unfortunately the sight of his dagger, firmly wedged into the stiff material a decent three feet above her head, failed to placate her. There was some commotion from outside, loud voices muffled by the door and the length of the hallway, but not even that distracted her from the task at hand and the frown she turned on him. “I don’t care what kind of barbaric society you grew up in. In England, we do not bring weapons into the drawing room, let alone use them.”

  “I’m well aware of that.” It was one of the many reasons he found polite society, drawing rooms in particular, so uncomfortable.

  “You’re an uncouth lout impersonating a gentleman.”

  “Not very well,” he agreed amiably.

  Her eyes narrowed on him. “Mock all you want, my lord, but I am—”

  The door flew open, hard enough to bang against the wall. Greyston took one look at the tall woman, her plume of ostrich feathers stroking the top of the doorway as she passed through, and reached for his dagger. The dagger no longer sheathed at his calf. Cursing himself for a damn fool, he came back up empty-handed.

  Halver dogged the woman’s footsteps. “Miss Lily, I beg your pardon, the lady refused to—”

  The lady in question twirled a hand in Halver’s direction and, without so much as a glance his way, without much more than a flick of her index finger, flung the butler in the air and clear across the room at a speed that blurred his hurtling body.

  Halver slammed into the wall with a cracking sound that might have been the plaster or his bones. Probably both. Arms and legs splayed at an awkward angle
, he seemed to stick there for God-awful seconds before sliding to the floor.

  “Ana!” shrieked Lady Lily. “Dear Lord, Ana, help him, help him…” She fell beside Halver’s broken body, shaking his arm in an attempt to revive him. “Wh-what is happening?”

  Greyston was relieved to see Ana take a defensive stance rather than fussing uselessly over Halver.

  “Well, now that that’s taken care of,” said Lady Ostrich, as Greyston had dubbed her after yesterday’s encounter, “perhaps we can have an honest talk?” She looked at him with those chilling eyes that were more silver than grey. “Who are you?”

  “I already told you.”

  “Tsk, Lord Adair, you should be able to do better than that.” Her gaze went to Lady Lily, who was still huddled over Halver. “Hmm, what do we have here?” She took a few steps in that direction, glancing back and forth between Greyston and Lady Lily. “How interesting.”

  Greyston leapt in her path. His first instinct was to get them out of this mess right now and figure out the rest later.

  Lady Ostrich’s lips twisted into a scornful smile. Her hand was poised to making a swatting motion that would, considering what he’d seen so far, likely smite him from the face of the earth. Yesterday she’d knocked him out cold with a mere tap on his shoulder. Today she’d tossed a man through the air with a flick of her finger. Whoever she was, whatever she was, later was not guaranteed. He may well run out of time while trying to stay two steps ahead of the witch.

  “I’m ready to talk,” he told her. He was ready to tell her anything, except he had no more an idea of what she wanted to hear now than when she’d questioned him on the green.

  Who are you? Lord Adair. Where are you from? Scotland. Answer me, maggot. Where have you come from? Perthshire. Who are you? My name is Greyston Adair. That is not what I’m asking. Answer me or you will not live to regret your foolishness.

  Something about the icy hardness of her silver eyes. Or perhaps the way she’d swirled that lethal index finger and he’d felt his gut winding into a knot of excruciating pain with each question. But he hadn’t felt any inclination to laugh off her melodramatic threat.