The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart (20 page)

“I’m not sure that’s fair, Jonathon. The demon almost killed me. It’s hard not to remember—”

“Almost killed us both. But we’re stronger than it was. Bear with me. Please. Trust. I need your trust. Otherwise I can’t play the part well.”

I nodded. “Just…hold me a moment. So I remember what
you
feel like.” He gladly obliged, folding me tenderly in his arms, kissing my hair. “That’s better.”

“Yes, it is.”

We couldn’t shake the chill, even in the summer, as we walked downtown.

“Jonathon,” I said. “Roth. I think that’s the same man that paid a visit to Nathaniel with another doctor. ‘Big, pale, with garish suits can only describe so many. I assume that doctor who visited Nathaniel was from the pharmacology department of the three branches, miracle elixir and all.”

Jonathon took a deep breath. “The ever-widening web.”

“Preston?” Mrs. Northe asked, taking one look at our faces as we walked in her door. I wonder if she felt the chill we brought with us.

“Going batty, if you ask me.” He turned to Mrs. Northe, continuing, “And a bit paranoid. His guard, sent by the Society, is actually a possessed body, we believe. Preston has shut down his wing. The building was
unnaturally
cold. In England I was taught what that temperature means.”

“That the building is full of spirits,” Mrs. Northe commented.

“Can you see them?” Jonathon asked. “Spirits? It would seem some people can. I didn’t see any ghosts, but good Samaritans in London shooed away an entourage I didn’t even know I had. I was a lot warmer afterward.”

“You and I have both had brushes with death, Lord Denbury. That tends to bring them out,” Mrs. Northe stated, handing us tea we hoped would mitigate our lingering shivers. “While I’ve only seen an occasional ghost, and only at certain times, I do feel them around me more often than not.”

“Ah, our haunted life,” Jonathon sighed, taking a seat at Mrs. Northe’s lacquered writing desk at the corner of the room. “We weren’t allowed downstairs, where Natalie presumes the work is being held, and I wasn’t inclined to pick a fight. Not today. May I use your stationery, Mrs. Northe?”

“Of course.”

He set to work on a note, pulling out a piece of paper plucked from his breast pocket that bore a red and yellow seal. He glared at the paper as he began to write.

“Your expected correspondence with evil, I presume?” I asked.

“I wish it were otherwise,” he replied.

I shuddered. Letters should be for love and fondness, not for matters like this. Faint, hollow traces ringed his eyes. That old haunted look. I remember it well from the days within the painting. Perhaps playing the part was just as draining as being split body from soul.

A small movement out of the corner of my eye turned me to the door. Rachel had her hand on the pocket doors, steadying herself, and when her eyes fell upon me she smiled weakly.

I jumped up and brought her to the sofa to sit beside me. “Feeling better?” I signed.

“Comes and goes,” she signed.

Jonathon looked up, put down his pen, stood, and bowed.

“Miss Horowitz, I presume?” he asked me, coming closer.

I nodded. “She can read lips, so make sure she’s focused on you and don’t mumble.”

Jonathon knelt before her, reaching out and asking for her hand. She gave it. “Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury, at your service.” He kissed Rachel’s hand. “Any friend of Natalie’s is a friend of mine.”

Rachel smiled, her wan face suddenly transforming into something healthier.

“Now, Miss Horowitz, I am a doctor, and I hear you’ve been plagued with spirits.”

Rachel nodded.

“I don’t know how to cure
that
, but it doesn’t appear you’ve been eating well. No appetite?”

Rachel shook her head.

“But if you drank something, could you keep it down?”

Rachel nodded.

“Do you like juice?”

Rachel nodded again.

“Mrs. Northe, may I have access to your kitchen? And also to your medicine cabinet? I’d like to prepare a concoction for Miss Horowitz to get her strength up.”

“All my supplies are at your disposal. Make me a list of anything I lack, and Mary will get it for you straightaway.”

“Excellent,” Jonathon said. “We need to get her strength back for the coming days.” He bowed his head to Rachel and exited.

“I like him,” she signed to me with a wide smile. “Is he yours?”

I blushed.

“Yes, he’s very taken,” Mrs. Northe signed.

Rachel blushed. “I forgot you could sign, too.” Rachel bit her lip.

“I learned to sign when Peter lost his ability to speak. The last year of his life,” Mrs. Northe added. “We brought a tutor in to teach us both. It was so much better than just wasting away in silence,” she said, blinking back a tear. Yet another detail about Mrs. Northe I feel I should have known but didn’t. She rarely spoke about herself, but whenever she did open up, I couldn’t help caring for her more.

“Oh, Rachel,” I said, plucking the pendant from where it had been tucked safe in my sleeve. “You mentioned that you often contacted spirits through tokens, something meaningful. Does this look familiar?”

Rachel clapped her hands to her mouth, then seized the pendant and held it to her breast.

“Oh,” I said, realizing why it had seemed familiar. “It’s yours.” I remembered it from school. Everyone had asked about it, and Rachel had gotten tired of signing out explanations of what the Star of David was, so she’d taken to wearing it beneath her dresses.

Watching the exchange, Mrs. Northe came over beside us and squeezed my shoulder. “Oh, Natalie, that was very wise of you to find this.”

I blinked and smiled. “It was?”

“Yes. Just as Rachel has been tethering spirits to objects, I think that she has been tethered to this work herself, tethered to loyalty to Preston, through this meaningful token. Returning it to her gives her soul more freedom. Talismans are very powerful in this particular brand of Society magic. While the spirits will not readily let her go, you may just have broken Preston’s hold.”

I smiled, proud of myself and my instincts, and moved to clasp the pendant where it belonged. Rachel kissed the star and pressed it tightly against her chest.

Jonathon returned with a glass of orange juice with thick syrup at the bottom. Honey, probably, and some white grit I assumed must be additives Jonathon deemed important.

“Miss Horowitz, please do a doctor the great favor of drinking this.” He handed the glass to Rachel, who looked at me as if for permission.

I signed to Rachel that she could trust him.

She nodded and drank, looking up at Jonathon with shy thanks. Maybe it was my wishful thinking, but she soon began to regain some color to her cheeks and lips.

“Lord Denbury,” Mrs. Northe began with a sly smile. “I know you’ve had a trying visit already today, but you
do
know there is another visit yet to pay. A very important one.”

Jonathon paled.

“Yes. Of course. Let me put on a fresh suit. I want to look my best.” He turned to me. “Then I shall come to call.”

Chapter 18

Mrs. Northe had her driver send me home while Jonathon prepared for the visit.

“Lord Denbury has returned and he would like to come calling,” I announced to my father the moment I walked in the door. “He can come, can’t he?”

“Of course. Knowing you, you’d find a way to see him anyway, even if I forbid it,” my father said as he made his way to his small study. “I have to have some idea of who I’m dealing with.” He closed the door.

Bessie moved about the parlor, straightening up every surface with a fastidious eye. “Don’t mind him. That’s how fathers are at the prospect of losing their daughter. Especially an only child. But Natalie, love, you’re
talking
. You’re being courted by a
British
lord
. I don’t care what kind of witchcraft happened to cause it, looks like God’s work to me,” she said, moving to our kitchen to make sure there was plenty of tea.

“It’s been God’s work indeed, I promise,” I said, following her and helping to prepare small tea sandwiches. “We couldn’t have fought a devil without faith founded on light and love, not darkness and fear. I want you to know the sort of man he is, what sort of woman I want to be. We may have gone about things unconventionally—”

“I trust you. I know how it is to do things unconventionally. Lord, my whole family did. So long as the Man Upstairs guides that convention,” she said, pointing to heaven, “your methods are all right with me.”

I readied Father’s dinner and took it to him, sure to place a kiss on his cheek as I set the silver tray upon his desk as was our custom. We’d long ago done away with family dinners on account of my lack of speech. Breakfast was the meal we ate together, and being a bunch of readers, writers, and artists, evening was time for work, reading, daydreaming. Perhaps this custom might change now, but then we knew everything was changing.

“I just…want you to be happy and taken care of,” he said quietly. I turned at the door.

“I
am
happy and taken care of, by you. And I will be by him, I promise.”

Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury, charmed everyone he met, so how could he not charm my father?

***

Father hardly cuts an imposing figure; he’s tall but slight. But he’s an academic who has his moments of intensity, and he stared down Jonathon with all of it when he opened the door.

Jonathon was dressed to make any girl swoon. He’d taken extra care to impress in a fine, new suit coat, something charcoal and magnificent, with a navy waistcoat and light blue cravat that emboldened the already piercing quality of his blue eyes. His black hair was combed neatly, and his kid gloves met my father’s bare hand. Jonathon was the first to extend his palm for a firm shake.

“Hello, Mr. Stewart. It’s an honor to meet you. Jonathon Whitby, Lord Denbury, at your service.” He nodded to me, bowing. “Miss Stewart.”

“Lord Denbury,” I curtsied. My, how
formal
. But surely my father had read that Jonathon and I used to rendezvous by my falling through a painting and into his arms.

“Indeed, do come in.” Father gestured, and we ascended the stairs to our top floor. Bessie opened the door and bowed her head. I could see her holding back a wild grin that almost made me laugh.

“My lord,” she said.

“Oh, please, miss, no titles with me. I do hope all of you will call me Jonathon.”

“There’s been plenty of familiarity here already,” my father cautioned. “Lord Denbury, this is a friend of Natalie’s mother and the all-around saint of our house, Mrs. Cartwright.”

“Mrs. Cartwright, a pleasure.”

“The pleasure is ours, Lord Denbury,” Bessie exclaimed. “You’re a miracle indeed to get our Natalie talking again. That sure is a blessing.”

“She certainly is,” Jonathon replied. He moved to take my hand, it being such a natural gesture between us, but then he thought better of it.

Inwardly I said a prayer to my mother to bless us here, now, in her house.

Mother never had been gone from our house, not in my mind, not in anyone’s. I gestured for us to move to the sitting room, where Bessie had gone to the trouble of polishing the fine silver candlesticks and making the place glow with glittering light. I gave her a look of thanks I hoped she understood. She beamed.

I let the men take what chairs they were comfortable in, leaving me the divan, where I arranged my skirts carefully as I sat. I’m sure my father had never seen me so poised in all my life.

“Natalie has informed me, Lord Denbury, that you’ve been dealing with your affairs in England after your…unfortunate circumstances. I am deeply sorry for the loss of your family. Having endured loss myself, I certainly empathize.”

My father was trying to be easy and warm, but I could see his strain. He hadn’t any practice with my being courted, and now he knew our situation was serious and sudden.

“Thank you, sir. It seems our Greenwich estate was seized, but with due diligence I am sure in time it will be returned to me. Our London apartments remain unscathed, but I was in the country only long enough to transfer investments, secure further holdings, and rescue a few treasures.”

I fondled the cameo about my neck, one such treasure. I hadn’t given a thought to his London property, though I suppose every aristocrat has multiple properties. I was glad he was not entirely without a home in his home country. It was smart of him to move through London as he had done—safely, quietly. And telling my father about secure provisions certainly wasn’t a bad move on the wooing-the-father scale.

“Do you intend to stay in New York, then?” my father asked pointedly.

“My parents intended to buy a townhouse here, in Greenwich Village, in honor of our Greenwich estate. I plan to make good on their intentions. If you or any of your Metropolitan fellows has a recommendation of a good broker, I’d be grateful. I’m a bit leery of unsolicited solicitors.”