The Heartbeat Thief (12 page)

The seasons changed around her as if she stood still, a statue in a dark garden. Wild roses and brambles crouched at the edges of the crushed gravel path that circled about her, the fiery blooms cowering from her stony gaze. The only light that ever shone constant was the cold unfeeling moon.

The moonlight had no heat, no love, and she turned her face increasingly away from the world. Senza imagined the heart of the moon lay there, hidden away in its dark side.

Cold. Dark. Protected and safe. There was much to be admired in a heart like that.

She’d grown in the sunny countryside, where summers spread lushly over the land, the heat visible in the distance: the coveys that made homes in the trees and the bushes, the butterflies that churned the air over the gardens. Winters were white fleece blankets, dark brown bark with branching fingers under spreads of snow, deep evergreens that spilled their fragrance over the scent of the iron chill, crimson berries clinging to ice-covered sprigs, drops of blood and life contrasting against the frozen slumber.

But this wasn’t the country, and she was no longer a child.

Gone were the hills and the seasons and the expectations of her youth. These past many years since her Unbirthing—she’d seen such pain, such grief. One by one, her family grew old and slipped away like leaves on a stream, each in their own time, the threads of their lives having been measured and snipped. Her own thread dulled the scissors of the Fates, time and time again, refusing to fray beneath its cruel sharp blades.

Her mother ceded her defeat when Senza grew completely unmoved toward the idea of marriage. It struck a great blow to Mrs. Fyne’s pride as a mother; her only daughter, a spinster. Her three sons had married, and she seemed to take great delight in her daughters-in-law and her grandchildren, but whenever she looked at her daughter, there was only a haunted, hollow look in her eyes. A look of unrecoverable failure.

Another thorn for Senza’s unmoving heart.

When her mother passed in 1878, from a silly fever that gripped too tightly to let go, the entire family fell into mourning. It should have been no match for Mrs. Fyne’s healthy body, but her wounded spirit left open a door for deeper malady.

Her father ordered the mirrors covered, great drapes over every doorway, and every person clothed themselves in the darkest of blacks. It was an outpouring of grief the household had not seen since the death of The Queen’s beloved Prince Albert many years earlier.

But not Senza. Black was no longer for her, not even to mark the passing of her own mother. She ordered her gowns to be cut from the darkest aubergine, a purple so deep as to blot out a moonless sky. But not black. Never black. She was of the living. She would always be of the living.

Even her veil was dark, dark purple, the hue gentling the harsh light of the sun, the sharp looks of those who tried to see her face within the ruddy shadow of her not-black veils.

As the family made their way from the grave site, a lone figure near a copse of trees caught Senza’s eye.

Beneath a great, ageless oak tree, she spied the shadowy slimness of a fine black coat, the glint of bright black eyes. Knell. Her knees went rubbery with relief. He had shown. He was here. He’d come back.

And he would be the reason for her eternal youth, her continuance…him. They would be united at last and they would never part, never again.

The tease of his smile thrust her into motion and she bolted toward him, turning heads and eliciting startled cries from her family. He strolled around the tree disappearing from view and she knew—just knew—

She knew it was pointless. She knew she’d never reach him, just as she knew she was chasing smoke on the wind. All that he was—all that he’d given her—all of it was both gift and curse, boon and bane. He would never be standing around the corner, arms crossed and tipsy grin. He’d always be that impossible spot on the horizon, that twilight star just beyond her grasp. And she knew she’d never stop trying to get there.

Breathless, Senza clung to the tree. Stones and silence and solitude. Nothing more. A graveyard never could hold more.

The wound his absence had torn inside her gradually numbed, but it had felt like the passage of a forever, in and of itself.

She glimpsed him a few months later, when she found herself at the family plot once more, after Mr. Fyne, heartbroken, followed his wife into the Hereafter.

She spotted Knell at the back of the church during the service, and there was nothing she could do about it. This time, she could not spring up and clamber after the shadow that would melt away from her. She bore it with a stony silence, staring hard enough at her father’s casket to bore a hole through it, to crawl into it, and to die.

In time, she realized Knell was always around, just never close enough to touch. He was always in the crowd, down the street, in a window high above her. He was just never with her. Never hers to touch, never hers to hold.

Never again. But it never stopped her from chasing, and it never stopped her from yearning.

Her parents were dead and buried. Senza decided the veils would never come off, and not only because she had to shield the freshness of her features, despite being nearly forty years old. Loss and grief seemed to settle themselves upon her shoulders like a valley fog, thick and impenetrable. She needed a way to separate herself from the contagion of death. She did not wear a shroud; rather, it was the world that wore it. A world that seemed determined to die, soul by soul around her.

They perished and faded and she could do nothing but stand by and watch. Wake after wake, another face disappearing from view. She had no choice but to let them go. And as each light extinguished, the darkness about her grew. The shadows grew deeper as the stars winked out, leaving at long last only she, the uncaring moon.

And each time she said goodbye, the veil she wore over her face took on another layer, and another, and another, putting even more distance between her heart and the world. Her quiet, wretched heart, that struck its chimes against her ribs, a hollow ringing of every purloined heartbeat.

One afternoon, when she dandled Henry’s youngest daughter upon her knee, the child reached up to grasp the fluttering edge of her fine silken veils and lifted, ducking her own chubby face beneath them in a game of peek-a-boo.

Senza nearly dropped the child when she scrambled to tug down the veil. If someone should see—if someone should know—

The child was startled, and began to fret. Senza shushed her, rocking her to complacency before setting her down in her basinet.

“Shh, child, hush-a-bye.” Senza lullabied the little one and blinked against the sting of bitter tears. The veil served its other purpose, hiding the lines of her profound grief.

It was soon time to go. She’d delayed this moment long enough.

The life she’d wanted to hang on to had all slipped away, leaving her stranded, a leaf caught at the water’s edge, tangled and caught and never to be freed. Hers, the only leaf upon the bank, watching the seasons freeze and thaw and melt away around her. But the chill…

That never subsided. Not when
his
leaf was nowhere to be found.

Why had she ever thought that she would not be alone in any of this?

Knell occupied her thoughts constantly. Eternally eighteen, and eternally in thrall with the dark seducer who never reappeared—years passed and nothing changed, least of all the state of her abandonment. She’d almost resigned herself to never being with him again.

Almost, but not quite.

During the week of her thirty-ninth birthday, cards and parcels arrived daily in the post, well-wishes from her now large and thriving family, far and wide. Letters and sentiments from the children of her loved ones, from cousins and distant kin. She read each one with her tea, pausing to recall a face, a voice. So many to recall, so many slipped away.

Her maid urged her to her room for an afternoon nap, unaware of the irony. Senza locked the door, slid loose the ribbon beneath her chin and tugged off her close bonnet. The sudden sunlight made her wince and she closed her eyes, flopping backwards onto the bed, rubbing her long-stifled scalp, delighting in the freedom of her disguise.

Her head thusly massaged, she let her arm fall wide upon the bed. Her fingers brushed against a sheet of paper on her pillow. Senza sat bolt upright, alarmed. Who had been in her room?

She gingerly picked up the note, a piece of folded parchment, across which crawled a spidery script. A thump in her gut told her instinctively it was his hand, his doing. Waving the paper in front of her open mouth, she caught the distinct scents of roses and cloves.

His scents. A decade condensed in a single inhalation, the memory of his breath and his skin and his single staggering kiss as fresh and new as the morning’s tea.

You’d better see to your children. You’ve many more lives to lead.

Children? What a cruel thing to say. She had no children and never would. She was the last of her line.

She tapped her lip with a trim fingernail. She may be the last, but the world would never comprehend it. If she were truly going to live forever, she had to do it like everyone else—or, rather, like the exotic cultures who believed in reincarnation did.

And thus, a distant cousin’s grand-daughter—and her namesake—was “born” in a desperate flash of necessity. A word in the right ear during a tea with friends, stories of her distant relations to women who had reason to doubt her. Tale by tale, this fictional cousin grew and, as she neared the age for a proper debut, Senza the Elder planned her own retirement.

She announced to her family that she was going to travel to ease the sorrows of her mind, to see the beautiful sights while they were still to be seen. Senza boarded the train at Woking station, her entire family waving on the platform to see her off. Henry’s sadness weighed his brows, even as he tried to send her off in cheer.

Goodbyes were never easy. Senza suspected he was all too fortunate, knowing his goodbyes were a manageable finite thing.

Senza travelled directly to London. If ever there would be a heartbeat of England, it would be pounding here, flush and full of life.

When Aggie and Winston had first married and moved to the city in 1861, the girls had written frequent letters to each other. London seemed so full of excitement compared to their quiet country life, with no end to the sights or the wonders, Aggie wrote. Despite the many requests to come to London and stay for a while, Senza hesitated to encroach upon her cousin’s hard-won kingdom. She remembered the longing Winston had kept about his eyes when he looked at her, even as the couple said their goodbyes and waved from the windows of their coach.

Running a household in London was complex work, as well, it seemed. Winston became a partner in his father’s practice and there were endless clients to entertain. Over time, Aggie’s letters had become less and less frequent until they were reduced to Christmas tidings or birth announcements. And always, always, too busy to come back to Surrey to visit, even at Christmas.

Senza couldn’t fault her for not writing, or finding time to break away from her duties. Mrs. Fyne had always had her hands full with her own household in the country, so Aggie’s London home by comparison must have been a constant buzz of activity.

Now, Senza had finally arrived to see this city with her own eyes, to witness firsthand the multitudinous wonders that had so ensnared her country cousin. The main trick would be in avoiding Aggie’s circles, and ultimately Aggie herself. How would she explain looking not even a day older than she did the last time they’d met? No creases about her mouth, no laugh lines near her eyes. Her cheeks were still like dewy apples, without freckle or frown line. She was a wide-eyed child in the city, fresh and full of innocent life.

On the outside, at least. Inside she was thirty-nine. Aggie would be forty, the wife of a prosperous barrister, mother of four sons and soon to be a grandmother by the eldest one.

So many milestones to mark the passing of twenty years. Senza chewed the tip of one gloved finger as her train neared London. What did she have, besides a hollowed heart and a locket full of stolen beats?

She had time. She had an entire lifetime ahead. With a curt nod, she silently reminded herself of the unique advantage of her situation. She had all of time before her, and she was determined to live.

And she had want of nothing. Knell’s magic followed her as she pursued her purloined life, ensuring she had lodging and contacts. She didn’t even have to worry what she’d find in London because all had been arranged for her.

The morning of her departure, she’d woken to find two bags packed at the foot of her bed. At first, she’d panicked, thinking her maid had come in during the night. What did she see? What had she discovered? Did she alert the house?

However the door was still locked, her fortress unbreached. No one had entered during the night.

She eyed the bags. Who, then, had packed them?

Curious, she’d opened one of the cases to find an array of gowns, all in the current style. She’d never seen them before. The other bag had shoes and sundries, a few of her most cherished books. Creature comforts. Beneath them, in a small wooden chest, a beribboned key poking from its lock, she found a pouch full of sovereigns and a tiny leather journal, full of banking firms, their addresses and names on account. A red ribbon marked a page with an address in Chelsea.

So. She had a destination, and all the trappings of a new life.

It was only a short cab ride from the station to the neighborhood, and a pleasant ride at that. Upon arriving at the address, she found herself on a quaint street, neatly-stoned road lined with proper sidewalks. Rows of cream-faced homes, although smaller than country manors, stood in smart lines, fronted by dainty gardens and ornate iron fences. Most picturesque were the bay windows that flanked each door, their roofs joining to create a small but tidy porch at each entrance.

When she knocked on the door of Number 42, the landlady herself answered, calling her name as if she’d known her all her life.

Not that it would have been inconceivable; the landlady appeared to be the same age as Senza. The woman simply looked her age, whereas Senza never would.

“You must be Miss Constance. Such a pleasure, miss. I’m Elizabeth Forrest. We’ve been waiting for you.”

It had been a very long time since Senza had been addressed by her Christian name. It took a moment to sink in. “Um, thank you, ma’am. I believe—I was…told there may be room here. For me?”

“Not if you stay on the porch all day. Come in, come in.” She drew Senza inside to a side parlor, making room for the carriage driver. He brought in her bags and set them by the stairs before tipping his hat. The landlady pulled coins from her pocket and pressed them into his hand before closing the door. “Let us go to your rooms. I hope they will please you.”

Upstairs, an apartment had been made ready for her. A parlor, with great windows that overlooked Lawrence Street, contained great bookcases stuffed top to bottom with books on every conceivable topic, from natural history to modern engineering. A knock at the open door made them both turn.

Two women, plainly dressed, slightly older, and genuinely smiling stood in the door. One of them held Senza’s bags.

“Oh, here they are, Miss Constance.” Mrs. Forrest waved the women into the room. “This is Mrs. Reeves, our cook—and you will fall in love with her duck pie, I know it—and Mrs. Roberts, our housekeeper. She will tend personally to you.”

“It’s been a long time since we had so distinguished a guest,” Roberts said. “My own girls are grown, but I think I remember a thing or two of the needs of a lady in society.”

So strange. She really hadn’t known what to expect the entire ride to Chelsea. Now, she had an apartment and a household, besides. She paced around the room, admiring the décor. Quite modern, compared to the Fyne household in Surrey, where her father had been a champion of the time-honored traditional.

In the center stood a single, small couch, not nearly large enough for entertaining guests, much to the lamenting of the landlady. Senza nodded her approval, all the same, allowing her hostess to cease the superfluous apologies. Privacy and security were the most precious commodities of all.

“Bedroom is through here, miss.” Roberts carried her suitcases down the short hallway and paused before an open door, allowing Senza to peer in.

The bedroom was a swirl of satin, deep, vibrant hues of dark green and emerald from carpet to drapes and all in between. Compared to the couch, the bed was titanic. Not that anyone besides her would be able to appreciate it. Motioning for her bags to be placed on the bed, she took a moment to admire a vase of fresh cut lilies on the bureau before going back out into the front room again.

“Mrs. Branson, who lives in the apartment below, will be your companion.” Mrs. Forrest adjusted the sheer curtains. “She is a great philanthropist, and very well-connected. Your uncle was very explicit in his instructions that you are to experience everything London has to offer. Theatre, the ballet, concerts of every size…”

Senza tilted her head. “My…uncle?”

“Why, yes, Miss Constance. Mr. Knell wrote often, and in great detail, to arrange your comfort. We are so pleased he thought of us. Mrs. Branson is so looking forward to meeting you at supper this evening.” She continued on, describing the menu and Mrs. Branson’s work with the various charitable groups around London and so forth but Senza barely heard a word.

Knell. He’d done all of this. Of course, he had. She was his beloved. He would see to her every need.

Senza lifted her chin, turning to face the matron. “Did my uncle mention when he would be joining me?”

“No, I don’t believe he did.” The landlady knitted her brows and seemed to search her memory. “In fact, I don’t recall that at all. I took the distinct impression that he resided a great distance from here. I can get his letters for you.”

Mrs. Forrest left Senza alone and retreated down the stairs, presumably to retrieve the missives. Roberts and Reeves bowed and retreated behind their mistress.

Once they were out of earshot, Senza checked the locks on the apartment door, the bedroom door, the windows. Solid. Everything was secure and solid. Even the powder room had a lock on the door, but that didn’t concern her much.

She wasn’t one for powder rooms. The tiles were very pretty, though.

She spent the afternoon unpacking and dressing for supper, passing the time reading until the dinner bell sounded. Knell’s letters were strewn across the table. He truly had seen to every comfort on her behalf, his thin spidery script filling several pages, listing his demands for his “niece”.

Nothing in those notes indicated he would ever be joining her. Senza frowned and watched the sky take on the richer hues of evening. What a truly disappointing turn of events. Not that she’d expected him to greet her with open arms—she wasn’t quite sure what she’d expected. But this, all the arrangements, the apartment and the staff, even the chaperone she’d soon be meeting… All of it, contrived for a purpose only Knell had the advantage of knowing.

She felt very much like a kept woman, indeed.

Mrs. Branson only emphasized the notion. The woman reminded her very much of an elderly aunt. She was pleasant, with powdered cheeks and a very cultured voice that reminded her of the matrons that had attended the same balls as she in her youth. There was a familiar feel to her ways.

But, by the time dinner was over, Senza had gotten the impression that the woman planned on being a constant chaperone. The very notion of it made her want to laugh and dismiss her.

Once she looked up, however, and spied her own reflection in the room length mirror that lined the wall, her rebuke died in her throat. She saw what the world saw: an innocent girl, barely twenty years old, an ingénue.

London was no place for a girl alone.

Dutifully, she played the part Knell had written for her. The matron took Senza with her everywhere, and introduced her to everyone worth knowing. London’s upper class society in 1881 spent a great deal of time ignoring poverty and want, yet there were still a stalwart few who honestly tried to save their corner of the world. Mrs. Brandon was one such person, and she seemed quite eager to take Senza on as her charge.

And, oh, the places they went.

By and by, Senza forgot her initial resentment over Knell’s imposition and Mrs. Branson’s near-constant chaperoning. There were carriage rides, and art expositions, and reading by the local talent—Chelsea seemed to be an absolute haven for writers, and the parties were chock-f of intellectuals. Senza enjoyed the frequent opportunities to engage in lively discussions with the very people who created the art she so much admired.

Equally, she enjoyed thwarting those with more philosophical pursuits, particularly regarding the multi-faceted gem of topics: death.

She could quote the great Classical minds with eloquence, use any relevant line of Shakespeare to support her positions—which was always solidly the exact opposite of those of her debate opponents. It was true sport for Senza, who would begin as an apt student, listening to the puffed-chest spouters of false expertise. She listened, wide-eyed and silent, drinking in every word. However, what her learned betters thought was admiration-imbued interest and a sincere desire to learn was actually the camouflaged shrewdness of a woman preparing for battle, gleaning her opponents’ strengths, weaknesses, and ultimate position before strategizing the most shocking destruction of their pompous positions.

A green child on the outside, a calculating sniper on the inside, orchestrating a very one-sided war of words. The only regrets Senza had was that the great scholars crumpled too soon. No one would argue with a lady, especially not with one who spoke with the charm of a courtesan, the eloquence of an aristocrat, and the authority of someone who had seen the other side of death and lived to tell the tale.

Secretly, she’d always hoped Knell would appear and take up a cheerful stance against her, or that one of these pipe-smoking mortals would impart an insight she’d never considered. At most, however, the debates were a way to pass the time, a respite until the men went back to admiring her beauty and unknowingly filling her locket with hot pulses of feckless hope.

Conversation with Mrs. Branson generally remained entrenched within the realm of A Woman’s Duties in Society and the curriculum she’s set up for the education of her charge. Occasionally, Senza would spy Winnie’s name in the newspaper and make an innocuous inquiry.