Photographs & Phantoms
Read Photographs & Phantoms Online
Authors: Cindy Spencer Pape
Photographs & Phantoms
By Cindy Spencer Pape
Brighton, 1855
As a member of the Order of the Round Table, Kendall Lake is overqualified to be investigating strange phenomena at a seaside photography studio. But since the photographer is related to the Order’s most powerful sorcerer, Kendall reluctantly boards a dirigible to Brighton.
Amy Deland is haunted by a shadow that appears in some of her recent portraits. In each case, the subject died within days of the sitting. Does she have her grandmother’s gift of foresight, or has she somehow caused the deaths?
As Kendall and Amy search for answers, their investigation draws them together in a most improper way—but it seems the evil presence in the studio is determined to keep them apart…
20,000 words
Dear Reader,
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Southern England, June, 1855
Kendall, Marquess Lake, stood on the observation deck of the dirigible’s gondola as it flew west toward Brighton, wishing he was heading north instead. London beckoned. He’d spent far too long in the countryside, overseeing the implementation of automated harvesters at Lakeview, one of his father’s estates. The early June haying had been a trial run of the equipment before the serious harvest in the fall.
He wanted adventure, craved it. His restlessness had been aggravated by his delay in Essex to witness the wedding of a childhood friend. While Kendall understood the social obligation of marrying someday, at thirty he was in no hurry to do so, and watching a friend get leg-shackled had been more than a little discomfiting.
A man of action, a Knight of the Order of the Round Table, Kendall was more used to fighting vampyres or rogue mages than dealing with disputes between tenant farmers or partnering bridesmaids. As the heir to the Duke of Trowbridge, however, he knew he had to get used to juggling missions with estate and social obligations. Upon his grandfather’s death a year earlier, Kendall’s father had been elevated to the dukedom and Kendall to the marquisate. Kendall’s responsibilities to both family and the Order had increased substantially, leaving him little time for fieldwork. He longed for a nice, simple task like putting down a goblin invasion.
Instead, he was off to Brighton just as the middle-class tourists began to flood the seaside town, to hold the hand of the niece of one of his father’s cronies and assure her all was well. The task was one they could have assigned to a clerk rather than a Knight, but Lord Drood was one of Kendall’s father’s closest friends and he was the most powerful sorcerer in England, perhaps in the world. Kendall’s father tended to jump when Drood asked for a favor.
As the airship approached the town, the first outlying buildings came into view and the scents of coal smoke and salt air reached his nostrils. They flew over a few grand country estates, an old stone church, a livery stable, a tavern, an automaton factory and a country store. The airfield was right outside the town proper, and once he’d debarked, Kendall traded his goggles and cap for his top hat and tucked his belted leather duster into his valise.
Out on the street, he hired a hansom, checked the piece of paper he’d shoved into his pocket and spoke to the cabbie. “150-B Lilac Lane.”
The cabbie looked at Kendall’s expensive frock coat, superfine trousers and custom-made boots and raised one grizzled eyebrow. “You sure about that, milord?”
“Quite.” The Order didn’t make mistakes on something as simple as addresses. The files in their analytical engine databases were quite extensive and included things like the addresses of distant relations of Order members.
The driver shrugged, clicked to his ancient mare and headed toward the bustling resort town. The painted wood and pastel brick buildings reminded Kendall of Easter eggs in a basket on this hazy afternoon. The Queen’s Road was lined with candy and souvenir shops, clothiers, rooming houses and photographic studios.
Ah yes, photographic studios. As a steam tram chugged past them toward the beach, filled with sunburned tourists and local workers, Kendall’s cab turned west off the Queen’s Road, the main thoroughfare, away from the Pavilion and the other grand buildings, into a slightly less prosperous section of town.
Hmm
. The farther they went, the less appealing the neighborhood became. Surely this Amelie Deland, a relative of one of the foremost Knights, didn’t live in abject poverty.
After another block or two, though, the neighborhood perked up into basic middle-class housing. The cabbie found Lilac Lane, and Kendall discovered that number 150 wasn’t a photography studio at all, but a neatly tended rooming house, probably the nicest one on a modest street, just a block or so in from the oceanfront shops of King’s Lane. So this spinster photographer he’d been sent to reassure had given her home address instead of her business. Hopefully she would be home for luncheon. If not, Kendall could wait if he had to. He tapped the toe of his boot on the floor of the cab.
“You want me to wait?” the cabbie asked.
“No.” When his business was over, Kendall could walk back to a main road and find another cab.
At the front door, he set his valise and trunk by the step and pressed the bell.
“Yes, may I help you?” A modestly dressed, middle-aged woman answered a few moments later. She had a pleasant face, showing the lines of frequent smiles and a life well lived, and blond hair fading gracefully into gray.
“Miss Deland?” He doubted it, but he’d been given absolutely no description to go on. All he knew was that Lord Drood’s niece was a photographer. This woman, though, had no chemical stains on her fingers nor hint of developing fluid to her scent. Rather, he detected furniture polish, rosewater, roast beef and fresh shortbread. His stomach rumbled.
“No, dear, I’m Mrs. Bennett, the landlady.” She beamed at him, wiping her hands on her apron before holding one out. “Mrs. Abigail Bennett, that is.”
“Kendall Lake,” he replied. He wasn’t in the mood to be milorded, and Lake was his family surname as well as his title. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Bennett.”
“Delighted, Mr. Lake. You’ll find Miss Deland around back in the carriage house. Are you here to have your photo taken?”
“No, I’m on an errand from her uncle, I believe. Lord Drood.”
“Oh, how nice. You can leave your things here in the foyer and tell Amy you’re welcome to stay for luncheon, dear.” With that she tittered like a flirtatious debutante and held the door while he tucked his luggage inside.
Kendall shook his head as he walked around the house. Amy? An awfully feminine nickname for a lady photographer. It also made her sound rather younger than the image he’d formed in his mind. Quite honestly, he expected steel-gray hair and trousers. The female descendants of Knights tended to be a little—well—odd. One theory was that the magick that ran through their bloodlines was somehow corrupted in females, and therefore erratic and unreliable.
The truth was the Order hadn’t trusted female mages since the days of Morgan Le Fey. Most of the younger Knights found that notion rather outdated, but Kendall had never taken much interest in it one way or the other. Order politics hadn’t been something he’d particularly concerned himself with. Now, though, that his father was head of the Order, he supposed he probably should.
Thinking about all of this was why he found himself standing beside the whitewashed carriage house with his walking stick raised to knock when the door opened. A mother and child, dressed in what was likely their Sunday best, whisked out the opened portal. Kendall tipped his hat and couldn’t resist winking at the mischievous-looking child of about seven.
“Goodbye, Mrs. Nutt. Lucinda.” A young woman in a simple but attractive navy day dress stood in the doorway, waving away the customers. She was hatless, with shining, honey-brown hair in a simply braided coronet. She looked up at Kendall and quirked one neat brow above a pair of remarkable eyes, so deep a blue they were almost violet, and lifted one corner of her full mouth into a half smile. “Good afternoon, sir. Why don’t I believe you’re here for me to take your portrait?” The accent was almost American, but softer and with a faint French overtone that matched the name Deland.
“Because your neighborhood tends to discourage clients with full wallets?” He found himself returning her dry tone and wry smile. A neatly lettered sign on the door said simply
A. Deland, Photographer.
“Or perhaps just because I’m a trifle older than the bulk of your clientele?” He’d glanced past her into the small foyer of her studio—most of the portraits hanging on the wall were of children, or families at the very least.
“True, though I do wedding and funeral portraits also, and landscapes. Perhaps you’re about to be married?” She crossed her arms under her rather impressive bust and leaned against the doorframe. The sailor-style blouse and slim hoops of her skirts allowed her more freedom of movement than the tight bodices and wide crinolines currently in vogue among Kendall’s social circle. Even in such understated clothing, he found her enchantingly feminine—except for the lines of strain that bracketed her soft lips and creased the corners of her eyes.
“Not that I’m aware of, Miss Deland.”
“And you are…?” Amusement twitched briefly at the corners of her lips.
“Sorry.” Good God, he’d been staring like a gobsmacked lad. He held out his hand. “Kendall, Lord Lake, at your service. I believe Lord Drood told you I was coming?”
Now she stiffened and for one brief moment her jaw dropped. “
You’re
Uncle Drood’s messenger? I was expecting someone of his generation, or possibly someone who resembled a constable. Forgive me, Lord Lake. Please, do come inside.” She bobbed a quick curtsy and backed out of the doorway to allow him to enter.
“And you’re a bit prettier than I expected Drood’s niece to be.” He looked about as his eyes adjusted to the interior light. The entry room was small, with just a desk, a faded settee and two rather shabby armchairs for waiting customers. “Can you explain what the problem is? Why you wrote to him for help?”
“Actually, I’m his great-niece.” She gestured to one of two chairs then took a seat in the other. “My grandmother is his sister.”
“I didn’t know he had a sister, let alone a Canadian one. It was quite a shock to hear you existed.” He crossed one leg over the other and sat back, studying her. Her face was pale, as though she had been worrying for some time, and her fingers twisted nervously in her lap.
“They don’t speak. She’s more than a decade older. Their father arranged a husband for her, but she refused and married for love. Once she’d wed her French
émigré,
her family never spoke to her again. Eventually, my grandparents moved to Montreal, where my mother was raised, and I was born. When I came to England to study, my grandmother gave me her brother’s name and direction. While relations between them are still strained, she was sure I could count on him if I encountered difficulties of a…hmm…shall we say a mystical nature.”
“And have you?”
Miss Deland shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her voice held a slight tremor. “I’ll admit to being something of a skeptic regarding the supernatural. While my grandmother always claimed to have some sort of foresight, none of the family truly believed in it. We assumed she was simply blessed with acute intuition and deductive reasoning, no more than a mild eccentricity that made us love her all the more. Then she told me about her brother, about being supposedly descended from Merlin himself… Truly, I didn’t believe it at all.” She bit down hard on her lower lip, as if waiting for him to laugh.
Kendall didn’t. He knew much more of her family history than she did. She
was
a direct descendant of the original Merlin, and her great-uncle was perhaps the most powerful sorcerer living. Clearly, his sister had possessed some gifts of her own, as sometimes happened with the female children of Knights. “So tell me what the problem is.”
“You’re one of the Order of the Round Table, then? Part of my great-uncle’s organization?”
Kendall nodded. “My father heads the Order, as my grandfather did before him. Lord Drood and my grandfather were the best of friends. Now will you tell me what drove you to contact him? Clearly, you’ve been in England for some time and have never done so.” The sheer number of photographs on the wall, including views of Brighton and the beach over several years, proved that.
Biting her lip, she sighed. “I’d better show you. You may wish to leave your hat and walking stick in here—I promise there’s no one to steal them.”
Amy couldn’t believe her great-uncle had sent a young, handsome peer in response to her letter. She’d expected some grizzled veteran, a servant, perhaps. Not…this. Lord Lake was the most classically handsome man she’d ever met, with the crisp sharp features of a Roman senator and the carriage of a military officer. Thick dark hair and tanned features contrasted sharply with light blue-green eyes that seemed to see right through her. His perfectly cut tweed coat probably cost more than she paid for a year’s rent.
She sensed him watching her as she led the way down a short hall into her workroom. What was he thinking?
They passed the water closet and darkroom. He didn’t seem like the sort who missed much, which made her wonder if her hair was still in place or her collar rumpled. Had she dusted this part of her domain lately? The only men who ever came back here were customers, and they were usually more worried about their own appearance than hers or the studio’s. She couldn’t remember having a man make her feel this nervous since she was a schoolgirl—if then. With four older brothers, she’d always been a tomboy, more one of the lads than a girl men paid attention to. Of course that had changed when she’d gotten older, and the resulting awkwardness was one of the reasons she’d left home for college.
In her workroom, the renovations she’d made to the carriage house were more obvious. The entire south wall, the one facing away from the main house, had been redone in glass. The shop behind the carriage house was a low, single-story affair and perched up close to the street, so it blocked very little of the southern illumination that flooded this room and her studio, which took up a full half of the structure. Two large skylights had also been added to the studio, and one in here, to make these two rooms nearly as bright as outdoors.
“Much nicer than the street would lead one to believe.” Lord Lake looked around with an approving smile.
“Thank you. Believe me, finding a landlady who allowed me so much freedom with renovations is worth the dubious address. Being off the main streets, I don’t get a lot of the tourist trade, though there’s some, but I do a steady business among the local residents.” She paused in front of her worktable, where supplies were laid out to touch up and mount the finished photographs. Biting her lip, she turned to look at him. “I want you to look at these three photographs and tell me if you see something odd.”