The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart (2 page)

“And you, miss. Sir. Travel safely.” The clerk nodded to us, throwing the package in a bin.

As we turned away, Jonathon grabbed my elbow. “What if he sees the Stewart name on the package? Won’t he—”

“I sent it to Mrs. Northe. Without a return address,” I replied.

“I could kiss you for your cleverness,” he replied near my ear, smirking at me and dropping the American accent for his tantalizing British one.

“No, no, none of that,” I giggled. “We’re
family
, remember?”

“Kissing cousins?” he grinned. “I thought you loved Edgar Allan Poe. He married his cousin.”

“True. And she died a tragic, early death. Stay sharp. We’re hardly out of the woods,” I said, trying to stay serious and on task. But it was hard to remain focused with that half-dimpled smirk of his and the heat of his hand on my elbow.

“No, there are no woods here,” Jonathon said, looking around him and up at the soot coating the station beams. “The woods are ahead of us in the wilds of Minnesota. Wait, what are you—” he cut short as I dragged him suddenly in the opposite direction toward something I saw across the station foyer.

“I’ve an idea,” I declared, stepping into the light of a general store selling everything a traveler might need, have forgotten, or have lost. I went to a rack of eyeglasses on display.

“I told you, you oughtn’t have dozed off on the train with your glasses
on
, Humphrey dear. Slid right off and underfoot,” I crowed for the shop-girl’s benefit, plucking a wide-rimmed, clunky pair of glasses from a display and sliding them onto Jonathon’s face.

“Oh, those look nice,” the lady said, bored, as if that’s what she said to everyone who put something on their nose. And no they didn’t; they looked hideous.

Jonathon thought so too. I could tell from the clench of his jaw and the flash of his blue eyes beneath the thick, fishbowl glass. I wanted to roar a laugh but held it back admirably.

“We’ll take them,” I said, rummaging in my reticule for one of the larger bills Mrs. Northe had sent me off with. The bored clerk took it.

Walking away, Jonathon fumbled for me, his case and my knapsack on one of his arms, reaching for me with the other.

“I can’t
see
,” he hissed, his British accent particularly sharp in annoyance. “These things are for a blind man. I have perfect vision—”

“Yes, but they entirely distract from your handsome face, my dear Lord Denbury, and that is a distinct advantage,” I replied, steadying him toward the westbound platforms.

“You’ll have to guide me closely,” he declared.

“And is that so bad?” I teased. He offered a rakish grin that even the glasses couldn’t make unattractive.

“I’ll suffer the fashion if it means you’ll cling to me.”

I giggled and slid my arm around his, entwining our fingertips. My blush returned.

“Humphrey, though?
Really
?” Jonathon scoffed. “At least I gave
you
a normal name with Sarah. I could’ve gone for Irma or Wilhelmina, something stuffy and matronly.” He stumbled as we took a step up onto the platforms, the bags swaying.

“Oh, but I love the name
Mina
,” I replied airily, guiding him toward our train.

“
Wilhelmina
. I didn’t say Mina.
Wilhelmina
Irma Persnickety and her blind cousin, Humphrey Fitzwilliam Persnickety,” he said, reaching out as if he were falling and finding my face and petting it. I let loose the laugh I’d held back earlier.

“Fitzwilliam? Oh, no, you’re not allowed to allude to Mr. Darcy. Darcy would not be caught
dead
in those glasses,” I teased and jumped aside as Jonathon crowed in protest. I ran a few steps ahead, thinking of the most random name I could come up with. “You’re helpless without me, Humphrey…
Pindarus
Persnickety.”

Pained by the name I’d plucked from
Julius
Caesar
, he shook his fist in the air quoting, “Pindarus? Where art thou, Pindarus?” He slid his glasses down his nose to look at me. “If you dare match wits with me about Shakespeare, I’ll rename you one of Lear’s daughters. How about Goneril?”

“That sounds like some horrid disease.” I tried to shush our laughter, afraid we’d attract unwanted attention, as I moved to Jonathon’s side to guide him up the train stairs. “Where are we going again,
coz
?” I asked, checking our printed schedule.

“St. Paul, Minnesota, to throw ourselves at the mercy of my friend Samuel Neumann,” Jonathon replied.

My smile faded. Passengers jostled around us. More trains pulled in, making the air wet with steam and smelling thickly of coal. Jonathon set his case and my bag down, and removed his glasses to adjust their thick bridge. A train whistle screamed.

“Jonathon,” I murmured. “I’ll be at the mercy of two men. One I don’t know. You, I barely know. And…I have to ask. Am I a reminder of terrible things? In the light of day, in a world free of magic—”

His gloved finger lifted my chin gently. The lamp post above us cast his elegant features partly into shadow, but his eyes blazed into me and stopped my breath as they so often did. “Here in the light of day I care about you more than ever. You’re the angel that freed me from a curse, not a reminder of it.” He smiled, putting on the ridiculous glasses again. “If you’re worried about me falling
further
for you—”

I laughed, giving him a swift kiss on the mouth. “I’m not. Just…keep falling for me.” With a look I hoped was flirtatious and alluring—I was still practicing my feminine wiles—I picked up my skirts and darted up the train steps.

“I will most certainly keep falling if you don’t help me up these stairs,” Jonathon called. With a giggle, I aided him up and into the aisle between the compartments. “A
private
compartment, if you please, Miss Persnickety,” he said pointedly. “Let’s avoid another incident like we had on our last train.”

“A
private
compartment?” I breathed. A thrill raced up my spine at the prospect.

A conductor with the logo of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway prominent on his vest and hat came to collect our tickets.

“We’d like a private compartment, please,” Jonathon stated.

“Of course, sir.” The man eyed us. “Newlyweds?”

Jonathon and I scoffed at the same time. “Cousins,” I replied. The conductor just eyed us some more and showed us to a small compartment with frosted glass doors.

“Where to?” the conductor asked as we entered the narrow compartment, which had two small beds and a long bench.

“St. Paul,” Jonathon replied. The conductor stamped our tickets and slid them into a clip by the compartment doors. I bobbed my head at him as he closed the doors, and we were alone for the first time since our hasty flight out of Manhattan.

“Think he believed us?” I asked.

“Not for a second.” Jonathon took off his hat, threw his glasses onto one of the beds, and pulled me into a deep kiss.

Next thing I knew, we were in a mess of entangled fabric, my skirts around his legs and the bones of my corset pressing hard against the bones of my rib cage.

I was afire with the dangerous thrill of something that we shouldn’t be doing, wondering just how far I’d dare go. Before I’d rescued Jonathon, he’d been trapped in a portrait. The demon might have had Jonathon’s body, but his soul was free. We had met in the world of the portrait. Sometimes in dreams. There, we had first tasted passion. But flesh-and-blood was
far
sweeter. It was so scorchingly real that I almost couldn’t breathe. Well, perhaps my corset
was
laced a bit too tightly…

Jonathon, balancing on one hand, nearly had his cravat free when the train rolled out with a lurch. He lost his balance, tumbling away from me and onto the floor of the car.

My cry of concern joined his laughter as he lay splayed on the floor, the silk of his neckwear pushed aside and revealing the hollow of his throat and a few undone buttons of his vest. I shifted on my elbow to look down at him.

“I could kiss you forever,” he said, gazing up at me hungrily. “But I’d want more.”

My nerves fluttered, my voice failing. “I…can’t…not that I don’t—”

He sat up, face to face with me, pressing a bare fingertip to my lips. “I know what a woman’s virtue is worth. I’ll wait as long as it takes. I know what you’re worth—”

I turned away. While his gentlemanly words were indeed comforting, another boundary worried me more.
Worth
.

“Worth has a whole new meaning with you, Jonathon. You’re from generations of nobility. I’m the daughter of a museum curator. I have nothing to offer you. You could ruin me, and no one would—”

“I’d never ruin you, Natalie. And what, saving my life isn’t dowry enough? To hell with class, society, and expectations. I’d have wanted you no matter how I met you.”

“Our paths would never have crossed if not for the painting and the dark magic.”

“And if I had to, I’d suffer everything I went through again just to meet you,” he declared. “My soul split from my body, the curse, the prison, the scars, the sleepless nights—I’d suffer it all again for you.”

I stopped him with another kiss, slow and passionate, running my fingers through his black locks, but careful. Tender. These sorts of kisses were generally reserved only for the engaged or married, but kissing Lord Denbury was its own point of no return.

Finally breaking away, he stared again into my eyes. “Do you trust me?”

“Why do you ask?”

Jonathon furrowed his brow, sliding away to lean against one of the beds.

“With everything that’s been assumed of me, I just…don’t want you to be frightened of me.” An awkward discomfort I’d rarely seen from him now surfaced.

“I do…trust you.” There were times when words came so easily. Other times not. Selective Mutism meant that for most of my life, I hadn’t spoken. I was four when I stopped speaking. Words, out loud, are still quite new to me. And evidently they fail most often when I’m self-conscious. But believing in him steadied me. “I wouldn’t have risked what I did if I didn’t believe in you.”

Jonathon grimaced. “Am
I
a reminder of terrible things? When you look at me, do you think of the demon?”

“He looked like you. But wasn’t you. His eyes were the reflective eyes of an animal. When I look at you, I see…” I blushed. “Wonderful.”

Jonathon smiled a moment before his expression turned calculating. “That’s what gave him away to you? The eyes? What else?”

“His voice was lower, his cadence uneven. He was rude. But his eyes were yours, until I looked straight at them. That’s when the difference was clear. Looking into his eyes, I saw the abyss. Why?”

“I may need to become him.” Jonathon looked at me as I swallowed hard. “I may need to act the part.” I started shaking. That might do my head in, watching Jonathon play his evil half. “Trust is the only thing that’s going to get us through the coming months,” he added, collapsing upon the uppermost bed. “So that’s all I’m going to ask of you.”

“You have my trust,” I said quietly, even if the last thing on earth I wanted to see was him playing the part of a fiend.

The reply must have soothed him, for several moments later I could hear the even breaths of his slumber. The poor thing hadn’t had much chance to sleep in recent days.

I watched him for a long time, the gaslight of the compartment flickering across his fine features, his long black lashes hiding his oceanic eyes from me, hiding the dreams we might share if we both were asleep. It was true about trust and the future. So many terrible loose ends. Too many. But we’ll sort them out. Together. We’ve no choice.

Chapter 2

Seeing more of the country was lovely, if only from train windows. Before this I’d never been further than New Jersey; there was never any need. New Yorkers believe New York is the center of the world, and I maintain they are correct. But if one is to
rightfully
claim that New York is the center of the world, it adds credibility to know something of the rest of the country for comparison.

However, there’s something to be said for the train cutting dramatically in and out of mountainous steppes, the gently rolling hills in parts of Ohio, and the plains of Indiana and Illinois, interminable miles of fields with the occasional city sprouting up out of nowhere.

The great speeds of the trains surprised me. One could get entirely across the country in mere days. It was freeing and thrilling to think that in our modern day, our vast country was laid open to us if we could afford the tickets. It’s so close and crowded in Manhattan. There’s such breadth out here that it’s a whole other world. I’d never appreciated the sheer scope of America until now.

More hills again in Wisconsin, the land so green, the fields speckled with herds of cows. Jonathon had slept right through the towns, all with names that sounded native. Signs visible from the train windows named countless dairy farms. Jonathon looked so peaceful that I hated to disturb him, but the thought of dairy farms roused my appetite.