One Touch of Scandal (16 page)

“Oh,” said Grace softly. “I hope it was a happy union.”

Again, Lady Anisha shrugged. “It was not, I think,
the marriage either would have chosen. But my mother was a great beauty, and my father very rich. There were worse lives to be lived, I daresay. My father's second marriage—to Lucan's mother, Pamela—ah, now
that
was a love match.”

They continued on for a time, talking of Lady Anisha's childhood in India. If the comparison between her mother and her stepmother left her bitter, one could not discern it from her manner. Indeed, she was at all times gracious, with an elegance few highborn Englishwomen could have mimicked.

Still, life in London could not have been all roses for her, Grace conceded. The old tabbies of the
ton
—like Aunt Abigail—would have been hard-pressed to acknowledge Lady Anisha Stafford as “one of us.”

Grace could certainly sympathize. She had come to England with every intention of making a new life and allowing her grief to heal. But she had found instead another tragedy; one that was still to play out, and, if Ruthveyn were to be believed, fraught with danger. Worse, she was beginning to fear she was falling a little in love with her rescuer, and that would never do.

Yes, some days she wished, quite desperately, to flee England altogether.

Milo, apparently, understood.

“
Help, help!
” said the bird. “
Let-me-out, let-me-out!
”

C
heroot in hand, Lord Ruthveyn descended the old stone staircase into the cellars, his path weakly lit by the hissing flame of a wall sconce. This was a journey made a score of times each day by the Society's members and staff, for it was in these dark, dungeonlike rooms that Belkadi stored bin upon bin of Europe's finest wines, and Dr. von Althausen kept his laboratories.

There were other rooms farther along the vaulted stone passageway, tucked beneath the houses that were connected like rabbit warrens to make up the headquarters of the F.A.C. but those chambers were used rarely, and mostly for ceremonial occasions, or for prayer and meditation. Ruthveyn entered the first room on the right, a long space lit by high, grated windows that ran beneath the ground-floor balconet.

Seated at the worktable, Lord Bessett was rolling down his sleeve, his face drawn, his eyes shadowed beneath with dark circles. Beside him, von Althausen was bent over his electricity generator with one of his silvery tools, making some sort of adjustment.

“Any luck?” asked Ruthveyn, sliding into one of the empty chairs.

Lord Bessett winced and shook his head. “I'm no good at it,” he said, casting a rueful glance at the doctor. “After two weeks, the visions cannot be electrically produced.”

“Patience, patience, my friend.” Von Althausen glanced up from his machine, then scowled at Ruthveyn's cheroot. “Ruthveyn, would you blow us all to Kingdom Come?” he barked. “Not all of us are bent on suicide.”

“What?” Ruthveyn lifted his hand, the cheroot dangling. “It's merely smoldering.”

“This is a laboratory,
um Gottes willen
!” snapped the doctor. “Put it out!”

Bessett turned his bleary gaze on Ruthveyn. “I love when he curses you. No one else dares.”

Ruthveyn lifted one eyebrow and stabbed out his cheroot. “Was he cursing?” said the marquess blandly. “You look accursed already, my friend.”

“Rough night.” Bessett secured his cuff, then stood to draw on his jacket. “You know what it's like, old chap.”

“The brain! The brain!” von Althausen muttered, throwing an old Holland cloth over his contraption. “It's all in the brain! It is nothing but electricity. It
must
be. Galvani proved as much.”

“But Bessett is not a dead frog,” Ruthveyn calmly pointed out. “You cannot teach his brain to control itself if you—”

“Do I tell you how to do
your
job, Ruthveyn?” Von Althausen turned around, glaring. “Do I?”

“I do not have a job,” he said blithely.

“You are a Guardian,” snapped the doctor, stooping down to look for something, “and one of the Vateis. Those are solemn duties—”

“Yes, but not jobs,” Ruthveyn interjected. “I am a retired diplomat, you will recall.”

“You're a retired
spy,
if you ask me,” Bessett countered, flinging himself back into his chair. “But Her Majesty can call you what she wishes, of course.” He turned to the doctor. “Dieter, have you a bottle down here?”

“Yes, of course.” The doctor's voice came from a set of tool bins beneath the table. “In the cupboard.”

It was scarcely four in the afternoon, but Ruthveyn took pity. “Sit, old chap, before you collapse,” he said. “I'll fetch it.”

Ruthveyn rose to rummage through the cluttered cupboard until he found a dusty bottle of armagnac, and three almost clean glasses. No servants were allowed in this room to tidy up, for the laboratory was filled with things both dangerous and private, a few of which even Ruthveyn did not comprehend.

There was all manner of optical equipment: microscopes, lenses, and in one corner on a wooden frame, one of those newfangled photographic cameras. There was an assortment of glass flasks, and cups—all handblown to von Althausen's specifications—as well as calipers and other assorted measuring devices, and piles of thick, leather-bound tomes on subjects from alchemy to zoology that had been pulled from the main library's shelves and carried down into the doctor's lair, never to be seen above-stairs again.

Ruthveyn gave it all a passing glance, then returned to the battered wooden table, watching his younger friend from the corner of one eye as he poured. Geoff had been
Lord Bessett but a short while, and the mantle of the earldom did not lie easy on his shoulders. The reasons, Ruthveyn knew, were complicated, but primary amongst them was the fact that Geoff had never expected to inherit.

Unlike Ruthveyn, who had been brought up expecting his father's title and duties to fall to him, Geoff had not. Not until his much-older half brother had died suddenly. The grief had merely added to Geoff's already challenging life. Even before his inheritance, the young man had made quite a name—and a fortune—for himself as a partner in MacGregor & Company, his stepfather's firm. In addition to his many metaphysical gifts, the old boy was one hell of an architect and artist.

Ruthveyn finished pouring and pushed the glasses round as von Althausen finally settled into one of the chairs. “To the
Fraternitas Aureae Crucis,
” Ruthveyn said, lifting his glass with a twisted smile.

“
Auf uns!
” the doctor replied.

They drank in companionable silence for a time, Ruthveyn surreptitiously studying the shadows beneath Geoff's eyes. Despite their occasional clash, he was fond of the young man. Though he had known of Geoff's existence within the
Fraternitas
, they had met quite by chance in North Africa, where Geoff had been engaged in overseeing a construction project for the French colonial government.

Toward the end of his assignment, Ruthveyn and Lazonby had come upon Geoff a little worse for wear in the parlor of a Moroccan brothel, his pockets being picked by a pair of dubious-looking Frenchmen.

It was a bit reminiscent, in fact, of Ruthveyn's first meeting with Lazonby—though on that occasion, they had both been something worse than glassy-eyed. They had also been naked—and stretched out on a pair of
red silk banquettes, a smoldering four-hosed hookah on the floor between them, and two willing lovelies curled round it like cats, all of them lethargic and sated in the aftermath of what could only be described as an orgy—in more ways than one. Then, at some point in the evening's finale, Ruthveyn had looked across the roiling haze at his new partner in debauchery as the sergeant rolled over to find his shirt.

And there it was.

The unmistakable mark on his flesh. The mark of the Guardian.

Geoff's voice cut through the reverie. “We've been asked to take an acolyte,” he said to no one in particular. “From Tuscany.”

Ruthveyn looked up from his drink with a frown. “Under what circumstances?”

“The lad has been brought along by one of the Advocati,” said Geoff. “Signor Vittorio. But now the doctors tell him he is dying.”

Ruthveyn cast a glance at von Althausen. “The doctors are forever saying that,” he remarked, “and it's very rarely true.”

“This is a cancer,” Geoff countered, “and these are uncertain times in Tuscany.”

“
Ja,
there is much clamor for war against Austria,” said von Althausen. “And talk of deposing Grand Duke Leopold.”

“Precisely,” said Geoff. “Vittorio thought it best the lad come here.”

“Does he have the Gift himself? Is that Vittorio's concern?”

Geoff winced. “There is potential, I gather—enough to worry Vittorio that the boy might be ill used—but he is not, I collect, a strong Vates.”

Ruthveyn did not like idea. Too often, he knew, very young men were like Lazonby in his youth, not quite ready to commit themselves to the
Fraternitas.
Or like himself, tormented and angry. Few came to this life as Geoff had done, resigned to his fate and already under the tutelage of his grandmother, a powerful Scottish seer. To give oneself wholly to the life of a Guardian was an almost monastic conversion, and sometimes the first real acceptance of one's fate. Better never to come to it at all, Ruthveyn believed, than to come but half-committed.

But von Althausen and Geoff were still staring at him. “We need a majority vote,” said Geoff quietly. “I have three, including Alexander. Lazonby and Manders are away. Will you use one of your vetoes?”

Ruthveyn considered it. There were but twelve vetoes allotted a Founder in his lifetime. It was what they had all agreed upon setting up the St. James Society. They had been fortunate in recruiting some of the
Fraternitas's
most senior Savants—learned, well-honed men like von Althausen—and their priests, or Preosts, like the Reverend Mr. Sutherland, to aid in their objectives. But the voting, and the responsibility of it, was left to the Founders.

“Has the lad been initiated?” he demanded. “Is he marked?”

“I cannot say,” said Geoff. “But he can travel here in a few months' time with all the proper documentation from Vittorio.”

“Belkadi won't like it,” Ruthveyn warned. “He dislikes Italians.”

“Belkadi dislikes half of humanity, including you,” said Geoff evenly. “Besides, he isn't a Founder.”

“And Italians hate London,” Ruthveyn went on. “It's cold, it's damp, and the air is foul. Did anyone tell the lad?”

Von Althausen grunted. “Who pissed in your porridge this morning, Ruthveyn?” he muttered. “You'd be well advised to take him. Who knows when one of you might be needed elsewhere? Already Lazonby is stuck in Scotland, and Manders is tending his political fires.”

The doctor was right. And Vittorio was an honorable man who had been doing yeoman's duty for the
Fraternitas
long before Ruthveyn's birth. This was more about his strange, black mood, he acknowledged, than an acolyte.

“What is his birth date?” he asked.

“The fourteenth of April,” said Geoff.

Ruthveyn shoved his empty glass away. “Very well,” he said. “But send word to Lazonby.”

“Consider it done.” Geoff drained his brandy and moved as if to rise.

At the last instant, Ruthveyn caught Geoff's arm. “I'm in a foul mood today. I should be horsewhipped, no doubt.”

Geoff's smile was wan. “Well, I would call you out for being an ass, but I haven't had above three hours' sleep in an age.”

It was a torment he and Geoff shared—one that Lazonby never felt. He slept like a baby and snored after a drunk like one of those monstrous locomotives. Ruthveyn jerked his head toward the ceiling. “I have the cure for sleeplessness upstairs.”

Geoff's expression went blank. “I am afraid I had to leave that habit back in Morocco, old chap.”

Ruthveyn shrugged one shoulder. “It's hardly opium.”

“Opium. Charas. It all rots the brain, Ruthveyn.”

“Perhaps,” Ruthveyn said quietly, “but a man must survive.”

Von Althausen set his brandy down. “Once again, my boy, they are mind-altering chemicals,” he said, casting a
warning glance at Ruthveyn. “They are to be used only ceremonially—and only then if they elicit information rather than quell it—which has never been the case for you. You would be well advised to give them up.”

“What, and merely drink myself into a stupor like half the gentlemen in London?” Ruthveyn jerked from his chair. “I see little difference.”

“Suit yourself,” replied the doctor. “But oftentimes 'tis better to deal with your devils firsthand.”

“Spoken like a man who doesn't have any,” Ruthveyn complained.

But the truth was, he was beginning to fear his friends might be right. For the first time in a long while, Ruthveyn wondered if the discomfort he was staving off wasn't more than sleeplessness and visions.

It had grown worse since Anisha and Luc arrived with the boys, for, inexplicably, he felt more alone than ever when his house was full of people he cared about. Perhaps it was because he felt compelled to hold them at a distance. It had become second nature to him now, that need to set an emotional pane of glass between himself and those he loved.

And now Mademoiselle Gauthier was living in his house. Beautiful, elegant Grace, who made him wish, foolishly, to shatter that glass. Grace, who elicited in him his every protective instinct yet gave up to him nothing of herself—in part because he had never really learned how to ask. And in part because he dared not.

It had been challenging at first, separating the raw lust from the fascination. Save for one of the Vateis, he had never met a woman he could not eventually read, though admittedly, some were less transparent than others. And there were a few—women like Angela Timmonds, or Melanie, his wife—whom he could shut out for a time by
sheer force of will. Until a deep and genuine affection—or even love—began to set in.

In his youth, Ruthveyn had not understood this. He had not grasped until too late the awful truth that the more one cared, the wider Hades' door would swing; that he and the object of his desire became like a pair of mirrors hung opposite one another across a corridor, allowing him to see deeper and deeper, and into infinity.

Oh, he certainly had not married Melanie for love; at twenty-three he had been too callow, too caught up in wrestling his own demons. But Melanie, with her soft, honey-colored curls and wide blue eyes, had been beautiful, and even then, something in her feminine frailty had stirred him. Worse, her father's position as one of the most powerful men within the East India Company had tempted his father to strike a bargain almost before Ruthveyn had known he'd
wanted
a bargain.

At first, he had been relieved at the ease with which he could shut her out—until he realized, too late, that it was as much the other way round. Caught up in his career, it had been weeks before he'd realized Melanie emotionally shut herself off to him, choosing instead to quietly mourn the young army captain her father had denied her. She had not welcomed his touch; she had tolerated it.