by Megan Chance
He looked up at me. His eyes were harder than I’d ever seen them. “It’s time for you to go, Madame.”
The look he gave me was so cold. I had not realized how used I was to his too intimate warmth until it was gone. This was worse. Much worse.
21
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AN ANGELFISH AMONG THE EELS
The strangeness of the night seeped into my skin like poison, and I did not understand what had happened to me. I could tell myself all I wanted that the spirit writing was only a manifestation of my own thoughts, and so explain it as some strange delusion brought on by strain or lack of sleep. But I couldn’t say the same for tonight. I’d had no knowledge of the things I’d seen. Where had it all come from? Who was I?
I felt vulnerable and undone and frightened. Because whether or not the visions were real, Dorothy thought they were, and Peter had lost his life attempting to break Michel’s bond with her. What now would happen to me? I paced my room, unable to be still, agitated beyond measure.
The quick, sharp rap on my door stopped my step. I glanced at the clock on the mantel. Four a.m. It seemed suddenly inevitable that he would come, that I would let him in, and I was well aware of the irony of the fact that the man I was most afraid of had the power to ease my fears. To help me or to hurt me was his choice. I did not know which he would make.
“Come in,” I called. “It’s not locked. Not that it would matter to you if it were.”
The door opened. He stepped inside, closing it softly again behind him. He looked much the same as he had when I’d left him in Dorothy’s room. His under vest was still unbuttoned to show his skin, which seemed to gleam golden in the light.
“I heard you pacing,” he said. “Nightmares?”
I laughed, and had to look away when the laugh turned into a sob. “I think I must be going mad.”
“Non,” he said, and the calm assurance in his voice made me look at him again. “Remember what I told you before. Let them in so you can control them.”
Desperately, I said, “How can it be real? How do you know I’m not losing my mind?”
“Tell me what you saw tonight. In the circle, what did you see?”
“I… there was a voice. It was your voice, and then it wasn’t. It was a woman’s. I didn’t know her. But she asked me to listen. And then it was like a memory, but not my own.”
“The boys swimming?”
“Yes. They were laughing. And then she came down the bank—”
“The woman who told you to watch?”
“No. No. This was their mother. Dorothy. She was younger. She had cherry tarts.”
“And that was how it was? Just a memory? You don’t remember speaking?”
“No. I was watching. It was as if I were far away, but everything was so clear. Like a dream.”
“Or a nightmare?” He came toward me, and it was very like that evening in the parlor, when he’d first threatened me. The slow pace, the way he let his fingers dangle to caress the furniture, as if he owned it, and I felt again that same fear, but this time, there was something that made me wait for him to reach me.
“Did you know any of these things before you came here?” he asked gently.
“I knew Dorothy had two sons who died.”
“You never investigated her? Not with your papa?”
“No. No, I knew of the Bennetts, of course, everyone does. But nothing else. Not until I married Peter.”
“What did you know then?”
“Only that she was an invalid,” I said.
“What about the things Peter told you?”
“He told me nothing.”
“Ah.” He was right there, just before me. “You aren’t lying to me about how the visions come? Did you eat something? Drink something? Laudanum, like your maman, perhaps?”
I shook my head. “There was the liqueur you gave me. I drank it each time before the spirit writing—”
“That was just a liqueur, nothing more.”
“Then no.”
His expression went thoughtful. He murmured, “Unbelievable. How strange to find you here. I hardly expected it. Peter was right, eh? An angelfish among the eels.”
I felt a sad tug at the familiar words, but I said nothing, and he went on, “I think you are that very rare thing, chère. A real medium. I confess I’d not thought one existed. I’ve seen some that made me wonder, but in the end, they were just clever women.”
“The way you’re clever.”
“Oui. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re real or not. You know I’ll do everything I can to discredit you? I’ll fight you, and you can’t win. Not with Dorothy. Not against me.”
His honesty took me aback.
“You want to take from me what I’ve spent months working for. You want to prove that I’m guilty of murdering your beloved husband. You want to save yourself by ruining me. Should I not fight back, Evie?”
I took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m not going to jail.”
His gaze did not leave mine. “Work with me, chère.Work with me and I’ll teach you everything I know.”
Then he kissed me.
I pressed my palms flat against his bare chest. I knew I should push him away. But I didn’t. Instead, I curled my fingers, and he pressed closer, putting his arms around me, trapping me against him, and suddenly, we were breathless and fumbling. I felt his fingers at my back, slipping each of the tiny buttons of my gown from their loops, and I was pulling his shirt from his trousers, pushing it off his shoulders, yanking at his under vest, pulling back only long enough for him to peel my sleeves from my arms, long enough so I could undo the hooks at the front of my corset while he loosened the ties of my crinoline. I was impatient, and so was he—our movements were hasty, jerking, our breaths coming in hard little gasps as we removed the layers of our armor: my gown, his trousers, my petticoats and chemise, his underclothes, and then we were naked, and he was pulling me down onto the floor, and I writhed beneath him until I was no longer myself.
WHEN IT WAS over, it took only a moment for the world to return to me, to remember who he was. I felt his silky hair against my shoulder, the rise and fall of his breathing against my breasts, and I was chagrined and furious with myself.
“Ah, not yet, chère,” he whispered against my throat. The movement of his lips tickled. “Don’t banish me yet.”
I pushed at his shoulders. I felt near tears. “I want you to leave.”
He sighed and rolled off me. I scrambled away from him, hiding myself as best I could until I reached my gown, which I held to my breasts.
He watched me with a rueful expression. Then he got to his feet. With no care for his nakedness, he came to where I sat, surrounded by our clothing, and with a patience that made me want to scream, he separated out his own. He said nothing as he pulled on his trousers, and then he bent to retrieve his shirt and his underwear, balling them in his hand.
I buried my face in my gown so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I saw him in a succession of images—bending close to Dorothy, unbuttoning his vest for her, pressing the laudanum to her lips. I heard Benjamin—Benjamin!—saying, “I think he killed Peter.” How easily Michel had worked me, with the skill not of hands or kisses or charm, but of challenge and conversation, of answers. I heard him cross the room, and then the soft click of the door as it opened, his little hesitation before he went out, and then I was alone.
I sat there for some time, my face buried in my gown. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come, there was just a terrible heaviness behind my eyes that wouldn’t go away. Then, finally, I looked up. The dawn light was creeping around the edges of the curtains.
I rose. I was sticky, and I ached. I went to the washbasin and poured water from the pitcher into it. The water was cold, but I dipped a cloth into it anyway and washed myself everywhere he had touched. My skin pimpled with gooseflesh, but I kept at it until I was certain every vestige of his presence was gone. Then I pulled on my dressing gown and collapsed upon my
bed, too exhausted and sick at heart to even crawl beneath the blankets, though the fire had long since died. To sleep—even for an hour to find my way into dreams instead of nightmares, to find solace… I longed for it. I closed my eyes, and for a moment my mind was empty, and I was certain I would sleep at last. I felt my body relaxing, fading, giving… .
Then I felt the sagging of the mattress, as if someone had just sat upon it. I opened my eyes quickly and saw a shadow there, the figure of a man, but before I could move or exclaim, a light flared and suddenly he was illuminated, but it was an odd kind of light, as if it came from within him and not without, and the rest of the room was in abject darkness, even though moments before it had been dawn.
“Peter,” I gasped.
My husband was sitting there, his hair matted and wet, his face pale, his lips blue. His eyes were closed. When I spoke his name, he opened them, and I saw they were gone, eaten away by fishes and eels, and he reached out to touch me, my name upon his lips, and I found myself scrambling away, falling off the bed in my haste, screaming so the sound seemed to spiral in my head—
I woke on the floor, the scream caught in my throat. I was losing my mind. I reached out in the darkness; it was a moment before I realized it was the comfort of Michel I’d been reaching for, and I drew back again, shaking, and there was a knocking on the door that raised panic within me. “No!” I called, my voice hoarse. “Go away!”
“Ma’am? Ma’am, it’s Kitty. Are you all right? I heard a noise—”
Kitty. I brushed back the hair that had fallen in my face and made myself rise. “I’m fine,” I called.
“Are you ready for breakfast, ma’am? Or to dress?”
I glanced about my room, at the still-made bed, the clothes piled in the middle of the floor. Clothes that I could not have removed myself and which any maid would have put away. “Could you bring me some tea, please?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I listened for her footsteps to recede, and then I picked up my clothing, the gown and corset, the crinolines, my chemise. I hung them all in the armoire, and then I crawled into bed and leaned back on the pillows and waited for her to return. When she did only a few minutes later, I took the tea from her and held it to my lips, letting the steam bathe my face. If Kitty noticed anything wrong, she said nothing.
“Charley gave me a message from Miz Bennett,” she said as she went to the armoire. “She’s coming to supper tonight, and she asks you to be there.”
“She does?” I’d scarcely expected her to be well enough to rise from bed, much less preside over a supper.
“Mr. Lambert said the mistress was in a poor way last night,” Kitty said, as if she read my thoughts. “Molly said she heard her moanin’ and groanin’ ‘til nearly morning—what happened to this bombazine? It’s all wrinkled up—” She took the gown I’d hung up and shook it out, beating at the wrinkles in the skirt before she hung it back again. “But I guess Mr. Jourdain worked his miracles. She was calling for her sons, I heard. Poor thing. And them gone now twenty years or more.”
I was amazed at how easily I could answer her. “I don’t suppose one ever stops missing one’s children.”
“I suppose not, ma’am. But not having any myself, I can’t say. Noisy and selfish little things, from what I can see. Will it be the silk or the wool today?”
“I’ll wear the silk. This house is too hot for wool.”
But once I was dressed, three-quarters of an hour later, I didn’t leave my room. I could not bear to think of last night, yet it was impossible not to. I tried to read, but I found myself too distracted even for Elisha Kane’s Arctic Explorations, which I’d taken from the library. The book had been all the talk of the upper ten this year, but I would no more read a sentence about ice-covered landscapes and men burdened to the breaking point than I would remember the play of Michel’s muscles beneath my hands. I cast aside the book, only to feel the ache of my thighs as I turned, only to catch my breath at the sudden image of his mouth on my breast.
This had never happened with Peter. Not these kinds of memories, never the visceral reaction to them after he’d gone from my bed. Peter had never made me feel as if my body was a source of endless fascination. I had never felt alive beneath his hands. I knew it was wrong to feel this way, and to feel it for my husband’s murderer—what kind of woman was I? To yearn for him, even knowing how he’d played me, even knowing this was a game for him, some way to keep me from finding the truth. I could not do this, I could not think of him, and yet I couldn’t stop myself either. Most women dreamed of chaste kisses, of romantic glances across the room. Of men like Benjamin. I remembered the affectionate kiss Ben had given me the night before. Respectful, fond, so different from Michel’s.
I thought of Dorothy crying out to touch him, and I understood it and knew he had somehow bewitched us both. And I knew that I must put an end to it.
I went to the window, where I stared out over the barren side yard and the small bit of Fifth Avenue I could see. There, on the corner of the First Presbyterian Church grounds, stood my police watchman. He seemed so idle, watching the people walk by on their way to wherever it was they meant to pass the time. How I envied them, those people for whom a policeman on Fifth Avenue meant nothing, for whom the sight of a blue coat and copper badge flashing in the light was not a subtle reminder of what terrible turns a life could take. I had been one of them only a month ago, yet how far away that world felt now.
I must gain hold of myself. I must remember what Michel no doubt never forgot—to not lose sight of my plan. I could not let him distract me. I could not afford to fail.
THE DAY PASSED day passed slowly, and when it was finally time to ready for supper, I was strung taut with nerves. In the first months of my marriage, I had faced the most formidable dragons of society. Now what I faced chilled me more than had my introduction to Caroline Astor. I didn’t want to be alone with him. I was too vulnerable. I lingered in my room a long time. Then, when I felt I could wait no longer, I made my way downstairs to the dining room. I paused for a moment outside the doorway, gathering my strength, and then I stepped inside.
He was there, his back to me as he stood by the fireplace leafing through a book. At the sight of him, I said too sharply, “Dorothy still intends to join us, I hope.”
He turned. His frock coat tonight was a deep green. I remembered how large his tailor bill had been; I didn’t think I’d seen him in the same coat twice. “Madame,” he said with a small bow and a mocking tone. “I wondered if you’d left us. You’ve been scarce all day.”
“I’ve been forbidden to leave the city,” I said.
“But not this house.”
“I believe the prosecutor would disagree with you. I either live here or I go to the Tombs. The terms of my bail were quite explicit.”
He put aside the book. “The way you talked this morning—”
“I’d rather not speak of it.”
“Ah. You’d rather ignore that it happened?”
“Exactly.”
“No doubt it’s become a habit for you.”
“I’ve never done anything like that—”
“I meant ignoring things,” he said. He moved to the table, which was set for three, and motioned to the decanted wine in its elaborately cut crystal. “Would you care for some?”
“I think I’d prefer to wait for Dorothy.”
“Then you won’t mind if I do?” When I shook my head, he poured the wine into his glass and drank it quickly, and then poured another. He raised his glass to me, smiling wickedly.
I heard a commotion on the stairs, the bustle that normally accompanied Dorothy’s every move. Michel heard it too; he set the wineglass on the table and strode past me to the door.
I hardly saw Dorothy at first, so surrounded was she by her nurses, not until Michel took her arm and she flapped her hands at the others and told them to leave, and then I was amazed at her transformation. Her eyes were shining, and she wore a deep plum gown that
made her hair seem beautifully white. Instead of her usual beribboned cap, someone had swept her hair up, catching it in a gold clasp that sparkled with garnets and peridot and topaz. She was looking into Michel’s face adoringly, but when he brought her to the table, she went from his arms to me, pressing her dry, powdered cheek against mine, saying, “Here she is. My miracle.”
“Indeed,” Michel said dryly. “Come, ma chère. Sit before you tire yourself out.”
“I feel reborn,” she said, but she obeyed him, settling herself in the chair at the head of the table, where he waited to seat her.
“For a few hours, at least.” He smiled, coming to pull out the chair for me, and I sat on Dorothy’s right, ignoring the brush of his hand against my shoulder. The maid came almost immediately, ladling out a soup for which I had no appetite.
“You look wonderfully rested,” I told Dorothy.
“It isn’t rest, child, it’s hope. The hope that soon I’ll hear my sons again.”
“You’ve heard them at nearly every circle,” Michel said, reaching for the wine.
“Yes, and don’t think I’m not grateful, dear boy. But last night it was like sitting down to supper with them, remembering old times.” Her eyes shone. “Did you see them, child? Did you see my boys?”
I nodded.
“Describe them to me.”
“They were young, maybe eight and ten. Dark haired. Very sweet. You were there too. You wore a big straw hat with poppies—”
“Yes, I remember it!”
“They were playing in the river. They ran into it wearing their clothes. They were dressed as if they’d just come from church.”
“A family dinner,” she corrected me dreamily. “With Edward’s parents. Oh, they were a pair, stiff as deacons, and Edward obeyed them like a, well, I suppose some would say a good son. I never cared for them much. The boys had to be so proper when they were around. But Johnny and Everett! Those two weren’t much for sitting still.”
I smiled. “I could see that.”