Fitcher's Brides (39 page)

This room, she thought, if it were exemplary of the rest of the chambers on this floor, could easily house a handful of people. It was absurd that she should have such quarters and they in their final hours be turned out into the storm. What would God think of them if they failed to help one another now? What sort of Christian refused to afford even so little kindness?

She thought again of what Amy had told her about the rooms—about her own and Vern's and the others on this floor—and she went out into the hall and to the next room.

She unlocked it and went inside. It was very like her own. It had been lived in recently, too. There were clothes draped over the armoire doors, and familiar clothes at that. Sticking out from under them was a small leather cat with six leather strands to it, exactly as Amy had described it. On the dresser, beneath a hinged mirror, there was a small box tied with ribbon identical to the one on her bed. She knew what it would contain.

Kate hastily withdrew and locked the door on Amy's room again. Even as she did so, she realized she hadn't smelled anything like what Fitcher had described. No doubt the room had been aired out afterward…still, she must assume it was unhealthy. She could not house her father there.

The next room along proved to have been Vern's. She recognized the items laid out in it—the parasol especially. There could be no mistaking that. After sorting through the wardrobe, she had to agree with Amy's assessment: If Vern had run away from Harbinger, she had left behind some of her most precious belongings.

Kate returned to the hall again and locked the door. Some sense of the danger they presented convinced her to mention neither of these rooms, not even to admit she had entered them. Did he keep them as shrines to his lost wives? She was reluctant to grant him that much humanity or to allow that he had in fact lost anything. If her suspicions were correct, and he was a collector, then no one had been lost, merely acquired. The overarching question was what form acquisition took. If she went into the rooms beyond them, would she find items belonging to other women? How many had preceded her sisters into this house and never come out again? What sort of God granted him such power over women? It might be the end of this world but if God was truly just it could not be the beginning of the next, not with Elias Fitcher in the lead. She wondered if he was merely mad or if some plan greater than she could imagine had yet to unfold.

As much as she wanted to know more, she could not now enter the rooms beyond Vern's. Instead, she crossed the hall.

Here she had some luck. The first door hung open. The room had been turned into storage. Trunks and satchels had been piled inside every which way, but a path could be made to the bed. For tonight it would offer her father shelter. Tomorrow they could retrieve his belongings as well as hers, and move some of the stored things elsewhere. Why, she wondered, did they bother storing belongings when everyone had only tonight and tomorrow left to live in these material bodies, in this world? Unless it was Fitcher's notion that after the Advent they would all be returned to Earth in the same physical state, in this hallowed place, and would need their things again. It occurred to her that while she had heard endlessly of the Day of Judgment and of how their souls must be readied for it, the nature of life beyond that day had never been fully detailed. Did the dead receive new bodies? Did anyone know?

She was speculating on the matter when she exited the room, and ran right into Fitcher himself.

She jumped, startled. He didn't so much as flinch. He held a bottle of champagne and two slender glasses. “
That
isn't your room,” he said. “Where is Louise?”

“No, I know. I was looking for someplace for my father to rest. And I dismissed Louise.”

“Unnecessary. I've already had Mr. Charter driven home.”

“But why, sir, in this storm? He'll have to come back tomorrow. There is adequate space here behind the trunks.”

With a glance around the corridor, he asked, “Have you gone into any other rooms?”

“My own.”

“Ah. And did you see the gift I'd left for you?”

“I saw its container. I felt I shouldn't open it alone.”

“Well, we'll open it together now, shall we?” The topic of her father had been dismissed, removed from play. She recognized how she'd been maneuvered.

Kate followed him across the hall to her room. He set the champagne on the writing desk, then parted the canopy and offered her the beribboned box. “It's a small thing,” he said, “but mine own. A trifle, but it means everything to me and I hope it shall come to mean as much to you.”

Kate gave him the lantern and opened the box. The egg looked identical to the one Amy had shown her—bright white stone shot through with cobalt. It might have been the same one, she couldn't tell, but if it were, then what was in the box next door? She rested the egg upon her palm, and even through the lace of her glove she could sense the arcane power of it.

He stood behind her, placing his hands upon her shoulders. “The house has a few rules. Despite its size, there are no servants, for it would be improper to make others serve us. Everyone takes part in the duties—all of them, whatever they might be, whatever must be done.

“This little egg is the embodiment of my affection for you—perfect and pure. I expect you to keep it with you at all times, that I might be close to you wherever you go. Will you do that for me?”

“If that is what you desire.”

“Swear it.”

“You doubt me, sir, already?”

His hands slipped. “Why, no. No, why should I doubt you? You are as reliable as
all
your sisterhood.”

She wet her lips, listening to the meaning that flowed like a subterranean stream beneath his words. His voice was powerful, intoxicating. She could do nothing to protect herself from the allure of him, but unlike her sisters before her, Kate had come equipped with some knowledge of him and his methods, and with greater self-possession. Stepping within his spell, she refused to be robbed of her own percipience. It might be divorced from the simmering emotions his beguiling voice put the flame to, but she would not disregard or doubt it any more than she would disregard the artfulness of his application.

He bent his head and kissed her neck. A spiderweb of pleasure, crisp and cold as ice, ran through her from the touch of his lips. She rolled her shoulders and tilted back her head.

He unbuttoned her blouse and his hands reached inside her garments, stirring her further. With him behind her and the egg in her palm, she could do little more than absorb it all. She was his instrument, his fiddle, vibrating as he drew his bow across her. She thought,
He knows me
.

He made a sound then, a low animal snarl, and his hands spread wide, separating her clothes, pushing them down, rending them if they didn't comply. He propelled her forward, against the bed.

She caught hold of the drapery. The errant thought wormed its way into her pleasure that there was a whip in the armoire next door because he'd known Amy's soul just as perfectly—known that she would respond most to punishment—and no doubt fathomed Vern as well. However he'd taken her, she had opened to him willingly. He knew them all. And so, a riding crop for her? Was she to canter for him?

Instead of going down onto the bed as he tugged her garments to her knees, Kate spun about to push at him with the egg in her fist. A carnal face, fanged with lust, met her. She caught only a glimpse. It vanished even as she turned—peripheral phantom of his true nature, so brief that anyone else would have denied they'd seen anything at all.

Already in her mind the image had congealed of how she was supposed to go down upon the bed, open and willing; and she wanted it, wanted the passion he instilled, wanted it as desperately as anything in life, but she knew he'd planted this yearning in her brain to direct her. How he did this, she didn't know and couldn't say, just as Amy hadn't been able to explain how she was being consumed. Her flesh trembled with the urge to surrender to him, even to know the sting of the crop. He would have her beg for that.

His hands reached around her fist, their heat about to melt her, and she drew the drape between them, warding off his ungovernable touch. He darkened angrily. It took every ounce of will she could muster to say firmly, “Sir, we are husband and wife, not dog and bitch.”

He bent his head, lowered at her through his brows. His breath rasped in his nostrils. For a moment she didn't know what would happen. He seemed arrested between his own lust and his awareness that she'd discovered the truth of him. He was like some chrysalid unable to take form. If he chose to strike, she would not be able to fight him. Sex with him would obliterate her as it had done her sisters. She was certain of it.

Then the moment passed, and he brushed back his hair. He looked at her with gentle, half-closed eyes and replied, “Yes, forgive me, I am too much in your thrall, madam, for reason to hold sway.”

“You would blame me for your iniquity?”

“Blame? No, I don't blame, merely account for myself. I've waited a long time for you.”

She ignored all that this implied. “As we've all waited for this new life in God to begin,” she answered. “And so let's you and I make a pact that we will give in to our passion only when we reach Him. Then we should know the truth of it, whether this is animal lust or the passion of love as God intended, beyond the flesh.”

“That is your bargain?” asked Fitcher.

“My…offer.”

“Your soul, tomorrow night, as the world outside ends? You'll face Him in my arms?”

“You make it sound like a dare.”

“Oh, much more than a dare, my dear Kate. Much more than that. It is the world itself.” He took the keys she'd carried, hefted them a moment, and then tossed them on the bed at her side. “You are the mistress of Harbinger till the end of time. You may go about as you please, put your father in whatever room you like, and pack in the rest of the stragglers as they crawl through my gates for their salvation. I care not, save that you don't go into one particular room, which that glass key opens. If you find
that
doorway, shun it for your life, just as you carry my little egg with you wherever you go.”

“For my life.”

He looked away, as if something elsewhere had caught his attention. “You're the youngest but the cleverest, aren't you?”

“How many of us have you judged?”

“Enough to know,” he said, and faced her again, smiling. “Enough.” He straightened his coat. “You'll want a fire. It's turning cold at night now. You'll find some lucifers on the mantel. Loco-focos they call them hereabout.”

“You could light it for me.”

He hesitated, then nodded and walked around to the far side of the bed. Once he was out of sight, Kate's legs failed her. She sat on the edge of the bed, listening to him collect the wood, open the damper. She pushed her clothes the rest of the way off, drawing her legs free. She wore only stockings now. Before he finished with the fire, she'd dragged the covers down on the bed and wrapped a sheet around herself. She set the egg beside her.

When Fitcher came into view again, she gestured at the bottle on the table. “We should still have our celebration,” she suggested.

“You think so?” He studied her oddly, as if unable to make up his mind about her. “Why not?” he said at last. He wrestled the cork out of the bottle. It made a dull
pop
and a thin smoke emerged. He poured the glasses, offered hers to her. Kate took it, and raised it to him. Then, letting the sheet drop, she patted the bed beside her.

Fitcher's gaze slithered from her own eyes to her lips, down around her neck and to her now exposed breasts. His nostrils flared, she thought, exactly like a horse's. He stepped up beside her to sit. The glasses clinked together. Kate drew the sheet up again and, with it, reeled him closer. She said, “Tell me about the pyramid.”

“Pyramid?”

“Atop the house. I've seen mansions with widow's walks, and signal towers from the days of the Indian wars, but none with a pyramid at its apex.”

“'Tis a symbol of power. Know you of the great pyramids of Egypt?”

“Nothing save that they exist, sir.”

“They have magical properties—mathematical relationships, combinations of special numbers.”

“Special numbers?”

“Twenty-five, fifty, three hundred sixty-six. And of course nine.”

She considered, then shook her head. “No, I see nothing special in those numbers that might conjure magic.”

“No? Alas, it's impossible to explain to one uninitiated in the mathematical aspects of God. They are found in Revelation, these numbers, and they prove God to be the architect. I should give you Mr. Taylor's book on the subject, but he won't be publishing it for a while yet. As for why it's there, I wished for it to be. I included it in the plans for our utopia. We have neither Indians to fight nor widows to watch for lost sailors here.”

She sipped her champagne. “No, only widowers,” she commented, then added, “I'm still wondering about the mathematical aspects of God.”

“Revelation, full of mathematical clues to the resurrection, to the millennium that now rises before us, brims with aspects. Most seekers cannot parse the secrets. The Book of David, wherein lie the numbers which provided the date of the Second Coming, is another such. I've spent a great deal of time with numbers—I daresay as much as I've spent with believers.”

“It's too much to take in.”

He slid his hand across and covered hers around the stem of her glass. “You shouldn't try. You need not know every grain of sand to realize a beach, nor every raindrop to know a thunderstorm engulfs you. Thinking is often the pursuit of insecurity. Why unbalance yourself, when I have already counted the numbers and established the answer for you?”