True to his word, Leon came every morning. At first he and Ambrose trained the dog in the garden. My cook fussed when they traipsed through her herbs, and her ranting solidified the friendship of the two most important men in my life. They bonded over ignoring the woman.

I wanted to trust Leon again; he made it easy. Leon decided that Angus, who now slept in my son’s bed at night, was old enough to take proper walks. He said Ambrose, while precious to me, was no more valuable than any of his other Carriers. No Incola would risk a war with us to gain him. Anxiety turned my stomach but I allowed it only if they took our best three guards. Park Lane, on which my house sat in the middle, was named for its proximity to Hyde Park and every front window of our home overlooked it. I could watch their whole excursion.

Ambrose was growing into such a little man. The responsibility of caring for another living thing matured him. Sometimes when he looked at me, I felt a much older soul peering out. Dawn was also maturing. I was so proud of her; she had taken the weight of our talk and carried it lightly. Though serious about keeping herself safe, she wasn’t encumbered by it.

I knew she wanted to go outside, to ride a horse in the park with the other girls of means. I could not even let her go in costume to the market with the servants because a guard detail would ruin the disguise. Leon said she would be safe if she were bonded to an Incola. I would not do that to her. Bonds made early in life were more permanent, so I'd read. She could choose her mate—Incola, Carrier, or human—when she was grown.

One morning when Leon and Ambrose walked with Angus and Dawn was engrossed in a book, I heard a sound from the torture room. The one my husband had built, the one I’d lined with metal and reinforced. I keyed my private code into the numerical pad and the mechanical door hissed open, the gears inside silently turning.

Paetus was inside. On his knees, stripped down to the loincloth worn when Mistress came to the club, his face downturned. I was forced to identify him based on the top of his head. I sealed the door behind me. Mr. Hall had assured me that the room was inescapable and I was taking no chances with Dawn so near. I had suspected that Paetus was the visitor when I discovered the room’s apparent use and upkeep. He and Julian used the room just as I had with my husband. Their stolen bodies needed this sort of treatment. The pain told them they were still alive.

I said nothing for many minutes, knowing the wait was part of the torture. Mistress had trained me to be a wonderful Dominatrix; my husband had shown me how to apply that training to Incola with a considerably higher threshold for anguish. I thought back to that first time I had participated in marking Paetus and beating Julian. I had appreciated the designs our whips made on other men’s skin but my husband was the only one I really desired to hurt. Paetus must have expected me to apply the instruments or he wouldn’t be there. I had to come up with the animosity to give him what he expected.

I thought of what he and my husband had planned to do to and with my body, what Paetus probably planned to do with Dawn’s body. The desire to hurt him rose easily. Sally stoked the embers of my heart while I spoke to Paetus. “Why would you come here after I told you your flesh was repulsive?”

Keeping his head bowed, Paetus said, “Mistress, our tenebrae is the place we may interact where you never have to touch me with your hands. I come here every Tuesday, as agreed. I am honored that you chose to attend today. I am yours to do with what you want.”

The name “tenebrae” indicated a Catholic ceremony. Latin for shadow or darkness, the word was perfect for what happened in this room. It had been four years since I had laid cane to skin but the body remembered. Julian told me that once. Though I hadn’t understood when he’d said it, I did now. He had me perfect the arts he wanted my body to remember when he took it. Fighting, fencing, riding, rutting, pianoforte, piccolo—they had all been for him. Acting as Mistress was no different.

I strapped Paetus to the birching pony, using all manner of instruments in rapid succession to set his nerves on fire. When I applied the feather duster, Paetus wept. He could feel the light tickling touch and thanked me profusely. I was his Mistress and he my servant. Locking the door behind me, I allowed him to leave when he felt ready, able.

That session with Paetus eased my temperament. My behavior of the previous weeks had been erratic: my suspicions of Leon, short temper with the children, disconnection with Madame Morvou’s pain and suffering. I needed the violence. I needed an outlet for my anger and distrust. Being Mistress did this for me and if it gave me a small measure of control over Paetus—and subsequently my daughter’s life and safety—that was an added bonus.

 

Callers ceased coming—save my secret one. Too often noblewomen and solicitors alike were left standing on our stoop, told we were “not at home.” Eventually they stopped visiting to avoid the insult of being turned away.

We sought another true medium who could channel Julian. We found only con artists who spoke in generalities, never mentioning my dead husband. Perhaps they worried the man who held the purse strings would not appreciate the attention to my previous husband. Thinking that might work in our favor, we pressed on, hoping Julian’s spirit would force his way inside any medium capable of containing him.

Returning from yet another failed outing, we approached the house on foot to see a ruckus at our front door. A commoner tried to muscle his way past my steward. Mr. Boyd was shouting, “I have told you. The lady of the house is not at home.”

The man saw Mr. Boyd glance our way and abandoned his efforts to enter the house. He shouted that we should watch him, see what happens when someone tried to leave him. “Why choose her over me?” he demanded. It sounded like a youth throwing a tantrum. His irregular, jerky gait was familiar to me, recognizable as a man being ridden. He yelled, “You are both mine,” and then threw himself in front of a cart carrying great vats of water and several men.

The four large stock horses trampled him and the large wheels rolled over his body. I will never forget the horrible crunching sound of his bones under that much weight. Flinching up and away, my gaze landed on the third story window where Ambrose watched the whole thing.

Hundreds of neighbors witnessed the next shocking event. The man wasn’t dead. His twisted, mangled body twitched and although his elbow bent in the wrong direction, he managed to retrieve a small derringer from his pocket. Laying it on the cobblestone in front of him, he used his thumb to pull the trigger. At close range, his face imploded into his brain.

Leon rushed me into the house, shouting commands at his men the whole way. I ran up the stairs to Ambrose. My baby shouldn’t see that. He would need his Mama. Ambrose sat under the window with his back against the wall rocking and mumbling, “Why, why did he have to die?”

I scooped him up, mindless of the possibility that my skin might touch his and carried him to his bed in the nursery. So great was the heat that radiated off him, it could be felt through his clothes and mine. I stripped his clothes and tucked him into bed.

Fever overtook his body that night. There was little anyone could do.

The illness baffled Leon. Carrier children almost never got sick. Further compounding Leon’s confusion was his inability to enter Ambrose’s body. He was reluctant to ride my son because of the bonding that would occur, but I begged him. It was the only way I knew to force the fever from Ambrose’s little body. My son was too young to repair his own body, even if his heat-addled brain had been capable.

Never had Leon been secret with his method, though I had not seen it firsthand. While I anxiously watched Ambrose, Leon retrieved an inkwell and quill from a desk down the hall. Careful to barely scratch Ambrose’s baby skin, he drew a mark on the boy’s shoulder. If my son had been a full-grown man and willing participant, Leon would have injected the ink below the skin. I admired the view as he stripped off his coat, waistcoat, shirt, and undershirt.

It had been a while since I’d enjoyed the male physique. Leon was more fit and burly than his covered shape led me to believe. His abdominal muscles were particularly well-developed, and while now it is quite commonplace to see a young man with a ripped six-pack, then it was a level of fitness unheard of in the genteel. Only the working class were muscled. Overlaying these muscles were fine, almost lace-like tattoos. He dipped the quill in the ink again and, pulling his trousers down to find a bare spot at the hip, drew on his own body. It made me love him a bit more, to know that the marks meant he had bonded and cared for so many.

Kneeling on the floor next to the tiny bed, Leon went deathly still and ghostly white. Ambrose began weakly fighting, his head thrashing. Leon stood and backed away, shaking his head, and my son stopped his struggle.

The Incola who protected my clan could do nothing for my son. He collapsed in a chair and sipped on the warm milk the footman brought. Only then did I notice how many servants and guards crowded the room.

I called Mr. Hall in. He had never taken readings of my children because I had never doubted they were Carriers. Now I had doubt. Perhaps Leon could not get in because Ambrose was human. Ed took a canister of Ambrose’s smell and went to catalog it. He asked me to come down to the secret chamber and hear the results, and something else Ed had thought important, but I couldn’t be coaxed from my son’s side.

Ambrose barely moved all night, though he moaned and muttered nonsense, his sweat soaking through the sheets. Servants brought the drip tray from the icebox. The frigid water brought obvious relief when I moistened a cloth and dabbed his head and so I also had them chisel a bit of the ice block to add.

His fever peaked in the wee hours of the morning and I submerged him in an ice bath. It irked me to do so, remembering the torture of such a shock to the system. I had often suffered such a treatment at the hands of Dr. Federick at West Freeman Asylum for Lunatics when I’d had no fever. That was done in malice. This was done out of love.

I put his body back in bed after his skin felt more normal. I sat next to him, my calming gloves soothing his forehead so that he might sleep dreamlessly.

I woke to the clinking of dishes and opened my eyes to find his bed empty. Panicked, I looked around and found Ambrose standing naked, eating every crumb of the snack and tea the maid had served me the previous evening. My son looked at me and said, “I want more, Mama.”

I rang for service but Ambrose wanted to eat in the breakfast room. I dressed him myself and we went down. Leon had stayed overnight and was already eating. We watched as Ambrose put away more food than I thought could fit in such a small body. He ate three poached eggs and nearly half a ham, shoving biscuits and fruit into his face between every bite of protein. When he finished, I sent him outside with Angus.

I found it quite nice to have the gentle-spirited Leon in my breakfast room. He said he’d had to feign his injury for the same inspector had shown up to investigate this death as Madame Morvou’s. My fiancé said the glorified bobbie probably suspected our involvement in both deaths yet had the decency to keep his suspicions to himself.

Leon and I went to talk with Ed in the library, where he assured us my son was a Carrier. My tinkerer then described his readings on the man who’d committed suicide in front of our house. The dead man was an oddity. The catalog said he was a partial match for both the unknown at Madame Morvou’s and the unknown in Theodore’s room.

Mr. Hall speculated that the man in those rooms was a blood relative of the dead man. Ed needed more samples. He seemed to be holding back and, when I pressured him, said, “Lord Ambrose has a similar reading. Is it possible that the dead man was your nephew?”

Although I did not want it to be true, I had to consider the possibility. No, Sally said. He wasn’t mixed race. The skin was much too light for that.

Yes, but even a black woman can be pale if she keeps out of the sun, I replied.

So it is possible but not probable. Why would Theodore kill himself after arguing with Mr. Boyd about seeing us? Why would he want us to see his death?

We whirled around as Dawn ran into the room bawling. “He killed him. Ambrose killed him!”