Crystal Gardens (27 page)

“You are looking at this from the wrong perspective.”

Judith got to her feet. “Do not try to lecture me on the subject of Lucas Sebastian. I have been dealing with him in one way or another
since I was eighteen years old. The knowledge that my son and daughter’s future is in his hands terrifies me.”

“Please listen to me. Or listen to Beth, for that matter.”

“Only a very naive and foolish woman could convince herself that she was in love with Lucas,” Judith said tightly. “Something tells me that you are neither naive nor foolish, Miss Ames.”

“I trust not.”

“Then you are an opportunist.” Judith’s smile was bitter. “I do not blame you in the least. But you are swimming out of your depth. I’m sure you think yourself a clever woman because you managed to get yourself thoroughly compromised by a wealthy gentleman who appears to feel obligated to do the honorable thing. But that is not what has happened. You are the one who is being used, Miss Ames.”

“In what possible manner?”

“Do not be deceived into thinking that Lucas’s notion of honor requires him to marry you because you were compromised. I assure you, he follows his own rules, not the social conventions. Nor should you delude yourself into believing that he has fallen in love with you. Lucas does not know the meaning of the word. If he has decided to marry you, it is because he has concluded that you will be useful to him.”

Evangeline’s temper flashed. She was suddenly on her feet. “How?”

“I do not pretend to know his plans. No one has ever been able to read Lucas. But I do know that he always has an objective and that he is quite ruthless when it comes to achieving it. You have been warned.”

“Thank you.” Evangeline made no attempt to conceal the ice in her words. “One more thing.”

Judith paused. “Yes?”

“This hobby of Lucas’s that you mentioned?”

“What of it?”

“As it happens, I am in need of his skills at the moment.”

Judith frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Someone is trying to kill me.”

“Is this some sort of joke? If so, I must tell you that it is in very poor taste.”

“The would-be killer has already made one attempt on my life. There is every reason to think he will try again. Naturally, I am hoping that Lucas will find the person who wants me dead before that individual is successful.”

“Good Lord.” Judith was dumbfounded. “I cannot help but wonder if you are as delusional and unbalanced as Lucas. I take back my warning to you about the risks of marrying him. From the sound of it, the two of you may be ideally suited.”

Judith opened the door of the parlor and swept out into the hall. A short time later her footsteps sounded on the stairs.

E
vangeline sat quietly, drinking tea, for a time. Eventually she rose and went out into the hall. She walked to the library. The door was open. Lucas was standing at his desk, examining the lantern weapon in the glare of a gas lamp. When he saw her his eyes heated a little.

“Evangeline,” he said. “Excellent. I was just going to send someone to find you. Come in and close the door. It has become almost impossible to have privacy in this place. Anyone would think I was hosting a damned house party. To think I once had it in mind to set up camp here in the library for a few days or weeks while I conducted a simple murder investigation.”

Evangeline moved into the room and closed the door behind her. “Are there any simple investigations when it comes to murder?”

“A good question. It depends on one’s definition of ‘simple.’ It is often easy enough to identify the killer. The difficult part is comprehending
why he or she committed the act. People can come up with the most astounding explanations and excuses. But in my experience there are only a handful of reasons for murder.”

“Such as?”

“Jealousy, vengeance, greed, fear and pleasure.”

“Pleasure?”

“The more common term is ‘madness.’” Lucas raised his brows. “Some killers enjoy the kill, Evangeline. For them it is a great game, and for the most part they are the ones I hunt.”

“The mad killers.”

“Yes.”

She glanced at the lantern. “It does not appear that your uncle was murdered by a madman.”

“I think we can look to one of the other traditional motives to explain Uncle Chester’s and possibly Mrs. Buckley’s death. Based on what we learned last night when we encountered the intruders, greed would seem to be the motivation.” Lucas glanced at the lantern. “That may be the murder weapon.”

“If so it would explain why there was no wound on your uncle’s body.”

“Murder by paranormal means leaves no obvious mark. The death usually appears to have been caused by a heart attack or a stroke.”

“Good heavens, you have investigated such murders?”

“Yes, but they are quite rare.” He set the lantern on the desk. “Very few people of talent are capable of committing murder in that manner.”

Evangeline froze.

Understanding lit Lucas’s eyes. “You are not a murderer, Evangeline. You killed in self-defense. That is a very different matter. Sit down and tell me why you came here to see me.”

Evangeline sank down onto one of the reading chairs, absently
twitching the folds of her skirts into place. “I have just concluded a rather uncomfortable conversation with Judith.”

“Hardly surprising,” Lucas said. “Most of my own conversations with Judith qualify as uncomfortable.” He propped himself against the edge of the desk. “Several have ranked as seriously unpleasant. I expect she warned you that I was a dangerous, mentally unbalanced man who was given to the morbid pastime of investigating the most dreadful murders.”

“I see you are aware of her deluded notions concerning your character.”

Lucas folded his arms. “I appreciate that you refer to her as deluded. But I must admit she has her reasons for her opinions.”

“She is frightened of you.”

“Evidently.”

“I understand how you might have made her very nervous when she was a young bride. You were dealing with the onset of your talents, after all, and she does not even believe in the paranormal. It is no wonder she thought you might be somewhat unbalanced.”

“Her reaction to me was certainly understandable,” Lucas said.

The perfectly neutral tone of his voice aroused her intuition.
There was more to the story,
she thought.

“You, on the other hand, no doubt resented her because you had recently lost your mother,” she continued, moving cautiously. “Furthermore, you were on the brink of manhood. The last thing you would have wanted was a stepmother. The fact that Judith wasn’t that much older than you would have made it all the more difficult for both of you.”

“Yes,” he said. He offered nothing more.

“Nevertheless, one would have thought that the hostility between the two of you would have softened somewhat over the years.”

“One would certainly think so,” Lucas agreed.

She recognized a conversational wall when she ran head-on into one, she thought. The strained relationship between Lucas and Judith was none of her affair. She was not a member of the family, after all. Nevertheless, she could not stop herself from pressing for answers.

“Judith said that when you were younger you were in the habit of going out into the streets at night and that you did not return until dawn. I assume that was when you began your murder investigations.”

“Yes.”

“But there was more to it, wasn’t there?”

“You want to know what I was doing on those nights?”

“Something tells me it is important.”

Lucas looked at her very steadily for a time, his eyes dark and unreadable. She knew that he was debating how much to tell her,
not because he doesn’t trust me
, she thought.
He is hesitating because he does not know how I will react
.

When the silence lengthened, she sighed and sat back. “It’s all right, Lucas. I understand that you do not wish to tell me. You are entitled to your secrets.”

“You have confided your most closely held secrets to me. It is only right that I tell you mine.”

He pushed himself away from the desk and went to the darkened windows. He stood quietly for a moment. She waited.

“I tried to talk about my paranormal senses with my father, but he soon made it clear that he considered them to be in the nature of a character flaw. He got angry and claimed that I had inherited my talent from my mother’s side, which was demonstrably untrue. He warned me to keep silent about my abilities. I confronted my grandfather. He confirmed that my affinity for the darkest of psychical energy came from the male line. The talent did not appear frequently, but when it did show up, it often proved disastrous.”

“In what way?”

Lucas gripped the windowsill with one hand. “Some of my ancestors could control their talents. Others could not. Those who failed often attributed their sensitivities to the work of demonic forces and so did others in the family. More than one of my predecessors ended their lives in private asylums for the insane.”

“The paranormal was not well understood in the past.”

Lucas glanced at her. “The paranormal is hardly better understood today, as we both know full well.”

“True.” She managed a small smile. “In the modern world psychical abilities are viewed as a kind of parlor trick. Indeed, we are overrun with fraudulent mediums and people claiming psychical powers.”

Lucas turned back to the window. “The problem with assuming that all practitioners of the paranormal are frauds is that one can easily overlook the real thing until it is too late.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I realized that my talents were growing stronger and that I was being drawn to the scenes of violent crimes, I knew that I had to learn to control my psychical nature. The alternative was to risk madness or perhaps something worse.”

“What could be worse?”

“Becoming a human predator, one of the monsters.”

“Never,” she said fiercely. “That is not in your nature.”

“I like to think that is true, but I came very close when I was nineteen, Evangeline.”

“No, never.”

He ignored that. “I went in search of a mentor, a guide, someone like me who could teach me what I needed to know to handle my talent. I visited every medium in London and attended every demonstration of psychical powers I could find. I immersed myself in the practitioners’ underworld and after a time some of them began to trust
me. The mediums were all frauds, of course, but some of the practitioners who claimed to possess paranormal abilities were genuine.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“I began hearing rumors of an especially powerful talent they called the Master. The practitioners spoke of him in whispers. I set out to find him.”

“Because he was believed to be so powerful?”

“No, because from the hints that I received, I was convinced that his particular talent was similar to mine.”

“You found him?” she asked.

“It would be more accurate to say that he found me. He had heard rumors, too, you see. There were whispers on the streets about a young man who was drawn to the scenes of murder and violence, a young man who had arrived at the scene of a recent crime in time to stop the killer, who was later found dead in the alley, the apparent victim of a heart attack.”

“Your doing?” Evangeline asked quietly.

“It was the first time I ever used my talent in that manner,” Lucas said, “the first time I realized I could do so. The man charged me. He had the knife that he had planned to use on the woman. There was a struggle. I clouded his mind with unbearable horrors. The shock stopped his heart.”

“You reacted instinctively in self-defense, just as I did when I encountered Douglas Mason at the top of the stairs.”

“The man did not die instantly,” Lucas said. “It … took a few seconds.”

“During which time you were in physical contact with him. You felt the dreadful currents of death, the shock that I experienced when Mason died. I have known it only once but I suspect the sensation will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.”

“There is nothing else to compare with the terrible energy generated at the moment of violent death.”

Knowing whispered through her. “I think that you have known that terrible sensation more than once.”

“Too many times. It is not good for the spirit.”

“No, I agree. But on that occasion you saved not only your own life but the life of the intended victim. She would have died if you had not interrupted the killer in time.”

“And what of all the others before her, Evangeline? The ones I failed to save because it took me so long to learn the killer’s pattern?”

“You cannot blame yourself for failing to read the mind of a madman. No one can do that. The point is that you did stop him. Like a doctor who loses patients, you must learn to concentrate on the people you have saved.”

Lucas smiled his humorless smile. “An interesting analogy. How do you manage to remain such a thoroughgoing romantic after all you have been through?”

“But I am not romanticizing your actions. I merely pointed out that you have saved any number of people. By any definition, that makes you a hero.”