In the Flesh (32 page)

“Very well,
Edmund,
I will!” She almost hiccupped over the name when he squeezed her nipple, inducing delicious darts of pleasure.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Déjà vu

AFTER LOVE,
they slept again, deeply and refreshingly, as if the awful revelations, once uncovered, had been cathartic.

It was only the thumping on the door that roused Beatrice from her slumber, and Ritchie, at her side, snapped awake too.

“Mr. Ritchie! Mr. Ritchie! There’s someone here. Please can you come.” The voice of the maid who’d admitted Beatrice earlier sounded anxious and confused, as if she were at the end of her tether.

Turning up the lamp, Ritchie turned to Beatrice. “Wait here, my love. I’ll attend to this. Don’t worry.” His words were calming, but in the flickering light, his face belied his even voice, looking tense and rather pale as he was suddenly gripped by some dread premonition. He sprang from the bed and pulled on trousers and a shirt, tugging the latter over his head and haphazardly shoving in the tails before slipping his braces into place.

“Mr. Ritchie!” came the voice again, and he strode to the door, stepped out into the passage and pulled the door almost shut again behind him.

Who could it be at this time of night? Whatever dread had gripped Ritchie seemed to take a hold on Beatrice, too. Was something wrong with Charlie? Had he slipped back into his bad ways again and been beaten up by a creditor? Surely not, now that he seemed to spend so much time cloistered with Jamie Brownlow.

Voices drifted in through the small gap where the door was ajar. Low, indistinct, but intense. Ritchie sounded astonished. Horrified, even. More out of control than he’d ever seemed before. After a few moments, he stepped back inside the room, his usual confident demeanor shockingly adrift.

His handsome face was like a mask, and as white as a sheet.

“What is it?” Beatrice clutched the bedding closely around her. Somehow she felt she needed armor, yet all she had was cotton and linen and wool. “What’s happened?”

Ritchie ran his hand through his hair, visibly thunderstruck yet fighting to regain his composure. It seemed that his thoughts were difficult to marshal.

“We have a visitor. I don’t know how…or why…but Margarita is here. She says a messenger from the Lord called ‘Mr. Smith’ has liberated her from her jail.”

Margarita?

For a moment, Beatrice drew a blank. Awoken in the night, in a strange bed, her mind was still disorientated, but after a second, the full significance of that name came crashing down.

“Your
wife?
She’s here?” The questions were redundant, as the anguish on Ritchie’s face told an eloquent tale. “How has she got here? I thought she was kept securely in the sanitarium?”

“She was. But someone has released her…I don’t know how. Either by trickery, posing as an agent of mine, or by spiriting her out of there by subterfuge.” His frown deepened. “I have my suspicions as to who is responsible for this, but it seems she insists this angel Smith brought her here in a carriage.”

“Smith? Who is Smith?” Beatrice had her suspicions, too. There was one far less than angelic individual who wished them both harm.

Ritchie shrugged at her, his face a mask of raw frustration.

“Eustace! That despicable weevil! How can he be so hateful?” Betrayal and anger surged through Beatrice’s chest like bile.

“Indeed, and it seems he’s simply deposited my wife here and retreated, leaving chaos in his wake.”

“Is she…is she?”

“Raving? Yes, it seems so. I must go down. Mrs. Brewer and Agatha managed to coax her into the parlor and Agatha is sitting with her, but it’s me she’s calling for.” Ritchie reached for his waistcoat and shrugged into it as he stepped into his carpet slippers. He seemed dazed, still trying to bring order to his wits.

“Can I help? Perhaps I could speak to her?” Fear of what Ritchie’s wife had done and could do was very real, but Beatrice felt helpless and compelled to offer. Her own feelings were a maelstrom, just as his must be, but perhaps together they could deal with this completely unexpected event.

“Bless you, my love, for offering.” Pausing, he hugged her fiercely. “But I have a feeling that the sight of you might inflame her even further.”

Even as he held her, a cacophony seemed to erupt somewhere in the house, from a lower floor. General shouting, crashes, a woman’s voice eerie and high, shrieking.

“I’d better go, Bea. I think she’s too much for any servant to cope with. I’ll have to try and calm her and send one of the others round to my doctor’s house to fetch him.” With a last squeeze of her hand, he dashed to the door and turned briefly at the last moment. “Stay here, my love…please… I’d never forgive myself if she should attack you too.”

Then he was gone, pounding across the landing and down the stairs, even as the sound of more shouts and crashes came floating up.

What to do? Beatrice felt powerless, completely at a loss. Sitting up in a bed, in a room, in a house she was completely unfamiliar with, while a murdering madwoman raged downstairs, with the Lord alone knew what intent in mind. If, indeed, she even had a mind.

Unable to remain inactive, Beatrice sprang out of bed and began to dress, pulling on her drawers and her chemise, and a single petticoat. Her costume was out of the question, as it would take a while to wrangle herself into her corset single-handed, so she pulled on Ritchie’s luxurious dressing gown and belted it tight around her, then pushed her bare feet into her boots and buttoned them up.

More noises echoed through the house as she dressed. Other voices now, in panic. More crashing, and a sudden strange roaring sound. And crackling.

What in heaven was going on?

Despite Ritchie’s instructions, Beatrice dashed out onto the landing, and immediately realized that something terrible and dangerous was occurring.

Smoke was pothering up through the stairwell, and a voice was screaming in stark fright on the floor below.

Oh dear Lord in heaven, Margarita had somehow managed to start another fire.

Ritchie’s voice, harsh but in control, echoed up the stairs.

“Mrs. Brewer, Agatha, get out, get out now! Shout for a bobby as loud as you can…get someone to summon the fire cart… . You, Oliver, run to 34 South Mulberry Street and bring Jamie here. Hurry! Go now, all of you!”

Footsteps thudded, and as a great cracking sound echoed through the house, as if wood were already shattering in the flame, two voices rang out. One Ritchie’s loud, filled with anxiety, yet broken as if he were struggling with something, the other high, queer, almost musical, almost floating above the bedlam.

“Beatrice! Beatrice! Are you decent? Come down…you must get out of the house!”

“Ah yes…my dear, dear seducer…you send them away so you can do it to me. Put it in me, the way you did…and hurt me!”

Beatrice’s eyes prickled from smoke rising up. She bent over the banister, trying to see the shrieking woman who had suddenly become her nemesis.

As she looked down, two faces looked up. Ritchie and his wife, locked in a struggle, he trying to restrain her, and she kicking and flailing and jerking with a strength that seemed to exceed the human norms.

“Ritchie!” Beatrice cried out in alarm. He was already smeared with soot, and she could see blood on his shirt. Oh dear Lord, what was happening? The same again as before, in some kind of horrific déjà vu?

“Beatrice! Listen carefully,” called Ritchie, struggling for his words as he grappled with the woman writhing and jerking in his arms. “Go to the back stairs…see if they are clear…and get out of the house as fast as you can! Please go, my love…get to safety, for the love of God.”

Before Beatrice could answer, Margarita let out a fierce screech, her face, which under normal circumstance would have been exquisitely beautiful, a mask of fury. Her features were contorted and her hair—which was golden blond and far paler that Ritchie’s, already appeared to be frazzled and a little scorched in places.

“Whore! Filthy strumpet! Whore!” she bellowed up the stairs, redoubling her enraged struggles. She seemed to be clad in some kind of simple day dress and a shawl, but both were soot smeared and also a little singed. What on earth had she been doing, while she was left? Had she injured the servant bidden to watch her?

“Beatrice, please! Look for a safe way out, as quick as you can!” Ritchie cried, then he gasped in pain.

To her horror, Beatrice saw the flash of something in Margarita’s hand. A small knife? Scissors? Something she’d concealed about her person? Whatever it was, she’d managed in her twisting to jam it into Ritchie’s restraining arm, and in the moment of shock, he loosened his grip and she sprang free and darted away from him.

Heading up the staircase for Beatrice!

Ritchie followed, thundering after his wife, blood dripping thickly from his arm. The two of them reached Beatrice’s landing almost together and Ritchie grabbed for Margarita, reestablishing his hold.

“Whore! Whore! Whore!” howled the blonde woman, tossing her head, kicking back against her husband, her slipper-clad feet hitting his shins.

“Beatrice, check the back stairs. We may be able to get down that way,” cried Ritchie, between struggles, nodding vaguely in the direction of the wall at the far end of the landing. Beatrice darted toward it, just avoiding the flying feet and fists of the still defiant Margarita, and found a discreet concealed door that must lead to the servants’ stairs.

But it was no good—thick black smoke was already billowing up. How the dickens had Margarita managed to create so much havoc, so fast? The cunning of the insane, no doubt, and now they were all paying for that infernal guile.

“I don’t think we can get out that way, Edmund,” she called, then had to stop and cough violently. Rushing back to the banister, she peered down, blinking at more smoke, only to see what she’d worst feared, down below.

The main staircase was on fire, and the cracking sound had been parts of it collapsing.

“The flames will cleanse you, dirty strumpet. Destroy your filth…and his,” chanted Margarita, her eyes wild.

“Into the bedroom, Bea…now…” gasped Ritchie, his voice sounding odd, almost weak. “We’ll have to try and get down by means of the window somehow. But we’re very high.”

Beatrice dashed into the bedroom, the scene of so much beauty, and now perhaps their path to safety. Flinging open the curtains, she looked down, and saw a sheer drop, many yards to the street below. A crowd had gathered and someone pointed up at her.

“Can anyone get a ladder?” she shouted out once she’d hauled up the sash. The night air was chilly, but blessedly fresh after the gathering smoke. “Please look for one. We can’t get down. We’re trapped.”

“Trapped in sin and filth,” screamed Margarita from behind her.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, shut up!” shouted Beatrice, whirling around, horrified at the paper whiteness of Ritchie’s skin as he hung on to his still fighting wife for dear life. The whole of his arm was a mass of red, blood trickling down from his wound. She wanted to run to him, help him hold Margarita, but the ferocious expression on the latter’s face was truly terrifying. Beatrice sensed that if she went any closer it would incense the madwoman even more.

A commotion in the street drew her back to the window, and to her relief she saw the fire cart clattering along the cobbles, horses at a pell-mell gallop, bell jangling furiously for people to get out of their way. Uniformed firemen leaped down from the contraption almost before it pulled to a halt, their keen eyes sizing up the situation. Almost immediately they began maneuvering their long ladder into position and priming their pump.

“We’re saved,” Beatrice called out to Ritchie, turning to him. “They’re putting up a ladder.”

“Climb down, Beatrice. Go now!” he ordered. “For my sake. I’ll bring her.”

Beatrice flew to the window.

“Can you climb down, miss,” bellowed up a brawny fireman, “or shall we come up and carry you?”

The ladder didn’t look strong. In fact it looked narrow and fragile. Beatrice swallowed. She had no particular fear of heights, but still the ladder looked perilous.

And how the devil was Ritchie going to get the screaming, squirming, kicking and flailing Margarita down it? His wife seemed to have an inexhaustible well of demonic energy and she was still fighting him as hard as ever.

“I can climb down,” Beatrice yelled down to the assembly of firemen, neighbors and passersby. Even as she quickly scanned the throng, she saw her brother racing up the street, with Jamie Brownlow and Polly, too. They were all three in their night attire, robes and shawls hastily thrown on.

“Bea! Bea! Are you all right?” shouted Charlie, his voice sharp with anxiety. “Can you get down? Is Ritchie with you?”

“Yes, I’m coming down now…Ritchie’s here…with…with someone else. We’re coming down.”

Her head began to spin. It was the smoke. The fear. She snapped around to Ritchie and thought furiously. How in heaven’s name could he get this maenad down that rickety ladder? Should a fireman come up? Could even the sturdiest of them hold Margarita in her madness?

Suddenly, an idea came. Also mad, in its own way. Before she could think twice, she leaped across the room toward her lover and his battling wife and, hauling back her arm, she aimed the first-ever punch of her life at Margarita’s pallid jaw.