The Dark Matters Quartet

by Claire Robyns

  Greyston lasted less than two minutes before he took after her, winding a path through the packed room. When he stepped through the canvas draped from the indicated mast, he found a narrow staircase curving upward to a viewing balcony obscured from below by the décor. The semi-circle alcove overhanging the ballroom held a scattering of hardback chairs, but no Georgina.

  He’d just propped his cane against the inner wall when she appeared, two long-stemmed glasses in one hand and an uncorked bottle of champagne dangling by its neck in her other.

  Enough light filtered in through the canvas to illuminate the soft flush on her cheeks and the zest that infected her smile.

  He took the whole picture in with a wary stance. “What are we doing here, Mrs. Bonnington?” he asked, placing emphasis on her married name.

  “I’d rather hoped we’d leave the formality downstairs.” She put her back to the wall and peered at him from beneath thick, black lashes. “Close your eyes, Greyston.”

  He looked at her a moment more, but she simply leant her head back and lowered her eyelids with no apparent intention of sneaking up on him unawares.

  “Do you feel that?” she said.

  Greyston steadied himself with a hand to the wall and closed his eyes. Feel what? It did strike him that while below the chattering muted the orchestra, the opposite was true up here. “I hear the music.”

  “If you listen hard enough, you can hear music anywhere,” she murmured. “Now feel it…feel the harmonies strumming the air, vibrations pulsing around you like butterflies flitting just beyond reach. Sometimes…sometimes I’m so sure I could grab hold of a thread, there, that B-minor chord, and let it drag me up, through the skies, and up and up...”

  The pleasant harmonies of her Welsh lilt drifted on the waves of orchestral music and then, suddenly, he was feeling.

  He was in the pilot cabin, with no glass between him and the Aether streaming by, soaring with the violin solo, higher and faster in the thinning air until the weight of the earth had no drag whatsoever.

  The violin hit a high note, then petered to a quivering death as the tune ended.

  Greyston slowly opened his eyes to find Georgina had poured the champagne and set the bottle on the floor.

  She pushed one of the glasses into his hand. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  His mood had softened, taking him to a place where his gaze raked over the exquisite slant of her pale blue eyes, high cheekbones and flawless skin, and he agreed on all accounts.

  Beautiful indeed.

  Nodding, he raised the glass to his lips without realising what he had done until the dry, sparkling bubbles hit his throat. “Have you ever travelled by airship?”

  “Often enough to know I love it.” She tipped her head back and drained the contents of her glass. Her gaze came to him, one of those delicately winged brows arched. “Are you going to sip on that like a ladybird?”

  Getting rid of the vile stuff in one swoop wasn’t a bad idea. He followed her example and threw back his drink.

  With an approving smile, she moved to the edge of the balcony, reaching over to clip a fold of canvas and tuck it through one of the wrought iron loops of the railing.

  Greyston collected the bottle and went to stand beside her. They were partially exposed to anyone who cared to look directly up, but he’d never paid much heed to the concept of compromising positions and, besides, neither he nor Georgina Bonnington were suitable candidates.

  Georgina held her glass out and he complied, replenishing her champagne. When it became apparent he wasn’t going to join her, she pouted. “A lady never drinks alone.”

  He grimaced, but refilled his glass. “All these bubbles will dull the mind.”

  “That’s rather the point,” she declared, turning to gaze out over the hall below and indicating with her glass. “Do you see that gentleman there?”

  Greyston followed the line of her eye to the two men embroiled in conversation, the younger one she was pointing at impeccably attired in pressed swallowtails and the other sporting a crooked cravat and silver strands of hair flying in every direction.

  “Recently lost an elder brother,” she murmured. “Father likely gone as well, or incapacitated beyond the call of duty.”

  “Do you know the family?”

  “I don’t need to,” she said. “See the way he holds himself? How attentively he hangs onto every word of that fuddy earl who’s probably spouting utter hogwash? He never expected to be the head of his family and now he has to fill the shoes of someone he regarded highly. He’s uncomfortable, eager, and drowning in depths of obligations he has no idea what to do with. Give him a year and he’ll have mastered the art of autocratic bluntness along with an expression of eternal boredom.”

  Her gaze skipped across the room and landed each time with deep analysis of character and situation.

  Not quite sure how much to believe, Greyston was nevertheless fascinated as he watched and listened, drank more champagne and kept her glass topped.

  “A pig farmer from somewhere near Lincolnshire,” she said, referring to man who appeared very much at ease in his given company. “A couple of weeks ago, he took his fattened pig to market and as he led her into the selling pen, she looked into his eyes and squealed. He fell down on his knees to beg forgiveness and found himself undone. His farmlands lie in waste since he packed himself off to the city for a life devoid of slaughter. Word spread of the man who’d proposed to a pig and here he is, embraced by the ton as their latest novelty.”

  Greyston stretched lower, his forearms over the top of the balcony railing, to get a better view. “How the blazes could you know all that?”

  She slid him a mischievous look. “Making up life stories is as much fun as observing the ones people wish to hide.”

  He chuckled. “You do both extremely well.”

  His gaze moved on from the pig farmer, scanning the crowd below and easily picking out Lily in a dress of red and gold silk layers that shimmered with the tones of fire as she walked. Kelan was a pace behind her, his hand an inch from her back, guiding her onto the dance floor without touching.

  As the orchestra swept the dancing pairs into the vibrant energy of the polka, Greyston pinpointed the emotion that had escaped him earlier.

  Regret.

  Not for what had been, or for what might have come, but simply for what was.

  “What of Lord and Lady Perth,” he said, telling himself he was putting Georgina’s remarkable observational skills to use for the good of their cause. “What do you see?”

  A long minute passed before she responded. “I see a woman newly and decidedly married.”

  She spun away from the railing to face him. “As to the how and why you lost her?” she said gently. “Only you have that answer, Greyston.”

  She wasn’t asking anything of him.

  He could have denied all.

  “It’s complicated,” he offered. Maybe it was the absence of intrusive curiosity. Maybe it had been a while since anyone had looked closely enough at him to ‘see’. And maybe it was just the bubbles that had gone to his head.

  She lowered her gaze, staring into the bottom of her glass. The lively music pulsed the air between them with an inexplicable melancholy.

  “My husband died sixteen months ago.”

  “God, I’m sorry,” he blurted, although that wasn’t the first thought to cross his mind.

  God, that isn’t right.

  You’re too young to be a widow.

  A sampling of his heart turned butter soft.

  “Thank you.” She blinked up at him, and as he watched the sparkle strip back from the pale blue of her eyes, he knew she was consciously allowing him a glimpse into a dark corner she hid from most. “He was my love, my world, my reason for being… I would have done anything to keep him. When you love someone that much, anything short of death isn’t complicated, Greyston, it’s giving up.”

  Sometimes it felt as if all he’d ever known was death.

&n
bsp; Georgina had no place judging him, if that was even what she was doing.

  Perhaps she was just throwing another observation out there.

  Either way, her argument resonated with him.

  “My father murdered Lily—Lady Perth’s—mother. He razed an entire castle to the ground and he would have killed Lily herself if she’d been present. She doesn’t know and I cannot bring myself to tell her. I lost Lily, because that lie would end up destroying us as much as the truth would. That’s no way to live, waking up each morning to the face of the man responsible for her mother’s death and, but for a stroke of fate, her own.”

  “Only if she blamed you for another man’s deed.” Georgina placed a hand on his arm. She smiled, but couldn’t quite cover the sadness in her expression. “Perhaps you don’t give her enough credit?”

  “Lily would never blame me, and that makes it worse.” He turned from her, pacing a short path up and down the balcony. “My father was trying to kill me at the time. Me, and anyone whose life I’d touched.”

  Not entirely accurate, but then he couldn’t say anything about the demons.

  He’d had fifteen years to prove his father wrong and vindicate the decision his mother had taken without her husband’s knowledge. To show that he was more than the demon in his blood, that all of them, Lily, the other four children who’d been inducted in Duncan McAllister’s demon-infected army, were worthwhile humans instead of vermin to be scoured from the face of the earth.

  He’d failed.

  In all those years, his father had only tolerated him growing up in his house to keep him close, as a means of access to the others when the time came that they were all gathered together at Cragloden Castle on their fifteenth birthdays.

  Fifteen years, and he’d never done a damn thing, never said a damn thing, never invoked a single damned fatherly emotion, to even once make the man reconsider.

  He was to blame and people telling him he wasn’t, Lily wholeheartedly denying the facts, would only stack the guilt until it choked him.

  “That’s truly terrible,” Georgina said when he paused. “I cannot imagine having one’s own…father…”

  “You shouldn’t have to, and neither should Lily.”

  “Of course not, but you didn’t walk away purely for her sake, did you?” She looked at him, waiting, but he didn’t know what she was getting at. “You’d also have to wake up each morning, and remember your father had tried to kill you. You’d never be able to put it aside, not so long as that lie was wedged between you and Lily, keeping the torment alive and fresh. You walked away for yourself, as well.”

  Greyston opened his mouth to object, and found he could not. He’d never thought about it that way, but now that he was, he acknowledged she’d struck a discordant truth.

  Not that he was ready to admit any such thing aloud. Instead, he conceded, “A woman’s insight is a formidable opponent.”

  “I don’t mean to be harsh,” she said. “Love is resilient and holds on long after there’s nothing left to hold onto. Self-preservation, however, is stronger and once you make that connection, once you’re ready to admit that staying with Lily would slowly kill you, mentally if not physically, that you walked away to spare your life in every way that counts, then your inborn instinct to survive will finally let go of her.”

  Greyston realised what she was saying. “That’s how you got past your husband’s death?”

  “I don’t know if I got past it,” she said with a little shrug. “He’ll always be in my heart, but perhaps he doesn’t dominate quite so much, not anymore. You’re acquainted with the Duke of Harchings, I believe? My husband was killed while in his service,” she went on without pausing for his reply. “He left me to my mourning in Cairo for six months and then he arrived one morning to drag me home with a harsh truth. I could love my husband for the rest of eternity, he informed me, but so long as I remained in love with him, I was dying. Do you know he had the gall to offer assistance?”

  Now that was one thing he did indeed know about the man.

  Harchings had also had the gall to stand in the cabin of the Red Hawk and imply Greyston’s duty to the crown included supplying him with a copy of the blueprint of the Red Hawk’s circulatory steam design.

  He grinned at the recollection of how that conversation had ended after he’d refused to comply.

  “I’m accustomed to getting what I want,” Harchings had warned and Greyston had happily informed him, “You’re welcome to try.”

  “He offered to assist with a quick bullet so I could join my husband,” Georgina said at his grin. “Not help me enjoy living again in the way you’re thinking, you wicked man.”

  “I wasn’t thinking any such thing,” he quickly covered. “Actually, I was wondering what you were doing in Cairo.”

  “Now that,” she said with the return of her wide smile, “is a story for another day.”

  FIFTEEN

  “It’s safe to say you saved my reputation two dances ago,” Lily remarked as she rotated in Kelan’s embrace to the beat of a slow waltz. “People will start talking all over again.”

  “Well, I hope they make mention of my perfectly executed glide when they do,” he said lightly.

  “One might almost think you enjoy dancing.”

  They paused for a count at the top of a slide. Kelan’s gaze connected with hers and a grin tugged at his lips. “What’s not to like about holding a beautiful woman in my arms?”

  “Flattery, Sir, will get you everywhere,” she teased to cover the effect of that compliment combined with heightened awareness of the man. “Which is a lot farther than my alleged beauty.”

  She’d danced her share of waltzes and had never found it remotely scandalous. Suddenly she understood the fuss. They were sliding again, his hand resting just above her waist, their thighs practically brushing but for the rustling whisper of silk. Kelan danced with the same grace he wielded a sword, with an effortless control that was lithe, fluid and relaxed. And yet, underpinning each move, the measured danger was a leashed power and, as her body was recognising, inherently sensual.

  He dipped his head, his words a breath of warmth along her cheek, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Most beautiful women manage to tilt their world to their will with nothing more than a smile,” she replied, clipping a wistful sigh short. “That would make a pleasant change.”

  “Most women aren’t applying their wiles to demons, Lily.”

  “There’s that,” Lily murmured, although she hadn’t been referring to demons at all.

  The favour she was after was so small, not even a favour really. He was going to banish Timothkin anyway. She only wanted him to do it a bit sooner than he’d planned.

  They came out of the rotation at an arm’s length, the intensity of his gaze not nearly as chilling as she was accustomed to, and then he brought her in again to slide left with a closeness that forced them to look past each other.

  Last night, although his blatant disregard for her plea had stung, she’d more or less expected it. Now, with the suggestion that he considered her beautiful spinning with them as he whirled her in his arms, this imposed intimacy raising dark stirrings of a kiss she’d thought well and truly buried, she expected more.

  It wasn’t logical. Polite compliments and an evening of Kelan playing the doting husband meant nothing.

  He was the same man yesterday as he was today and she knew better. They couldn’t even divulge the full discovery of his uncle’s memory box for fear of what Kelan might do. Greyston had insisted Kelan would sacrifice Ana for the information and Lily was inclined to agree.

  So, no, there was no rhyme or reason for her heightened awareness or her heightened expectations and it simply wouldn’t do.

  She trusted Kelan with her life, and very little else.

  The following morning, Kelan was gone before Lily made her way down to breakfast. She’d fallen into a sleep of pure exhaustion after too many nights without and hadn’t even
heard him moving around next door.

  “Apparently he has an interview with the queen first,” Greyston informed her, “and he intends to ride on to Clitheroe directly from Buckingham Palace.”

  “He might have mentioned the interview with the queen,” she muttered. “How on earth did he manage that in a day, anyway?”

  Greyston shrugged. “I’m only interested in what he learns.”

  “Yes, well.” She sighed, then peered at Greyston. “Don’t you find this all a little nonsensical? Why are we trying so hard to learn anything when we could simply banish every demon as and when it pops up? Isn’t getting rid of them the goal?”

  “Finding out how something works is always relevant, Lily, whether you’re trying to predict, contain or look for a bigger picture.”

  “We wouldn’t have to give a fig about any of that if we didn’t give the demons a chance to gander about the place,” she pointed out, to which Greyston had nothing more to add.

  It was on those exact sentiments that she arrived at the Site of Exhibition across the Horticultural Gardens from the Central Hall of Arts and Sciences.

  The lawn was set up with canvas tents offering beverages and seating, but all the excitement was on Cromwell Road.

  Today’s exhibition was for the unveiling of a new invention that promised, according to the advertising postcards, to revolutionise London’s transport.

  There’d been some previous success with horseless carriages, enormous clangourous steam engines that had proved unsuitable for city roads but were put to use by some of the more prosperous farms and mills. Lily could only wonder if this new offering would fare any better within the tolerances of town living.

  For once, Greyston seemed enthusiastic about a social engagement. While Lily’s curiosity was roused, her main agenda was simply to meet up with Evelyn. There were so many people milling around, however, that it might take all afternoon before they bumped into each other.

  Greyston had to tunnel a path for them, with a rude elbow here and there that Lily chose not to see, to get them through the crowd bunched around the Autodrone. He didn’t stop until they were at the very front, close enough to reach out and touch the glinting metal.