by Liz Carlyle
She held his gaze steadily, even as one tear wobbled down the side of her nose. “I wish I did not,” she said. “I have tried to pretend, even to myself that it wasn’t coming to this. I wish I could just stay here until this awful business is finished, enjoying a friendship with your sister, and the pleasure of teaching those children, and yes, perhaps even enjoying your bed from time to time. But I wish I did not love you because you are so dark inside. You speak, Adrian, of this cosmic sharing of sensual and spiritual things. But you don’t really share anything. That’s how it seems to me.”
He sat down on the side of the bed and drew a shuddering breath. “What, then?” he rasped. “What in God’s name do you want to know? What can I tell you, Grace, that will make you feel better?”
“Just…everything.” Grace dragged the hair back from her face in a gesture that spoke of weariness. “I want to know if you are one of the Vateis, or whatever they are rightly called,” she went on. “I want to know why, when you touch me, I sometimes feel as if you cast a spell over me, and why your eyes look as if they are a thousand years old and have seen a thousand terrible things. And I want to know why you brought me here. I want to know what you saw.”
“Grace, it isn’t—”
“No,” she said, speaking over him. “I know it isn’t Napier you fear—in fact, I don’t think you fear him at all—or anyone else. So I want to know what it is you have seen—or sensed or divined or whatever the word is—that makes you concerned for me. I think I have that right.”
He was quiet a long while, turning over in his mind all that she had said, and even the ease with which she could ask such questions. He felt suddenly as if his entire life was balanced on the blade of a sword. As if fate were waiting for him to tip this way or that before slicing him to ribbons.
“I have seen a thousand terrible things, Grace,” he finally said. “Like my Scots grandmother before me, and her father before that, and a hundred generations before that, perhaps. Yes, we carry it in our blood like a curse. Are we the Vateis? I don’t know. It’s as good a name as any.”
“So that mark on your hip is not just a mark,” she said. “And the legend of the Guardians is not just a legend. You and Rance and the people like you are the descendants of Sibylla, the Gift.”
He looked away. “We are that,” he said, “beyond any doubt. There are enough family Bibles to prove it.”
“So your mother was a mystic,” said Grace slowly. “A Hindu prophet, or something like it, and she married a man who carried in his blood the Scottish Gift. A man who bore the mark of the Guardian, whose job it was to guard you as a child, I daresay. With bloodlines like that, Adrian, you could not have escaped your fate had you tried.”
He was shocked by how easily she accepted it—his sister’s doing, no doubt. He turned on the bed to face her and took her hand in his. “You speak of all this as if it’s red hair or rheumatism passing through the blood. I wish I could be so blasé.”
“Oh, I am certainly not that,” she said, her voice low and a little tremulous. “I had a poor aunt who had the most terrible dreams—dreams that could come true, or so the villagers whispered. Papa said she was treated like a pariah, and eventually she threw herself off a cliff. It broke my father’s heart. No, Adrian, of all the things I am, blasé is not one of them.”
That quieted him for a time. Oh, it was a story he’d heard time and again—old village suspicions died hard. But to hear it from Grace saddened him.
“Why did you bring me here, Adrian, to this house?” she whispered. “I know it wasn’t to seduce me—for that was my doing, not yours. But the man I first met in St. James’s was very different from that angry, troubled man who stalked me down the stairs in Whitehall and kissed me nearly senseless.”
Ruthveyn considered what she asked. She thought she had a right to know. And perhaps she did. Initially, he’d not wished to frighten her, had not even been sure himself what he’d seen. He still wasn’t. But perhaps it was time to be open with Grace.
Sitting opposite her on the bed, he drew his legs up into siddhasana and exhaled fully, trying to let go of the frustration warring inside him.
“I went to Holding’s house in Belgrave Square that morning,” he said after a time. “And there I saw…something. The evil that is yet to come, I think. I do not believe Holding’s was the last death in this terrible business. I just feel it strongly. And now I have dreamt…”
I dreamt of it, and I saw you dead, he thought, closing his eyes. Oh, Grace. My love. I saw the knife and I saw the blood and I felt my life draining away with it…
But Grace had set her hand over his where it lay relaxed upon his knee. “Who, Adrian?” she whispered. “Who did you see?”
He opened his eyes, and realized she was talking about his vision, not the dream. And his dreams were not prophetic, he reminded himself. They were not. Even a vision could be misinterpreted. And they could sometimes be altered by intervention, divine or otherwise. That much had been proven throughout history, and was in part the reason Guardians existed. To keep the Gift from being illused by those who would maliciously tinker with the course of human events.
He swallowed hard and looked away, lest she see more than he wished in his eyes. “I cannot be sure,” he hedged, for that was true.
“But you saw someone,” she said.
He turned to her, his eyes bleak, and surrendered. “I saw Fenella Crane,” he said. “I saw her dead on a field of snow—dead by violent means. Hatred and fear swirled in the air around her, but…I could not quite make it out.”
“Fenella,” Grace whispered, her hand going to her throat. “Dear God! Is she going to die?”
He shook his head. “I cannot know, but I fear it. The vision, it might have been metaphorical. Or just wrong in a way I cannot yet interpret. But I warned Napier some time ago.”
“And did he believe you?” Her voice was urgent. “My God, does he know you have the Gift?”
This time he did not even bother to deny anything; he felt suddenly beyond it. “Someone told Napier about me,” he rasped. “Months ago, when Lazonby was still imprisoned. Someone placed high within the Government. It had to be, for only three or four people know. Everyone else is dead now, and no one in the Society would betray me. But most days, Napier still thinks it’s all balderdash.”
“Mon Dieu,” Grace murmured.
“But you may take comfort in the fact that Napier is having the house watched,” he said quietly. “I dragged him to Rotherhithe yesterday, and we saw Miss Crane. She seemed unsettled, mistrustful, and caught up in fretting over Josiah Crane. I could not see what it was that threatened her.”
“And when these things come to you,” she pressed, “what form do they take? Dreams? Visions?”
“Visions. Or, if I open myself, just…impressions. Like an emotion that manifests itself in a sort of energy around me.” He looked away and stared at a point deep inside the room. “Good God, that sounds insane.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Her voice was firm. “Tell me how it happens. Tell me exactly.”
“I don’t know how it happens,” he said, opening his hands, palms up, on his knees. “I know only that if I am not on my guard when I am with others—if I do not deliberately shut my mind—it just comes. When I touch people—bare skin, usually. Or sometimes when I simply look into their eyes, even accidentally. It’s as if God just throws up a window sash and lets me see into their souls.”
“Everyone’s?” Grace’s voice went up a notch, as if she was envisioning what that would be like. But no one could understand, he thought, unless he had lived it.
“Not everyone, thank God,” he whispered, his shoulders slumping. “Some people are what the Vateis have always called Unknowables. We are blind to them.”
“What makes someone unknowable?”
He laughed, but it was bitter. “That, too, is unknown,” he confessed. “And some people are more open than others. Some people can be read by one Vates more easily than another. The Vateis gene
rally cannot read one another—but there can be nuances. Anisha can read my palm and my stars, for example, skills she was taught in the traditional way of our mother’s people, so it is possible her gift is one she inherited maternally, and she is not of the Vateis at all.”
“Remarkable,” Grace whispered. “There must be some rhyme or reason to it.”
He shrugged. “I have given up looking for any,” he said. “In Mr. Sutherland’s genealogical research, he has found none.”
“Mr. Sutherland?”
“Our Preost—it’s something like a priest,” said Ruthveyn. “Indeed, he has found people who have a Gift so vague they think it is just ordinary intuition, as if it has been all but bred out of the blood. Some, like Lazonby, have powers of keen perception—clairvoyance, perhaps, but not precognition. Some Vateis can read the opposite sex only. The Gift tends to skip a generation, but even so, we cannot read our own children or grandchildren at all, nor our siblings very well, if at all—my grandmother always said that was God’s small mercy. Yet von Althausen swears it has nothing to do with God. That visions are merely uncontrolled electrical pulses in the brain; but I’ll be damned, Grace, if I understand any of it.”
“Von Althausen,” Grace murmured. “The one Anisha calls the mad scientist.”
“Anisha,” he said grimly. “I could throttle her. She is the one who told you all this, isn’t she?”
“She did not have to.” Grace shook her head, the confusion suddenly clearing from her visage. “That is what the St. James Society is, isn’t it? You are studying the metaphysical.”
“I am funding the studies, yes, along with Lord Bessett,” he said. “The organization, however, has numbered natural philosophers amongst its membership for centuries. Now we are trying merely to foster a haven for research. To formalize initiation rites and make members known to one another. And to identify, if we can, any unknown family lines. The Society has lost its structure over the centuries—and that could be dangerous.”
“For centuries this has gone on?” Grace was staring at him. “So…it isn’t even the St. James Society, really.”
For a moment, he considered how best to answer her, but he was in so deep, honesty seemed the only avenue left. “Not exactly,” he finally answered. “It is called the Fraternitas Aureae Crucis—the Brotherhood of the Golden Cross. In its oldest known form, the symbol had no thistle, and the ancient writings suggest the Fraternitas was once more a religious order than anything else.”
“Like the Knights Templar?”
He shrugged. “We think the Guardians sprang in part from the Jesuits, but even that is no more than legend,” he answered. “It must have something to do with the old Celtic civilizations of Europe, for some of the terms used by the Fraternitas are Celtic in origin. But the name is Latin, which suggests it was clearly Christianized under Roman influence. I think, frankly, we’ll never know the truth, no matter how hard Sutherland works at it.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “And all these people in this organization…they have the Gift?”
“No, no.” He dragged both hands through his hair. “All manner of scientific men belonged to the Fraternitas—the Savants, they were traditionally called. And then we have our men of law or of letters—the Advocati. Our men of God, the Preosts. But all of them protect, in one way or another, the Gift.”
“The Savants. The Advocati. The Preosts.” Grace’s tone was musing. “It begins to sound like the Rosicrucians, or even something Masonic.”
He shook his head. “It predates Masonry,” he answered, “though many believe the Fraternitas was once a sept of the former—thus the cross emblem. But no one knows with certainty.”
Grace dipped her head to catch his gaze. “Adrian,” she said tentatively, “can you read me? Can you see my future? Is that what’s wrong?”
Ruthveyn fell silent for a time. He did not know what to say, and so he decided to be honest again, and this time he took both her hands in his. “I can feel your presence, Grace, when you are near me. I don’t even need to look. When I said it was your scent, I lied. And when I touch you, yes, I feel we almost seep into one another. There are moments when we share an energy and a life force, much as the tantras teach. But to see beyond that? No, I cannot. Not yet.” He stopped, and bowed his head. “But we cannot hold out hope, Grace. For me, intimacy deepens the mind connection. Given what I feel for you…well, in the long run, I think we dare not hope.”
“I see.” After a moment’s hesitation, Grace gently drew her hands from his, and stared into the gloom. “Well, I am touched. But it would be awful for you. I can understand that. One would have no secrets from one’s lover.”
“And one would see, quite likely, the time—and even the means by which—that love would end,” he added, “which would be the hardest part of all.”
But Grace turned to him, her eyes suddenly shimmering in the lamplight. “Oh, Adrian, there is where you are wrong,” she said huskily. “True love does not end. It simply does not.”
At that, Ruthveyn felt something catch in the back of his throat, and he found himself compelled to look away. She had a point, he realized, for what he felt for her would never fade. Of that, he was increasingly, almost painfully, certain. He searched for the words to tell her, then thought better of it.
Just then, somewhere in the bowels of the house, there was a clanking sound. A bucket—or a coal shuttle—being set down. Ruthveyn’s gaze flew to the window. No hint of dawn yet lit the window, but the moon was waning. And most certainly, his servants were stirring.
Hastily, he caught Grace’s face in both hands and kissed her. “I must go,” he said when at last he lifted his mouth from hers. “I do not know, Grace, how much more I could feel for you than I already do. I look at you, and it just takes my breath. But I shut off so much of myself so long ago—”
The clank! came again, ominously near now.
There really was nothing more to be said, and already he had said too much. Ruthveyn rose from the bed and left her, as he should have done long before.
But the catch in his throat was still with him, and the bittersweet taste of her was still on his lips, even as he slipped out the door.
CHAPTER 14
The Bréviaire’s Secret
Sunday was, technically speaking, Grace’s half day. But because of Lord Lucan’s indebtedness to his sister—and his sister’s perverse pleasure in extracting her pound of flesh—the boys generally spent the time after morning church services with their uncle. In this way it came about that Grace, having the afternoon to herself, asked Higgenthorpe’s assistance in fetching down from the attic her father’s army trunk, which had accompanied her from pillar to post since his death.
The butler snapped his fingers, and in a trice, two of Ruthveyn’s burly footmen had hauled the old beast down the stairs and into her bedchamber. Grace was on her knees and up to her elbows in memories—quite literally—when Lady Anisha wandered into her room in a pair of her silk pantaloons and plopped down in the chair by the hearth. Today she even wore a gold ring in her left nostril and looked altogether different from the elegant young Englishwoman Grace had accompanied to church.
“What are you doing?” she asked, propping her chin on her fist.
Grace laughed and dusted a blob of smut from her cuff. “Woolgathering, mostly,” she said. “Or perhaps dust-gathering is the better term. Do you need me? This can wait.”
“No, I’m just bored.” Anisha studied her for a time. “So, my dear, Raju tells me he has explained the Fraternitas to you.”
Grace flicked an appraising glance up at her. “Oui,” she said swiftly. “Have you any objection?”
Anisha’s eyes widened. “Me? I have nothing to do with it.”
“You are not…one of them?”
Anisha rolled her eyes in that expressive way of hers. “My dear girl, the Fraternitas is for men only—very stubborn, arrogant, hotheaded men, too, for all their fine talk of intellect and science. They may speak loftily o
f protecting women, but admit one? Never.”
“Ah,” said Grace. “I did not perfectly understand.”
As if the topic bored her, Anisha prodded the battered wooden trunk with the toe of her slipper. “Is that monstrous thing yours? It looks twice your age.”
Laughing, Grace sat back on her heels and lifted out a wide leather case. “Actually, it was Papa’s, from his school days at the École Spéciale Militaire,” she said. “Our family treasures—pitiful lot that they are—have been packed in here an age. Here, have a look at Scotland Yard’s incriminating evidence against me.”
With that, she snapped loose the lid and lifted it back. Her father’s Colt revolvers gleamed up from their blue velvet beds, brilliant as the day they were made.
“My, a brace of pistols!” said Anisha. “Will those be your weapons of choice on your next murderous rampage? Is that Napier’s theory?”
But the mere mention of Napier’s name brought back to Grace the shadow hanging over her—and the reason for it. Something in her expression must have withered.
Eyes widening with dismay, Anisha set her fingertips to her mouth. “Oh, Grace, how wicked of me! It is not funny, is it? Mr. Holding was to have been your husband.”
When Grace burst inexplicably into a full flood of tears, Anisha slid onto the floor. “Oh, Grace, forgive me,” she said, gathering her into her arms. “I am the most thoughtless person on earth.”
“No, I st-st-started it,” Grace managed. “I keep t-trying to make a joke of Napier, but—”
And for a moment, the grief swamped her anew. She sobbed into Anisha’s shoulder as if the world were ending, yet not entirely sure just what it was she cried about. She did not precisely miss Ethan Holding, but she was deeply sorry he was gone.
Still, her grief seemed somehow more profound than that. It was the sadness of wanting and being afraid to want. The grief of fearing one might never feel normal again. The sorrow of missing her father, and of being so damnably weary of fearing Scotland Yard might skulk up behind her and drop a noose round her neck.