One Touch of Scandal (28 page)

“Grace, it isn't—”

“No,” she said, speaking over him. “I know it isn't Napier you fear—in fact, I don't think you fear him at all—or anyone else. So I want to know what it is you have seen—or sensed or divined or whatever the word is—that makes you concerned for me. I think I have that right.”

He was quiet a long while, turning over in his mind all that she had said, and even the ease with which she could ask such questions. He felt suddenly as if his entire
life was balanced on the blade of a sword. As if fate were waiting for him to tip this way or that before slicing him to ribbons.

“I
have
seen a thousand terrible things, Grace,” he finally said. “Like my Scots grandmother before me, and her father before that, and a hundred generations before that, perhaps. Yes, we carry it in our blood like a curse. Are we the Vateis? I don't know. It's as good a name as any.”

“So that mark on your hip is not just a mark,” she said. “And the legend of the Guardians is not just a legend. You and Rance and the people like you are the descendants of Sibylla, the Gift.”

He looked away. “We are that,” he said, “beyond any doubt. There are enough family Bibles to prove it.”

“So your mother was a mystic,” said Grace slowly. “A Hindu prophet, or something like it, and she married a man who carried in his blood the Scottish Gift. A man who bore the mark of the Guardian, whose job it was to guard you as a child, I daresay. With bloodlines like that, Adrian, you could not have escaped your fate had you tried.”

He was shocked by how easily she accepted it—his sister's doing, no doubt. He turned on the bed to face her and took her hand in his. “You speak of all this as if it's red hair or rheumatism passing through the blood. I wish I could be so blasé.”

“Oh, I am certainly not that,” she said, her voice low and a little tremulous. “I had a poor aunt who had the most terrible dreams—dreams that could come true, or so the villagers whispered. Papa said she was treated like a pariah, and eventually she threw herself off a cliff. It broke my father's heart. No, Adrian, of all the things I am, blasé is not one of them.”

That quieted him for a time. Oh, it was a story he'd heard time and again—old village suspicions died hard. But to hear it from Grace saddened him.

“Why did you bring me here, Adrian, to this house?” she whispered. “I
know
it wasn't to seduce me—for that was my doing, not yours. But the man I first met in St. James's was very different from that angry, troubled man who stalked me down the stairs in Whitehall and kissed me nearly senseless.”

Ruthveyn considered what she asked. She thought she had a right to know. And perhaps she did. Initially, he'd not wished to frighten her, had not even been sure himself what he'd seen. He still wasn't. But perhaps it was time to be open with Grace.

Sitting opposite her on the bed, he drew his legs up into
siddhasana
and exhaled fully, trying to let go of the frustration warring inside him.

“I went to Holding's house in Belgrave Square that morning,” he said after a time. “And there I saw…something. The evil that is yet to come, I think. I do not believe Holding's was the last death in this terrible business. I just feel it strongly. And now I have dreamt…”

I dreamt of it, and I saw you dead
, he thought, closing his eyes.
Oh, Grace. My love. I saw the knife and I saw the blood and I felt my life draining away with it…

But Grace had set her hand over his where it lay relaxed upon his knee. “Who, Adrian?” she whispered. “Who did you see?”

He opened his eyes, and realized she was talking about his vision, not the dream. And his dreams were not prophetic, he reminded himself.
They were not.
Even a vision could be misinterpreted. And they could sometimes be altered by intervention, divine or otherwise. That much had been proven throughout history, and was in part the
reason Guardians existed. To keep the Gift from being ill-used by those who would maliciously tinker with the course of human events.

He swallowed hard and looked away, lest she see more than he wished in his eyes. “I cannot be sure,” he hedged, for that was true.

“But you saw
someone,
” she said.

He turned to her, his eyes bleak, and surrendered. “I saw Fenella Crane,” he said. “I saw her dead on a field of snow—dead by violent means. Hatred and fear swirled in the air around her, but…I could not quite make it out.”

“Fenella,
” Grace whispered, her hand going to her throat. “Dear God! Is she going to die?”

He shook his head. “I cannot know, but I fear it. The vision, it might have been metaphorical. Or just wrong in a way I cannot yet interpret. But I warned Napier some time ago.”

“And did he believe you?” Her voice was urgent. “My God, does he know you have the Gift?”

This time he did not even bother to deny anything; he felt suddenly beyond it. “Someone told Napier about me,” he rasped. “Months ago, when Lazonby was still imprisoned. Someone placed high within the Government. It had to be, for only three or four people know. Everyone else is dead now, and no one in the Society would betray me. But most days, Napier still thinks it's all balderdash.”

“
Mon Dieu,
” Grace murmured.

“But you may take comfort in the fact that Napier is having the house watched,” he said quietly. “I dragged him to Rotherhithe yesterday, and we saw Miss Crane. She seemed unsettled, mistrustful, and caught up in fretting over Josiah Crane. I could not see what it was that threatened her.”

“And when these things come to you,” she pressed, “what form do they take? Dreams? Visions?”

“Visions. Or, if I open myself, just…impressions. Like an emotion that manifests itself in a sort of energy around me.” He looked away and stared at a point deep inside the room. “Good God, that sounds insane.”

“No, it doesn't.” Her voice was firm. “Tell me how it happens. Tell me exactly.”

“I don't know how it happens,” he said, opening his hands, palms up, on his knees. “I know only that if I am not on my guard when I am with others—if I do not deliberately shut my mind—it just comes. When I touch people—bare skin, usually. Or sometimes when I simply look into their eyes, even accidentally. It's as if God just throws up a window sash and lets me see into their souls.”

“Everyone's?” Grace's voice went up a notch, as if she was envisioning what that would be like. But no one could understand, he thought, unless he had lived it.

“Not everyone, thank God,” he whispered, his shoulders slumping. “Some people are what the Vateis have always called
Unknowables.
We are blind to them.”

“What makes someone unknowable?”

He laughed, but it was bitter. “That, too, is unknown,” he confessed. “And some people are more open than others. Some people can be read by one Vates more easily than another. The Vateis generally cannot read one another—but there can be nuances. Anisha can read my palm and my stars, for example, skills she was taught in the traditional way of our mother's people, so it is possible her gift is one she inherited maternally, and she is not of the Vateis at all.”

“Remarkable,” Grace whispered. “There must be some rhyme or reason to it.”

He shrugged. “I have given up looking for any,” he said. “In Mr. Sutherland's genealogical research, he has found none.”

“Mr. Sutherland?”

“Our Preost—it's something like a priest,” said Ruthveyn. “Indeed, he has found people who have a Gift so vague they think it is just ordinary intuition, as if it has been all but bred out of the blood. Some, like Lazonby, have powers of keen perception—clairvoyance, perhaps, but not precognition. Some Vateis can read the opposite sex only. The Gift tends to skip a generation, but even so, we cannot read our own children or grandchildren at all, nor our siblings very well, if at all—my grandmother always said that was God's small mercy. Yet von Althausen swears it has nothing to do with God. That visions are merely uncontrolled electrical pulses in the brain; but I'll be damned, Grace, if I understand any of it.”

“Von Althausen,” Grace murmured. “The one Anisha calls the mad scientist.”

“
Anisha,
” he said grimly. “I could throttle her. She is the one who told you all this, isn't she?”

“She did not have to.” Grace shook her head, the confusion suddenly clearing from her visage. “
That
is what the St. James Society is, isn't it? You are studying the metaphysical.”

“I am funding the studies, yes, along with Lord Bessett,” he said. “The organization, however, has numbered natural philosophers amongst its membership for centuries. Now we are trying merely to foster a haven for research. To formalize initiation rites and make members known to one another. And to identify, if we can, any unknown family lines. The Society has lost its structure over the centuries—and that could be dangerous.”

“For centuries this has gone on?” Grace was staring at him. “So…it isn't even the St. James Society, really.”

For a moment, he considered how best to answer her, but he was in so deep, honesty seemed the only avenue left. “Not exactly,” he finally answered. “It is called the
Fraternitas Aureae Crucis
—the Brotherhood of the Golden Cross. In its oldest known form, the symbol had no thistle, and the ancient writings suggest the
Fraternitas
was once more a religious order than anything else.”

“Like the Knights Templar?”

He shrugged. “We think the Guardians sprang in part from the Jesuits, but even that is no more than legend,” he answered. “It must have something to do with the old Celtic civilizations of Europe, for some of the terms used by the
Fraternitas
are Celtic in origin. But the name is Latin, which suggests it was clearly Christianized under Roman influence. I think, frankly, we'll never know the truth, no matter how hard Sutherland works at it.”

Grace's eyes widened. “And all these people in this organization…they have the Gift?”

“No, no.” He dragged both hands through his hair. “All manner of scientific men belonged to the
Fraternitas
—the Savants, they were traditionally called. And then we have our men of law or of letters—the Advocati. Our men of God, the Preosts. But all of them protect, in one way or another, the Gift.”

“The Savants. The Advocati. The Preosts.” Grace's tone was musing. “It begins to sound like the Rosicrucians, or even something Masonic.”

He shook his head. “It predates Masonry,” he answered, “though many believe the
Fraternitas
was once a sept of the former—thus the cross emblem. But no one knows with certainty.”

Grace dipped her head to catch his gaze. “Adrian,”
she said tentatively, “can you read me? Can you see my future? Is that what's wrong?”

Ruthveyn fell silent for a time. He did not know what to say, and so he decided to be honest again, and this time he took both her hands in his. “I can feel your presence, Grace, when you are near me. I don't even need to look. When I said it was your scent, I lied. And when I touch you, yes, I feel we almost seep
into
one another. There are moments when we share an energy and a life force, much as the tantras teach. But to see beyond that? No, I cannot. Not yet.” He stopped, and bowed his head. “But we cannot hold out hope, Grace. For me, intimacy deepens the mind connection. Given what I feel for you…well, in the long run, I think we dare not hope.”

“I see.” After a moment's hesitation, Grace gently drew her hands from his, and stared into the gloom. “Well, I am touched. But it would be awful for you. I can understand that. One would have no secrets from one's lover.”

“And one would see, quite likely, the time—and even the means by which—that love would end,” he added, “which would be the hardest part of all.”

But Grace turned to him, her eyes suddenly shimmering in the lamplight. “Oh, Adrian, there is where you are wrong,” she said huskily. “True love does not end. It simply does not.”

At that, Ruthveyn felt something catch in the back of his throat, and he found himself compelled to look away. She had a point, he realized, for what he felt for her would never fade. Of that, he was increasingly, almost painfully, certain. He searched for the words to tell her, then thought better of it.

Just then, somewhere in the bowels of the house, there was a clanking sound. A bucket—or a coal shuttle—being set down. Ruthveyn's gaze flew to the window. No hint of
dawn yet lit the window, but the moon was waning. And most certainly, his servants were stirring.

Hastily, he caught Grace's face in both hands and kissed her. “I must go,” he said when at last he lifted his mouth from hers. “I do not know, Grace, how much more I could feel for you than I already do. I look at you, and it just takes my breath. But I shut off so much of myself so long ago—”

The
clank
! came again, ominously near now.

There really was nothing more to be said, and already he had said too much. Ruthveyn rose from the bed and left her, as he should have done long before.

But the catch in his throat was still with him, and the bittersweet taste of her was still on his lips, even as he slipped out the door.

S
unday was, technically speaking, Grace's half day. But because of Lord Lucan's indebtedness to his sister—and his sister's perverse pleasure in extracting her pound of flesh—the boys generally spent the time after morning church services with their uncle. In this way it came about that Grace, having the afternoon to herself, asked Higgenthorpe's assistance in fetching down from the attic her father's army trunk, which had accompanied her from pillar to post since his death.

The butler snapped his fingers, and in a trice, two of Ruthveyn's burly footmen had hauled the old beast down the stairs and into her bedchamber. Grace was on her knees and up to her elbows in memories—quite literally—when Lady Anisha wandered into her room in a pair of her silk pantaloons and plopped down in the
chair by the hearth. Today she even wore a gold ring in her left nostril and looked altogether different from the elegant young Englishwoman Grace had accompanied to church.

“What are you doing?” she asked, propping her chin on her fist.

Grace laughed and dusted a blob of smut from her cuff. “Woolgathering, mostly,” she said. “Or perhaps
dust-gathering
is the better term. Do you need me? This can wait.”

“No, I'm just bored.” Anisha studied her for a time. “So, my dear, Raju tells me he has explained the
Fraternitas
to you.”

Grace flicked an appraising glance up at her. “
Oui,
” she said swiftly. “Have you any objection?”

Anisha's eyes widened. “
Me
? I have nothing to do with it.”

“You are not…one of them?”

Anisha rolled her eyes in that expressive way of hers. “My dear girl, the
Fraternitas
is for men only—very stubborn, arrogant, hotheaded men, too, for all their fine talk of intellect and science. They may speak loftily of protecting women, but admit one?
Never.
”

“Ah,” said Grace. “I did not perfectly understand.”

As if the topic bored her, Anisha prodded the battered wooden trunk with the toe of her slipper. “Is that monstrous thing yours? It looks twice your age.”

Laughing, Grace sat back on her heels and lifted out a wide leather case. “Actually, it was Papa's, from his school days at the
École Spéciale Militaire
,” she said. “Our family treasures—pitiful lot that they are—have been packed in here an age. Here, have a look at Scotland Yard's incriminating evidence against me.”

With that, she snapped loose the lid and lifted it back.
Her father's Colt revolvers gleamed up from their blue velvet beds, brilliant as the day they were made.

“My, a brace of pistols!” said Anisha. “Will those be your weapons of choice on your next murderous rampage? Is that Napier's theory?”

But the mere mention of Napier's name brought back to Grace the shadow hanging over her—and the reason for it. Something in her expression must have withered.

Eyes widening with dismay, Anisha set her fingertips to her mouth. “Oh, Grace, how wicked of me! It is not funny, is it? Mr. Holding was to have been your husband.”

When Grace burst inexplicably into a full flood of tears, Anisha slid onto the floor. “Oh, Grace, forgive me,” she said, gathering her into her arms. “I am the most thoughtless person on earth.”

“No, I st-st-started it,” Grace managed. “I keep t-trying to make a joke of Napier, but—”

And for a moment, the grief swamped her anew. She sobbed into Anisha's shoulder as if the world were ending, yet not entirely sure just what it was she cried about. She did not precisely miss Ethan Holding, but she was deeply sorry he was gone.

Still, her grief seemed somehow more profound than that. It was the sadness of wanting and being afraid to want. The grief of fearing one might never feel normal again. The sorrow of missing her father, and of being so damnably weary of fearing Scotland Yard might skulk up behind her and drop a noose round her neck.

Worse, she had not seen Adrian in days, and she could feel the distance between them. He had not been at dinner, and last night Luc had remarked that his old suite in St. James's had come empty again. Adrian was avoiding her, Grace sensed, and in her darker moments, she began to
fear she had stirred up in him something he did not want to face—and but for her, would not have needed to.

“There, there,” said Anisha, patting her lightly on the back. “It cannot be as bad as all that, Grace. Have heart, my dear. It will all work out eventually, I do promise you.”

Confused, she lifted her face from Anisha's shoulder. “
B-B-But he's dead!
” she said through her hitching sobs. “How can it work out?”

Anisha's face fell. “No, no, it will not,” she agreed squeezing both her hands. “You are quite right about poor Mr. Holding.”

At last Grace sat back on her heels again, dabbing away at her eyes with her pocket handkerchief. “Oh, Anisha, do forgive me,” she said. “I am not quite myself.”

“Of course, how could you be?” Anisha smiled gently, then smoothed her hands over the leather gun case. “Tell me about these,” she went on. “Your father must have loved them very much.”

“Yes, he did.” Grace flashed a watery smile. “When I was perhaps fourteen, Mamma had someone bring them back from America as an anniversary gift. He loved them so much, I could not bear to part with them.”

Anisha crossed her legs on the carpet in that odd way her brother had, then lifted a small wooden box Grace had left perched on the ledge in the trunk. “And what is this?”

“Some of Mamma's jewelry,” said Grace. “Small things mostly, but all Papa could afford. They were given, though, with great love. Let me show you.”

And bit by bit, Anisha coaxed her from her gloom by turning Grace's attention to the trunk and allowing her to let go some of the grief. Save for her tears at Mr. Hold
ing's grave, Grace realized, she had not cried since leaving France and her father's funeral mass.

Eventually, when half the contents of the trunk lay spread about the carpet around them, and a dozen little stories had been told, Anisha caught her hand and squeezed it again. “You need to simply accept, Grace, that you have had a couple of very hard years,” she said. “You should, perhaps, cry more often. Not less.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

But Anisha had opened Grace's hand on her knee and was lightly tracing her finger over Grace's palm, her expression pensive. “You have had to leave your beloved Algeria to take your ailing father home to die,” she said. “But you faced it, and you went on to face a new job in a new place, then you faced the prospect of a new but uncertain future with Mr. Holding. And when you thought that settled, fate dashed it all to pieces again. And now you are here, with Adrian and all his darkness to deal with.”

“Oh, Anisha, it's not—”

But Anisha raised a forestalling hand. “Believe me, Grace, when I say I know something of tragedy and sudden change,” she said. “It wears one's emotions to a bloody nub, no matter how brave we may appear on the outside.”

She returned her gaze to Grace's hand, drawing her finger down the deep line that hooked down the center of her palm, then made a
tch-tching
sound. “See all these little lines crisscrossing everywhere?” she said. “This is just what I am talking about. They come from the strain in your life. Your sorrows, if you will.”

Grace leaned over to look, then sighed. “Well, Anisha, at least they are still on my hand, not my face,” she managed. “
Yet.
”

At last, they both laughed again.

Anisha's finger ran over one of the fleshy mounds of the palm. “And this—this is Venus. It represents Shakti, the great, divine mother.” She looked up slyly. “My dear Grace, your passion is impressive—a little too impressive. Have a care that your sensual appetites do not bring you to grief.”

Grace felt her face flame with heat. “I fear it may already be too late,” she muttered.

At that, Anisha gently closed Grace's hand. “This is too much for one day,” she said. “If you will permit me, I will do this at greater length after I have charted your stars.”

“Why not?” Grace knew nothing of astrology, or whatever it was called, but according to Adrian, it clearly mattered to his sister. “I will put myself in your hands, Anisha. Perhaps I shall learn something.”

Anisha smiled faintly. “Then write down the date and precise place of your birth,” she said, “and the time, please, as near as you know it.”

Grace cast a glance at the trunk. “It is written in there somewhere.”

“Excellent,” said Anisha. “Find it, then I will be able to consult the stars with great exactitude. And in this way, I will be able to tell you precisely when you should next go to my brother's bed.”

“
Ça alors!
” Grace uttered. “Anisha!”

“What?” Anisha blinked innocently. “You have not, I hope, given him up? Raju will not take it gracefully. No, you must go to his bed at the time when his mind is most clear and his
prana
is abundant. Go, and show him that overdeveloped Venus, and ask him what is to be done for it.”

Grace imagined her face was cherry red. “Really,
Anisha,” she said. “Here, if you are so full of mischief and energy, help me finish going through this trunk.”

“Of course.” Anisha uncrossed her legs and leapt up with ease. “What are you looking for?”

Grace knelt and peered down into it. Mostly books and bundles of papers remained. “I'm not absolutely certain,” she admitted. “Something I saw as a child—a book or perhaps a drawing? I think I shall know it when I see it. Let's just unload everything bit by bit.”

“Loose papers first,” declared Anisha. “I shall get them out, and you sit down and sort. This thing—was it a certain color?”

“Not that I can recall.” Grace began to go through the first pile of detritus passed down to her. “But do you remember, Anisha, that old legend about the Guardians?”

Anisha looked over her shoulder and flipped her long, silk scarf back into place. “About the little girl being kidnapped? And how they rode onto the Île Saint-Louis after her?”

“
Oui,
and then the bridge collapsed.” Grace scowled at her papers. “I didn't mention it to your brother, but something has been nagging at me. And it's the oddest thing.”

Apparently catching something in Grace's tone, Anisha turned slowly around. “Yes?”

“I had an ancestor who almost died in a bridge collapse—a
Scottish
ancestor—and according to family lore, he was left for dead in Paris.”

Anisha froze, eyes wide. “Truly?”

“Eventually he recovered, and may even have returned home for a time. But I believe he died in Paris—Papa once said something about his tomb. I cannot quite recall.”

“It makes one wonder how many bridges there are in Paris,” said Anisha.

“More than half a dozen,” said Grace pensively. “But how many, over the centuries, could have collapsed?”

“Good question.” Anisha set the next pile of papers down. “And this thing we are looking for, has it something to do with that ancestor?”

Here, Grace was compelled to lift both hands. “I do not know,” she said, “but that symbol—the golden cross—I
know
I've seen it somewhere. Somewhere in childhood. And since I was raised mostly in North Africa, isn't it more likely what I saw was something my father already had?”

“Very likely,” said Anisha, hefting out another load. “Let's sort the books first, for they shall go much faster.”

The sixth book Anisha handed out—a slender, crumbling volume of faded red leather—instantly struck a chord with Grace.

“This looks familiar,” she murmured, turning it over. The book had once been deeply embossed in gold, but much of it had worn away, and the cover was all but rent from the spine. Still, it looked beautiful—and costly.

Anisha knelt beside her. “What is it?”

“A
bréviaire,
” she said. “Or a sort of prayer book. It is in Latin, of course.”

Gently, Grace flipped it open, and there it was, emblazoned upon the frontispiece, hand-colored in brilliant shades of red and blue. In this version, there was no thistle. The Latin cross was illuminated in shimmering gold, positioned above a crossed quill and sword, the letters F.A.C below.

“Good Lord, the
Fraternitas Aureae Crucis!”
Anisha whispered, brushing her finger over it. “And look! What does this say?”

Excited, Grace turned the book to show her. On the top right corner of the title page, in a spidery, cramped hand,
someone had written his name and address. “
Sir Angus Muirhead,
” she murmured, “
Rue de la Verrerie.
”

Beyond that, however, there was nothing to indicate who Muirhead had been or how he had come to own the book, though the pages looked well thumbed. The publication date was given as 1670, and within, the book was beautifully illustrated in brilliant hues of red, blue, and gold.

“Muirhead,” Anisha repeated. “Is that a Scots name? Could he be your ancestor?”

Grace sighed. “Angus is a Scots name, I believe,” she said. “I suppose he is a relation, or Papa would not have had the book, but oh, I do so wish I had listened more as a child!”

“Is there a family Bible, perhaps?”

Grace laid the prayer book down. “It's possible my uncle has one. And that address is near the Place de Vosges, just round the corner from his house. The house where my father and many generations before him were born. Is that not odd?”

“Grace,” said Anisha excitedly, “what if you are descended from the Gift? From Sibylla?”

“Well, it couldn't quite be that,” said Grace. “Even if we stretch probability, and say this
is
my ancestor, and that he
did
come to Paris with her, it would mean only that he was, at best, her kinsman.”