The Spiritualist (32 page)

Ben gave me a curious look. “Why do you say that?”

“He can’t have wanted to show me off,” I said, looking down at my gloved hands. “And I’m certain his mother didn’t wish him to take me. She was so disappointed in his choice—the thought of parading me through their friends’ homes must have rankled her.”

“You only know one side of things, Evie, you must remember that.”

I was reminded uncomfortably of Michel’s brown and white house, of my own assertion that it was best to accept partial truths. I could not obey my own words, it seemed.

The wind had come up, and it rippled the dark, thick fur at the collar of Ben’s coat—a bit of an ostentatious touch, and one I liked, though when I’d first seen the coat I’d been surprised. Ben was normally so stolid and respectable. No doubt it was Peter’s influence. My husband had liked those little, unusual touches.

Ben sighed. “I think there was a part of Peter that resented his mother greatly. Perhaps he even chose you to spite her.”

“A good reason for a marriage,” I said sarcastically.

Ben’s glance was quick. “You made him happy, Evie.”

“Did I? He didn’t seem happy to me.”

“You couldn’t have affected that,” he said, and there was something wistful in the tone of his voice, in the way he looked away from me, out toward the street, with its passing carriages. “Peter was melancholy. He had to make peace with who he was.”

“I didn’t realize being an Atherton was so difficult for him.”

Ben smiled. “To step to the Atherton drums was not his way.”

There was a man hurrying toward us, and I pressed closer to Ben to let him pass.

“I think Peter did you a great disservice,” Ben said quietly. “Had you been my wife, well… ah, never mind. It’s easy enough to say in retrospect. You’ve a good heart, Evie. Having had some dealings with those who don’t, I would’ve said Peter was very lucky to have you.”

I blinked away sudden tears. “That was a generous thing to say.”

“But I believe it—don’t you know that?”

“Yes, I—” I wiped at my eyes, laughing a little in embarrassment. “Of course I know it. I can’t tell you how much I value our friendship. It’s been an anchor for me. Almost since we first met. Do you remember?”

“How could I not? It isn’t every society wife who greets guests wearing an apron and carrying a dust bucket.”

I grimaced. “Peter didn’t warn me. It was cleaning day.”

“You were very gracious,” Ben teased. “And when I thought to ease your embarrassment by letting you win at chess, you beat me soundly.”

“I can’t abide being patronized.”

“You think I don’t know it?”

We laughed together, and the sound was warm enough that I no longer felt cold, though the wind still stung my cheeks.

“Someday, we’ll play again,” I promised him. “When I’m back in my own home.” Or, I thought—though I didn’t say it—
the one we might one day share.

Ben turned to me. Our eyes met. I saw something flash through his; was it sorrow? He turned away and sighed, and my good mood slipped away as quickly as it had come. He looked so sad that I had to curb the urge to take him in my arms to comfort him.

“Ben, what is it? What makes you look that way?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head and giving me a weak smile. “Regrets of my own, I suppose. They tend to creep up on one at the oddest moments.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “There are so many things I should have said to Peter, but I thought we had time. Now I suppose I’m left only with dreams of him.”

“Dreams. Yes, I suppose we all have those.”

“What do you regret?” I asked gently.

“I’m afraid there are too many to list.”

“Tell me one. Come, I’ve told you.”

“Ah, only one?” He stared up at the overcast sky as if he were too shy to look at me. “I suppose I’m sorry it took me so long to find my heart’s desire. I wasted so many years… . Well, I suppose we all do.”

I felt a funny little lurch, a pleasing heat, and I prompted, “Your heart’s desire?”

His face reddened with the cold. “What I have. Or rather, what I
had
before Peter died. A good law practice. A good friend. I regret that we fought before… .” He took a deep breath and turned to me. “He was a good man, Evelyn, and I doubt we’ll find his like again.”

My disappointment—and humiliation that I’d mistaken his meaning—made me look away. “Yes, I know.”

He said, “I can’t help thinking, had it not been for—” He bit off abruptly. I saw the clenching of his gloved fist, and for a moment I sensed something a little desperate in him, but it was gone so quickly I was uncertain, and his voice was tightly controlled when he continued. “Had it not been for Jourdain, Peter would still be alive today.”

My fingers curved around the hard edges of the notebooks in my bag. “Ben, I—”

“Which reminds me: I wanted to congratulate you for the other night. I must admit, you surprised even me. You’ve the makings of an actress about you, my dear. Your trance looked so very real.”

“Yes. I wished to speak with you about that.”

“Dorothy was enthralled. You were right to pursue this mediumship. A few more performances like that, and I doubt even Jourdain’s silver tongue could convince Dorothy to release you.”

“But the spirit writing—”

“Absolutely riveting.” His eyes brightened with praise. “A brilliant touch, Evie, to cast doubt upon Jourdain. But you must be careful. Perhaps you should be less overt the next time. More vague. A few words about how the spirits would prefer to speak through you, things like that.”

Carefully, I said, “The truth is, I’m not certain how much control I have over it. The trance itself—”

“It’s very convincing. You looked quite done in. In fact, I would say you’ve seemed pale lately. Are you sleeping?”

“Not well,” I admitted. “My nightmares keep me awake every night now.” The notebooks seemed to burn into my hand. “Do you suppose there could be anything real in it? Anything at all?”

Ben frowned. “You aren’t being swayed by his nonsense, are you?”

I licked my lips, feeling foolish.

“I wish I could be there with you all the time,” Ben said. “I wish I could protect you better.”

The wind was cold again now. I shivered and huddled into myself.

“Benjamin, the way he thinks… in some ways he reminds me of my father. He can be very interesting.”

“Interesting?” Ben’s frown broadened. “Be careful, Evelyn.”

“I am careful,” I said rather edgily. “I found something else. I found the lever.”

“The lever?”

“The one Michel uses to make the raps. He’s built it into the floor beneath the table, under the carpet. All he needs do is press on it with his foot. I suppose I could use it myself easily enough.”

His laugh was delighted. “To use his own tricks against him—yes, yes, we must! Tuesday night, let him call the spirits, as he does, but then you must take over. When Dorothy realizes you can do the same things he can I shan’t worry any longer about Jourdain convincing her to set you out. The only question is what he’ll do once he realizes how much power he’s lost.” Ben took my hand into his own and squeezed it, and the worry I saw come into his eyes was so potent the thought of a future with him gained a dizzying hold. “You must be wary, Evie. I cannot warn you enough. Please. I don’t want you to be one of my regrets.”

“I won’t be,” I said, smiling at him, squeezing his hand back. “I promise.”

B
ENJAMIN LEFT ME
at the Bennett door, and I stood there, watching until he boarded his carriage and rode away. I felt bereft and alone, the notebooks a heavy weight beneath my cloak. I pressed them close, reproaching myself for not sharing the writing of the first one as I’d intended. I wanted to believe Michel had engineered it all… but I could not lose my niggling sense that he hadn’t, and my fear that Ben would think me mad had kept me silent. I could not bear to face the dismay and disappointment I knew I would see in his eyes.

The wind brought an icy dusting of snow that brushed my face and brought me back to myself, and I shivered and opened the door.

It had no sooner swung open than Michel stood before me. At the unexpected sight of him, a strange heat flooded me, and with it came a sharp stab of guilt. The feeling so confused me that I stood dumbfounded.

He said, “Ah, there you are. Did you have a pleasant walk?”

“Quite pleasant,” I said, recovering myself, pushing by him into the foyer.

He glanced outside. “Where’s your erstwhile suitor?”

“If you mean Benjamin, he had to return.”

“Ah, a pity,” he said, though it was clear he thought it anything but. He closed the door. When I unclasped my cloak, he was there, lifting it from my shoulders. He laid it over the stair railing while I fumbled with the bag.

“What’s that?” he asked as I put it on the hall table.

“Nothing.” I reached for it again, but he was too fast, leaning past me, pulling the bag so that it fell against his thigh before he had the strap hard within his hand.

He opened it and glanced inside. “The notebooks? You showed them to Rampling?”

“As it happens, no,” I said.

“He wouldn’t believe you, you know,” he said, handing the bag back to me. “He’d think you asylum bound if you told him the truth.”

“I don’t know what the truth is,” I said, turning away from him. I was surprised to find my hands were trembling as I pulled out my hatpin, and I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to steady them. My fingers would not obey me. The pin tangled in my hair, and in frustration I cursed beneath my breath.

“Wait,” Michel said quietly, and then he was beside me. His fingers brushed my cheek, and then, quickly, he loosed the pin and lifted my hat from my hair, setting it carefully on the side table, laying the hatpin beside it.

“Thank you,” I said nervously.

“Come to the parlor with me,” he said. “It’s time for a lesson.”

“Dorothy didn’t want us to do that.”

“Do what?” His brow lifted, there was an undeniable suggestion in his tone. I felt my face go hot again.

“Take lessons without her there. Or without the circle.”

“Dorothy’s sleeping. She’ll never know.”

I met his gaze directly. “I think it’s better to follow her wishes in this, don’t you?”

“Ah. Perhaps. But then we’ll never discover what your
maman
might think of all this, would we?”

I was too startled to speak. I forgot Dorothy’s jealousy; when he began to walk toward the parlor, I followed, and once we were inside, and he shut the door behind us, I demanded, “What did you mean by that? What do you know of my mother?”

He made his way to the settee and sat down, and without thinking, I sat beside him.

He said, “Tell me about your dreams.”

“I want to know—”

“We’ll get to your
maman.
Tell me first about your dreams.”

I sighed. “They became worse after my father died. I caught the cholera, and I was… I was very sick. They told me I was delirious. The dreams were… I remember the dreams.”

“What happened in them?”

“I was walking in a wood that grew deeper with every step. Papa kept appearing behind trees, farther and farther away, and I was… I was chasing him. Then I caught him. I ran into his arms, and he told me to go home. Just to… go home.” The unbearable sadness I’d felt in the dream was a memory that never left me.

“Is it the same dream you have now?” Michel asked.

I looked down at the sheen of light upon the black bombazine of my gown. “No. Now they change all the time. I never know who I’ll see. Lately, there’s been Peter and—”

I stopped myself just before I confessed that Michel had been in them too.

“Does Peter speak to you?”

I nodded and looked up. I forced myself to meet his gaze boldly. “He tells me that someone is lying to me, and not to believe him. He says that I can find the truth.”

Michel’s expression was impassive. “Like your
maman
, you’ve the gift for talking to spirits,
chère
.”

I disagreed. “I’m not talking to them. They’re only nightmares.”

“If you don’t let them in other ways, they visit how they can.”

“I would have thought you could come up with something better than that.”

“The answers are what they are. Just because you don’t like them doesn’t mean they aren’t true.”

“I suppose now you’ll say my mother was a medium too.”

“Wasn’t she?”

“She was mad,” I said firmly. “In her last days she took laudanum, but she never stopped hearing voices—spirit voices, she called them.”

“But you didn’t believe it?”

“How could I?”

Michel made a clucking sound. “Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don’t understand.”

“A pretty answer,” I said coldly.

He shrugged. “Science discovers something new every day. Twenty years ago, what would you have said to someone who told you we’d be sending messages to each other over a piece of wire?”

“An invention is not the same as hearing voices no one else can hear,” I protested.

“Doesn’t electricity seem like magic? You can’t see it, how can it be real? How do you know spiritualism isn’t science too—perhaps it’s a fact of nature not yet discovered.”

“I know it’s not.”

“How?” The word was fast and blunt. He leaned forward. “You’ve a rational soul, Evie, but you can’t continue to ignore the nonmaterial world. You said before that if you couldn’t see something, you didn’t believe it. You can’t see intuition, or feeling. Does that make them imaginary? What about instinct? What does yours say?”

“To stay away from you,” I said.

“Does it? Or does it tell you to let me come closer?”

“I—”

“Admit what you are. You’re an intuitive creature, you always have been, eh?”

I shook my head fiercely. “Not me.”

“
Non?
You didn’t daydream? You didn’t tell yourself stories or play with imaginary friends? Your papa never told you your head was in the clouds?”

How did he know these things? “I was a child then.”

“You learned to run from what you feel, and that’s why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control. The spirits work through the intuitive world, whether you will or no. You can invite them in and share their knowledge, or deny them and live in fear of madness.”