The Sweetest Dark (3 page)

“It's on the southern coast, set near Idylling. Seat of the dukes of Idylling. The Louis family, you know.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Lovely area. I myself spent a holiday there once.” He leaned back in his chair, his gaze taking on a faraway cast. “Sandy beaches. Balmy breezes. One may sea-bathe in utter comfort… .”

I counted silently to twenty, then cleared my throat. “What happened to her, sir?”

Mr. Forrester lowered his gaze back to me. “To whom?”

“To the other girl? The one who left the opening for a new student?”

“Why, I'm certain nothing
happened
to her, Eleanore. Really, what a question. I trust you will manage to curb that macabre bent of yours once at Iverson. You won't make many friends that way.”

“No, sir,” I agreed, and pressed my lips shut.

London wasn't the only part of the country being attacked. The dailies were full of articles about how the Germans were beginning to bomb the coasts, as well, as far as they could go in their massive zeppelin airships.

Wessex. I'd bet the sterling school of Iverson had found itself with a sudden slew of student openings.

“The headmistress, Mrs. Westcliffe, has been made aware of your particular … personal history and has decided to take you in anyway. Provisionally, I might add. The duke himself sponsors the school, you know, and has granted it a very generous endowment for a select few impoverished students. You are an extremely lucky young woman, Eleanore.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect you to make the most of this opportunity.”

“I shall, sir.”

“Indeed. Not many patients from Moor Gate will ever be offered such a reprieve. You must always remember them and your months spent there. Strive to succeed for their sakes, as well as your own.”

I wondered, very seriously, if Mr. H. W. Forrester had ever noticed the curtain cord hanging down the wall just behind him or considered how easy it might be to wrap it around and around his neck.

He leaned forward again, his jowls swelling over his collar, and frowned at me with his owlish disapproval. The diamond securing his tie flared.

“You seem much improved from your first years here, child, but do not give me reason to regret this arrangement. Obey the headmistress without question, and fulfill all your duties to the duke and to the school.”

“Yes, sir.”

He frowned at me for a moment more, then sighed. “That will be all, Miss Jones.”

And it was. That had been my last evening in the Home.

Idylling, Iverson, dukes and bombs and sea-bathing …

I didn't care if the Huns shelled it every night, if the duke wanted me to dance a jig for my suppers, or if the school itself was situated smack in the middle of the South Pole. It would be better than Blisshaven, I told myself, savoring each chewy bite of that cold sausage on the train. Better than Moor Gate.

Better than anything, really. How could it not be?

Of course, that last, hopeful thought occurred to me only hours before I would meet Jesse and Armand, those two savagely different and yet dangerously similar creatures who were destined to dig their talons into me and change my life forever.

Chapter Three

Mine was the final stop of the line. By then there were only two of us left in the compartment, me and a slouched, elderly man with a tweed cap pulled down low over his ears, a cane and valise propped by his feet. He'd been snoring for the past two hours, even through the lurching stops and starts.

Beyond the glass of my window the night was now amethyst. Infinite amethyst, deep and dark with a ripple of stars winking over the obsidian break of the forest paralleling the tracks. I found that depth of purple sky mesmerizing. Nights in the city were always gray or black or the color of the streetlights. Always. So I wasn't sure why this particular hue—those stars, the jagged line of trees—was so familiar. I must have imagined it this way, I decided. I read so much. I must have read of amethyst nights and imagined it.

“
Bourne
mouth,
end
o'the line,” called the stationmaster from past my window, clumping along the wooden platform as the train hissed to a halt.

I stood, stretching the ache from my shoulders, and found my suitcase. A glance back at the snoring man showed he was already up and shuffling out, so I followed him, my case bumping against my knees.

A waft of damp air hit me as I exited, stirring the loose strands of hair that had pulled free of my chignon. It wasn't balmy precisely. It was April, so it wouldn't be, even here. But it carried the promise of warmth, smelling strongly of the salty Channel and of the coming summer that only waited to bloom.

I took it in with wonder. I could
taste
the sea, I realized. I could taste it.

“Last stop, miss,” barked the stationmaster, now paused before me. “Everyone off. Even little girls, eh?”

I had lingered too long on the steps leading down to the platform. In my chagrin, I jumped over the last two rungs, landing smartly on both feet, but the man was already pacing off.

I walked slowly away from the train, looking around the platform.

Someone was supposed to meet me. Director Forrester hadn't known who, but he had been reasonably certain—those had been his exact words,
reasonably certain,
mumbling to himself as he'd ruffled through all the papers on his desk,
because surely they could not expect you to find it on your own, no, indeed; I cannot seem to locate the telegram that says so, but
—that someone from the school would meet me here and take me on the rest of the way to Iverson, which apparently involved traveling by foot and carriage and maybe even a ferry. I was as unclear on the exact location of the school as the director had been.

I prayed he was right, that someone would come. I didn't have enough money left for another cab.

But … the station itself seemed closed, its curtains shut, its windows dark. That by itself wasn't too surprising; in London the streetlamps were extinguished at six and windows were papered in black to block any little leaks of light. No one wanted to guide the Germans' nighttime bombs. Yet the train station's windows weren't papered. There was simply no one left inside to turn on the lights.

I did hear music playing from somewhere, lovely and haunting, muted. Perhaps the stationmaster had left on a phonograph in his office.

The platform was virtually empty. There was no one at all to my left, toward the end of the train, and only a pair of porters unloading a stack of luggage far up by the front, near the first-class compartments, threading in and out of a single pool of light cast from a lamppost nearby.

The stationmaster had aimed their way. After a few more minutes of glancing nervously around the deserted platform, I did the same.

Before I'd gotten far, a new cluster of people approached the growing wall of trunks. There were four of them plus the stationmaster, their hats and shoulders stroked with gold from above. One of the newcomers was a man of about forty in a long taupe coat. The other three were younger people more my age, two boys and a girl.

Or not quite my age, I amended to myself, as the nearest of the boys noticed my approach. They were all taller, probably a few years older. And much, much better dressed than I.

The boy who'd seen me had sandy hair and heavy-lidded hazel eyes; they looked me up and down without interest before he turned his attention back to his companions.

“… to Idylling,” the second boy was saying to the long-coated man. “Is it really just you, George? I mean, look at all this. Chloe alone brought enough trunks to fill three autos.”

“Armand!” protested the girl, with a sort of trilling little laugh. “Honestly!”

“Not to mention Laurence's and mine,” the boy went on, speaking over her. “No, there's no hope for it. There's not room for all of us. We'll have to motor there without you.”

“My lord, I don't believe His Grace will—”

“Right, well, what Reginald doesn't know won't hurt the rest of us, will it, old chap? I'll send Thomas back for you with the auto as soon as I can. You can wait here with the baggage.”

“Sir,” broke in the stationmaster from behind them, just outside their ring of light. The other four angled as one to see him, still brushed in buttery gold. The stationmaster rocked back on his heels. “We closed for the night five minutes past, sir.”

“Ah,” said the second boy. He had longish chestnut hair that touched the top of his starched collar; much of his face was obscured by the brim of his hat, but I saw him tug at his lower lip in thought. Even to me, it looked utterly contrived. “I see. Perhaps, though, you might make an exception tonight? For the duke?”

“The duke, sir?”

“Well, the duke's
son,
” said the hazel-eyed boy, sounding impatient. “Lord Armand, of course.”

“Station closes at ten sharp,” said the stationmaster. “Rules, sir.”

“Now,
really,
” began the boy named Laurence, and in his clipped voice he was speaking very quickly, but curiously enough I no longer heard what he was saying, because just then the other one—the Duke of Idylling's son himself, I supposed—had caught sight of me hanging back in the shadows.

He had been reaching into his inner coat pocket for something. I saw dimly and without surprise that it was a wallet, and while still holding it he pushed up his hat, staring at me intently. His skin was pale as ivory, his eyes were blue and heavily lashed, quite as striking as a girl's.

The line of his lips began to flatten into an expression that might have been pain or irritation or perhaps pure distaste.

“Who are you?” he demanded.

Laurence and the stationmaster, who had been working themselves into an actual argument, fell silent. The trilling girl leaned past the duke's son to get a better look at me, the lace wrap around her neck and shoulders prickled with light. She was as stunning as I'd expected, dark hair, dark eyes, a rosebud mouth puffed into a pout. An overripe scent of jasmine and sugar surrounded her like a cloud.

“Oh, Mandy, do send her off,” I heard her plead under her breath. “Tell her we haven't any pennies to spare.”

I spoke to the dark-haired lord. “I'm going to Iverson. To the school. Can you give me a lift?”

Laurence snorted and the girl looked truly appalled, but Lord Armand only stared at me harder.

“What's your name?”

“Eleanore.”

This bit of information didn't seem to satisfy him. He took off his hat with his free hand, and for one wild and unlikely moment I thought he was going to offer me a bow, but instead he pushed his fingers through the shiny brown hair that had been mashed to his forehead.

“I haven't got a trunk,” I said into the silence. “Only this.” I tapped the toe of my shoe against my suitcase. “So I won't take up much room.”

Chloe raised a hand to her mouth; her snicker was still loud enough to hear.

Yet I held on to that steady blue gaze. From the cut of his clothes to the angle of his chin, Lord Armand of Idylling was every inch an aristocrat and no doubt used to people of my class scraping low whenever he passed by. I wasn't going to be one of them. There was something about this young man, some indefinable thing that felt like—like a living snake poised taut between us. A real, electric, dangerous thing, and I knew if I dropped my gaze, it would turn on me, and I would lose more than just this moment.

“How about it?” I said, trying to sound confident but instead managing something barely above a whisper.

The pressed shape of his lips began to loosen. He opened his mouth, maybe to speak, but before he could, a new voice chimed in.

“No need, m'lord.”

I didn't have to look away first; Lord Armand did. His gaze cut to someone behind me.

“Hastings,” greeted the boy, strangely flat, and when I turned around fully I saw that the new person who'd spoken was my fellow passenger from the train, the snoring old man, standing now motionless beneath the awning of the station roof. “How … nice to see you again.”

“Aye. I'm here for the gel.” The man curled an arm toward me. “Come along, miss. Haven't got all night.”

I flicked a last glance at Armand, who was scowling faintly. None of the others were looking at me at all.

I picked up my case again and walked away.

The elderly man didn't wait for me to reach him. He limped off into the amethyst-and-star night without another word, his cane tapping emphatically with every other step.

I was feeling my way down the platform stairs when I heard the imperious tones of Lord Armand lift sharp behind me.

“Eleanore who?” he called.

Bugger him and his gorgeous eyes and his snide friends and his chauffeured motorcar. I kept walking.

“Eleanore
who
?” he called again, much louder.

“Jones,” yelled back the man ahead of me; he'd paused at last to let me catch up. “Eleanore Rose Jones!”

A carriage with a pair of horses and a driver waited at the end of a graveled lot. It was a big carriage, the old-fashioned kind that was entirely enclosed, a bit like a fairy-tale pumpkin transformed into a coach. Which was fortunate, because horses always hated me. No matter how gently I spoke or how quietly I passed by, to a one they hated me, and venturing too close meant nearly always a bolt or a lunging bite.

We crunched along the lot, countless little stones grinding beneath the soles of my feet. A long, gleaming automobile had been parked at an angle in the exact middle, clearly waiting for trunks and lords.

“Mr. Hastings?” I said after a moment.

“Aye.”

“My middle name isn't Rose.”

Funny that I couldn't see him smile, but I thought I sensed it anyway. “No? What's it, then?”

“I haven't got one,” I admitted.

“Well, I'd say Rose is as fine a name as any, ain't it?”

I saw his point.

...

The interior of the carriage was not nearly as musty as I'd feared it'd be. In fact, it was luxurious, far nicer than the London hansom I'd been in so many hours past. The seat cushions were plush and newly padded, the walls had been papered in silk, and a pair of folded fleece blankets had been left out for me to ward off the chill.

Since Mr. Hastings had climbed up outside to sit beside the driver on his perch, I drew one blanket over my shoulders and the other across my lap. I wasn't terribly cold, but they were so soft. As the carriage rolled away from the station, I rubbed a velvety edge slowly over and over the back of my hand.

For each tiny, merciful gift from life, I was grateful.

The blankets at the Home had been of boiled wool. There was a fleece coverlet at the nurse's station, but you had to be white-knuckled, wishing-you-were-dead sick for her to offer it, and usually it smelled like iodine.

I'd kept the curtains opened and the window cracked. I craved that outside air, which still tasted of wonderful salt to me.

A motorcar roared up behind us, its reflective lanterns splashing a feeble illumination along the fence posts lining the bend in the road. The horn bugled twice before the car sped past, spitting pebbles in its wake. Chloe's laughter was full and loud as they vanished into the dark ahead.

The dust settled, and the horses pulling our carriage only plodded on.

I didn't feel sleepy. I should have; I should have been exhausted, actually. In my excitement over leaving the Home I hadn't slept much the night before, and certainly today had dragged on long enough. I removed my hat and rested my head against the seat back, closing my eyes, listening to the sounds of the shore and the horses and the country night.

We bumped over a bridge spanning a river, waking wooden thunder from each and every plank.

I'm not sure when I began to grasp that I was hearing more than just those ordinary noises. Ten minutes later? Thirty? It came upon me gradually, the awareness that the phonograph music from the station was still playing, even though we were no longer anywhere near it.

I opened my eyes. I sat up. Was I dreaming?

It was still playing.

I slapped my cheeks with both hands, pinched my arms. I was
asleep,
this was a
dream,
I needed to wake up, because this
was not happening.

But it was.

“No,” I muttered, caught somewhere between anger and disbelief. “Not again.”

I searched the carriage, pulling up the cushions, running my hands along the smooth walls, the door latch, the window frames, the floorboards. I found nothing new, nothing to explain the slow, sweet music that was playing very markedly all around me.

And it
was
around me, not merely inside my head. I was not imagining it. I'd never heard this composition before, this wistful combination of notes that swelled and subsided but never fully ended. It was not entirely unlike the music emanating from metals or stones but was far more complex than that. More a symphony than a single song.