Lost Among the Living

by Simone St. James

  “Yes,” I said, my voice perhaps sharper than I intended. “You should. It isn’t polite to prevaricate.”

  The look he gave me from beneath his salt-and-pepper eyebrows was unreadable. He clasped his hands behind his back and gave no answer.

  “Tell me, Colonel,” I said, “how long have you been a lover of art?”

  “Mrs. Manders, are you quite all right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said. He began to stroll around the room, and I followed at his side. My exhaustion and nerves had amplified the effects of the champagne, I realized. “I don’t think I thanked you, Colonel, for letting me see my husband’s file.”

  He looked at me sideways, a glance that was speculative and, inexplicably, had a note of dread in it. “It was nothing, I assure you.”

  “So much interesting information,” I said. “Even a silly woman like me could learn so much.”

  “And what exactly did you learn, Mrs. Manders?” he asked.

  I thought it over. The champagne had made me dizzy, my tongue loose in my head. “Do you know, I don’t think I am going to tell you.”

  “Mrs. Manders.” He stopped walking and faced me. Looking at him was like looking into a shallow pool and realizing that you couldn’t see the bottom, could not fathom where it was. “You are upset, and I believe we both understand why. But I feel obliged to give you a warning. Things have been very difficult for you—but they are going to get even more difficult, I’m afraid.”

  “What does that mean?” My voice dropped to nearly a whisper. “Tell me.”

  He did not reply, and I would have said more, but a hand reached out and grasped me.

  “Mrs. Manders!” Robert leaned in and put a heavy arm around my shoulders. “You really must put a sack on your head, my dear, so you don’t outshine the bride. How are you, sir?”

  I froze. Robert—who had been drinking since before the party started, by the smell of him—pumped the colonel’s hand, then led me away, his beefy hand still on my bare shoulder. I swallowed bile. “It’s a party,” he hissed at me through gin-soaked breath. “Act like it, if you please.”

  I circulated around the room under Robert’s clammy grip, being introduced to strangers, until he stopped us by a pillar, took two drinks from a passing waiter, and handed me one.

  “I don’t want this,” I said.

  “Drink it,” he commanded, taking a long swig of his own.

  I sipped the champagne, its sweetness on my tongue now making me gag.

  “You must loosen up, Jo,” Robert said, his bleary eyes watching me. “Take my advice. You may be the best-looking woman in the room, but your expression is positively sour. Mrs. Mandel’s cousin-in-law is a baronet, and Staffron brought some of his richer banking friends. You’ll never catch any of the eligible men here unless you flirt.”

  I stepped out of his reach and took another sip of my drink. “What do you care, anyway? You should go paw one of the neighbors’ wives.”

  “Careful, now.” Robert raised his glass and gestured to the room around us. “I gave you a warning to watch your tongue. I spotted you right away, you know. Making nice with that old stick of a colonel—he could be your father, my dear. Did you know that Wilde, the lawyer, was observing you two?”

  “What are you talking about?” I looked around the room, but didn’t see Dottie’s man of business.

  “Quite interested, he was,” Robert said. “Though you could do better, even as a mistress.”

  Before I could escape him, the band switched to a jaunty march, and Dottie stepped up on the raised dais, waving her arms to get the attention of everyone in the room. She wore, unbelievably, a jacket and skirt—though these were of curious yellow-green and sewn with glass beads that reflected the light in shards. The suit jacket was buttoned down the front and sported an Oriental collar that sat neatly in a ribbon around her narrow neck. She wore the same hairstyle as ever.

  “My lovely wife,” Robert hissed drunkenly in my ear.

  “Shut up,” I said to him, and he laughed.

  There were speeches—lots of speeches. Dottie said a few words, clipped yet heartfelt. Mr. Staffron, who I’d barely spoken to since he came to stay, spoke sonorously; then his wife, Cora’s mother, came to the stage, babbling and dabbing her tears with a handkerchief. Robert left my side, mounted the stage, and made a few jokes that had the room laughing uncomfortably. I stood and listened, my feet pinching, and instead of the twinkling lights of the party, I saw the leaves swirling upward; instead of the wash of words from the dais, I heard the shrill whistle; and as Cora and Martin climbed the steps, I watched Princer’s stomach, clotted and stinking of blood, soaring over me again and again. As I hovered alone and unnoticed, my glass in my hand, for a moment the terrors of the woods were more real to me than the pleasant civilization of this room.

  I blinked and tried to focus on Cora and Martin. Martin spoke first, declaring how lucky he was to have found such a beautiful woman. Cora followed, uncharacteristically shy, her few sentences stilted and rehearsed, her thin face frozen in stage fright as she thanked everyone for coming and declared how happy she was. They stood a foot apart and did not touch.

  There was dancing afterward; the four-piece orchestra began again, more champagne flowed, and couples began to rotate demurely around the dance floor. I was asked to dance by one of Dottie’s art buyers and then Cora’s cousin, the doctor from Harley Street. I accepted numbly and moved around the dance floor with each man in a daze, making mechanical conversation. Mabry’s words went through my head in time with the music. Things are going to get even more difficult, I’m afraid.

  I took another glass of champagne, wishing I had a watch so I could decide when to leave. The champagne was making me even more tired, and a pulse in my temples was beginning to pound. The practiced tones of the orchestra sounded like screeching. Something was wrong. It wasn’t just my feeling out of sorts—there was a thick tension in the air, as of a coming thunderstorm. I looked around the room and realized that Dottie, Robert, and Martin were gone.

  The din of voices and music in the room seemed to grow louder. The backs of my eyes throbbed. Where had the family disappeared to? Why had they left their own party? I spied Cora in the corner of the room, nodding and smiling at someone, the corners of her eyes tired now, her smile clenched and tense. I started toward her, but someone intercepted me—David Wilde, clad in a formal black suit. “Mrs. Manders,” he said. “Please do me the honor of a dance.”

  “Mr. Wilde,” I said.

  Mr. Wilde smiled at me. He looked handsome and distinguished, with the silver in his hair and his matching silver eyes. He crooked his right elbow in my direction. “I promise I’m adept,” he said.

  It was a strangely unbalanced feeling, dancing with a one-armed man. But he maneuvered me expertly around the room, his right hand firm on my waist, as if he danced with women all the time. Beneath my hand, the shoulder of his wasted arm felt bulky and strong beneath his jacket.

  “Did you not bring your wife tonight?” I managed to ask him.

  “Mrs. Wilde dislikes social functions,” he replied. “Mrs. Manders, I’m afraid I should apologize for the circumstances of our first meeting.”

  “You needn’t,” I said. “You were tasked with giving your opinion of me as Martin’s possible wife, and you gave it.”

  “Did Mrs. Forsyth tell you that?” he asked in surprise.

  “She never had to. I figured it out from the first minute I got back to Wych Elm House.” My tongue was running away with me, I realized vaguely, and I could not control it. “Since we are at Martin’s engagement party, Mr. Wilde, it no longer figures. I understand what it means to be obliged to do something as part of your employment.”

  He was quiet for a moment as the room spun around us. I blinked, trying not to topple, and realized I was clinging to him a little tighter in order to stay upright. He re
sponded by angling his body and placing his hand even more firmly on my waist—not like one of Casparov’s nasty old gropes, but a gentlemanly effort to keep me discreetly vertical. “Do you ever wonder, Mrs. Manders,” he said, “whether my assessment of you was positive or negative?”

  “No,” I said to him. “No.”

  “Perhaps I won’t tell you, then.”

  “You told her I was respectable,” I said, my loose tongue moving again. “You questioned me about my prospects and concluded that I wasn’t after money, so I was probably trustworthy. You told me in detail about Frances to see if I would be shocked or horrified, and I passed that test, too.” I waited for him to protest, but he did not. “But you knew about Mother,” I continued. “You’d already researched my background. I suppose you wondered if the madness in my family would mix with the madness in Martin’s, if we had children.”

  The silence he gave me after that was appalled—but not, I knew, at me. “It must be difficult,” Mr. Wilde said quietly, “to be such a perceptive woman.”

  The dance was winding to a close, and we slowed. “Perceptive or mad,” I said. “Do you ever wonder if they’re the same thing?”

  The music stopped, and he stepped back from me. “What do you mean?” he asked me.

  “I just wonder sometimes,” I said. I swayed a little, and he reached out and gripped my arm with his good hand. “I’m well acquainted with madness, as you pointed out. My mother died. Sometimes I wonder if it’s only the mad people who see the truth, or who say it out loud.” I pulled my arm slowly from his grip. “Thank you for the dance.”

  A new dance started, and I returned to the sidelines. I drank more champagne. David Wilde danced with a different woman and did not look my way. Well done, Jo, I thought. Now he thinks you’re insane.

  I looked around and saw that the family was still gone, and Cora had gone, too. My head pounded. Something was wrong, terribly, terribly wrong. The orchestra was playing a lively tune, trying to keep the dancers going, but people were beginning to notice. This was not how the party was supposed to go. I was getting curious looks, as I was the only family member—such as I was—left. I shrank back into the corner, hoping no one would approach me and ask. I don’t know; I’m not really family. Perhaps the champagne had run out, or there had been an emergency in the kitchen.

  I turned and saw Frances Forsyth’s face, beneath an arch of flowers across the room. She was wearing her gray dress and her pearls, and for a second she watched me before someone passed in front of her and she disappeared. Had I imagined her? I didn’t know. I moved across the room toward the empty space where I’d seen her.

  I narrowly avoided colliding with a dancing couple—the woman had her head angled back, her neck showing, as she laughed at something her partner said—and wobbled in as straight a line as I could muster. My heart pounded. I stood in the spot where I’d seen Frances, but she was not there. There was not even a breath of cold where she’d been.

  There was no emergency in the kitchen, no minor incident that would take the family out of the room for this long. Something was happening. The idea that someone had died lodged in my mind, and I could not get rid of it. Someone was dead—someone must be dead. Had Martin collapsed?

  I had another glass of champagne in my hand—I had no idea where it had come from. If Martin were dead, it would all be over. It would ruin Dottie, break her. She’d leave this house and never come back, and so would Robert. But Martin was still fighting, I told myself. He hadn’t given in. He had a doctor, and he was trying so hard . . .

  I edged around the room and slid out the door. I had to face it. If Martin were dead, if the family was finished and my future erased, I had to know. I had faced worse. I felt panicked and curiously detached, as I had that day in the train station when Alex left, though I was not ill. I walked down the dim corridor in my peacock dress, the empty glass of champagne dangling from my fingers, my heels clicking softly on the floor.

  A waiter—one of the staff Dottie had hired for the evening—passed me and gave me a curious look, but did not stop. I reached the staircase and started to descend, my hand gripping the banister. The terrible thing would be happening downstairs, away from the party and the guests. It would be sealed in one of the private rooms, the way terrible things always were.

  A maid appeared at the bottom of the stairs. I recognized her—Tildy, her name was, one of Mrs. Bennett’s staff. She looked up at me, and the expression on her blanched face was one of such sheer terror I almost stopped in surprise.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “Don’t.” Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it from the maid.

  “Mrs. Manders—”

  “Please don’t,” I said. “You won’t get in trouble. We never saw each other.” I reached the bottom of the stairs and got my footing. My legs felt too long, too unbalanced. My dress was too short. My heart was beating so hard my breath came shallow. I just wanted it to be over.

  Tildy bolted past me and ran up the stairs. I continued down the corridor, which was dark and quiet. Not even the echo of the orchestra could be heard here.

  Voices. Low, urgent, unhappy. Dottie’s voice—rising, then coming back under control. Robert’s voice, low and angry. Voices overlapping. I followed them, placing one foot after the other.

  They were in the large parlor. The doors were open, and there was Dottie, standing in the middle of the room in her fancy beaded suit. She looked as distressed as I’d ever seen her. Robert stood several feet away, his hands in his pockets, his face pale and angry. Martin sat in a chair near his father’s elbow, leaning heavily on one arm, his face slack and his eyes aglow with painful ecstasy. Cora stood behind him, biting the lipstick off her lips, her hands clenched together.

  Martin was not dead. My mind fixed on that fact as my gaze fixed on him and I came toward the doorway. Then I realized what Martin was looking at with such an expression of complex wonderment in his eyes.

  There was another figure in the room. A man sat in a chair with his back to me, his features in shadow. The family all stared at him, transfixed.

  They did not hear the click of my heels on the floor until I was in the doorway. The air was so dense I could hardly breathe, but I put a hand on the doorframe and kept upright. “What is going on?” I said into the silence.

  Dottie’s look of horror mirrored the maid’s. Her gaze caught mine, pierced it. Her narrow shoulders shook as she took a breath. “We were going to prepare you,” she said.

  In one motion, the man unwound from his chair and stood, turning to face me. I saw long legs, the familiar set of shoulders. The breath left me. I could not speak.

  Alex came forward into the light. Just that small movement pierced me, stabbed me as if someone had thrust an elbow into my gut. His face came out of the shadows and I shattered.

  “Jo,” he said.

  A low moan came out of me. I gripped the doorframe, my fingers numb. I felt my legs buckling, saw spots dance in front of my eyes. The room spun away. “No,” I said, my voice hoarse to my own ears. I heard a click and saw the empty champagne glass land softly on the floor.

  He took another step toward me.

  I revulsed in horror, all of my brain and my body rebelling. I stumbled back, wobbling on my heels. “No,” I said again. I backed out of the room and ran down the corridor, a sob in my throat. Voices sounded behind me.

  I pulled open the door to the morning room and crossed to the glass terrace doors. There were footsteps behind me now—I knew that long, sure stride, had heard it in my feverish dreams. I kicked off my heels and ran out onto the terrace, my feet shocked against the cold tile.

  He was coming after me. Alone. I hurried across the terrace and descended the steps to the garden. When my feet hit the earth, I began to run, ignoring the cold and the hard earth on my soles, ignoring the rustle of my dress and the chilled night air in my throat. I ran through the
garden toward the shadows of the trees.

  Alex’s stride came behind me. “Jo,” he said, his voice urgent but unhurried. He was catching up with me easily, and he wasn’t even running. “Jo, look at me.”

  I sobbed. This was my dream, my nightmare. Jo, look at me. I knew what would happen next. He would say, They were wrong; there was blood in the cockpit after all, and I would turn, and I would see his face, his head—

  “Jo, look at me!”

  I ran faster, my feet numb on the path now, but I was no match for him. Just as in the dream, he came up behind me, closer and closer. I could only hope that I would wake in my lonely bedroom and—

  His hand grabbed my arm. I jumped as if his touch burned me and tried to pull away, but he held me fast. He jerked me backward and turned me to face him.

  “It isn’t you,” I said. “It can’t be.”

  “For God’s sake, Jo.” He yanked me closer, his hand hard on my arm. He was wearing a wool coat, and the motion unbalanced me toward him, made me put my hands on the lapels. It was unfamiliar beneath my fingertips. I had never seen it before.

  “Look at me,” my husband said.

  I raised my gaze. It was Alex—his high cheekbones, his mouth, his blue eyes. His dark blond hair, grown slightly long now and tousling in the cold breeze. He stared down into my face, his hand on my arm, his chest beneath my fingers, and finally I knew him. It was Alex.

  He was alive.

  I took a breath and regained my footing. He felt my body go still, and his grip relaxed on me, but still he looked at me, searching my expression. I took a small step back.

  Three years. Alive for three years, and I hadn’t known.

  All of the family, sitting in the large parlor, circled around him. We wanted to prepare you.

  Colonel Mabry, looking at me with concern in his eyes. Things are about to become more difficult for you.