THAT evening found me in a dreadful temper, terribly overdressed, and seated in the castle’s dimly lit ballroom. I’d racked my brain—and trunk—for what might pass for suitable attire for a séance—a difficult task as I had not known upon packing that I was attending a séance. I was supposed to be appraising and acquiring a dozen illuminated manuscripts for Mr. Owen. Perhaps finagling a discreet love affair once matters were settled with the books, should a suitable candidate show themselves. Someone pleasant enough to eradicate those unruly feelings I harbored for one Mr. Ruan Kivell without causing any extra emotional entanglements. That’s exactly what I needed—something to help me forget the irrational pull toward the peculiar man.
Tonight, I ended up settling upon an airy green-and-gold evening gown with a daring décolletage. Everyone else in the room was dressed in mournful shades of grays, lilacs, and black. Serge and wool. At least it was dark—making my inappropriate attire less obvious—but even still the gold threads caught the candlelight, sparkling in the shadows.
I shifted in the wooden dining chair, resisting the urge to tug on the seafoam silk of my skirt, and hide within the pathetically thin material. I’d never been skittish, but ever since my adventures in Cornwall, crowds made me nervous. It could be a mere gathering of ten people, and I would start feeling … rabbity … consumed by this primal need to flee before something larger came along to gobble me up, even though I knew good and well no harm would befall me in here.
A half-dozen ancient silver candelabras were set around the perimeter of the room, throwing the center into little more than shadows and shapes. All the better to disguise the sleight of hand that inevitably would follow. Two anemic electric lights battled the darkness, allowing the guests to find their way to their seats, while the candlelight danced in the breeze from the open windows. It certainly was a scene set for deception. One where strings became invisible, filament mistaken for ghostly renderings, and sticks rattling tables would remain unseen.
Mr. Owen sat beside me, a grim expression beneath his full white beard. He frowned, lifting his hand to tuck a curl back into the gold cloth that bound my unruly brown curls. “Don’t think I don’t know how much it is costing you to come here, my girl.”
“You’re a fine one to talk. Look at you. A man bound for the gallows, if I’ve ever seen one.”
“I mean it, Ruby. I’m old and have seen and done far more than is wise. But you…” He reached up, thumb lingering at the slight pink scar bisecting my eyebrow. He dropped his hands limply to his lap with a gruff shake of his head. “Never mind me. This place has too many ghosts, that is all.” Mr. Owen quickly changed the subject, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Do you see that man over there?” He tilted his head to the far side of the very large circular table. The man in question was probably sixty or so, with typical patrician features. A delicate nose. Fine brows and fair hair that shone like burnished bronze in candlelight. At his side was a much younger woman, not much older than I, who looked as if a stiff wind would blow her over.
A hollow and brittle thing, putting me in mind of the fictional Miss Havisham, albeit not in her wedding gown tonight. Now that would be overdressed for a séance. “Who are they?” I asked, swallowing down the amusing image.
“The Duke of Biddlesford. Capital fellow.” He leaned closer, finally getting a bit more color again and spoke behind his hand. I’d heard whispers that a duke had arrived this morning, but I hadn’t crossed paths with him yet—not that I particularly wanted to. I didn’t have much use for the aristocracy, nor they me.
“Of course, the young lady next to him who looks as if she bit into an unripe persimmon is his second wife, Catherine. And before you ask—I haven’t a clue why she looks miserable when she has more money than you. Perhaps marriage to old men does not suit her.” He leaned closer still, whispering into my ear, with a nod toward the dowager countess. “I’m honestly surprised Lady Morton is here at all. I heard rumors that she was angling to be the second Duchess of Biddlesford before he settled on that one.”
I raised my brows. “How is it that you are better versed in the history of the people in attendance tonight than I am, when you have scarcely left your room for five minutes in all of two days?”
He gave me a pained look, laying a hand on his chest. “You wound me, Ruby. How am I to acquire their treasures if I don’t know what secrets they’ve hidden in the attic?”
I laughed, earning me a cross look from Lady Morton, who was reluctantly seated only a few places to my left, alongside her daughter, Lady Amelia. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, still with the vestiges of childhood on her face.
Mr. Owen squeezed my hand, drawing my attention back to our conversation. “I knew Biddlesford a lifetime ago, back when he was a boy.” He grew wistful as he watched the duke.
“When you lived in Scot—?” I started to ask but my words died away as my attention was caught by an old man who had sat down directly across from me. His angry expression stole all the light from the room. The fellow’s gray hair was scraggly, falling loose about his shoulders. Gauging from the fine cut of his coat, he had both means and access to an enviable tailor, even if he lacked a decent barber to go with it. Likely some lesser aristocrat considering the rest of the company here. Though one could never tell; after all, Mr. Owen and I were also in attendance and didn’t have a drop of aristocratic blood between us. I drew in a shaky breath then a second, tapping my thigh beneath the table, desperate to will away the slow creeping panic clawing its way up my throat.
“Who is that?”
“No one to concern yourself with.” Yet the tense muscle at the edge of Mr. Owen’s jaw told me this was another prevarication.
A younger man came in, pulling a spare chair from the wall to settle himself beside the scraggly haired fellow, drawing the man’s focus from me at long last. The addition of the newcomer caused the seats to shift, putting young Lady Amelia beside me, to Lady Morton’s dismay. At least I didn’t have to see her disapproving glowers any longer. A small mercy.
There was something familiar about the fellow who’d just joined the group—something in the shape of his eyes and line of his Roman nose, perhaps the geometry of the two together—but before I could ponder the question of his intriguing features anymore, the electric lights to the room were cut, thrusting us all into the dark.
“Right. Time for the ectoplasm and table shaking,” I muttered.
“You promised to behave yourself.” Mr. Owen whispered behind gritted teeth. His good humor from earlier had vanished.
I hadn’t agreed to anything.
Lady Amelia giggled behind her hand, casting me a curious look.
A low hum reverberated from somewhere outside the room and the air filled with the unctuous scent of incense—dark and rich—putting me in mind of the old cathedrals I’d visited during the darkest days of the war, back when I still sought meaning amongst the devastation of life.
Three shrouded figures appeared in the doorway, processing into the room. The first bore a dove in a cage, fluttering noisily against its confines. The second, a pair of shears, and the third clasped a book tight against her chest. I’d give them high marks for maintaining the theme. Perhaps I’d get my ten pounds’ worth yet.
I reached into my pocket for the flask I often carried with me and realized that I’d left it in my room. Damn.
Sensing my turn of thought, Mr. Owen cut me a sharp look and I dutifully retrained my attention upon the Three Fates. Their dark gowns were Roman in style, thin and light falling to the floor, and each wore a long black veil shielding their faces from view.
The low rhythmic hum grew louder, settling under my skin and embedding itself uncomfortably in my brain. Where was it coming from? I took in a slow breath and let it out again. Counting in my head. Fingertips drumming on my thigh. I’d been to war and back; surely, I could endure a single séance sober? But as the moments dragged on, a clawing sensation ran down my spine, followed by a cold flush to my face. I recognized it at once—fear.
Run.
Run, child. Run.
The voice in my head was clear as if the words had been spoken aloud.
The first medium immediately swung her gaze to me, holding it for several seconds, before looking to each participant in turn with an unnatural jerk of her chin.
My throat clenched. Her movements were stilted, almost inhuman. Mr. Owen clasped my hand, squeezing it against my own leg as one would to calm a fidgety child. This was absurd. It was theatrics, that’s all, and yet I could not escape the creeping dread that threatened to devour me whole.
By the time I managed to settle my thoughts, the three mediums had taken their seats around the table at twelve, four, and eight o’clock, splitting our group into equal portions. One by one the women lifted their veils. The first medium was very old, probably of an age with Mr. Owen. Another possibly a decade older than me with fine features and auburn hair. And the third …
When I looked upon the third, all my earlier fears made perfect sense. The woman’s distinct hawkish appearance and unusual eyes unnerved me as much now as they had the first time I saw her at the crossroads in Lothlel Green weeks earlier.
It was the White Witch of Launceton, and she was a very long way from home. The first time I laid eyes upon her, I thought she was a ghost. I had no idea I’d ever see her again, nor did I want to—for last time there was a murderer on the loose.
“What is it, lass?” Mr. Owen whispered in my ear. His breath rustling my hair with his words.
I was unable to speak. The memories from my time in Cornwall struck hard and fast—no more than fragments of thoughts— of how she’d mysteriously appeared portending death and destruction only to vanish again like an ill omen. I stared unblinking at her pale face, unable to form the words.
The oldest of the three women began to speak.
Mr. Owen took my hand in his own, squeezing tenderly, as did Lady Amelia, reminding me of what I must do.
Join hands.
Right.
I think that’s how it went the last time I participated in one of these ridiculous charades, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except the White Witch, and why she was here.
The youngest of the three mediums began to speak from where she sat on the far side of Lady Morton, the dowager countess.
“Arthur. Arthur McTavish. Can you reach him, see why he called for me?” Lady Morton asked.
McTavish? Now that was intriguing, my own curiosity at war with my sense of self-preservation. While I wasn’t as versed in the aristocracy as Mr. Owen, I was quite certain that the late Lord Morton was not named Arthur. Nor were they McTavishes. I chewed on my lip, curious about this turn of events despite the White Witch’s unwanted appearance.
She couldn’t harm me.
She couldn’t.
I simply had to make it through this farce, then I could find out what she wanted. And from the way she watched me, I was certain that I was the reason she’d come.
As soon as I latched onto my post-séance plan, the temperature dropped precipitously. The room fell into silence as a strange lilting voice rang out. “He’s here … the one who betrayed me … he’s here.”
Mr. Owen’s pulse galloped against my palm as he crushed my knuckles against his fingers.
“What’s your name, spirit?” called the youngest medium. Her voice bore a faint Russian accent. “Tell us your name.”
But the eerie voice continued, as if she had not heard the young medium’s request at all. “Boundless ambition. Boundless desire.” The lilting voice called, the words neither spoken nor sung—hovering somewhere between. “Wanting and striving. Always wanting and striving. My love was not enough. Was never enough. Never enough.”
Mr. Owen tensed as the voice echoed around us.
“I tried to warn you. Tried to show you … but it was too late.” The strange voice grew sharp, as the words died upon the lips of the eldest medium. It was she who spoke. Was this the Lucy Campbell that Mr. Owen spoke of? The only true spiritualist he’d ever met. I swallowed hard, unable to look away from the scene before me. The old woman’s head lolled from side to side, her eyes rolled back into her head revealing only the milky whites. I’d certainly never seen anything like this in France. “But you … I know what you did. I know … what … you … did. And soon the world will know too. Too long have I lain in my stony tomb. Too long have you stolen my tongue. I will be heard. We … will … be … heard.”
The eldest medium’s expression contorted in pain as her body drew ramrod straight in the chair. Her eyes wide and sightless as her head continued to rock about on her neck like that of a newborn babe unable to control the weight—white eyes moving from face to face to face with a terrifying liquidity I’d never seen in all my days.
The spirit was seeking something.
There was no other explanation for it.
My breath was visible in the coldness of the room.
The medium grew still at last, her eyes fixed upon me with an odd gentleness before looking away, craning her neck into an improbable angle. “There is nowhere on earth you can hide from the dead. We have not forgotten … we shall not forgive. The dead know what you’ve done.”
“What do they know, spirit?” Challenging a possessed spiritualist was likely a terrible decision—but she, it, had been looking at me before going on this tirade, and someone needed to take charge of this nonsense as things were quickly getting out of hand.
The unearthly voice softened as an icy breeze floated through the room, gently caressing my neck. “He knows you’ve come, child. He’ll be coming for you now.”
Who is coming?
I ought to be afraid—any rational person would—and yet I could not quite convince my body of what my mind knew to be true. Only a fool would argue with a ghost. But surely this séance couldn’t be real. Could it?
“Who. Who is coming?” I asked at last.
Her mouth grew round and her word came out in a hush. “Run.” And with that final word the candles all snuffed out in the room, casting us all into the darkness and cold.
“It’s Mariah!” a man shouted from the far side of the room.
“She’s returned.”
“Back … she’s come back…”
The voices began to bleed into one as the youngest medium rose to her feet, rattling the tabletop with her movement, struggling with matches that refused to light.
Someone else was looking for the lamps.
Lady Amelia squeezed my hand, causing my knuckles to ache. Her skin damp against mine. The room grew colder, as if such a thing was possible.
“I left you the key, but you abandoned me. Why did you abandon me? Why did you leave me, my love?” The old medium’s voice grew shrill as she called out into the darkness. “The key will tell all and then you—you will pay for your sins…”
At long last the youngest medium managed to locate the switch, and the room was flooded with artificial light, burning my eyes which had grown accustomed to the darkness.
The room warmed instantly, and the strange specter left as quickly as it had come.
“Murderer!” the scraggly haired old man across the table roared, leaping from his chair and lunging toward the spot where Mr. Owen sat. “Murderer!” he shouted again, waggling a bony finger at Mr. Owen.
Mr. Owen shrugged away from me, scraping his chair across the worn wooden floors, and fled the room as it descended into chaos. Everyone spoke at once, clamoring to understand what had occurred.
The oldest medium had gone utterly slack, her neck resting on the high back of the chair. A grayness settled over her features as she opened her fathomless eyes and looked at me.
This was not the face of a woman who was playing a con. No vapor or smoke tricks here—nor silken scarves masquerading as ectoplasm.
My heart thundered in my chest as I heeded that warning voice at long last.
I ran—scrambling through the sweaty bodies, struggling to make sense of what had occurred. Where was Mr. Owen? I strained up on the tips of my toes—a benefit of my height I supposed—where I could make out a tuft of his fluffy white hair near the west wing doors. I darted through the crowd and down the hall after him in hopes of finding out what in God’s name had happened back there.