A Gentleman's Guide to Scandal (3 page)

Her moment's hesitation had attracted the small, grubby child, who took hold of Elinor's skirt and looked up at her with wide eyes. “Hello,” Elinor said, startled. She held her hands awkwardly at her sides and cast a quick look around for the child's keeper. It appeared to have none. “Er. I have to go, child.” She started to move away, but the child clung fast.

Elinor sighed and rummaged in her reticule until she found a small sweet. She had taken to carrying them since her
sister-in-law began to increase, as a form of defense against the sudden changes in her moods. It worked far better on the child than on Joan; pressing the sweet into the child's palm earned her skirt an immediate reprieve, and she left the child struggling to extricate the treat from its paper wrapping. Elinor hurried to join Phoebe, who was dancing foot-to-foot in impatience.

“You must watch what you say around this woman,” Elinor said as she reached the front steps. “She will try to deceive you.”

“She has a true gift,” Phoebe said. “You'll see, Elinor. She's the most incredible thing. You will be entirely convinced, I promise.” Phoebe knocked lightly on the door. Her whole body seemed to quiver, and her eyes were fever-bright.

“Are you certain this is a good idea?” Elinor asked.

“You will understand as soon as you speak with her,” Phoebe said, a touch breathless. Elinor stifled a sigh. Phoebe had apparently been coming here for some weeks now, and handing over a considerable amount of money for the privilege.

The door opened with an ominous groan. Despite herself, Elinor gave a startled hop. No one stood beyond; only a long, darkened hallway. A single door stood open at the end, oozing candlelight.

“This way,” Phoebe whispered, and drifted inside.

Elinor stepped over the threshold reluctantly. She did not believe in spirits, or in the ability of mediums to conjure them. She believed in people, and their capacity for trickery. And so when she stepped inside, she did not shudder in dread or anticipation. She looked up and back, and squinted into the shadows. There. A fine cord was knotted around a nail at the corner of the door, and threaded carefully along the wall, down the hallway. She tried the latch on the door. Loose. A good tug on that cord would open it.

“Oh, Phoebe,” Elinor whispered. The dusty hallway swallowed the sound, and turned her footsteps dull and vanishing. The light at the end of the hall seemed to press against her, oily and unpleasantly warm. The air was thick
with burnt incense. Elinor took a deep breath and immediately felt a wave of dizziness sweep over her. With distrust beetling in her belly, she followed Phoebe into Madame Vesta's chamber.

The woman herself was a spindly thing, though younger than she wished to appear. Even in the shadows Elinor could make out the smudge of something smoky dabbed around her eyes, to make them appear sunken. Her hair she had grayed, perhaps with a powder—not quite reaching the roots. Her hands gave her away: smooth and lithe as they shuffled a deck of cards in a rhythmic susurrus.

Two chairs sat on the opposite side of Vesta's table. Phoebe looked again at Elinor, as if the appearance of the correct number of chairs proved something. Perhaps the previous clients had come in a pair. Perhaps Vesta had guessed that Phoebe would bring her visiting friend. And if Phoebe had come alone, the extra chair would be easy to excuse. It was a calculated guess, Elinor decided, meant to immediately instill in her a sense that Vesta knew more than she ought.

Nonetheless, Elinor did her best to keep her face clear of judgment.

“Madame Vesta. I have brought my friend, Elinor, to see you,” Phoebe said. The worshipful tone in her voice made Elinor wince, even leaving aside the blatant disregard for proper forms of address.

“Of course,” Madame Vesta said, and waved a hand at the chairs. “Please, sit. You are welcome in my house.”

Elinor eased herself into the chair, wondering if it would wobble to make her feel off-balance—but it was a sturdy thing, and quite comfortable. She cast a cynical eye about the room. The windows were covered, leaving the candles as the only illumination. They were arranged such that Elinor and Phoebe were well-lit, while light flickered indistinctly over Madame Vesta's features. Elinor had always had a knack for reading people. She suspected Madame Vesta had the same talent, and wished to observe their faces as she spoke. The twitch of a lip, the slight furrow of a brow—tiny signs could spell the truth.

“You have come today to speak to me about . . .” Madame Vesta trailed off, briefly enough that she might have only been pausing for breath.

“It is not the usual thing, no,” Phoebe said, leaning forward, and Elinor resisted the urge to groan. The trailing off bit was Joan's favorite trick. In general, people could not abide silence. They were eager to fill it, and rarely remembered that it was they who had finished the sentence.

“Of course. You have come to speak to a particular spirit,” Madame Vesta said, eyes fixed on Phoebe's face. She must have seen some sign of agreement there, for she did not immediately correct herself. “Someone close to you. Ah, but not close. Is it distance . . . ? Time . . . ?”

“She died far away, and years ago,” Phoebe said.

Elinor bit the inside of her lip. If it had been someone dead two days the next street over, Madame Vesta would have claimed some metaphorical distance. And there was only one person Phoebe could be speaking of.

“Marie,” Elinor said softly. Phoebe glanced at her in surprise. Elinor shook her head. Of course it was Marie. Phoebe's life did not offer many ghosts to choose from, and Marie's memory held a near-mythical sway over the girl. She had been gone for six years, but she haunted all of them—the dowager marchioness, Lord Farleigh, Kitty, Phoebe. And Elinor, too.

“Yes. Your sister,” Madame Vesta said. The hint of a frown flitted across her face. She wasn't pleased at having her guessing game preempted. “She is here. She is listening.”

Elinor curled her hand in her lap, digging her nails against her palm. Even if Marie had found herself in possession of a spectral form, she never would have come to this place. Elinor would have sooner expected her to appear at the foot of her bed, laughing at how thoroughly wrong she had been proved after years of dedicated skepticism.

The question was not whether Marie's spirit was truly present. The question was why Phoebe should seek her out now.

Apparently Madame Vesta wondered the same thing. “Something has changed,” she said. “You are disquieted.”

Her accent was thick. Thick and inconsistent. It had started out Slavic and was veering into French, but underneath . . .

“I see a man. Family? No, not connected by blood. But he knew your sister. I do not see him among the spirits . . . yes, he still lives. His name swirls around you. I see a letter. A J? No, an E . . . Edward?”

“Edward Foyle,” Phoebe declared, and cast another look of triumph at Elinor, who had been watching the youngest Spenser's features. A faint widening of Phoebe's eyes at the suggestion of a man, a downward twitch of the corner of her mouth at the
J
, a sudden tightening of her jaw at
E
. At times Elinor felt there were only a half dozen names in rotation among the men of England; it was not such a startling thing that Madame Vesta had hit upon the right one. And she had started with J, of course. One could not spit without striking a John.

That accent still bothered her. Its drunken wandering between foreign locales covered something familiar.

“Shropshire?” Elinor guessed aloud.

Madame Vesta was a professional, Elinor gave her that. The only hint that Elinor had guessed right was a flaring of her nostrils and a slight twitch of her eyelid. “Pardon me, I am not sure I follow,” she said. She'd taken a left into Italian with that. Elinor let out an unladylike snort.

“You should pick an accent and stick with it,” she said. “Phoebe, this woman is a fraud.”

“Elinor,” Phoebe said, half reproachful, half pleading. “She knows things. Things she couldn't—”

“She's reading you, not listening to the spirits. You have an expressive face, Phoebe. I could do the same, if I had the desire to swindle you out of your coin. I guessed about Marie, didn't I?”

“You know me,” Phoebe said. “That's different.”

“And how much have you told her about yourself? A fair bit, and I doubt you realized half of what you revealed.” Elinor stood, pushing back her chair.

“I cannot reach the departed with such a person in the room,” Madame Vesta declared. “You must leave, or the spirits will not speak.” Madame Vesta had a red tinge in her cheeks. Elinor suppressed the urge to slap a bit more color into them.

“I am leaving. We both are,” Elinor declared.

“No, we aren't,” Phoebe said. “Elinor, please.”

Elinor was accustomed to pity. She had been ill most of her life. She was used to being treated like a small, hapless child. And so she did not allow pity to cross her face. Instead, she spoke in a quiet, steady tone, a tone meant for an equal who has momentarily stumbled.

“Phoebe, this woman is a fraud. She is trying to take advantage of you and your trusting, loving heart. Whatever answers you are searching for, you will not find them here.”

Madame Vesta hissed between her teeth. “You call yourself her friend, but vile air swirls about you. The spirits shy from your very presence! Ah, all but one. A man. I see him, clearly. He reaches for you. His name . . . I see an M. Matthew.” She paused, triumphant. Perhaps she read Elinor's silence as shock, as awe at her insight. Which only showed that she was not as good at this game as she believed. Elinor heard her pulse in her ears like a drumbeat, fury rising in her breast.

She leaned toward the woman. She rested the fingertips of one hand against the wood, focusing on the five points of pressure, forcing herself to take steady breaths. If she let emotion sweep her up, she would begin to breathe too quickly. She could not succumb to her anger; it would only drive her to an attack, as she'd suffered so many times before. With the incense in the air, her chest was already tight. And so she did not shout. She lowered her voice, calm and sweet.

“Marie Spenser was my dearest friend,” she said. “Matthew was the best man I have ever known. You are not fit to speak their names. They would have nothing but contempt for you. If their spirits had truly returned, they would not come to you if every other man, woman, and child in England had perished,” she said. “Do not speak to Phoebe again.” She did not spell out a threat. Madame Vesta clearly knew who
she was; she knew the heads that would bend at Elinor's whisper. She could likely imagine the kind of power that could be brought to bear against her, at Elinor's request. Elinor was not proud of using that sort of influence—it always made her feel a bully. But in this case, she was willing to make an exception.

Madame Vesta had the sense to fall silent, at least, but settled back in her chair with a defiant glint in her eye.

Phoebe looked ready to cry. She stood, eyes downcast, and set a single coin on the table. “I'm sorry,” she said. Elinor couldn't tell which of them she addressed. Guilt added to the pressure in Elinor's chest. She hadn't meant to humiliate Phoebe, only protect her.

“Let's go,” she said gently, and took Phoebe's arm.

Outside, the air was fetid but cool, and Elinor gulped down a grateful breath. The incense clung to her skin and her hair. Phoebe pulled free of her and stood, hands cupping her elbows and eyes fixed on nothing.

“Forgive me,” Elinor said. “I handled that brutishly.”

“I knew she wasn't real,” Phoebe said. “I did.” She lifted her chin. She'd known no such thing, but like her brother, she was a creature of pride.

“She was very convincing,” Elinor said.

“I
hoped
she was real,” Phoebe said.

It shouldn't have surprised Elinor that Phoebe would long for her eldest sister's counsel. Elinor longed for it as well. When her mother had died and her brother went away to school, the Spenser women had taken her in as one of their own. She was between Kitty and Marie in age, but it was Marie she always gravitated toward. The older girl would brush her hair out and tell her fairy tales, stories of knights and dragons and princesses—who always seemed to be the ones with the clever idea to solve all the kingdom's worries.

And it was Marie who had lain with her when her world dissolved into the unbearable pain of her frequent headaches and who stroked her back and held her when her breath came in a strangled wheeze. Those stories had kept her calm, had kept her taking in one breath after another.

She was never Elinor's sister, but Elinor had longed for her to be.

“I am sorry,” Elinor said, and touched Phoebe's arm softly.

At that moment, a commotion at the end of the street drew them all around. There was a great clatter of wheels and hooves, and the excited whicker of a horse pulled up suddenly. A hired hack lurched to a halt at the end of the lane, Lord Farleigh already half out of it.

“Oh, drat,” Phoebe said.

Elinor might have chosen more emphatic language. Even from this distance, Lord Farleigh's expression was one of deep anger. He strode to them, eating up the distance with his long legs. Tension darkened his eyes, leaving them the dark gray of a roiling storm.

Elinor flinched. Colin had a unique ability to make her feel gawky, awkward, and perpetually half a second from some grand faux pas. He was not a lovely man; his features were too severe for that. His narrow jaw gave his face a lean, almost hungry cast, and the nearly colorless blond of his hair lent him an otherworldly air that drew women more surely than
lovely
ever could. Even as a lanky teenager, he'd had a way of glancing at you out of the corner of his eye, his smile halfway between indulgent and contemptuous, that lured in young ladies like kittens to catnip—and made Elinor feel rooted in place, with all the wit of a damp potato.