The Spiritualist (37 page)

“I think you like me well enough.”

“No.” I shook my head against him. I felt my own hair tangle with his. “This isn’t what I want.”

“You don’t know what you want.”

“Yes I do. I do.”

“Ah, your safe life. Your Rampling.” He infused the words with such scorn. “That isn’t you,
chère
. When will you see it?”

My legs were still wrapped around him, my hands clutching him. Our sweat was cooling and slick between us. I felt the movement of his lips against my shoulder like a burn.

He lifted his head and moved so that my legs slid down his and my feet touched the ground. He pushed me a little with his shoulder, pressing me more firmly to the door, lodging his hip against mine. The posture had changed just enough: we were no longer tangled together, but I couldn’t move. I was his prisoner.

He stared into my eyes, and a chill came into his that frightened me. I think I made a sound, I know I made a motion, an attempt to escape, and he pushed me back again until I stilled. His hand moved up my body, up my thigh, skating past the bunching of my nightgown at my waist, and then up the swell of my breast, to my neck, curving around, his fingers spanning my throat. “If I killed Peter, what makes you think I wouldn’t kill you? Why not now, when no one’s here to see?” He pressed—it was a small pressure, but I felt the constriction of air. How foolish I’d been, how stupid—

The pressure stopped. His fingers loosened. I gasped.

“You work against me when what you really want is to be right here.” He let his hand fall, the backs of his fingers traced down the tendon of my throat, across my collarbone. “Why fight what’s meant to be? Take what you want. I don’t object.”

Gooseflesh rose on my skin. My breath came fast. “It won’t work, you know. This, this distraction. It doesn’t change my mind about you.”

He lifted his head, and the look I saw in his eyes stole my reason. I had trouble remembering what I’d said. His lips grazed mine. When I would have kissed him, he stepped away and took my hand, pulling me away from the door, into his arms. “Come to bed. Let’s do this properly, eh?”

I
T WAS VERY
late when we were finally sated. I was aching and woozy, and as I heard his quiet, even breathing beside me, I dreaded the coming of morning and the return to myself which would inevitably bring with it recriminations and doubt. He made it easy to accept the perversity within me, the darkness made it easy. In the morning, would that Evelyn be the one who remained? Or would she shiver away, hiding in the shadows until the night brought her out again, ravenous and aching? Would I be able to admit the truth I knew: that I wanted him, and that wanting had no conscience and no morality—it made excuses, it equivocated, it asked questions like: Can you be certain he was the one who killed Peter? What if he was not?

I pushed the thoughts away. From somewhere, I heard a whisper. My eyes had been half closed, now I opened them, staring into the darkness. There was nothing.

Then I heard it again.
Listen
.

I raised myself slightly up on my elbow. Michel’s arm, which was curled about me, slipped limply to my waist.

It felt as if something were lifting the top of my head. A sound beat between my ears.

Listen to me.

I fell back to the pillow with a little gasp. For a moment it was as if I were in the trance again, as if something were pulling at my soul, the prelude to the fog. But that was impossible. We weren’t in the circle; no one had called a spirit—

“Ssshhh,
chère
,” Michel whispered, half asleep. His arm tightened around me again, and suddenly the feeling was gone. I closed my eyes. And then, without warning or preamble, I fell into a deep sleep—one without nightmares.

I
WOKE WITH
a start to a loud, pounding noise. It took me a moment to realize the sound was a knock, and another moment still to realize that I was not in my own bed, but Michel’s, and that it was morning, and I should have gone before now, before the household began to rouse. There were no worse gossips than the help, and the last thing I wanted was gossip.

Beside me, Michel cursed some Creole imprecation beneath his breath, and sat up, pushing back his hair, calling, “What is it?”

“Miz Bennett, sir,” called back a voice. “It’s past nine—”

Another curse. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

“Very well, sir. But if you’d hurry.”

He shoved back the blankets, rising from the bed in one fluid motion, without a single look at me. I wondered if he even remembered I was there, but the same moment I had the thought, he said, “I’ve got to tend to Dorothy, but I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”

“I can’t stay here,” I protested. “Kitty will be coming to dress me, if she hasn’t already—”

“Not yet.” He twisted around, coming onto the bed again, leaning down to kiss me. “I’ll tell her you were ill last night and to let you sleep.”

“She knows I wasn’t.”

“Trust me to convince her.” He gave me a wry smile, and then he rose again, quickly, striding to where his dressing gown lay on the floor, next to mine. He kicked everything else aside and picked up his robe, shrugging into it. Then he went out the door. I heard his quick stride down the hall, and I was alone. I rose and went to the pile of scattered clothing. I left my nightgown there, but I put on my dressing gown. I was alone in his room, with his permission, by his insistence—this was the perfect opportunity to search it once more. But I was reluctant. I was suddenly afraid of what I might find, I was afraid of his secrets. The truth was I no longer wanted to know.

He’s directing you
. The thought came unbidden.
He’s seduced you to keep you from looking, to keep you on his side.

That was the truth, I knew it.

I looked at the desk, at the drawers I knew were locked. No, I thought. He’ll be back any moment. I sat on the bed. I put my hands in my lap, meaning to wait. But then I was looking at the pile of ribands on the bedside table, the watch chain I knew was buried within them, and remembering how I’d meant to open the drawer to search for the key, and suddenly I was doing it.

Inside there were handkerchiefs—there must have been twenty or more, shoved about haphazardly, some of them stained with dark spots, spatterings. Blood, I thought in dismay, but then I lifted one out and I realized that blood would not have left such a stain as this—still bright, undiminished by washing. It was ink, or… or paint. Meant to look like blood, but not blood at all. I drew them out, one by one, and realized that they’d been deliberately marked, some with only small spots, others with more. Handkerchiefs devised to show he was consumptive.

I remembered Dorothy’s words.
“When I found him, he was so thin and ill.”
Her compassionate concern, her fear. He had appealed to her maternal instincts first, knowing, of course, that it was what would capture her—oh, he was shrewd.

Mulishly, I pulled out the last handkerchief, dropping it into my lap, and when I did, I heard another sound, a soft but heavy
plop
onto the carpet, and I looked down. There, lying beside my foot, was a key.

I shoved the handkerchiefs back into the drawer, and then I picked it up.

I went to the desk and fit the key within the lock, turning it until I heard the click. The drawer slid easily open.

Inside was a pile of notebooks, some leather bound, some bound in cardboard. I reached for the one on top, tooled leather, much finer than the others. I took it out and sank to the floor, leaning back against the bed, cradling the book in my lap, and then I turned over the cover to reveal pages scrawled with Michel’s handwriting. It began with a date—January of last year—and then it was all notes, names I didn’t recognize. Men’s names, women’s names, lists of their accomplishments, their children, their families. A compendium of the research he’d done on each one. I thought about what Benjamin had told me, about how Michel would have investigated Peter, and me. I turned the pages, knowing what I was looking for but afraid to find it. I turned until I came to August of last year.

Peter Atherton
, it said.

I inhaled sharply.

The notes on me and Peter ended there, and I sat staring at them. The things he knew, the ways he’d studied us. He’d reduced us to only words—such a little amount required to capture a life, a relationship. Some of it I had not known. Not Peter’s tutor, nor the banishment to Cambridge, and not the courtship of Ella Bishop.

I heard a step in the hallway. I looked up just as the door opened and he came inside.

There was a moment of hesitation, and then he closed the door behind him and said, “Well. I confess you surprise me,
chère
. I’d thought it would take you more time than this.”

“You’re not consumptive,” I said unnecessarily.

He shook his head and stepped over to me. He glanced down at the book I held, and then he sighed and went to the bed, lying down, pulling the pillow beneath his head, stretching out.

“You knew everything about me. Before I even stepped through Dorothy’s door, you knew.”

“Not everything,” he said. “I didn’t know how you moan when—”

“Don’t.”

He made a sound of impatience. “Come, Evie, how did you think I do it?”

“I never expected this kind of detail.”

“It’s the details that matter.”

“You even knew Peter’s mother’s perfume—”

“Ah, very useful, that. At the right moment, a few drops on the tablecloth”—he acted it out in a gesture—“and
voilà
—the spirit is come.”

“Does it never trouble you?”

“Does what trouble me?”

“The fact that it’s not real.”

“Grief is a terrible thing, eh? People are looking for comfort. If I can give it to them, what’s the harm?”

“They give you things—they give you money—because they believe, but it’s a lie.”

He rose up on one elbow to look down on me. “Is that what worries you,
chère
? The fate of my immortal soul? You could change that, you know. You could save me. With one simple thing, you could do so.”

“What’s that?” I asked dully.

“Help me.” He leaned over the edge of the bed, his hair falling forward to narrow his face. “It doesn’t have to be a lie. It wouldn’t be, if you were there, would it? Think of it: people would be comforted by their loved ones, and we would be rich. What’s wrong with charging for such a service, hmmm?”

How he turned things, how he appealed to the part of me that wanted to justify my hunger for him.

“You planned all this. You planned to seduce me—”

“
Oui
, I planned to seduce you. But that was before I knew you, Evie. I didn’t know then what you were—or what we are to each other.”

I stared blindly at the notebook in my hands. “What we are to each other?”

“Come, you know it. You feel it. Why else are you here? We’ve an affinity with each other.”

“You would lie about anything. No doubt you’re lying about my—my
talent
as well. You’ve found some way to get into my mind, but it’s only some kind of trick—”

“Ah,
chère
, I’m no miracle worker. How would I do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know! But you must have. What other explanation can there be, except that I’m insane?”

“How about that it’s real?” He stroked my shoulder. “Why are you so afraid? You aren’t your
maman
. You’re stronger. You’ve her talent and your papa’s brains and your own cunning. Think what you could do.”

“I don’t even believe in spirits.”

“Maybe you should, since they’re speaking in your head. You’ve let the world push you about,
chère
. Isn’t it time to push back?”

I twisted to look at him. His eyes glittered in the light easing past the crack in the curtains like those of a mesmerist, a sorcerer. “Think of it,” he whispered. “You could beat them all if you chose. The Athertons, the city, everyone. Take your life back. Make your own future.”

His words tempted and cajoled. How easy it would be to believe, to enter into his game.
“Will you be the wolf ? Or the rabbit?”

“Let me help you. We can save each other, eh? You from hanging and me from certain damnation.”

“I don’t think I can trust you.”

“All life’s a risk, that’s what makes it interesting.” His hand fell to my breast. I felt the warmth of his fingers through the lawn of my robe. “In the end, there’s only one thing you can believe. Bodies are honest; they don’t lie.”

“Jourdain’s watching the way they move; he knows how they feel about that brother simply by the way they sit… .”

“Believe what’s between us.” Michel leaned closer and kissed me. When he pulled away again, leaving me breathless, he said,