“You may as well come,” Gareth St. John said. “You might do more good than I will.”
He hadn’t thought to say it. He hadn’t, really, thought at all, other than to wonder if Fitzpatrick thought Gareth could do anything about the situation or had just come to the first authority figure he could find. Not that it mattered. He was the one at hand. Fitzpatrick was fifteen and terrified, and Gareth’s body was headed for the door long before his mind snapped itself out of the shock.
Simon had hired the Brightmore woman for some skill with the occult, presumably. It wouldn’t hurt to have her along. Gareth glanced over his shoulder to see how she’d taken the order.
She was nearly neck and neck with him. Either she moved with inhuman speed—not wholly impossible, given the circumstances—or she hadn’t been waiting on his invitation. Not one to sit on her hands in a crisis. Gareth had to give her that, just as he’d had to concede a few moments ago she had some measure of wit.
Naturally, he told himself as they followed Fitzpatrick into the hall, Mrs. Brightmore hadn’t seen the case yet. Neither, in all fairness, had he.
“Has someone gone to get Mrs. Grenville?” he asked.
Fitzpatrick nodded. “Charlotte.”
Better she than me was all through his voice. Modern youth wasn’t much for chivalry, it appeared. Not that Gareth could entirely blame the boy.
By the time they’d gotten halfway up the stairs, his leg had already begun to ache. He could slow down, but not in front of the Brightmore woman, and it probably wouldn’t be a good idea even if she wasn’t there. If Elizabeth’s powers shut off suddenly, as they sometimes did—then there would be something he could do. If he and Elizabeth were lucky.
One bit of fortune was on Gareth’s side. Until the builders could finish the new dormitory that occupied so much of Mrs. Grenville’s attention, the female students stayed on the second floor in a hastily refitted guest room. If climbing the stairs in a hurry was painful, dashing across the grounds would have been a study in agony. It was lucky too, they had been inside: here there was a ceiling.
A year or two ago, Gareth had never had time to think during a crisis. They’d always been right at hand. Half the time, he’d no sooner stumbled out of his bed than there’d been some broken and bleeding young man in front of him, and his mind had turned itself swiftly and wholly to the task. He’d never thought, then, he might actually miss those days.
When he reached the landing, Mrs. Brightmore by his side, he could hear Elizabeth sobbing. It was honestly something of a relief. The girl clearly hadn’t damaged herself too badly. It took a certain amount of strength to cry, particularly at any volume, and it required that the person crying have lungs in relatively good condition. Death, in Gareth’s experience, was quiet, more often than not.
Nonetheless, he covered the length of the hallway quickly, despite the pain in his leg. It didn’t take long before he drew in sight of the open doorway and glimpsed the figures inside. Fitzpatrick had dashed ahead of him and now stood a little to the side. Waite and Fairley were nearby. All three had their heads tipped backward, the better to stare the six or so feet to the ceiling.
Elizabeth Donnell floated there. “Floating” gave the impression of serenity, though the girl was anything but serene. She twisted and shrieked, kicking her legs and clawing at the air as if she could find some purchase on emptiness. Her red hair had come loose from its plaits sometime in the struggle and tangled about her as if in an unseen wind. As Gareth came in, she looked down at him with red-rimmed eyes and, with some effort, made her crying coherent.
“Oh, Dr. St. John,” she said and gulped, “can you get me down from here? Please?”
Poor little thing. Gareth’s own talent had been quite bad enough at thirteen, but it had been far more subtle, and controllable, than this. He’d have been screaming too, in her circumstances.
Pity wouldn’t get her down, though. Admitting he didn’t know what would get her down would probably only make matters worse. The last thing the students needed was further panic. None of that meant he had the slightest idea how to begin. At a minimum, he could talk calmly to her until Mrs. Grenville returned, and be on hand in case the situation got…out of hand.
Gareth drew a breath to speak.
“I can.” It was Mrs. Brightmore. Her brown eyes were a little wide, but her face, although pale, showed no signs of panic.
It was a familiar face too. Gareth had thought so since a few moments after he’d met her and was more convinced now. He couldn’t place the connection, and it didn’t matter. If the woman thought she had the situation in hand—it was more than he did. “This is Mrs. Brightmore,” he said by way of an introduction. “She’s come to be your teacher.”
The boys turned briefly, but only briefly. A new teacher, even a young and pretty one, held no fascination beside the scene playing out above them. Gareth shot them a reproving look—this is not a sideshow, gentlemen—and was glad to see a general embarrassed shuffling.
More to the point, Elizabeth turned a gaze to Mrs. Brightmore that was both surprised and hopeful. “You are? So you know about—?” She gestured vaguely around her.
“Yes, of course.” A quick smile. “It won’t be any problem at all, so long as you do what I say.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Mrs. Brightmore took a few steps into the room until she was standing almost directly below Elizabeth—just enough off to look easily up at the girl. “First of all, I’d like you to shut your eyes. Good. Now take a very deep breath. Fill your lungs and hold it for a second.”
Elizabeth fell almost silent, but Gareth saw her lips moving and heard a very low mutter. Some of the words sounded a bit like Latin. None of them seemed quite to correspond with the short, neat woman in the brown checked wool. However, the lamplight casting a shadow across her face and darkening her chestnut hair made her look more suited to her role.
“When I say ‘go,’” she went on, “open your eyes, look at me, and let your breath out. Slowly. Count to ten.”
The whole room was silent now, silent enough to hear the first puff of Elizabeth’s breath, and attentive enough to notice when her body started to descend. It was only a few inches, but her nose no longer brushed the ceiling.
“Good God!” Waite whispered.
Gareth knew he should reprove him, but he’d only barely controlled the urge to swear himself. “I suggest,” he said, “that the three of you go and explain the situation to Mrs. Grenville.”
“But Charlotte—” Fairley said.
“Miss Woodwell won’t know about this latest development, will she?” Gareth used the voice that had always worked on orderlies and assumed the sound of footsteps meant it had worked. For his part, he didn’t take his eyes off the center of the room, where Elizabeth was slowly but surely drifting downward.
Now, as he hadn’t had time to do earlier, he took a closer look at Mrs. Brightmore. Pretty, yes. Even now he wasn’t blind to a pleasantly rounded figure or a cheerful, heart-shaped face. She hadn’t dressed to play up either asset though, or to show off her wealth. Her clothing was plain and her hair pulled back in a simple knot. Necessary, perhaps, since she didn’t travel with a maid. She was no schoolgirl, but she was no more than his age, if that, young to be so certain of herself under these circumstances.
Nothing in her appearance explained how she’d learned whatever she was doing. Nor did it account for the feeling Gareth had met her before. That was highly improbable. He hadn’t been more than half a year in England, he’d been recovering for most of that, and she was no nurse.
Elizabeth continued her descent. Mrs. Brightmore didn’t give her much time to realize it, from the way things looked. She kept talking, lengthening her words slowly, and her hands moved in slow patterns in the air. Her fingers were long and slim, nimble looking.
“Now in for another count of ten. Imagine letting out everything that makes you float, as if you’re a great big balloon. Someone’s untied the end, and the air’s coming out. But it’s not all at once. I am right here, and you are safe. Just breathe out now, slowly—and hold—and then in again.”
There was a faint accent to her voice now, almost but not quite French. It was familiar, again, like the movements of her hands.
“In once again—hold—and out—and we’re done!”
Gareth almost jumped when the heels of Elizabeth’s boots touched the carpet. By the look on her face, though, he wasn’t half as surprised as she was. “I-it worked!” the girl said.
“So it did. I’d go downstairs, if I were you, and see if I could get some bread and butter out of Cook. You’ll be able to eat a horse soon.” Mrs. Brightmore smiled.
It was the smile that pulled all the other hints together. A dimple in one cheek made it look slightly lopsided, and suddenly Gareth knew he’d seen that precise smile before. In person, yes, but also on a poster. Not a very good print, but the girl had been pretty, the night had been quiet, and they’d all been flush with pay. I’ve never been, James had said. Don’t you think we should, before we leave? Don’t have these in Egypt, I’ll wager.
Gareth and Edward had been willing enough to go along. Wine had helped.
It should have been gin. Spirits to talk with spirits. Gareth remembered Edward’s voice. A month or so later, Edward had lain on a filthy cot in a hot country, sweating and bleeding and dying for nothing particularly right or true. Edward had been whole that night, though. Merry going in, melancholy after. He hadn’t been able to say why.
Madame Marguerite, the woman had been called then. Medium Most Magnificent. Part of something called Hawkins’s Wonder Show. She’d sounded more French, or more like her audience had expected French to sound. Her hair had been down in ringlets and her wrists clinking with cheap bangles. Her dress had been white and cut much lower. But she’d moved her hands the same way, and her voice had been just as coaxing when she spoke to “The Realms Beyond.”
Gareth had almost been able to see the wires.
He took a step back without thinking. He’d started to admire her—that was the worst of it. The way she kept her head in a crisis, her quiet humor, her ability to calm a scared child. Downstairs, perhaps he’d even started to like her.
Now—
Gareth reminded herself he didn’t know. He couldn’t know for sure. It had been six years. Plenty had happened, plenty of faces had passed through his vision on the way, and women did look and even sound similar. And Mrs. Brightmore could do what she claimed. She just had.
Except…she’d simply talked, for the most part. Any half-shilling fortune-teller could talk a decent game, and most of them could manage a few tricks of mesmerism—certainly enough to work on a scared child. The invocation had been the only blatantly magical part of the process, and even that might have been for effect.
He didn’t want to offend an innocent woman, nor did he want to offend a woman he would have to work with. Nevertheless, he had to know. More than that, he owed some information to the Grenvilles.
“I realize it’s an unusual question,” he said abruptly. “But I think we’ve met before. May I ask your Christian name?”
Was it his imagination, or was her smile a touch fixed now? “Olivia,” she said. “But I don’t—”
“Ah,” he said and watched her face. “I was almost certain it was Marguerite.”
She was very good. The recognition on her face—and the guilt—was there for only a minute. Just long enough to tell him what he needed to know.