Mesmerized

by Candace Camp

  St. Leger, following her, reached out to open the carriage door for her, but she grasped the handle before he could. Turning to him, she said significantly, “My family is not so archaic as some and see nothing wrong in a woman exercising her mind in pursuit of a career.”

  “They see nothing wrong in your chasing ghosts?” St. Leger asked mildly, reaching toward her to help her up into her carriage.

  Olivia narrowed her eyes and started to reply, but stopped as she saw realization dawning on St. Leger’s face. He looked at the carriage door, on which her father’s ducal crest was tastefully drawn, then pulled out her card to look at it again.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed, with some amazement. “You’re not—you’re one of the ‘mad Morelands’?”

  Olivia jerked the door open and stepped up into the carriage, shrugging off his helping hand. She turned and sat down, leaning forward and saying, “Yes! I am definitely one of the ‘mad Morelands.’ Indeed, I am probably the maddest of the lot. If I were you, I’d burn that card, lest some of it rub off on you.”

  She slammed the door on his hurried words: “No, wait! I didn’t—I’m—”

  Olivia rapped sharply on the carriage roof, and the driver started like a shot, cutting off the rest of her companion’s words.

  “___sorry,” Stephen St. Leger finished lamely. He looked down at his polished leather boots and elegant silk trousers, now splashed with dirty water from the carriage wheels. He suspected that the driver had been well aware of what he had been doing.

  Of course, Stephen thought ruefully, he could scarcely blame the man. His words had been clumsy and boorish. His cousin Capshaw was right: he had spent too long in the United States, or, more accurately, he had spent too long in the lonely wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. He was no longer accustomed to being in polite society or, indeed, much of any kind of society at all.

  He had not really meant anything bad about the woman’s family. He had merely been shocked when it registered on him that the young lady he had thought he caught red-handed aiding a medium had in fact been the daughter of a duke, a gently reared young woman of good lineage and a hefty fortune. He had simply blurted out the name by which her family was largely regarded in London society. The “mad Morelands”…they must be mad, indeed, he thought, if they found nothing wrong with letting one of their daughters traipse about London alone at night, attending séances and confronting charlatans. It seemed a risky business.

  Her having a business surprised him less. He had seen enough wives and daughters helping to conduct family businesses—or widows left to run one on their own—in his time in the United States. It was, however, somewhat startling to find a young, unmarried lady in England doing so, especially one from one of the most noble families in the country. Her family, he would have thought, would have moved heaven and earth to keep her from doing so.

  But, he supposed, the reason they had not lay in the very epithet that had slipped off his tongue. The Morelands, while not actually legally mad, were generally considered to be, well, off. The old duke, Miss Moreland’s grandfather, had been famous for his various bizarre and intense “health treatments,” which had ranged from mud baths to foul-smelling restorative drinks to being wrapped in wet sheets for hours at a time—the latter of which was generally considered to have been what sent the man at a relatively young age into his last, fatal bout of pneumonia. He had spent much of his life traveling in England and the Continent, consulting with quacks and chasing the latest fads. His wife, it was said, had a peculiar tendency to talk about her ancestors as if she had daily conversations with them. The duke’s younger brother, the present duke’s uncle, was reputed to spend much of his time playing with tin soldiers.

  The present Duke of Broughton, Miss Moreland’s father, was obsessed with some sort of ancient subject—Stephen wasn’t sure what, though he had it vaguely in his mind that the man collected statues and broken bits of pots and things. And he had married a woman well-known for her unusual views on social reform, women, marriage and children. Even more horrifying to London society was the fact that the current duchess had not been born to the nobility, being merely the daughter of country gentry. There were several Moreland children, most of them younger than Stephen was, and he did not know much about them, having left the country before most of them were old enough to enter society, but from everything he had heard from his mother and friends, he had gotten the impression that they were an odd lot.

  What he had seen of Miss O. Q. Moreland certainly had done nothing to change that impression. She was decidedly peculiar—going out alone in the evening to attend séances, sneaking through darkened rooms to pounce on a fraudulent medium and expose her practices, even carrying on a business of doing such things!

  Stephen idly rubbed his thumb over the engraved letters of her card. Investigator of Psychic Phenomena. He couldn’t help but smile a little, thinking of her feisty stance, hands on hips, looking up at him with those big brown eyes that looked as though they should be soft and melting but were instead fierce. Small and dainty, yet looking as if she were ready to take on any opponent.

  He remembered the odd feeling that had gone through him when the light had been turned on and he had first looked at her. He had thought her a part of the medium’s act, helping to hoodwink an innocent public. Yet when he looked at her, something had shot through him, some strange current of emotion and physical attraction that jarred and surprised him. It had been something like desire…and yet something more, as well, something he could not remember ever feeling before.

  Frowning, he turned and started to walk away, but the man who had been beside him at the séance came out the front door at that moment and hurried down the steps toward him, saying, “St. Leger!”

  Stephen turned, surprised. “Capshaw. I thought you must have decided to stay.”

  The other man made a face. “I doubt that I would have been welcome, frankly, after the scene you made. But I had to do what I could to calm down Colonel Franklin. I told him that you were my cousin and a gentleman and would not spread scurrilous lies about him.”

  “I don’t give a damn about that pompous colonel,” St. Leger said, grimacing.

  “What were you doing, by the way?” Mr. Capshaw went on curiously. “Did you go there to expose the medium? I must say, I didn’t think it sounded like your sort of entertainment.”

  “Hardly. But I wasn’t planning to do anything. It was just that when I heard her rustling about in the dark, I could not resist the opportunity to catch one of the charlatans red-handed.” He shrugged. “I went merely to—I don’t know, see what sort of thing they do. Try to understand what their hold is on otherwise rational people.”

  “There are more than a few who believe in it,” Capshaw commented. “I’ve seen one medium who did things that, well, frankly left me wondering.” He glanced over at his friend. “Don’t you ever think that maybe it’s a possibility? That people can speak to us from the other side?”

  “It strikes me as highly unlikely,” Stephen said shortly. “If they could, surely they would tell us something more important than the wretched pap these mediums put out. And why do they spend their time knocking on things? One would think that they would have better things to do with their time than play parlor tricks.”

  Mr. Capshaw chuckled. “That sounds like you.”

  “They are playing on people’s grief,” St. Leger went on grimly. “Using it to gain money.”

  His friend glanced at him. He had heard that Lady St. Leger, Stephen’s mother, had been attending the séances of a popular Russian medium, and the anger in his friend’s voice confirmed his suspicion. Stephen’s older brother had died almost a year earlier, and their mother was said to be still mired in grief over his death.

  “Sometimes,” Capshaw said carefully, “it helps a person get through it, thinking that they can contact their loved one.”

  “It helps the damned medium acquire money,” St. Leger growled. “And how do you know it helps
them? What if it just keeps them in that same painful place, constantly mourning their loss, never getting on with their lives?”

  He stopped and looked at his companion. “I thought Mother was getting better, that she was not so wrapped up in sorrow as when I first came home. And when she wanted to take Belinda to London, it seemed a good sign. But then she fell in with this Valenskaya woman, and now she seems deeper in mourning than ever. I told myself the same things you said, that it didn’t matter if it wasn’t real, that it would help soothe her. What did it matter if she went to a few séances? But when Belinda wrote me and said that Mother had given this medium her emerald ring out of gratitude for all she’d done…Father gave her that ring! I have never seen it off her hand until now. Obviously this woman is exercising great power over her. That’s why I came to London. And it didn’t help my fears any when I saw Mother, either. She is forever talking about what this woman says, she and Belinda both, and it all sounds like the most blatant nonsense. Yet they seem to swallow it without a moment’s thought.”

  Capshaw gave him a sympathetic glance, but, as Stephen knew, there was little he could say to help him.

  “If only I could prove to her that the woman is a fraud!” Stephen went on. His thoughts went then to Miss Moreland of the snapping brown eyes and the business card, but he pushed her aside immediately. A man could hardly ask a woman to get rid of his problems for him, after all, and, besides, he could not expose his mother to the embarrassment. Besides, the woman was probably as peculiar as everyone said all her family were.

  They continued for a moment in silence; then Stephen said, with studied casualness, “What do you know of the Morelands?”

  “Morelands? Who do you—oh, you mean Broughton’s brood? The ‘mad Morelands’?”

  “Yes.”

  Capshaw shrugged. “I don’t know any of them personally. Although the eldest was at Eton at the same time I was—some damned peculiar name, I remember that. They’ve all got peculiar names. Roman or Greek or something. Broughton’s always been mad for antiquities, you know.”

  “Yes, I remember that much.”

  “He was a daredevil—the one at Eton when I was there. Always into some scrape or other. Not the sort of chap I was mates with. It was enough to make one tired just hearing all the things he’d done. Theo—that was what we called him. His real name was something longer, Theodosius or some such. He’s an explorer now, I’ve heard. Always off paddling up the Amazon or trekking through Arabia or something.”

  “Ah. Even more peculiar than haring off to the U.S., I suppose.”

  Capshaw glanced at him, then gave a rueful grin. “Well, yes, I guess he would be someone you might get along with. If you and I weren’t cousins, we probably wouldn’t be friends, either. He was a couple of years behind you at Eton, though.” He paused, then said, “There are several others, all younger, though. The girls, I think, tend to be bookish. Don’t go out in society—well, except for The Goddess.”

  “The who?”

  “Oh, some poetic sort gave her the name years ago when she came out, and it rather stuck. Suited her, you see. Lady Kyria Moreland. If ever anyone could carry off such an epithet, it is she. Tall, statuesque, flaming red hair…she’s a beauty, right enough. Odd, though—she could have married anyone, had suitors begging for her hand right and left, still does get plenty of offers, so I’ve heard, though she’s been out for eight years, at least.”

  “She’s still unmarried?” St. Leger asked, surprised.

  “Yes. That’s what I’m saying. All the women say she’s the maddest of the lot. She could have been a duchess, a countess…Even some prince or other asked for her hand—foreigner, of course, so no surprise she didn’t accept him. But still…she turned them all down, says she enjoys her life just as it is. Doesn’t plan to ever marry.”

  “Definitely one of a kind,” St. Leger commented.

  “Oh, and one of the daughters blows things up.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Burned down one of the outbuildings at Broughton Park a couple of years ago. Caused a bit of a stir.”

  “I see. For any particular reason?”

  His cousin frowned. “Not sure, really. Just heard it round at the club, that Broughton’s daughter burned it down, and it wasn’t the first time she’d blown something up. Oh, and that Broughton was in a flap about it—it was next to some shed full of his pots or something.”

  “Interesting.” St. Leger wondered if it was another daughter or his own medium-chaser who had engaged in the pyrotechnics.

  “Why are you so interested in the Morela—oh, wait!” Capshaw’s brow cleared. “Don’t tell. Is that your ‘ghost’? She was one of Broughton’s brood?”

  “Apparently.” Stephen nodded.

  “Good Gad,” Capshaw said, much struck by the revelation. “Well, not really a surprise, I suppose.”

  “No. But, you know, she didn’t seem that peculiar, really.” He paused, then added, “Well, maybe a bit odd, but quite sharp and—somehow appealing, for it all.”

  “Appealing?” His friend narrowed his eyes in speculation.

  “Yes. In a general way, you know.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Stephen grimaced at his companion. “Don’t give me that look. I have no interest in Miss Moreland. Believe me, the last thing I am looking for is a woman, particularly a peculiar one. Between the estate and my mother falling into some charlatan’s clutches, I have enough on my plate.”

  The two parted soon after that, Capshaw hailing a hansom to take him to his rooms and St. Leger turning to walk the last two blocks to his family’s home.

  It was a pleasant town house, narrow and tall, built a hundred years earlier in the Georgian style by a St. Leger ancestor. Stephen stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the elegant front door and looked at the house for a moment. This house held some of his sweetest and bitterest memories, for it had been here where he lived when he came to London as a young man. When he had fallen in love…and later lost her.

  Shaking off the memory, he trotted up the steps and opened the door. A footman came forward promptly to take his light coat and hat.

  “My lord. I hope you had a good evening.”

  “Not as productive as I’d hoped.”

  “Lady St. Leger is in the drawing room.”

  “They didn’t go out?”

  “I believe that she, Miss Belinda and Lady Pamela did go out earlier, sir, but they returned a few minutes ago. Her Ladyship asked me to tell you that she would like to see you if you came in early.”

  “Yes, of course.” Stephen turned and went down the hall to the formal drawing room, a narrow elegant blue-and-white chamber. Pamela had redecorated it, of course, as she had the rest of the house, after Roderick had come into the title. Stephen preferred the warmer, darker colors of the room when he had lived here years ago.

  His mother was sitting at the piano, playing a quiet air, when he came in. Belinda, his lively younger sister, was seated beside her, turning the pages of the music for her. Pamela, he was sorry to discover, was also there, sitting on a pale blue velvet love seat, a bored expression on her face. It changed when Stephen entered the room, turning into the slow, faintly mysterious smile that she was well-known for, a smile that promised a wealth of secret pleasures.

  “Stephen,” Pamela said in her husky voice. “What a pleasant surprise.” She laid her hand in silent invitation on the seat beside her on the love seat.

  “Pamela,” Stephen replied stiffly, giving her a brief nod, then going to his mother at the piano. He bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Mother. I am surprised to find you home so early.”

  Lady St. Leger gave him a sparkling smile. She was dressed, as always, in the complete black of mourning, although tonight a pair of diamonds dangled at her ears, catching the light. White hair curled softly around her face, gentle and still pretty despite the years and sorrow that had visited her.

  “There were really no parties of any
consequence,” his mother explained. “The season’s all but over, really. And Belinda was tired. So we just visited friends.”

  Belinda jumped up from her seat, belying any indication of tiredness, and came around the piano bench to greet her brother. Her hair was dark, like his, arranged on her head in a cascade of curls, and her eyes were also gray, though softer than his silvery brightness. She was a pretty girl, with the light of intelligence and curiosity in her eyes, quick to smile and laugh.

  “Stephen!” she cried now as she reached out to give him a hug. “Are you going riding with me in the park tomorrow? You said this morning you might. Mother won’t let me go without an escort.” She made a face, annoyance tempered with fondness.

  “In the morning?”

  “Of course. That’s when everyone goes.”

  “Everyone meaning the Honorable Damian Hargrove?” Pamela asked in a tone of lazy amusement.

  Belinda wrinkled her nose, saying, “No. Mr. Hargrove is simply a friend.” She looked up at her brother pleadingly, “Please, Stephen, say you’ll go?”

  “Of course I will. If you can manage to get up early enough, of course.”

  “Of course.” Belinda looked affronted at the idea that she could not.

  Lady St. Leger arose from the piano, taking her son’s hand, and led him around to the sofa across from Pamela. She sat down beside him, beaming, her hand still tucked in his.

  Stephen smiled back at his mother, then said in carefully neutral tones, “Whom did you visit this evening?” He had a pretty strong suspicion who it had been.

  “Madame Valenskaya—and her daughter and Mr. Babington, of course.” Howard Babington, Stephen knew, was the gentleman who had opened his house to the Russian medium and her daughter during their stay in London. “It was such a pleasant evening,” his mother went on.

  Her smile was enough to make Stephen wonder if perhaps Capshaw wasn’t right, after all. Maybe it was better for his mother to believe in this nonsense if it lightened her heart. She had been plunged into grief at his older brother’s death almost a year ago. It had taken Stephen some time to settle his affairs and return to England to take up the title and estate left to him by Roderick’s demise, so it had been four months after Roderick’s death before he reached their ancestral home. But his mother had still been in the depths of despair. He had wished many times over the months that he could lighten her sorrow somehow. Even if it took the ministrations of this Russian medium, perhaps it was worth it. They would, after all, be leaving in a few days to return to the family estate, leaving Madame Valenskaya in London. Hopefully, by the next season, his mother would be past this nonsense.