Dark Season (7 page)

Ella felt as though her blood had turned to ice.

Did he lay her out here? In this house?

She kept perfectly still, but she had turned a dark corner in her mind and she did not like what she saw there.

The dark man, Isidore, holding Mrs. Trombly’s daughter, stiff and cold.

Her papa’s deathbed. She had sat by his side until the end and after. How strange it had been to gaze on that familiar form, the livid face framed by tufts of oakum hair, and know that Papa was gone from it.

And before that, her brother, Robert. She had not seen his body. By the time it came back to them, there was not enough intact. She had seen her papa after he saw. That was enough.

She shook herself. That’s when she realized Mrs. Trombly was smiling, a lovely, luminous smile.

“Phillipa guided you to the music room,” she said dreamily. “And you played at her harpsichord. You played, and Isidore came. He came back to us.”

She took Ella’s hand, her fingers soft and cool as sheets.

“I’ve missed him,” she said. “Almost as much as I do Phillipa. We share a property line with the Blackwoods, in the country. Isidore was often with us, even as a boy. He had no brothers or sisters, and the lure of playmates proved irresistible.” Her dreamy smile tightened. “Nothing could keep him away.”

“What would have kept him away?” Ella felt that strange prickling, the hairs on her neck lifting. Mrs. Trombly’s tone told her that something
had
tried to keep Isidore away. “After all, it’s very natural,” she said with a studied offhandedness, “and very fortunate for children to make friends of their neighbors.” She didn’t think she sounded wistful, but Mrs. Trombly’s look was suddenly penetrating.

“The old viscount didn’t share that view,” she said slowly. She drew her fine brows together, forming a deep crease in the middle of her forehead. She paused again. “He was a rather … controlling man.”

She squeezed Ella’s hand.

“It’s working,” she said, eyes bright. “I never gave up hope. You can help her. I know you can.” She raised Ella’s fingers to her lips.

“And if you can help her,” she said, “you can help Isidore.”

Ella’s heart was hammering again. She should get up, leave, now, at once. Put as much distance as she could between herself and Trombly Place. She had to go. If she stayed any longer, she would crush Mrs. Trombly’s hope. Inevitably, she would reveal something about who and what she really was. That luminous smile would fade forever.

I don’t belong here. I must leave. I must leave now.

“I believe in you,” said Mrs. Trombly. “I have to believe.”

When Ella freed her hand, it was only to retrieve her sugar biscuit and take another bite.

The Benningtons had moved into the Bennington House on Dering Street, Hanover Square. Isidore knocked with the heavy ring then waited on the front steps. Daphne, Ben—they were good friends. Old friends. Clement had reminded him that he’d broken a dinner engagement with no word of explanation.

How does a man stop running? How does a man pick up his old life?

He makes amends. He repairs bridges.

Yesterday had been a disaster. He’d lost his head at Louisa’s. That melody. That slender woman at the harpsichord.

He didn’t want to think of that encounter, or what had come after. He’d fled the house in disgrace, mood black and growing blacker. He hadn’t returned to his apartments, hadn’t stopped by the club. He’d gone to a tavern and drank his lunch—five flips, so maybe that counted as a meal. Each flip had at least part of an egg stirred into the gin, and sugar. Dinner … dinner had been more of the same. But without the eggs and sugar.

Maybe I shouldn’t have ripped up that ticket.
That’s what he went to sleep thinking.
Maybe I should buy another.

But somehow—though he woke late in the morning, head filled with sand and glass, body aching—he was determined to try again. London. The
ton.
All of it. He wasn’t giving up. His visit to Trombly Place had been a false start. Today would be different.

He rocked on his heels, looking up, up the façade of Bennington House. The sky above was blue. He tried to keep his mind sunny and blank.

He wouldn’t tell Daphne and Bennington the truth. Why he’d failed to keep the engagement. He’d give them an airy, charming excuse then launch into an off-color anecdote from his travels. The one about the dancing girl who stripped off her clothes and folded herself until she could have fit in a hatbox. Or the one about the Albanian cavalryman who shot his friend in the hand over a mummified crocodile phallus.

He wouldn’t say what he could now admit to himself. That the people he’d cared about and who’d cared about him
before
—those were the people he had the most trouble facing. They had also been friends with—he didn’t want to think her name. Not today. For today, let him be free of her.

But she was suddenly there, on the step beside him, a presence he could almost see out of the corner of his eye, could almost touch.
Phillipa
. Bennington was the only core member of their set who hadn’t
been at the party when Phillipa died. He was kept at home with a headache. He’d been spared that final scene. But Daphne had been there. He made his hands into fists, resisting the urge to bring them to his temples. He heard, again, Daphne’s screams. Saw her, kneeling, arms twined around her own neck. She had sobbed until her face had purpled.

When the butler opened the door, he managed to smile.

He was shown through an imposing hall—gleaming white marble with Roman statues in the wall niches striking martial poses—and into the sitting room. This room too was imposing, decidedly masculine in its décor, with heavy mahogany furniture and gilt-framed oval portraits of the Bennington forbears, all soldiers, on the navy blue-papered walls. No feminine touches softened or brightened the space. Even the curtains that hung over the tall windows were thick and somber. There was a massive portrait-book and a few cheaply printed newspapers on the low table, the only items in the room that looked moveable, as though they hadn’t been in the same spot for fifty years. Isidore was reaching toward them when the door opened. He turned.

“Sid,” said Daphne Bennington in her sweet, high voice and held out her hand. He took it. She smiled, a dimple flashing in her creamy cheek. She wore a low-cut gown of green silk that left a great deal of her breasts exposed and little to the imagination as to the luscious contours of the remainder. “We wondered if you were halfway to Dar es Salaam by now.” She gestured to the leather settee, and he sat while she moved to take the armchair opposite. She was a petite woman, almost child-sized, although her lush figure told quite another story. The chair dwarfed her, and he was struck again by the ponderous, uninviting quality of the room and by the incongruity between that room and its mistress. The furnishings weren’t to Bennington’s taste, either; he’d bet his life on that. Bennington was too much of a dandy. He’d always favored style over substance, form over function. He and Clement had called him “Knees” at Cambridge because he used to wear trousers so tight he couldn’t sit down. This room—this whole house—reflected the style of his father, General Sir Henry Bennington. The general had died over a year ago, but clearly Bennington hadn’t yet made the house his own. Or maybe he was trying to become the kind of man who’d be at home with sabers on the walls and bookshelves filled with leather-bound tomes of military strategy. Maybe he wanted to remake himself in his father’s image. Like a tulip pretending to be a hickory tree.

Isidore shouldn’t judge. After all, he was society’s black sheep trying to sprout a golden fleece.

“We expected you last week,” Daphne prompted when a few moments had passed without his offering any kind of response.

“Yes, about that … ” Isidore rubbed his thumb along his jaw, the airy, charming excuse and the off-color anecdotes vanishing from his mind. Daphne was looking at him with interest, one delicate brow raised, as though she enjoyed watching him squirm. He released his breath in a burst.

“I should have sent a note, but what would I have written?” He wrote in the air with his forefinger. “Sick of it all, let’s meet instead on a farther shore, Sid?”

“You could have made up a polite excuse,” said Daphne dryly. “Something less dramatic. Bad cough. Pressing business. Allergic to turbot. Anything, really.”

Isidore laughed. Daphne was so tiny and exquisite that people often made the mistake of thinking her a perfect little doll—masses of red-gold hair, round blue eyes that opened and closed, head filled with sawdust. But she had a keen mind and a scathing tongue. He’d heard her deliver withering set-downs to men who couldn’t ever seem to grasp the fact that she wasn’t cooing in their ears. She had been the Incomparable of the season her first year out in London, and even though she’d married Bennington that summer, she didn’t stay at home feathering her love nest like many young wives. She attended every ball, every party, with Bennington and without him.

She and Phillipa had been thick as thieves.

He swore to himself. Fought the memories. But, looking at Daphne’s bright hair, remembering Phillipa’s dark head bent toward hers as they shared some whispered joke, he couldn’t stem the tide of dark thoughts.

Thick as thieves, yes, but Phillipa had not confided in Daphne. There was no one with whom he could share the burden of his knowledge. Phillipa had told Daphne the same story she told everyone else.

Cynical, brooding Isidore Blackwood had dropped down on his knees in the Tromblys’ music room, clasped Phillipa against his chest, and begged her to become his bride. Her heart had beat wildly. His heart had beat wildly. After so many years of friendship, they’d both realized, simultaneously, as though struck with the same bolt from the heavens, that they were in love. A perfect romance. He would never say a word to the contrary.

There was, of course, one other person who knew what he knew. The man who should have proposed to Phillipa but didn’t. The man who left her in such an impossible situation that Isidore, her best friend, had had no choice but to step up and offer to make her his wife. If Isidore ever learned the man’s name … Why, he would beat him within an inch of his life.

Daphne was staring. Christ, his repartee was rusty. She had joked about polite excuses. Now he must riposte.

“That is very good counsel,” he said, almost hearing the creak in his voice. “But I have no need for it.” He flashed his most charming smile. “I’ve resolved to live in a way that puts me less in need of excuses.”

“
That’s
not dramatic,” murmured Daphne. Then she colored slightly. “I don’t mean to be cutting,” she said. “I hope you don’t feel you have to make grand declarations on account of a missed engagement.” She paused, a shadow flitting across her eyes. “It so happens I dined alone that night. Ben didn’t turn up, either.”

“What was his polite excuse?” Isidore spoke lightly, but he didn’t take his eyes from her face.

She frowned. Then, all at once, she leapt up, widened her eyes, and spread her arms, imitating her husband. “By God, Daph, I plumb forgot!”

This excellent bit of mimicry elicited another laugh. She had looked and sounded for all the world like Bennington. The man was a study in innocence. Daphne dimpled for him and sat back down.

“He didn’t remember we’d asked you over until the sixth rubber of whist. I hated to admit you’d never come. It would have been lovely to play you each for a guilty party vis-à-vis the other, but I was afraid you’d compare notes at the club and the truth would out. Then I’d be scourged as a manipulative minx.”

“You
are
a manipulative mix,” said Isidore. “I adore you for it. Bennington does too if he has half a brain in his head.”

The arrival of the tea tray prevented Daphne from having to answer. But the tension in her rosy mouth did not escape Isidore’s notice.

“How do you take your tea?” she asked.

“Black, no sugar.” He took the cup and saucer, balancing both on his knee.

“I haven’t seen Ben at the club. Haven’t laid eyes on him in weeks. Where is he now?”

Daphne stirred sugar into her tea. “Debating the franchise, I imagine.” Then, as though clarification might be necessary, she added: “The Liberals want to extend the vote.”

“I may be known chiefly as an indolent rake who abandoned his mother country to live in a tent with desert nomads, but I do pick up
The Times
on occasion, if only to swat flies.” Isidore leaned back in his chair and gazed at the medallion in the plasterwork ceiling. “I fancied Bennington as a backwoods peer. Showing up to the opening of Parliament so everyone could get a look at his pretty face then running for his life if anyone so much as mentioned the word ‘bill’ in his hearing.”

“Did you?” Daphne’s voice sounded brittle. Isidore turned his eyes back on her. She was still stirring her tea as though she’d forgotten what her hand was doing. The sight disturbed him. She noticed his close regard and smiled, laying her spoon on the tray.

“I don’t blame you for thinking that,” she said. “Ben was as frivolous as the rest of you. I won’t deny it.”

“The rest of us?” Isidore clapped a hand on his heart as though wounded.

“But you couldn’t be more wrong,” continued Daphne. “You haven’t been around much in the past five years. Ben is very involved in politics. He has grown serious.”

“He was always serious,” said Isidore. “About his hair oil and how he knotted his cravat. Just as I was always serious about getting to the bottom of a gin bottle and betting every shilling my father ever gave me at long odds. I don’t think frivolity is an apt charge, Daph. We were misapplying our talents, perhaps, but we were doing so with a great deal of focus and determination.”

“My husband’s focus has changed. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Daphne took a delicate sip of tea. “A piece of walnut cake? Lemon tart? The lemon tart is divine. We have a new cook who has a gift for pastry. How is your cook working out? It’s so terribly hard to find a good one.”

Isidore followed her gaze to the assorted cakes and sweets arrayed on the table.