A Spark Unseen (28 page)

His words were still running through my head when I stood before the mirror in my bedchamber, Marianna’s portrait watching me from the wall, the silver fish now sitting beside the swan on the bedside table, trying on first one dress and then another before carefully arranging my hair. I had to believe that Lane was coming here just as much as my uncle did, and that Lane would know the right thing to do. That some of this weight inside me would lift, and that I would have to make no more of these decisions alone.

There were two more hours until Ben Aldridge came.

I turned down the gas, all the sconces dark except for two, leaving the salon in a soft yellow light, almost like candles. The shutters were latched, curtains drawn, the clock pointing to three minutes until midnight. Our stage was set. One of Joseph’s cousins waited on the upper landing, two were with Joseph in the library, and one with Jean-Baptiste in the cabinet beneath the foyer stairs, ready to block the doors as soon as Ben Aldridge and whoever came with him entered the ladies’ salon. I had not asked how they planned to subdue him or get the required information, but when Joseph shut the door to the library I had heard the distinctive
click
of a gun being loaded.

Henri leaned on the chimneypiece, smoking, his dark brows pulled down. He had spent part of the day napping on my settee while I did the same in my bedchamber, and I’d been too busy the rest of the time to pay much attention to his doings. I had not asked him to be here and he had not asked to stay, so we just didn’t speak of it. Mary fidgeted on the settee, playing with her apron as if she wanted to find something to scrub with it. I sat down beside her, nerves jangling, wondering what I had put in motion, and where it all might end. We watched the clock hands move.

A carriage went by, and our three heads jerked in unison toward the front of the house. But the rattling moved on down Rue Trudon, fading with the seconds. I smoothed my skirt, touched my knot of hair, feeling my pulse beat hard in my neck. The clock struck and I jumped.

Henri looked quickly away from my face, throwing his cigarette into the hearth, while Mary, who had been frowning at Henri, flipped out her pocket watch to adjust the time, a bit of tongue sticking out between her teeth. Eleven more times the chimes rang, and half an hour later they struck again, and then once more on the hour. Three more times this happened. Two thirty in the morning. The room was silent, the street outside was silent, and we sat like people in a sepulcher.

I stared down at my hands, still and folded in my lap, mildly surprised to see the tiny splashes of water dotting my fingers. He wasn’t coming. I counted the drips,
five
,
six
,
seven
,
eight
, as they fell from my cheeks. Something had changed. We had been too obvious. For whatever reason, Ben had decided not to trade. I heard his voice again in my ear, whispering,
“And what do you think I do with things I have no use for? Do you think I will hesitate?”

My chest heaved, and heaved again, but no matter how hard I tried to fill my lungs, I was still short of air. I was suffocating. I stood, pushing away Mary’s hand, turned away from Henri Marchand, half hidden in a haze of smoke, and walked out of the salon. I passed the open door of the library, startling the half-asleep men inside, and then ran down the back corridor. Still struggling for air, I threw open the door into the cool green smell of the courtyard.

I needed to be thinking, laying out a plan. But I could not. I hurried down a graveled path, wiping my cheeks, until I was leaning over the edge of the fountain, letting the spray wet them again. The bricks along the fountain pool’s edge were loose, the mortar crumbling beneath my hand, like everything was crumbling. I didn’t know how to correct this. I didn’t know how to find Lane, how to take care of my uncle, how to provide for Mary and Mrs. Cooper and the village and Stranwyne, or even what to do when I went back to the house. It was like the numbers had no order, as if one no longer proceeded to two and three and four, leading in circles instead of straight, honest lines. The knot of pain returned to my middle, doubled in intensity; I couldn’t stand straight against it. I had failed them. All of them. I had, and I alone.

And almost as soon as this revelation came, I had two others: The first being that I was not alone, not in this garden, the second that I was very, very stupid. The water splashed and played and I heard the noise again, a sound that could not be made by wind or a falling branch or even the paw of an animal; it was the soft crunch of gravel beneath a foot, near, and directly behind me.

Now my mind was moving, thoughts shooting like the crackling blue electricity. I considered the speed of the unhurried footsteps, the nearest path and how fast I could get there, the brick that was cold beneath my hand, loose in its mortar. The sound of the footsteps disappeared, masked by the paving stones surrounding the fountain and the splashing water, but I felt the presence. Maybe it was the change in the wind or the atmosphere, or maybe I could almost hear breath. But the presence was there. And then I felt a touch on my shoulder.

I spun, swinging my hand as if delivering a slap, only my hand now held the brick. The brick connected with flesh, there was a grunt, and the tall figure that had been standing behind me staggered back a step before falling to the paving stones. And there he lay, rolled onto his side, hands clutching his head where the brick had done its job.

But I did not run as I’d meant to. I stood still as the man on the ground moaned once and sat up, still clutching his head, murmuring some of the same curses I’d heard Henri use in French. But even in the darkness, in the wrong time and place and in the wrong language, I knew that voice, and the long fingers, the way the elbows were now resting on his knees.

I knew the sound of my name when his low voice said, “Katharine, was that a brick you just hit me with?”

I
stared at Lane like an imbecile, my mind as blank and numb as the brick in my hand. He was thin, sitting in a pale square of light from a moon I hadn’t even noticed, his hair long and several days’ growth of beard on his chin. I tried to set down the brick, but I could not remove my gaze from what was in front of me. It fell with a watery
thunk
into the pool. And then Lane was on his feet. I’d almost forgotten how quickly he could do that. Lithe, like a cat.

“What in God’s name are you doing here?” he said, keeping his voice soft. One of his cheekbones was darker than the other.

“You’re bleeding,” I said.

“Where did you come from? Are you next door?”

“What?”

“Get back inside, Katharine.”

“But —”

“Go! Quick!”

“But —”

He repeated the French phrase I had heard a few seconds earlier, his low voice both familiar and new, then grabbed me by the arm and I was trotting after him, away from the fountain and across the paving stones, where he thrust me straight into a clump of ornamental trees. I squeezed into the damp, leafy space, the branches snagging at my dress, the ground beneath my feet soft with moisture and uneven roots. Lane pushed in after me.

It was very dark. I sensed rather than saw the motion of his finger going to his lips, stopping my questions. We stood still, listening. I heard the wind, the fountain, my heaving breath, and far away, the howl of a dog. I could make much more sense of those things than my thoughts at that moment. Then I heard a little hiss of pain as the long fingers I loved so well began exploring the side of his face.

“Katharine,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “why did you just try to kill me?”

“I wasn’t trying to kill you, I … you were sneaking up behind me.”

“I didn’t reckon on it being that dangerous,” he murmured, trying to see the stickiness on his hand in the dark. I bent down, feeling beneath the hem of my dress for the seam of my petticoat.

“Don’t …”

I got my teeth on the edge, and ripped a piece of thin muslin away from the lace.

“Katharine …”

I finished tearing away a vaguely rectangular piece of cloth and reached up to press it on his wounded cheek.

“Katharine,” he said. “I had a handkerchief in my pocket.”

I pressed hard on the wound. Either I was standing in a hole or he was taller than I remembered. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. All I could think was that the blood soaking through the cloth was warm on my fingertips, the skin beneath my hand present and real. Here, solid, not gone, not dead. With me. My breath caught as I held the torn cloth, and I realized it was because I was crying.

I heard him sigh again, and then the space between us went away. My wet cheek was pressed against his chest; there were hands on my back and I was being held tight, tucked beneath his chin, his mouth in my hair. Long fingers steadied my head, kisses working their way from my forehead to my cheeks to my ears and around to my mouth, where I tasted the saltiness of my own tears. I had no knowledge of what had brought him to this courtyard, no understanding of anything, really, except that for the first time in so many days and months that I could not remember, something was as it should be. The ever-aching knot inside me loosened, relaxing its grip.

After too short a time he reached back and unwound my fingers from his hair, put my arms around his waist, and rested his chin back on top of my head. I became aware of the garden again, of the quiet, the branches poking my back, and the heartbeat beneath my ear.

“You have a beard,” I whispered.

“Razors have been scarce.”

“Where have you been?”

“Locked up,” he replied. “Unofficially. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

He leaned back and I tilted my chin, his face a frame of shadow. I felt the tension drawing inside him, like a coiling spring. “But what about Mr. Tully?”

“He’s here, safe. In the attic.”

I felt him flinch. “In Paris?”

“Yes, he’s —”

“What? How did … Is he —”

But then his fingers went to my lips, shutting them, as if it had been my voice rising above a whisper. The darkness became charged, strained with listening, and then I heard what he had. Voices in the garden, male, speaking very quietly in what I thought was French. He pulled me in close as two figures passed not ten feet from our hiding place, avoiding the gravel paths, moving quickly through the foliage toward the street door.

We listened to them go, to the faint footsteps in the stone passage, and the quiet returning. I felt Lane’s body relax, and risked a whisper. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know,” he replied in my ear. “Just watching, maybe, or more likely looking for me. I have to go, Katharine. I only came to get my things.”

“From Mrs. Reynolds’s, you mean? What were you doing there? And where are you going?”

“Shhh.”

“Lane, where do you have to go?”

I could feel him shaking his head. He was pushing me away now. I held on to his arms.

“Listen to me, Katharine. Get Mr. Tully out. I don’t know how you managed it, but he can’t stay here. Ben Aldridge is here, and he needs him. He …”

“I know it. He came to take him from Stranwyne. … I had to …” I searched for a way to explain, to keep him from bolting away from me. “They all think he’s dead now. The village, Aunt Bit … We told them that so we could —”

“You told my aunt Bit that Mr. Tully was dead?” The note of condemnation I heard there made me stiffen.

“And what else could I have done? Let Mr. Wickersham have him?”

“No, but you could have …” He paused.

“Could have what? Did you have a better plan? If so, you really should have written and told me of it. You’ve let Aunt Bit worry that you were dead for months.” I felt hurt creeping into the words. “And why didn’t you? Why didn’t you write? One word to …”

I felt the muscles of Lane’s arms go tense beneath my hands. He stood ramrod straight, looking over my head, gaze fixed on the house. Color blushed faintly on his face, on the leaves and the rosebushes, as if the first rays of dawn had reached over the rooftops. But it was too early for the sun. I spun around. The kitchen window of my grandmother’s house was glowing, as was Mrs. Reynolds’s, and it took a long moment to realize that the rosy flicker was not the light of gas or even candles.

It was fire.