City of Ash (56 page)

Beatrice

S
o … keeping Sebastian from asking questions. That was my first goal of the day, and don’t think I didn’t know how impossible it was going to be, because after what I’d said yesterday, and the fight we’d had, he was going to want to talk. It was inevitable, and any other time I would simply have avoided him. But that brought us to my second goal of the day, which was to discover the next step in our little plot. I suspected he’d spent last night—no doubt late into the night—revising
Penelope
, and I needed those scenes. Ginny had gone up to the house—a bad idea, no matter how you looked at it, and too damn risky—but that wasn’t going to be enough. We needed more, and that
more
was in Sebastian’s fertile brain.

Two more contradictory goals you couldn’t find, and on the way down to rehearsal, I tried to think up some way to have them both. By the time I reached the Phoenix, I felt strung tight, which was never good, and worse still when it came to the troupe. They would sense it, and I would be in for no end of teasing, which I wasn’t in the mood for, not the least bit.

I was early again, surprisingly enough. Lucius was there, and he and Mr. Geary and Sebastian were busy conferring over some scene while Jackson was lying on the stage, reading the newspaper. Jack glanced up when I came inside, and he must have sensed my mood straight off—and really it was amazing how good I was at predicting things like this—because he said, “Ah, my beauteous Bea! ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry—’ ”

“Shut up, Jack,” I interrupted irritably.

“Ah, my sweet girl, why so snappish? Ah, I have it: ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ Am I not hit upon it?”

I opened my mouth to say something nasty, but before I could, Sebastian said, “Don’t be an ass, Wheeler,” which surprised all of us, and Jack especially, because his mouth snapped shut like a fish trapping a fly.

“My, my, aren’t we all foul-tempered this morning,” Jack said sullenly, turning back to his paper. And then, beneath his breath but still loud enough for us all to hear, “God save me from true lovers.”

I glanced at Sebastian, who looked at me with a question in his eyes that I could read as if he’d said the words.
We need to talk, Bea
.

I turned away, uncomfortable, wondering again how I would manage, and just then, Aloys came in, his dark face darker than usual, as if some shadow had crossed it, his brow furrowed.

I said, “You look as if you swallowed a lemon, Aloys.”

His frown grew. “Has Langley been here?”

I glanced at Sebastian, who was watching, and said, “Nathan? Why would he be?”

“He’s all the talk this morning.”

I thought of Ginny going up there alone, my feeling that it was a bad idea. I hadn’t thought I could get strung much tighter, but I was wrong. “Why? Why happened?”

Aloys said, “Apparently, he’s seeing ghosts again. Or that’s the talk, in any case. When he went into the city council meeting this morning, he was off his head, shouting about how he had to find his wife’s body, et cetera, et cetera. Quite a scene, I take it.”

“How do you know this?” Sebastian asked.

“I was accosted on my way here by several people who’d witnessed it themselves. They know of our association with him, of course. I told them he must have been reading our new playwright’s
Penelope
. Nothing like a little publicity, you know, and God knows the play’s enough to give anyone nightmares.”

“He hasn’t read it.” Sebastian glanced at me. “Has he?”

I felt his suspicion, but at least Aloys had said nothing of
Ginny, and that was a relief. “Has anyone? You haven’t even finished the new version.”

Lucius glanced up. “How does that go, by the way? I hope your efforts with
Much Ado
have not derailed it unduly.”

Sebastian did not take his gaze from me. “No. I’m nearly finished. I’ve had plenty of time lately.”

I felt a little flare of excitement. “Are you past the séance scene then?”

“Séance?” Lucius clapped his hands together. “Ah, excellent, excellent! Everyone loves a séance. I suppose, as a grave trap is impossible for the time being, we could set secret doors into the flats for the spirit to emerge through. There is a spirit that appears, isn’t there?”

“Oh yes,” Sebastian said with a grim smile. “A quite bold one. It even appears in Barnabus’s bed.”

I went still.
Impossible
. How the hell were we to effect that?

Jack rolled onto his side. “In his bed? Now that would give the bravest man nightmares.”

“Well, let’s hope Langley doesn’t hear of it,” Aloys said. “God knows he doesn’t need more to imagine.”

“Has he seemed off to you, Bea?” Jack asked me.

“Has who seemed off?” Brody asked as he came in.

“Langley’s gone half mad,” Jack informed him.

“Has he? Well, that don’t surprise me, I guess. What with his wife going missing in the fire like that and the whole city burning down around him.”

“It burned down around all of us,” Aloys said. “And most of us remain quite sane.”

Jack said idly, “Yes, well, you aren’t missing a rich wife, are you? Well, Bea? Should we call the asylum men if he shows up here again?”

I felt them all looking at me, Sebastian’s gaze most of all, and I avoided it as I said, “He was very distraught last night.”

“No doubt it took all your skill to soothe him,” Jack said with a little grin.

“I never did manage it. He isn’t himself, that’s true enough.”

“As long as he keeps the money coming in, eh?” Lucius said.
“Enough talk, children. Go on now, and give me act two, scene one.”

Obediently, we did as he directed, but I felt Sebastian’s eyes on me throughout, and that unspoken question hanging in the air only adding to the other ones I knew he wanted to ask. At least I’d discovered the next part of the play—though how
that
was going to happen, I had no idea, and I didn’t like the thought either, of her being close enough for Nathan to touch. But I also saw how the thing Jack had said was true. It would be enough to unbalance most men, and Nathan was on edge. A little more than I’d expected, but if Ginny and I could manage this …

My mind was spinning with
how
, so the end of rehearsal came as a surprise, and I was distracted enough that I didn’t race out the way I should have done, and there was Sebastian waiting, and I was trapped.

Still, I tried. I hurried to the opening of the tent, dodging outside, into little clouds of dust that made me choke, but I didn’t get far. I’d got only a few tents away before he was there, beside me. “Where are you off to so quickly?”

“To the relief tent,” I lied, because the truth was that I didn’t think I could swallow anything just now. “I know you have to write—”

“There’s plenty of time for that later. There are things we should discuss first.”

Like the fact that I’d told him I loved him. I swallowed. “Not now,” I managed. “I’ve things to do.”

“Like what?”

“I—”

“Come with me, Bea,” he said softly. “Talk to me.”

“There’s no point,” I said, a little meanly too, and I knew it. “Nothing’s changed.”

“Some things have,” he disagreed. “Like the fact that Langley’s dashing about like a madman and saying he’s seeing his wife’s spirit. Things like that don’t happen overnight. Is that what your séance was about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What plan are you hatching? Why won’t you tell me?”

He was looking at me so intently that the urge to tell him came over me like a fever. I bit it back.

“I don’t want you to go to him again,” he said.

“Don’t be absurd, Bastian.”

“He’s unstable, if what Aloys said is true. He could be dangerous.”

“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Bea, I mean it. Stay away from Langley.”

I met his gaze. “I can’t. You know I can’t. I need him.”

“You don’t need the things you think you do. Your talent—”

“Was wasted until Nathan Langley came along,” I said sharply. “I’ve already told you, I have to be practical.”

“You said you loved me,” he said. “Was that a lie?”

There it was, the thing I’d been waiting for. “No,” I said, and it was a damn whisper; there was no strength to it, and I couldn’t find any, and it would have been better to lie. Why the hell hadn’t I? “But it doesn’t matter, does it? Loving you doesn’t put food on the table, and it doesn’t protect me from Lucius’s games. Only Nathan can do that.”

“What if you’re wrong?” he asked. “What if I can do those things for you?”

I laughed. “Then I’d say you’re a damn magician.”

“I’ve never written better or faster in my life.
Penelope
’s almost done, and I’ll be able to devote myself to the new play. We could be a force together. I’d write the plays, you’d act in them. They’d form lines around the block. Eventually we could have the company you want.”

He said it so damn ardently that I wanted to believe him. It was stupid how much I wanted it.

I glanced away. “It would take too long. Look at me, Bastian. I’m nearly thirty.”

“You’ve just reached your prime.”

“I can’t keep the lead without Nathan.”

“Lucius won’t take it from you now.”

“You don’t know him the way I do.”

A sigh of exasperation. “How can you be so damned blind? Why can’t you see that he would do anything for you?”

“Because he won’t,” I snapped. “I’d like to live in your world,
Bastian, where everyone’s good and their motives are pure, but it’s a delusion.”

“If
Penelope
’s a success, your position will be assured.”

“I hope so,” I said. “But I can’t afford to count on it.”

Sebastian swept his hand through his hair, obviously frustrated. “God, if only she hadn’t died—”

Ginny Langley again. I snapped, “But she did, didn’t she?”

He went still. He said softly, “We could do it. You know we could. Don’t go back to him, Bea. Please.”

And there it was, the jealousy I’d waited for, that I’d wanted. And, you know, the irony was that if he’d said these things to me even a few days ago, I might have done what he wanted. If I’d got Ginny on a wagon that night. If we hadn’t snuck into her house and I hadn’t seen how much money she had. If I hadn’t made her cause my own. Now there was too much I wanted. And we were too damned close. It was too late. I was entangled with her in ways I couldn’t see clear of, and more important, I didn’t
want
to see clear of them. I would save Geneva Langley. I could save myself.

“Trust me, Bastian,” I said quietly. “Can you do that? Just for a little while longer?”

He hesitated. I saw his struggle. I put my hand on his arm.

“Just a little while longer,” I said again. “And it will all be over.” I thought I had him. I truly did. But I was wrong.

“What will be over, Bea?”

I couldn’t answer. And so he walked away.

Geneva

W
hen she came to the tent that afternoon, bearing the usual half-smashed, moist, and doughy slices of bread, I was still elated over my success with Nathan. I ate the bread so quickly I nearly choked on it.

“You should have seen his face,” I told her. “He was terrified.”

She was sitting on the floor, her arms around her knees. “Aloys said there was talk. People are saying that Nathan is coming undone.”

I smiled. “Well, then it went better than even I’d supposed, didn’t it?”

“Yes.” Distracted, barely audible.

I frowned. I noticed for the first time how quiet she seemed. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I have the next step. The next step in the plan.”

That distracted me, as she must have known it would. “What is it?”

“I don’t know how we can do it, but the spirit appears to Barnabus in his own bed.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “His own bed?”

A little smile. “I told you I didn’t know how to do it. But it’s perfect, of course. Trust Sebastian to bend a plot.”

There was a sarcasm there, and something else, something I would have questioned had I not been so caught by the plan. “Well, there’s no other choice, is there? Unless you’ve a better idea?”