“Now, now, what is this?” he said, pulling back so he could look down into my face. I did not realize my cheeks were wet until he touched a finger of his forest-green velvet glove to my skin.
“Nothing. Nothing.” My reassurances were hollow.
His smile stiffened and faded, and he appeared stricken. “I knew I should have come sooner.”
I shook my head. “No. No, I am fine, really I am.”
He did not believe me, and his frown of concern made me twist away. I forced a smile with some effort and he shook his head at me. “Good God, that is a ghastly excuse for a smile. There is no use for it, I have found you out. You are miserable.”
“I am not miserable,” I told him. “I just . . .” I sighed, looking out over the lawn to the school. The long row of mullioned windows stretched to my north, the sun glancing off the panes so that nothing could be seen inside. “I fear I have botched this entire thing,” I said at last.
“There, there, what are you saying?” He pulled me to the bench and made me sit with him. The wind blew, but it did not trouble me now. Sebastian was here, and his warmth could not be dulled by the winter wind.
I told him the entire tale—Madge’s cryptic warnings, Lord Suddington, the coven girls, Miss Thompson. “I had to shrive her,” I said. I brushed the tendrils of hair from my eyes, where the wind had caught them in my eyelashes.
His gloved hands reached for mine. “I am sorry. It must have been dreadful.”
I felt as if I was confessing a terrible deficiency, but made myself tell him: “I was afraid.”
“Yes.” He said it simply.
I shook my head. “It is difficult to see myself as a coward.”
“But you are a woman, Emma. That is all.”
“I am supposed to be Dhampir,” I told him in a sudden rush of heat. “What good has that done me? I’ve accomplished nothing here.”
He held up a staying finger. “You expect too much from yourself.”
I sulked slightly, lulled into the comfort of having him at my side. “I felt something. Someone.” My eyes slid tentatively to his face. “In my head. I could hear him speaking, like thoughts but they were not mine.”
Sebastian cocked his head. “What do you mean—like when Marius spoke to you in your mind?”
“A little, yes. But this was different. It seemed to call to me. It was curious, questing. It said . . .” I lost courage. Sebastian showed the patience of one who knows silence is the best form of persuasion, and finally, I blurted it out. “It called me
sister
.”
His head snapped back, his body went rigid. “That is hogwash. Do not even begin to credit anything meaningful to that phrase. You know Alyssa is in her confinement now. Her child is due to arrive in a few weeks time. She has nothing to do with this.”
“Of course not. I know it holds nothing of merit. It is only that it frightened me. It was so . . .
intimate
and just wretched.”
Sebastian twisted his lips into his most scathing grin. “Well, then, I have made it in time, for we cannot have you
wretched
. It does not suit you.” He wagged a finger at me. “It makes you far too pale. And you’ve got shadows under your eyes. Why, look at your drab clothing. Gray is
not
for you, my dear. Promise me you will allow me to burn that dress.”
I smiled, as he intended me to, and played my part. “Sebastian, I am a schoolteacher.”
“Darling, these girls are going to return to wealthy families and shall attend the most prestigious parties in Town. They will know fashion. You must think of the advantages of giving them a proper model to view. And your hair is simply too plain. Ugh.”
I laughed. “I do not know what is wrong with me, but here you are insulting me and it cheers me so.”
He shrugged. “It is a talent, perhaps my only one. Oh, that and the ability to consume vast amounts of spirits.” And then we were smiling at each other again. “Did you think I would not come?”
“You said you would not.”
He angled his head in a silent admonition. “I did not mean it. Yes, I suppose I am a rogue, but I am not a cad. There is a difference. A rogue has principles.”
I thought he was joking, although I wasn’t certain. Sebastian was so unusual it sometimes seemed he was being ridiculous when he was quite serious. And yet, just when you thought him sincere, his wicked grin would appear and you knew you’d been caught.
“You do not know how happy I am to see you,” I said suddenly.
Waving a hand, he pretended to dismiss me. “Oh, bother, that is enough sentiment. I may be an unconventional Englishman but I am an Englishman all the same, and you know how we dread these vulgar displays of sentiment. Decorum, please.”
He made a production of straightening his clothing as if I’d mauled him. My spirits seemed to have taken flight, for I was so happy I could barely contain myself. I laughed.
“Are you not at all cross with me for not coming sooner?” he inquired amiably, finally taking a seat, or rather draping himself in it.
“I am beyond cross,” I countered pleasantly. “But it seems rather irrelevant now.”
“Curious, at least?” He regarded me indolently.
I narrowed my gaze on him, smiling. “You have something to tell me. Why do you not just say it?”
“In that you are mistaken.” He surged to his feet and held out his hand to me. When I took it, he pulled me up beside him. “I have something I must show you. Come with me now. We must go into the village.”
That was when I saw that behind his merry façade was a vein of dead seriousness. Sebastian was fond of foolery, but he was no fool. Whatever he had to show me was of the utmost importance, I could tell.
I sobered immediately. “Let me just fetch my cape, and send word to my friend Mrs. Boniface that I am leaving, in case anyone looks for me.”
S
ebastian gave no hint on the ride down the Fell as to what surprise lay in store for me. I could see by the tension around his eyes that it was not a pleasant one, though he tried to divert me with the tale of how his latest light o’ love groomsman had stolen a jeweled snuffbox from him and taken up with a wealthy widow. He cursed the fellow, but I could see he was not hurt. In fact, the man’s ingenuity was a thing Sebastian most likely admired.
His demeanor altered sharply as the rented carriage drew up to the Rood and Cup. He paused just before opening the door for me. “Brace yourself, Emma.”
Mrs. Danby nearly accosted me when I entered the common room. “Goodness, it is wonderful to see you. I have been wondering after you, Mrs. Andrews. How are you faring there in that school? Is that wretched Sloane-Smith woman—well, the less said of her the better. And that poor teacher. We barely saw her here in town, of course. She wasn’t like Miss Easterly and Miss Grisholm. Those two come into the village every Sunday, regular. Oh, but listen to me go on, come inside, come inside.”
My gaze went instantly to the hearth, but Old Madge was not at her seat today. “How is your mother?” I asked.
“You are kind to ask after her. But please don’t you trouble yourself, Mrs. Andrews.”
Actually, my reasons were far more selfish than kind. I wanted to press her on what she meant by her mention of the Cyprian Queen. Also, it had occurred to me that I might ask the ancient woman about the time period when my mother had been in these parts. She probably had not known my mother, and would not know specifically about happenings at the school, but there was a chance she could tell me if there’d been any unusual disturbance in the village then.
Sebastian said, “We shall have some wine in my rooms, Mrs. Danby.” His almost curt tone was out of character, and I looked at him. “I trust all has been quiet,” he added meaningfully.
“He has been sleeping,” she assured him.
She walked with us up the stairs. The way was familiar, although we turned in the opposite direction from where my room had been located. When Mrs. Danby seemed ready to enter the first room on the left, Sebastian made a quick move to cut her off. With his hand on the knob, he said, “Thank you, now will you see to that wine, please? And some biscuits? I have a propensity for sweets.”
She threw him a caustic look, one I would not have guessed the pleasant woman could manifest, then glanced at me. I suppose she was thinking of propriety. The dear woman was attempting to serve as chaperone.
“My cousin and I are quite thirsty,” Sebastian insisted, stressing the relation.
“Very well,” she muttered, and walked off in a huff.
“That got rid of her,” Sebastian said under his breath.
“You were being beastly,” I countered.
“Hush, now, Emma. When you see who is inside—”
I cut him off with a nervous laugh. “What do you have in there, a three-headed beast?”
I had never seen Sebastian as doleful as he was now. “No, darling. A ghost.”
T
he interior of the room was dimmed, the heavy woolen draperies drawn against the afternoon light so that I felt like I was entering a cave. The air was pungent, smelling of an apothecary, and chilled with a cold that somehow seemed deeper, thicker, than the air outside.
The grate in the fireplace was dark, a sullen pile of barely smoking ash. Sebastian muttered a curse and hurried past me to fix the fire. I looked about, seeing nothing but shadows crowding the room, but I heard a rustle to my left and was shocked to see someone stirring on the bed.
“I told you not to close the curtains,” Sebastian said as he stoked the embers to life and fed the fire from a supply of faggots piled on the hearth. “I’ve brought Emma.” To me, he said, “Open the drape. Let some light in here.”
I went to the window and did as he commanded. When I turned to the bed, I peered curiously at the person tangled in the bedclothes. I had no expectation, and yet when I recognized the figure, I actually stumbled back a step, my shock was so great. It was Father Luke.
He was so changed! Had I seen him on the street, I would have taken him for a beggar. Except perhaps for his eyes. How they blazed, hollowed out and haunted—there I saw my friend, the priest who had nearly sacrificed himself to aid us in Avebury.
When he spoke, the sound was that of sand against rusted metal. “Let in the light, Emma. Isn’t that why you’ve come? Sebastian brought you to send me to the light, having dragged me like a screaming demon out of the dark.”
He paused. I tried to say something, but I could not find words. Sebastian had been right; this was a ghost.
He nodded, as if he had expected as much, although I could see it pained him to see my reaction. “I am a wretch, I know. You should go. Suffer me no more humiliations.”
“You would not be so much a fright if you would eat,” Sebastian said simply, whipping off his green cape with a flourish. He might have been chiding a child for complaining of a stomachache after consuming too many sweets.
Father Luke smiled ever so slightly. “You see Sebastian here is my good friend, and my chief tormentor.” Easing his head back among the crushed pillows, he allowed the smile to deepen. “Perhaps merely my just penance.”
“Well, then, you should have behaved better,” Sebastian said without rancor.
I found my voice. “What is the matter with him? It is clear he is suffering. Should we call in a doctor?”
Sebastian snorted but it was Father Luke who answered. “No doctor. Sebastian is doing the right thing. It is I who am the beast.” He closed his eyes for a moment as if to gird himself. “Sebastian, you have overreached yourself this time. This is no place for Mrs. Andrews.”
I glanced to Sebastian. “Should I go?”
Sebastian shrugged. “It is up to you. If you cannot bear it.”
“It is not that.”
“I want nothing from you,” Father Luke bellowed, suddenly surging up off the pillows, “except that you leave now.”
“It is not a question of what you want,” Sebastian said, stepping forward to take the brunt of Father Luke’s rage, “but what you need.”
“You should have left me where I was!” Father Luke croaked, his hoarse voice rising to the level of fast-moving thunder. “Why did you bring me here at all—for this, to show me to this woman and complete my devastation?”
Sebastian hardly twitched an eyebrow. “You are feeling stronger, I see. Enough to bellow rudely at me. Ah, well, I suppose it is a good sign.”
Father Luke’s lips peeled back from his teeth. They were still strong, white, shining out from his ashen face like a bay of lights along a granite wall. He was about to reply when some kind of pain or convulsion gripped him, and he stopped, his voice choking in his throat.
I made a step to aid him only to be halted by Sebastian. “Leave him, Emma. It is the opium, or lack of it.”
My God! I could have been tumbled by the strength of a kitten’s breath. Opium? Frozen on the spot, I could only gape at the paleness of the man, the skeletal remains of the robust, imposing picture he’d once made.
Sebastian nodded. “I found him in an opium den in East London. Ah Sing was not too happy to lose his very good customer, and I nearly came to blows with the man.” To Father Luke, he said, more loudly, “Do you know what trouble you caused me?”
“You should have left me there,” Father Luke gasped, shaking harder now. “You fool. You silly, stupid fool.” Another shudder wracked him and he tucked his chin in, rolling his back as if to brace for a great wave to break over him.
“Oh, bother, he is going into a seizure.” Sebastian sprinted forward, grabbing the priest around the shoulders and holding tight.
“What should I do?” I cried.
“Just—see to the fire for me. There is nothing we can do to stave it off. It is the disease, it must run the course.”
Father Luke struggled to speak. “Please, make her go. This is no place—”
“There is no time. Ah, damn, keep your back turned, Emma.”
“I’ll wait out in the hallway—”
“Just stay, damn it all, and get the fire going strong!” Sebastian bit out as he grappled with the priest. Under the grinding devastation of his opium hunger, and in the wake of the terrible things that drug had done to his body, Father Luke was much weakened, but still muscled and broad in the shoulders with legs like tree trunks and a neck the same. He had been a warrior priest once, trained both spiritually and physically to do battle. Sebastian was a wisp next to him, but he held on tightly to his patient. Father Luke’s grip had to be crushing, his clammy body sour with the hours spent despondent on the bed, but Sebastian never flinched.
I backed into the corner, the fire forgotten. A knock at the door sent me jumping.
“The wine,” Sebastian ground out roughly. “It’s Mrs. Danby. Do not let her in.”
I nodded jerkily and scrambled to the door before the innkeeper grew impatient. I opened it, only wide enough to peek out at Mrs. Danby.
“That room needs a good airing,” she told me, trying to peer around me as I plucked the tray from her arms.
I positioned myself to block her view into the room. I had no doubt even her kind nature would be tried at the sight of the convulsing invalid on the bed in the arms of another man. “Indeed. But if you would be patient with my friends a while longer, it would be so helpful.”
Her gaze was concerned. “There’s sickness in there? I am used to tending the sick, you know dear.”
“How kind of you to offer, but we are fine for now.” I stepped back quickly and shut the door, hoping she would forgive my rudeness. My arms cramped under the heavy weight of the tray and I hurried to lay it down. She had brought us wine and a pile of biscuits, as requested, as well as an assortment of sandwiches.
“And you are going to eat,” Sebastian said crossly to the now spiritless priest, all gentleness gone.
“Has it passed?” I asked anxiously.
He was grim as he straightened. “For now. Lud, look at me.” He pulled his waistcoat smartly into place and began to smooth the expensive fabric.
I skirted around him, intent on the figure lying on the bed. Father Luke did not move. I took one of the sandwiches and tore off a piece. “Take it,” I said to Father Luke. “Or Sebastian will have your hide.”
His face was parchment-white, glistening with sweat. He only ignored me for a moment before relenting, taking the shred of food from my hands and putting it into his mouth.
While he chewed, I grabbed the basin of water and wet a cloth, then sat on the edge of the bed and began to sponge off the priest’s face and neck.
“You do not have to show me compassion,” he murmured. “I brought this upon myself.”
“Hush.” I paused to hand him another fragment of the sandwich. His great chin squared stubbornly in refusal.
“I lost faith,” he whispered, still not meeting my eye.
“Yes. I remember.”
He turned from me and shortly fell into a restless sleep. I remained beside him for a time, partially as an act of kindness and partially to give myself time to steady my emotions.
Sebastian handed me a cup of wine when I rose. We crept softly to the other end of the room where we might whisper without disturbing the sleeping priest.
“How did you find him?” I asked.
Sebastian frowned at his reflection in a pier glass on the wall. “He came to me in Town for money. Just came to the townhouse one night. I was carousing, as you might imagine, and rather indecorously. Imagine my surprise to find a priest in my hallway. I thought at first he’d come to save my soul. I offered him some brandy—as a jest, mind you—and he accepted. Then I saw how bad off he was, and I was sorry for the fellow. I thought him ill. Stupid of me, but how was I to suspect? I gave him some coins and sent him on his way, with promises to meet for tea or coffee or ale or something or other. Neither one of us meant it and I barely thought of afterward.”
“He must have shown up again?”
He nodded. “And that time, I knew it was not ague that ailed him. His shaking hands, his sweating—he was nearly as bad as you see now. He begged money from me again, and when I suggested he go to a hospital instead, he grew agitated. I admit, it frightened me that he would become violent. You know, he is a formidably large man.”
“He is indeed,” I agreed.
“Quite right. So I gave him all the money I had and hoped he would leave me. He did, with such shame and remorse on his face that I knew—at once, I knew he was eating opium. That desperate look . . . there is no mistaking it. But he was gone, you see, and I was glad to be rid of him, glad he had not killed me.”
Sebastian sighed, fussing with his cravat. Glancing at me, he appeared sheepish. “Then my conscience got me. Yes, indeed—a conscience. It appears I am actually in possession of one. Who knew? And it began to assert itself most inconveniently and so I set out to find him, which did not prove easy. The Ah Sings of this world like their customers without complications. They have men to deal with complications. Large men with disagreeable temperaments. Who can snap a delicate neck like mine with a flick of a wrist.” He shuddered.
“So what did you do?”
Sebastian smirked. “I hired larger men,” he said. “One of the advantages of frequenting the underworld, and being free with my coin as I am, is that you make the most unlikely of friends.”
“Then you managed to take him safely away from the opium den?”
“Three times, in fact. He kept escaping. Terribly determined, he is. Terrorized my staff and I almost lost my housekeeper over the whole affair. But even that old tartar couldn’t abandon the wretch.” Sebastian jerked his head toward the bed. “It was she who made me go after him again that last time. She told me to go into that disgusting, vile place once more, this time
without
the brawny fellows. And thus the priest would be forced to come to my rescue. She insisted the man would never allow harm to come to me after all I’d done for him.”
I nodded. “She knew his heart was still good and sound.”
His head whipped round and he snorted. “Heavens, no. She was quite wrong, as it turned out. The cur lay there insensate while I was mauled.”
I gasped. “What? Then tell me at last, Sebastian, how the devil you got that man all the way up here in Cumbria and lying on that bed.”
He lifted a boyishly lean shoulder. “I barely made it out of there with my life, and when I stumbled into my townhouse, I was just about to take a stick to Mrs. Oxney when he arrived at my door. A deplorably sloppy scene ensued in which he actually berated me for endangering my life for him. Imagine! Well, I tried to cast him out, as I had had my fill of the entire matter, but he was insistent on getting me to agree never to return to Ah Sing’s establishment, which of course I would not.”
“Of course,” I agreed mildly.
“He actually manhandled me! Tore my best surcoat, the ham-fisted oaf. You would think all of that opium would have made him weak. Then I informed him he would soon be quit of me, at least for a while, as I was leaving that very night to travel here to see you, and he suddenly changed at the mention of your name. He became calm and the next thing I knew, he had thrust himself in my carriage and would not budge when I ordered him out. He said nothing, only that he was determined to come along, and as I had no hope of moving him, I let him. The journey was grueling for him, as you might imagine.”
I took a moment to digest this. “What do you plan to do with him?”
“Get him off the drug. After that, I have not given a thought.” His head jerked toward me. “I do not expect you to help nurse him. That is not why I brought him with me. I simply did not have another place for him.”
I glanced at the bed. The priest slept. Where was the proper place for a fallen priest? I wondered. And what could I do besides offer kindness and comfort?
“Have you heard from him?” Sebastian asked me. I did not need to ask to whom he referred. I knew he meant Valerian. I did not look at him when I shook my head.
He muttered something softly, perhaps not meant for my ears. I pretended I had not heard, but I silently agreed with him. For his long absence and incomprehensible silence these past months, Valerian Fox was a bloody bastard.