If His Kiss Is Wicked

by Jo Goodman

  “Mr. Matlack.”

  “Was Mr. Matlack standing in a small clearing here?”

  “Yes.”

  “The cottage is rather more distant than this drawing suggests.”

  “Mr. Matlack does not have your uncle’s skills.”

  “He did well enough. I recognize this spot. I rested here until daybreak. When the sun rose I could see in which direction the village lay. I made my way there by staying clear of the road.”

  Restell passed her the last picture. “And what of this place?”

  Emma regarded it, but she shook her head from the first. It showed a steep descent to the brook, most of it a rocky incline with occasional tufts of grass sprouting between the stones. “I don’t know it. If this is the same brook I followed, then this embankment is beyond where I left the path. What is its significance?”

  “It’s where Jonathan Kincaid’s body was discovered.”

  Emma was silent for several long seconds absorbing this fact. “His body.” She stared at the steep incline rendered in the artist’s drawing. “He fell?”

  “A logical assumption, and perhaps the one that was intended for others to make, but if it was a fall that broke his neck, it didn’t happen here.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Mr. Broadstreet and several villagers told me there was evidence in Kincaid’s home to suggest he might have been injured there. Overturned chairs, a cracked wall in the stairwell.”

  “You saw this?”

  “No, everything had been put to rights or repaired by the time I visited. His body was discovered within days of your return to London.”

  She frowned. “Then he was in Walthamstow when I was?”

  Restell nodded. “Yes. Sir Arthur’s sketches established that. Several villagers could place him there. No one I showed the sketches to had any difficulty identifying Kincaid. He grew up there and until recently resided in the home his parents left him. It is the home where you were held, Emma.”

  Emma was sick with the knowledge that it was so. She forced herself to listen to the whole of what Restell had to say.

  “Trips to London took him away these last few years. Frequently, from what I gathered. The people who knew him better than others—and no one would admit to knowing him well—said he was putting on airs. He apparently boasted of an arrangement he’d made in London that would see him heavy in his pockets before the end of spring. You may be interested to know that the two sketches of Kincaid that you favored were the ones considered most like him.”

  “It does not seem so important now.”

  “No, perhaps not. His true name was William Peele. In Walthamstow he was known as Billy Peele. There are two cousins he counted as confidants and cronies. They have not been seen since before Billy Peele was found dead. Neither came to his grave site for the service. They are Elliot and William Peele, the latter going by Will to avoid the inevitable confusion.”

  “The names mean nothing. I do not think I ever heard my attackers address each other by name, but mayhap it is only that I do not remember.” Emma laid one hand against the right side of her face and gently massaged her temple.

  “Is it a headache?”

  “A small one only.”

  “Would you like to lie down?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps more sherry.”

  She smiled a bit unevenly. “In a little while, I think.”

  Restell rolled the drawings back into a single cylinder and slipped the string around it. He tapped it lightly against his knee until Emma took it from his hands. “Bloody hell,” he said, running one hand through his hair. “I didn’t realize what I was doing.”

  “I know.” Emma laid the sketches on the floor. “I acquit you of being intentionally cruel.”

  “Do you understand yet why the tapping bothers you so?”

  She shook her head. “I have racked my brain to think of it, but nothing comes to me. I suppose it is not a memory I can force, like the cottage, or the room, or even certain aspects of my escape. I could not bring those things to mind in their entirety until you provided these sketches. It was an inspired idea. I wish you had showed them to me before now.”

  “I don’t think we can assume your reaction would have been the same. You were attacked at Lady Rivendale’s only days before I returned to London. That did not suggest itself as a good time to put these in front of you. Then we were married and—”

  Emma laid her hand over his. “I understand. The time was never right after our wedding.”

  “Why is that, Emma? Why did that happen?”

  She squeezed his fingers. “I cannot tell you.”

  “Do you mean you don’t know?”

  “No, I mean I cannot tell you.”

  “Emmalyn.”

  She smiled a shade ruefully at his use of her full name. “So I am in trouble, is that it? Because I choose to keep my own counsel? That is not fair, Restell, not when you have withheld so much from me. You are still not telling me all that you know. You are as afraid of what will happen to my mind as I am.” Too late, she realized she had said more than was her intention, and her sharp intake of breath merely served as an exclamation point to her confession.

  Restell’s head snapped around, and he pinned her back with his implacable blue eyes. “You still fear you are going mad.” It was more an accusation than it was a statement of fact. “That’s it, isn’t it? Something happened on our wedding night that confirmed it in your mind.”

  Caught out, Emma merely stared back at him.

  “What was it, Emma?”

  She refused to answer.

  Restell did not allow that to deter him. He recounted the events as he remembered them. “I followed you into the dressing room. You went behind the screen. I made the colossal error in judgment to suppose that you would be flattered by my attention to your silhouette, and you railed at me. I left you alone, then, and you…” His voice trailed off because he was not privy to her thoughts. “And you were…embarrassed?…angry?…frightened?” He realized she was holding his hand so tightly her nails were digging into his skin. He didn’t care. “It has to be said aloud, Emma, and you have to be the one to say it. What happened after I stepped out of the room?”

  Emma took a steadying breath. “That is when I stepped out of my body.”

  Chapter 11

  Restell desired to discover more about Emma’s confession, but she began to weep softly, and he didn’t press. It made him smile when she reached for the handkerchief he carried rather than one of her own. In spite of her attempts to set herself from him, there were still small intimacies that made him feel that she was very much his wife.

  “Excuse me,” Emma said, rising to her feet.

  Restell let her go without asking for an explanation. He watched her disappear into their bedroom, then heard faint sounds of movement coming from the dressing room. He stood and went to the bedroom. She had not closed the door behind her, and he saw her standing at the washstand holding a damp cloth to her eyes. Satisfied that she was all of a piece, Restell turned away before she saw him. He sat on the arm of a wing chair, waiting for her to come out. A few minutes later, she did. Her eyelids were slightly swollen, but her eyes were clear. The small smile she gave him was regretful, not watery.

  Restell glanced at the damp cloth she carried. “Shall I ring for Bettis?”

  “No. I would like something to eat, though. I have had nothing since this morning.”

  She had eaten little enough then, Restell remembered. He didn’t say as much. His cause would not be served by any admission that he watched rather more closely than even she might suspect. “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Will you lie down?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I think I will.”

  Restell returned to the sitting room before he rang for Hobbes. He asked for their supper to be brought up and informed his valet that his plans for this evening were yet uncertain. Once Hobbes was gone, Restell picked up the bottle of sherry from the
drinks cabinet and carried it and the glasses back to the bedroom. Emma had removed her gown and was sitting up in bed wearing her chemise. The combs that had secured her hair were lying on the table beside her. Her hair fell in thick waves on either side of her shoulders. She’d drawn her knees forward to her chest and was holding the compress against her forehead.

  “Sherry?”

  Emma stole a glance at him. “A little.”

  He set the glasses on the table and poured some for each of them. He took his glass but left hers where it rested. “When you’re ready for it,” he said, returning to his perch on the curved arm of the wing chair. “And when you’re of a piece that you can explain yourself, I should like to hear that also.”

  “There is not a great deal I can tell you.”

  “Something more, I hope, than you stepped out of your body.”

  Holding the compress in her hands, Emma raised her head. Her regard was frank. “It sounded every bit as absurd as I thought it would, and to call it absurd is to consider it in the most gentle light. Admit that what I said to you is quite mad.”

  “I will admit nothing of the sort. I do not yet comprehend what you mean by it.”

  “And I comprehend it no better than you.”

  “Then let us see if we can make sense of it together. What did you fear, Emma? That I would suggest an asylum?” When her face drained of color, he realized he’d hit the mark. “You did, didn’t you? Do you trust me so little?”

  “I know you so little.”

  He could not argue her point. He sipped his sherry and waited her out.

  “My grandmother lived the last ten years of her life in such a place,” she said finally. “There is madness in my family, Restell.”

  “There is madness in mine as well,” he said, “but we prefer to call it eccentricity and adapt accordingly.” He intercepted her pained look. “I am not making light of you. What I’m saying is quite true. My mother—not Lady Gardner, but the woman who bore me—had a great aunt who regularly tried to poison her husband. There are those who say he deserved it for fathering nearly a dozen bastards and leaving her childless, but who is to know the truth of it all? No one thought to put her in an asylum, though. On the other hand, I am familiar with a gentleman who had his wife put in such a place for simply disobeying him. My point is that whether one is relegated to a lunatic asylum is often a matter of what others are willing to tolerate.”

  “I have always thought you were tolerant.”

  “Then you should say it as if you believe it. I cannot help but think you are merely hopeful.”

  “Perhaps I am hopeful that you believe it.”

  He smiled. “I am tolerant, Emma. Like madness, tolerance also runs deep in my family.”

  Emma slowly released a breath as she considered this. “Then let me explain as well as I am able.” She set down the cloth and picked up her glass of sherry. “My discomfort began before you left the dressing room. I was almost immediately ill when I realized you were watching me. You left, but the feeling did not pass. In fact, it became worse. I saw I was shaking, and I could barely draw a breath. Both those things have happened before, many times actually since I was attacked, so while the experience is frightening, it is also familiar. I have even learned to expect that darkness will sometimes appear at the corners of my vision, but what I could not anticipate was the calm.”

  “Calm?” asked Restell, as Emma sipped her drink. “Is that not to be desired?”

  “Not when it caused me to become removed from myself.” She sighed. “It’s clear you do not understand, and I can say it no better than that. I cannot account for my time in the dressing room. I remember washing behind the screen and then…” She shrugged helplessly. “And then nothing. I went through the motions of washing and drying, even walking from behind the screen, yet it was as if all of those things were done by someone other than me. I was sitting on a stool when you called to me. It was then that I came into myself again. I became aware. What happened in between, that is what I cannot explain.”

  Restell had no explanation for it either. Emma’s description of events was clear enough, however. “Have you ever known the like before?”

  “I think it’s why I cannot recall what happened when I was attacked.”

  “Then perhaps it is not a terrible thing, Emma. It is protection of a sort.”

  “It does not feel like protection, not when it happens in my own dressing room. There was no threat there.”

  “No, but I think you felt threatened. It is not so dissimilar from what happens when you hear the steady, deliberate tapping. You act to physically protect yourself. Why can it not be that your mind does the same?”

  Emma said nothing. She pressed the rim of her wineglass against her lower lip as she considered what he’d said. Finally, she tipped the glass and drank, then set it aside. “You did not ask me if it’s happened since our wedding night.”

  “Then I have been remiss. Has it?”

  She nodded. “Twice. Once when I was in my uncle’s studio and just two days ago when I was in his library.”

  “You felt threatened in both those places?”

  “I thought I was being watched.”

  “There is always someone around, Emma.”

  “No, it is different when it is Hobbes or Lewis or one of the other footmen. I expect them to be there. I know they will be there. In the dressing room…when you were watching me…it was unexpected. I had the same sense in the studio and again in Sir Arthur’s library.”

  “Was anyone there?”

  “I don’t know. I cannot account for my time in either place. I was on the studio balcony when I became aware again; in the library I was on the upper rung of a ladder reaching for a book. I almost took a tumble.”

  “From the ladder or the balcony?” Restell was able to pose the question with considerably more composure than he felt.

  “The ladder.”

  “I suppose that is the lesser of two evils.”

  “Only because I had not yet reached the balcony rail.”

  Restell finished his drink in a single swallow. She was getting a little of her own back, so he didn’t mind if she saw she’d unsettled him. She should know that she was not the only one who could be unnerved.

  Their supper arrived and Restell held back his questions. He ate at the table in the bedroom while Emma had her meal in bed. She would have objected to being treated as an invalid, but he made that argument moot by treating her like a queen. When their trays were cleared and Emma looked as if she could get her feet under her again, he invited her to sit in the chair he had occupied. He spun his own chair away from the table and straddled it, resting his forearms across the back rail.

  “Is it often that you’re alone in the studio?” Restell asked the question as if there’d been no interruption. “I was under the impression that your uncle was always there.”

  “Not always, but it is mostly the case. Sometimes when his knees are bothering him, he paints in his library. I am charged with getting him what he needs from the studio as he does not have confidence in the servants.”

  “Should I ask McCleod or one of the others to escort you everywhere you go?”

  “I will place myself in an asylum if you do that.”

  Restell counted her dark humor as a sign that she was recovering herself. “Very well, then what will help you ease your mind?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not going mad, Emma.”

  She smiled tentatively. “It is good to hear you say so.”

  Restell watched Emma raise her bare feet onto the chair and tuck the hem of her chemise around them. “Tell me about your grandmother’s madness,” he said. “Did she try to poison anyone?”

  “No.” Emma gave him a sharp glance. “Have you fathered a score of bastards?”

  He grinned. “Nary a one. I swear it.”

  “Then you are safe. My grandmother was visited by long bouts of melancholia and seized by unpredictable
humors. At least that is how it was explained to me. She did not want to eat or change her clothes. She refused to allow the servants to help her bathe, and I understand there were days she could not climb from her bed.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “No. She died when I was yet an infant.”

  “This is your father’s mother?”

  “No. My mother’s. Sir Arthur’s as well, of course.”

  “And your grandfather on that side? Where is he?”

  “Dead before my grandmother. It’s why I went to live with my uncle when my parents were lost at sea. There was no one except my father’s sister, and she has lived in India with her husband and children for a decade. I did not want to go there.”

  “Understandable.” A small crease appeared between Restell’s eyebrows as he attempted to follow the sequence of certain events. “So it was your grandfather who gave permission for his wife to be cared for in the asylum.”

  “No. I suppose I wasn’t clear. My grandfather had already died before my grandmother was sent to Bellefaire. Uncle Arthur made the arrangements for her to go.”

  “Your uncle.” Restell spoke the words under his breath, more to himself than to Emma. Had even two hours passed since Sir Arthur had spoken to him about Emma? It is a touch of the melancholia, I think. One must remain hopeful that it will pass. “Bloody hell.” He shook his head, wondering what else he had failed to comprehend about his wife, her family, and her fears. It was not as if she leaped at shadows. Her fears were grounded, and he was the one that had not fully realized their import. “Bloody, bloody hell.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Restell knew she would not stand for him to say it was nothing, not when the opposite was so clearly true. He asked a question instead, as if it were the thing that had been on his mind. “Your mother had nothing to say about her own mother’s care?”

  “My mother did not have any legal standing to gainsay him. She and Uncle Arthur were estranged for years because of his decision. I do not know the whole of it. Children never do.”