City of Ash (55 page)

And Ginny would have to return from the dead
.

So there it was, really, the real reason for not stopping. Because nothing had changed when it came to her situation. Nathan still wanted her in an asylum, and the fact that she’d been missing for days meant no one would disagree that she needed to be put there, even without taking into account her father, who wanted it as much as Nathan did. There was no way she would escape
it. And however irritating she was, she didn’t deserve that. She deserved to be free from Nathan, free to tell her father to go to hell. I hated them both for what they’d done to her and what they planned to do. It was strange, you know, but the two of them got caught up in my head with every manager or actor who’d ever taken advantage of me, and her revenge felt like my own.

But Monday.
How would we do it by Monday?

I didn’t know. I was too exhausted to think. When I finally reached Fort Spokane, I went to her tent instead of Sebastian’s. He would not be expecting me, given that he knew I was with Nathan, and that was a relief, one less thing to worry about. I pushed aside her tent flap, stepping inside. She was asleep; she didn’t even stir. I lay down on the ground cover next to her bedroll.

The next thing I knew, I was waking to a whisper.

“Bea?” Her voice in my ear. In my sleep, I’d rolled closer to her, and I felt her at my back, nestled against me as if she’d gone searching for warmth in the early hours as well. My nose was full of her—fire smoke and sweat and unwashed hair. I bit back a moan and rose to one elbow.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” I sat up, twisting to look over my shoulder at her, and for a moment it was almost as if I looked into a mirror. Blinking, bleary dark eyes, skin pale and smudged with dirt, dark hair falling around white shoulders, a grayed chemise. It was disorienting. I had to blink to make it go away, to make myself see her again, instead of myself.

She said, “You’re not with Mr. DeWitt. Or Nathan.”

“No flies on you,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Sebastian thinks I’m with Nathan. And Nathan’s too busy having nightmares to care where the hell I am. Terrible ones too, by the sound of it. Damn, I’m tired.”

“Perhaps you should go back to sleep.”

I shook my head. “I’ve got rehearsal.”

“Let it wait.”

“Lucius will fine me.”

She laughed quietly; the sound was rough and deep. “What do you care for a two-dollar forfeit, Bea? You’ll have so much more before long.”

“Will I?”

Her amusement died in a quick frown. “Why do you say that? What happened last night after I was gone?”

“Your father telegraphed him,” I said bluntly. “He’s on his way here. Nathan said he’d be here by Monday.”

“My father’s coming here?” She said the words so plaintively, in this wistful voice that was hard at the same time, as if she both wanted to see him and was afraid of it, which I supposed was probably true. “Dear God. Are you certain?”

“Do you think Nathan would lie about it?”

“No.” She shook her head, saying bitterly, “He wouldn’t lie. There’s no reason to. This changes everything.”

I got to my feet and went to the lard pail in the corner, which held some tepid water. I knelt beside it and splashed my face, which felt good, but it didn’t ease my bone-deep weariness.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“It’s not enough time,” I told her, drying my face on my filthy skirt—and no doubt streaking it once again with the ashy dust that covered everything like a fine scrim. “And
Much Ado
opens on Monday as well. I’ll be too busy with the show.”

“But we must. What did Mr. DeWitt say happens once the spirit appears in the séance?”

I turned to look at her. “I don’t know. Yet.”

“You said the spirit gains power, didn’t you? That once Barnabus called her up, she doesn’t go away.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then I won’t go away. I shall keep appearing to him. Where is he today?”

I felt a little panic. “I don’t know. But you can’t do that, Ginny. Not without me, and I can’t be there. I’ve got rehearsal, and there’s Sebastian to manage as well.”

“You manage him. You go to rehearsal. I’ll follow Nathan.”

“It’s too dangerous. What if you’re seen?”

“I hope to be.”

“Not by Nathan, you fool,” I snapped. “By someone else?”

“What else am I to do? We’ve only a few days. It’s hardly enough time.”

“Damn it, Ginny, let me think—”

“There’s no time to think.” She was kneeling on her bedroll, and now she leaned forward, imploring me with her bare arms, pale as any spirit’s. “I’ll go to the house. I’ll linger by the windows. He’ll never catch me.”

“But the maids—”

“Do you think I don’t know the schedule I set for them? I can avoid them.”

I shook my head. “It’s too risky.”

“What other choice is there?” She went still, studying me as if I’d suddenly become something strange, the same way those women at the charity ball had looked at me, and I felt this little shiver of fear. “Do you want to abandon this?”

And my decision was made, just that quickly. “No.”

She gave me a short nod of satisfaction and rose, grabbing for the dress hanging from the tent post. “It’s early yet. I have time to get to the house before he leaves.”

“I don’t like this,” I said.

“You’re afraid I can’t do it? I thought you said I had talent?”

“It’s not about that. It’s—”

“It’s my risk to take, Bea, and I’m willing to take it,” she said, a little coldly. “Please don’t forget how much I have at stake. Or what you hope to gain.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Now all you must do is find Penelope’s next step.”

“Easier said than done,” I said wryly.

“I have faith in you.”

And I hated to admit it, but you know, the way she said it, so simply, as if there was no question I could do it, got into me like a splinter you keep worrying until it gets deeper and harder to dislodge, and my exhaustion suddenly disappeared. Suddenly I was ready to do what needed to be done.

“Be careful,” I said.

She gave me this purely luminous smile. “It will be worth it, Bea. Think what a prize we’ll have when it’s done.”

And I knew the prize she meant.

Sebastian
.

Geneva

I
dressed and left the tent as quickly as possible, dodging among the other tents on the grounds, ignoring the people bustling with the morning, too busy with their own lives to trouble mine. I was so intent on the task at hand that I didn’t feel the hunger that had become my constant companion. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Nathan.

Bea’s news that my father was on his way both distressed and emboldened me. There was a beauty in it, actually, a wonderful irony in the fact that my father would soon have no choice but to admit that it was his son-in-law who belonged in an asylum instead of the daughter he had nearly committed. And then I would step forward, pleading amnesia—a plot right out of a melodrama, Bea would no doubt say—and take up my place in Papa’s affections again. With my husband out of the way, I would be able to show my father how well he’d been lied to. I would be able to mount the defense I needed.

I was more determined than ever to see this plan through.

It took me longer than I’d thought to reach the house, and I was sweating when I reached the rhododendron in the side yard. I hid within its glossy green leaves and glanced at the sky—it must be nearly nine. Given the night Bea said Nathan had had, he would no doubt be only just rising. Bonnie would be serving breakfast, and then she would go upstairs to make beds and tend to the bedrooms. The cook and Anna, the scullery maid, would be cleaning the kitchen. The iceman would be coming
around soon, to the back door, where the cook would meet him and complain about the price, and they would speak idly together for a few minutes. Now was the perfect time.

I crept around the side, past the parlor doors. I kept to the wall until I reached the single window of the dining room, measuring the distance I would have to run if Nathan decided to give chase—only a few yards.

Slowly, I peeked into the window.

He was there, as I’d predicted, the paper folded at his side, unopened. He was in his shirtsleeves, elbows on the table as he leaned over his coffee cup, stirring it like one half-dead, his hair unmacassared, falling forward into his face. He paid no attention to the window at all.

I withdrew again, safely out of sight, and then I called, “Nathan.”

The windows were thin; I did not doubt he could hear me. I waited. Nothing. No sound, no discernable movement.

Again I said, “Nathan,” and this time I drew it out, long and haunting, the kind of sound a ghost might make, turning his name into a dirge.

This time I heard something drop.

“Nathan,” I said, and then I stepped into the window.

He was staring toward it, his face white, his eyes hugely round. At the sight of me, he jerked back so hard his chair screeched upon the floor. I saw him make a sound, his lips formed my name, but it must have been a whisper, because I couldn’t hear it.

More than that, I didn’t wait to see. I withdrew again, and this time I ran to the other side of the rhododendron, my heart racing, trying to quiet my nervous breathing. I waited for him to come racing out. I waited for the scream of my name.

There was nothing.

It was not what I’d expected, and that made me nervous. Cautiously, I peeked through the leaves of the rhododendron. He would have had to go to the parlor doors, the nearest ones, but I saw no movement there at all. I eased around the edge of the tree, holding my breath. I could not see the dining room window clearly—it was at too much of an angle, but what I did see made
me scoot back into the protection of the leaves again. Nathan, his hands pressed against the glass, his posture tense with what could have been terror or anger or both; I could not tell.

But he had not tried to come after me. Why not? Because he truly thought I was dead? Because he was convinced I was a spirit? Or was there some other reason?

I didn’t dare go to the dining room window again, but neither was I ready to leave this place. I glanced around, my gaze lighting again on the fence of our neighbor’s house, the large maple there. If I could appear to him once more as he left … It was a risk, I knew, but one worth taking.

Quickly I dodged from our yard. The neighbor’s fence was not tall, three feet only, but it was enough to hide me if I crouched very low. I glanced at the windows of that house—the drapes still drawn. The man who lived there owned one of the shipyards; he was rarely home, and I’d met him only once. Just now the house seemed still as a corpse and just as empty. I hurried down the path that broke the fence, to the right of the maple tree, jerking my too-long skirt after me when it caught, and then I knelt in the lee of the fence, waiting for the carriage to come around for my husband, glancing nervously to the house behind me, hoping I was right and that Mr. Anderson, who was so seldom home, was not so today either.

There was not even a rustle in the drapes, and so I turned my attention back to my house, and Nathan. It seemed to take a long time; long enough that I began to wonder if Nathan intended not to go into the city today. He hadn’t slept well; his office was no longer. Perhaps he meant to stay at home—

But then I heard a carriage coming around the block, and I peeked to see—ours, with the emblem gold upon the door, coming from the back stables, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It stopped before the house.

My thighs were burning from the position I held, but I dared not move. Only a few more moments, and ah … there it was. The front door opening, the driver hastening to open the carriage door for my husband, who wore a suitcoat and a hat now, but who glanced about nervously, as if he expected to see a ghost.

He spoke something in a low voice to the driver, and then
climbed inside. The driver closed the door and went quickly to his seat, taking up the reins. I rose, clinging to the tree, and then, at the right moment, I came around, stepping into view, and I saw Nathan’s face in the carriage window, the jerk of his head. Our gazes met. Deliberately, I filled mine with hatred and rage. I saw his pure fear in response, and then the carriage was past, and I melted back into my hiding place until it was out of sight.

It had worked. I had done it, and I had not mistaken the expression on his face. Nathan was afraid. Whatever Bea had said to him last night had worked. He truly thought I was a ghost, and he truly believed I was there for vengeance.

It was all I could do not to leap from the tree and run back to the tent, to tell her what had happened, how well it had gone. But I forced myself to wait, to be certain Nathan had not told the driver to turn around, and when I knew he had not, I went back to the road and hurried away from this neighborhood. No one was about other than one or two gardeners, a maid emptying chamber pots, the iceman on his wagon. They all glanced up at me and then away again, uninterested, as if I were below their notice. I could not blame them. My hair was loose, my gown burned and filthy beyond recognition; I was not the Ginny Langley I’d been, and yet how much more alive I felt now. I knew that was something Bea would understand, because I knew she felt it too, every night upon that stage, as she bowed to laughter and applause—and for a strange, disorienting moment, I felt her thirst for it, as if she were somehow inside of me, and I knew that was part of my giddiness now, the realization that she and I were together in this, that it was something we shared that we would always share. No matter what happened after today, whether this plan worked or did not,
Penelope Justis
belonged to us. We had not written it or devised it, but we had made it live, and I knew it would stay, something bright and luminescent and perfect. As if somehow, despite ourselves, we’d created our own star.