His at Night (21 page)

He stuck the telegram into his pocket, returned to the bedroom, and scrutinized the chest further. With the blade of his razor he sliced off a fraction of a calling card and folded that fragment into a thin, but still relatively stiff stem. The slits were not deep; most of them cut into the lid’s edge by barely one-sixth of an inch. But there were two slits—one on either side of the lid—into which the card stem sank more than half an inch.

He suddenly remembered the minuscule key in the safe in Mrs. Douglas’s room.

Elissande awoke to an epic clash in her head. Or rather, a titanic clash. For weren’t the Titans defeated by Zeus? Her head, too, must have been split by a thunderbolt. She pried her eyelids apart, then squeezed them shut immediately. The room was unbearably bright, as if someone had shoved a torch directly into her eye socket. Her head splintered further in protest. Her innards, in contrast, decided to die in slow, roiling agony.

She moaned. The sound exploded in her ears, discharging shrapnel of pure pain deep into her brain.

How ironic that she was not even dead, when she was already fully in the embrace of hell.

Someone removed the blanket that covered her. She shivered. The person, careful not to jostle her, further disentangled her from more sheets that were twisted and bunched about her. She shivered again. She was vaguely aware that she was not wearing
much—if anything. But she could not care; she was skewered on Beelzebub’s spit.

Something cool and silky settled around her. Her unresponsive arms were lifted and stuffed into sleeves. A dressing gown?

Slowly she was turned around. She whimpered: The movement had intensified the pounding in her skull. Once she was facing up, her head was raised, causing her to cry out.

“Here,” said a man’s voice, his arm strong about her. “A cure for your bad head. Drink it.”

The liquid that came into her mouth was the vilest concoction she’d ever tasted, swamp ooze and rotten eggs.

She sputtered. “No.”

“Drink it. You’ll feel better.”

She whimpered again. But there was something at once authoritative and soothing about the voice, and something at once authoritative and soothing about the way he held her. She complied.

She stopped to gag after every swallow, but he kept tipping the cup at her lips and she, gasping and rasping, drank.

After she’d swallowed every last drop of the foul brew, he gave her water, and she’d never tasted anything so sweet. She gulped eagerly, thirstily, happy to feel the water spilling down her chin. When she’d at last had enough, she turned away from the glass and pressed her face into his chest.

His waistcoat was a very fine material, the linen of his shirt soft and warm. Her head still banged awfully,
but she was—she was safe. She had a protector, for once, someone who cradled and looked after her and who smelled wonderful at the same time.

Lebanon
, she thought, for no reason at all.

This state of comfort and security, however, did not last long. Her protector set her back down on the bed, covered her again, and, despite her groan of disappointment and the hand she clutched at his waistcoat, left.

When footsteps once more came toward her, she opened her eyes and immediately closed them again.

Lord Vere.

No.

Not him.

“Come, Lady Vere,” he chirped. “I know the temptation is strong to remain abed but you must stir. Your bath is waiting.”

What was he doing in her room? She must still be dreaming.

Memories of the past week returned with a vengeance. Lady Kingsley’s rat problem. A house full of bachelors. The lovely Lord Frederick. The tussle in her uncle’s study. The wedding.

She was
married
. To
Lord Vere
.

She’d spent the night with him.

“Shall I sing you awake, then?” he said, all energetic eagerness. “I know just the song. ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you’—”

She struggled upright. “Thank you. I’m quite awake now.”

As she moved on the bed, the bedcover shifted to reveal a smear of red on the sheets. Her hand went to her throat as more memories spilled back into her head. She recalled his teeth against her tongue—what a bizarre, bizarre thing. She remembered being hurled onto his bed—dear God! And pain—awful, lacerating pain between her legs. She winced against the recollection.

But how trustworthy were those memories? She also remembered speaking of the Hope Diamond and a handkerchief that smelled like Lebanon. What could possibly have led her to allude to the Song of Songs?

“But I’ve just started,” Lord Vere whined. “Let me finish the song.”

She swallowed and determinedly swung her legs over the side of the bed. As she straightened, she realized that she was barely dressed, wearing only her silk dressing gown. Thankfully it was quite dim; only a faint halo of light framed the curtains—she didn’t know why she’d thought the room unbearably bright before. “I’d be delighted to hear you sing another time. But you must excuse me now, sir. I believe my bath is waiting.”

He ran before her and opened the bathroom door for her. “One piece of advice, my dear. Be very quick about it—or you’ll melt.”

She blinked. “Beg your pardon?”

“The water is hot. Don’t stay much more than a
quarter of an hour, or you’ll start to melt,” he repeated, in all seriousness.

Such an assertion could only be met on its own level of absurdity. “But wouldn’t the water have started to cool after a quarter of an hour?”

His jaw dropped. “My goodness, I’ve never thought of it.
That’s
why we don’t hear more about people dissolving in their tubs.”

She closed the door, lowered herself into the tub, and stared at the tops of her knees. She would not cry. She refused to cry. She’d known perfectly well what she was getting into when she’d taken off her clothes before Lord Vere.

In precisely a quarter of an hour she emerged from her bath—to the sight of her husband at the table in the sitting room, staring at a fork in undiluted fascination. At the sound of her approach, he looked up, set down the fork, and smiled in that doltish way of his.

“How’s your head, my dear? You drank a whole bottle of Sauternes.”

Could he possibly be the person who had given her the bad head cure earlier? In whose arms she had lain so contentedly?

Best not to think of that. It would only spoil the sweetness of the memory.

“My head is better. Thank you.”

“And your stomach? More settled?”

“I believe so.”

“Come eat something then. I’ve ordered you tea and some plain toast.”

Tea and plain toast did not sound as if they would send her stomach into renewed convulsions. She walked slowly to the table and sat down.

He poured tea for her, spilling enough to wet half the tablecloth. “I might have had a bit too much to drink myself, to tell you the truth, my dear. But it’s not every day you get married, eh? Worth a bad head, I say.”

She chewed on her toast and did not look at him.

“What do you think of the speaking tube, by the way? I think it’s marvelous. I talk in this room right here and they hear it all the way in the kitchen. I was a little surprised, however, that a man came to deliver the tea and the toast. Thought they’d pop right out of the speaking tube. I didn’t dare leave the spot. Wouldn’t be quite the thing if the teapot made the trip all the way up here and then—splat—because I couldn’t be there to catch it.”

The throb in her head worsened; the place between her thighs also began to smart unpleasantly.

“I was reading the papers before you came,” Lord Vere went on. “And I must tell you, I was shocked to read, in the pages of the
Times
, no less, the German Kaiser referred to as our dear sovereign’s grandson. How can anyone besmirch Her Majesty so, to attach that Prussian bounder to her blameless family? I fully intend to write a letter to the paper requesting a retraction.”

The Kaiser
was
the queen’s grandson by her eldest daughter, the former Princess Royal. The House of Hanover was and had always been solidly German.

She smiled wanly. “Yes, you should.”

She was determined to be a good wife to him: She owed him everything. Perhaps tomorrow, when her head no longer hurt, when listening to him talk didn’t make her think longingly of a chorus of a thousand crows, she would sit down with him—and all the volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica—
and correct some of his misconceptions.

But now, it was all she could do to smile at him and let him be as wrong as a broken clock.

Elissande grunted in frustration. Her head was still not well enough for her to twist her neck and look into the mirror behind her. But without seeing her reflection, she fumbled with her corset, which laced in the back.

A light knock came at her door. “May I be of some help, my dear?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine.” The last thing she needed was his help. The two of them would be tied together to a chair with the laces of her corset if he were to involve himself.

As if he hadn’t heard her, he entered, clad in a blue lounge suit. Her uncle always wore a frock coat for going out, but gentlemen of her generation seemed to prefer less formal attire.

“Sir!”

She clutched the corset to her torso. She was
not
dressed—she had on only her combination—and he should not be anywhere in her vicinity. Then her gaze
fell on the bed, where God only knew what had transpired during the night.

God and Lord Vere. Whatever it was that had taken place in this bed, it had certainly changed his mind about their marriage. Gone was the oppressive silence of yesterday; today he abounded with his usual bumbling zeal. She clutched harder at her corset.

“Really, I don’t need any help,” she reiterated.

“Of course you do,” he said. “Lucky for you I’m an expert on ladies’ undergarments.”

Oh, he was, was he?

But he turned her around and, for once, demonstrated what might be considered real skill as he tightened the laces down her back efficiently and well.

She was astonished. “Where did you learn how to work a corset?”

“Well, you know how it is. If you help ladies out of their corsets, you have to help them back in.”

There were ladies who let him help them out of their corsets without being compelled by vows of marriage? She couldn’t tell whether she was shocked or appalled.

He yanked hard. All the air squeezed out of her—a daily necessity for fitting into her clothes.

“But that was before I met you. Now there is only you for me, of course.”

A terrifying thought, that. But she did not have time to dwell on it as he proceeded with her corset cover and her petticoats.

“Hurry,” he said. “We must make haste. It’s already quarter past ten.”

“Quarter past
ten?
Are you sure?”

“Of course.” He took out his watch to show her. “See, precisely.”

“And your watch is accurate?” She had no confidence in him at all.

“Checked it against Big Ben’s chimes this morning.”

She rubbed her still-tender temple. She was forgetting something. What was she forgetting?

“My aunt! My goodness, she must be famished.” And frightened, all alone in strange surroundings, with Elissande nowhere in sight.