by Megan Chance
I stared at her. “What?”
“If he’s taking advantage of me, I say: go ahead. He makes me happy. I told you that already. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I wanted you and Michel to be friends.” She leaned back heavily into the cushions, the thin gray braid of her hair trailing over her shoulder. “It disappoints me that you don’t like him as much as he seems to like you.”
I laughed. “I hardly think like is the proper word. I don’t think he’s interested in friendship so much as other things.”
She turned to me with a frown. “What other things?”
Her rheumy eyes were suddenly sharply focused, uncomfortably so. I realized I’d misstepped. My life now depended on her generosity; I could not afford to give her cause for jealousy.
Quickly, I said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s as you say, there’s no point in discussing him if we can’t agree. And you said you wanted to talk with me about the spirit writing.”
She relaxed somewhat, and then sighed, and I was relieved. “Yes. We read it last night, and we agreed: you could be a powerful medium, Evelyn. The spirits want to communicate with you, but the writing is a poor vehicle. Such mystery! At the next circle, you should attempt to allow them to speak through you as Michel does. He’s agreed to show you how it’s done. But perhaps it would be best if he tutored you within the circle rather than outside it. Or here, with me.”
The comment was lightly made, but I knew it was deliberately so. I had raised her suspicions. She preferred Michel and I not be alone together.
“The others believe Peter’s spirit hasn’t appeared to Michel because he’s waiting for you to gain the skill. Time goes so fast. Benjamin reminded us that your trial’s only five and a half weeks away. Best to speed things up, don’t you agree? For your sake, of course.”
Reluctantly I agreed. “I suppose it would be best.”
“I know I can trust you, child.”
I heard what she didn’t say. “Of course you can.”
I LEFT DOROTHY’S room feeling the weight of her expectation. I was aware now of having to walk a fine line—she cared nothing for whether or not Michel was a mountebank, but the particulars of my relationship with him mattered greatly to her. I had raised an alarm—I prayed I’d not lost too much of her trust.
I had taken to locking my door and keeping the key with me, though I knew it was worthless—the door had been locked the night Michel stole the key as well, and he had managed it easily. But it made me feel safer, especially now that I had the two note-books with the spirit writing in them. The one was my own secret, the other I preferred to keep in my possession. When I next saw him, I meant to tell Ben that I’d done the writing before, to show him the pages. There was a logical explanation for this. Ben and I could find it together. The hope was even more powerful than my wish to tell him of the lever I’d found beneath the table. I could hardly wait to see him.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it carefully behind me.
“There you are.”
I jumped.
Michel lounged upon my bed, playing with the hairpins I’d piled on the table beside, a solitary game of pick-up-sticks. He sat up, leaning against my pillow. “Ah, did I frighten you? Forgive me.”
“W-what are you doing here?”
“You searched my room. I’m only returning the favor.”
I tried to conceal how badly he’d disconcerted me. “The difference is that I’m not hiding anything.”
“Non?” He pulled from behind him the two journals—the one from last night, and the one I’d hidden beneath my bed. “Look at this—a treasure trove.”
“You knew about that,” I managed. “You saw me do the writing last night.”
“Oui, the one. But the other…” He shook his finger at me, tsking.“ You’ve been keeping secrets from me, chère. I thought last night was the first time, but you’ve done this before.”
“Only once.”
“ ‘Only once,’ ” he mocked. “When was this? Before we decided to develop you?”
“Does it matter?”
He put his legs over the side of the bed, rising. “You see, I decided you were a bit of a charlatan yourself. You can see why I might’ve thought so, eh? You claim to have nightmares, we decide to develop you, and suddenly—voilà!—the spirits are writing through your hand. And not only that, they’re telling you someone is lying, and you think that someone is me. Perhaps you even go to Dorothy and tell her that.”
He stepped toward me. “And now I find that you’ve done this other writing on your own. You’ve told no one. You have it hidden away. Why is that? I ask myself. Could it be that she doesn’t trust it? Or maybe she’s afraid. But why would she be afraid? It falls into her plans to discredit me. Why not show it to everyone? Why not say: I know what this means; Michel is a liar. But she doesn’t do that. Why not?” He stopped just before me. “Why not? Why, because she thinks it’s real. That’s why she’s afraid. She thinks the spirits are really writing through her. Do I have it right, chère?”
I was stunned. “It wasn’t you?”
Michel frowned. “Do I look like a spirit?”
“But I thought—”
“You may steal from me all you like, chère,” he said. “Just give me something in return.”
Nervously, I said, “I have nothing. What could I possibly give you?”
“Work with me,” he said.
“I thought you said we didn’t need two mediums.”
“That was before I realized your talent.”
“My talent? But you can’t—you think this writing is real?”
“Isn’t it?”
Such simple words, but their implication was astonishing. I was dazed—both with an odd relief and a profound dismay. He thought it was real, which meant he’d had no hand in it, which meant one of two things: either I was going mad, or he was right, and it was real.
Or did it mean that? Liars will lead you astray. Wouldn’t he tempt me to believe it was real? Wouldn’t he try to either lead me into madness or try to win me to his side?
“Come, chère,” he whispered. “Think what we could do together, eh?”
I knew he had murdered my husband. I knew he was trying to use me. But I was afraid, and that fear made me vulnerable, and I knew he understood that too, and knew just how to turn it to his purpose. Liars will lead you astray.
“No,” I said faintly. I half turned to take the doorknob. “If you would please leave me—”
He reached around me, wrapping his hand about my own, holding both the knob and me fast. “Evie, use your sense. Look at Dorothy—don’t you see how much better she is with me? She wanted to die, her life was a misery. Isn’t she happier now?”
“She’s in thrall to you,” I snapped. “That’s not happiness. It’s enslavement.”
“Who’re you to say? We each choose how we want to live. Look at yourself: were you happy with Peter? You had everything you could’ve wanted.”
“Not everything,” I protested.
“Non. Not love. Some would say love is enslavement, yet you—”
“Love is not unkindness, or… or selfishness.”
He laughed. “You can’t be so naive.”
“The love Dorothy feels for you is based on lies. She doesn’t know you.”
His gaze seemed to go right through me. “And you do.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
His one hand was still on mine, still clasped to the doorknob, but he raised his other. He touched my lips with his finger, and then he touched his own, and it made me shiver; it was like a kiss, like a promise, and he said, “We’re the same. I’m right, eh? You feel it too. We could conquer the world, Evie.”
“I don’t want to conquer the world,” I said desperately. “I only want my old life back. I want my house. I want a good husband. I don’t care about money or anything else, as long as we’re happy.”
“You sound as if you’ve someone in mind.”
“Don
’t be absurd—”
“It isn’t me, it seems, so perhaps… Dudley’s got Grace. Maull’s a Free Lover, and that doesn’t seem your style. Colville’s still mourning his wife, so that leaves… Rampling. Ah, is that who you’ve set your sights on, chère? Rampling? Or am I wrong?”
“It’s none of your business,” I said tightly.
He smiled, and it was mean and knowing at the same time. “Such a common choice. I’d thought you’d more ambition than that. But I guess better the devil you know.”
“I don’t take your meaning.”
“Non. More’s the pity.” He released the doorknob and my hand and stepped back. “My offer’s still open. ‘Come live with me, and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove… .’ Ah, but you want less than that.”
“I want honesty.”
“Is that so? I’d never have thought it, given your past. But people change, eh?” He gestured to the doorknob. “Now, if you don’t mind, Dorothy’s waiting for me.”
And then he was gone, slipping out, sauntering down the hallway toward Dorothy’s room. Almost as if by magic, the door opened; Charley came anxiously into the hall. The moment he saw Michel, his expression sagged into relief. The two of them disappeared into the room. The door closed.
I was left standing alone, feeling oddly battered and undone, as if I’d been caught in an inexorable tide, swept onto the shore of my own life, which was suddenly a foreign land where I didn’t speak the language. How did Michel do that? How did he so effortlessly make me feel a stranger to myself?
I stepped inside and saw the notebooks where he’d left them, on the bed. Michel Jourdain was a master of illusion, a man who knew how to bend words, who had lived his life manipulating others. I should not be surprised that he understood how to manipulate me.
He was a liar. That was all I had to remember.
19
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AMBITION AND FACULTY
SATURDAY, VALENTINE’S DAY, 1857
TWO WEEKS AFTER
EVELYN ATHERTON’S ARREST
Dorothy’s jealousy and Michel’s denial that he had anything to do with the spirit writing only unnerved me more. It was time to speak with Ben about it, I knew, and so I had penned a note to him and given it to Kitty to deliver. The next day I waited in the library for him to arrive. Michel had gone to Dorothy, and I had no fear I would encounter him in the next hour or so. I chose a book at random from the shelves—I could hardly have said what it was—and then I found myself drawn to the huge window.
It was Valentine’s Day, but there would be no heavily embossed card from Peter this year, nothing to raise the false hopes that every other February had brought. I felt a sad relief over that now as I stared out at the backyard. Statuary and urns and stone benches dotted the narrow expanse, overlooking flower beds made invisible by the snow. A cast-iron gate marked the boundary and kept out whatever riffraff traveled the alley behind, and beyond that were the brownstone and brick walls of other houses, their windows glinting dim and empty in the overcast light, their chimneys belching smoke that grayed the snow crusting their windowsills.
My own yard on Irving Street—the Atherton yard, I should have said—was smaller than this. Elizabeth Atherton had cared little for gardens and had preferred to take her children to Union Square Park to play, though by the time they’d built the house, her youngest son had already been moving quickly into adulthood. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have such a luxury as a yard to play in as a child. My yard had been the busy streets, my games dodging traffic, tripping through the mounds of garbage and splashing through sewage, chasing the pigs and cows on their way to the slaughterhouse while their drovers hollered curses. But this—to climb the benches and race through the grass, to play hide-and-seek among the statuary, darting from Apollo and Mercury, to build snowmen to match Michelangelo’s David—here clad discreetly in a fig leaf so as not to offend decency. Or had he a fig leaf in Italy too? I tried to remember the drawings I’d seen, because I’d never seen it for myself, as much as I’d wanted to… .
“You mean to tell me you haven’t been there? Dear God, Peter, never tell me you didn’t take a wedding tour?”
The words came from a not-so-distant memory, and I was flung back in time, remembering how Duncan Granger had looked up from his nesselrode pudding with an expression of exaggerated shock, and how I tried not to show the disappointment that still felt too sharp.
Peter had paused, his own spoon poised halfway to his mouth. “I couldn’t take the time.”
Duncan laughed. He’d been one of Peter’s latest fast friends, a young man with dark hair and hazel eyes that were so heavily lashed they should have been a woman’s, though his laugh was at odds with all that—it was blustery and deep. “You couldn’t take the time? For a wedding tour?”
Across the table, Peter’s mother dabbed a napkin to her mouth. “It truly would have been a waste, I’m afraid. Evelyn hasn’t the eye to appreciate such things. Not to offend you, dear—you know I think only the best of you, but it’s the rare person indeed who can rise above one’s upbringing.”
Though Elizabeth Atherton smiled—a habit of hers, to cloak a cutting remark with what seemed to be sympathy—the remark still burned. I could not keep myself from responding in kind. “Oh yes, indeed. I see it myself every day.”
Peter’s mother frowned.
Peter explained to Duncan, “Evelyn received an uncommon education.”
“Her father tutored her in philosophy and science, among other things.” Elizabeth Atherton shuddered. “Why, I continue to be appalled at what he exposed her to! I know he meant well, Evelyn, and I suppose I’m old-fashioned, but I do think girls should be brought up learning French and the finer arts. What use has a woman for Latin, after all?”
“None at all,” I agreed. “If one doesn’t read.”
“Well, I believe everyone can benefit from experiencing beauty,” Duncan said. “To not take the opportunity to see it first-hand—why, I should say it was criminal!”
His enthusiasm was contagious, and I opened my mouth to agree when I saw he wasn’t looking at me. He was smiling at my husband, who met his gaze and said almost wistfully, “What use have I for European beauty, when there’s so much to be had here?” Peter hesitated only a moment before he turned to me and raised his glass, but I felt the perfunctoriness of his flattery. One complimented one’s wife; it meant nothing more than that.
Peter’s mother cleared her throat. “Have you a wife yourself, Mr. Granger?”
“Oh no, I’m afraid not,” Duncan said, turning to her. “Though I expect it’s my duty to find one someday.”
Elizabeth Atherton frowned. “I see.”
Peter set aside his spoon with a declarative clank. “Well, Duncan and I must be off.”
“Oh, not so soon,” I protested.
“Unfortunately so.”
“You’ve been out every night this week,” his mother said pointedly. “I’m certain Mr. Granger would excuse you to spend a quiet evening with your wife.”
“Of course, I would hate to take you from such a pleasant diversion,” Duncan said quickly and too politely. “If you’d rather—”
“Not tonight,” Peter said firmly, though he, like his mother, softened his words with a smile.
Elizabeth wasn’t cowed. To Duncan, she said, “Forgive my plain speaking, Mr. Granger, but my son has obligations to his family.”
“Of course I understand,” Duncan said gamely.
She turned back to Peter. “How you expect to get a child on your wife when you’re never home is beyond me—”
“Mother Atherton, please,” I said quickly. My face was burning.
“I’m only stating the obvious.” Elizabeth’s blue eyes were guileless as she looked at her son. I saw Duncan’s pale skin turning ruddier by the moment, and I was embarrassed both for myself and for him, though I should have been used to such comments. God knew I heard them often enough. “You can’t blame me for
wanting to see the Atherton name passed on.”
“We’ll talk of this later.” Peter sounded strangled.
“I hope so,” she said. “I’m not getting younger, you know. I doubt I’ll survive another winter—”
“Shall we go, Duncan?” Peter buttoned his frock coat. He bent to kiss his mother, then stepped over to me, brushing his lips hastily over my cheek. “I’ll see you in the morning. Duncan may be here for breakfast.”
“Has Mr. Granger no home of his own to tend to?”
“He’s serving as my assistant, Mama. Until I find a law partner, I’ve need of him.” Peter waved his hand at Duncan, and the two of them nearly ran from the dining room, leaving me alone at the table with Peter’s mother.
“Would you care to retire to your room, Mother Atherton?” I asked, rising to help her to her feet, but she only gave me a look so full of bitterness and scorn that I stopped cold.
“Don’t you care that your husband keeps no hours at his own home?” she asked sharply. “What happened to your voice, girl?”
“Apparently I’ve no need of it,” I said. “You say quite enough for the both of us.”
She turned away abruptly, as if she could not bear to look at me, and her voice was low and sorrowful as she said, “I had hoped for more from you, Evelyn. I had hoped… well, what can one expect from such an uneven match, I suppose?”
Her question had stung then, and the memory of it did still. Elizabeth Atherton was dead, but the words she’d spoken haunted me, and with them returned the things Michel had said to me upon the stair, about Peter’s resentment of me.
Perhaps it was true what Michel had said, that Peter meant to punish me from beyond the grave, but I hoped not. It seemed impossible that he had hated me that much.
But I’d been wrong about other things. I’d been wrong about the Athertons. I supposed I could be wrong about Peter too—but that would mean everything in my life had been a lie. Could I have been that blind?
“I’m wondering… when will you open your eyes?”
“Mrs. Atherton?”
The voice intruded into my thoughts so completely that I was confused—was I hearing things now too? Then I realized it was Kitty, hovering in the doorway.