“The tongs were right beside you,” Alex said drily.
“We have no need of tongs.” Her voice was a strange, high stage-whisper. It did indeed sound almost like two people speaking at once. A clever bit of ventriloquism.
“Your Grace.” Nightingale sounded oddly hesitant. If Alex hadn’t known better, he would have thought he was scared. The man knew how to work a room. “Have you any rope? I think the time may have come to restrain Miss Jones.”
Oh, very good. The subtle implication of danger. Alex had to hand it to him; it was an admirable performance. He rose and fetched the cord set aside for this moment from the writing desk drawer. No mean feat given how dark it was. It was good, strong rope but not so thick that she wouldn’t be able to cut through it if she had to. She wouldn’t even need to retie herself since he intended to “expose” her before they reached that stage.
He led her into the spirit cabinet, and without closing the curtain behind them, he sat her on the chair he found there. First he tied her wrists to the arms, then her ankles to the legs. All this in near total darkness. Only a single candle burned on this side of the curtain and that a stub. He was fairly certain she was going to need a knife, so allowing the curtain to obscure them again, he withdrew the blade from her sleeve and eased it into her fingers.
“Cheating,” she whispered.
He placed a quick kiss on her forehead and withdrew.
Only when he was back in his seat waiting—it could take as long as twenty minutes for the “materialization” to begin—did he realize how natural that last casual, affectionate gesture had felt, and this despite what a prickly cactus of a woman she was. Actually, he rather enjoyed her spikes.
Nightingale hadn’t requested that Alex be bound too, something Alex had half expected. He wouldn’t be the first skeptic to sweep aside the curtain in an attempt to expose a spiritualist. It was always claimed that interrupting the trance endangered the medium’s life. He had never needed to stoop to such desperate measures before. And it was a stoop. Perhaps that was why Nightingale hadn’t bothered. He credited Alex with better taste. Or perhaps he was confident he could simply restrain him.
It was a shame it had come to this, but a curtain dive was the most dramatic way to expose Evie. Carter would spread the news far and wide.
They waited in silence, the only sounds coals shifting and logs crackling. Even the clock on the mantle had been allowed to run silent, its pendulum halted for lack of a winding. It had been ticking his whole life. His father would have dismissed the servant who failed to keep it going. When this was over, Alex would sell it as he would sell every stick of furniture the duke had so much as brushed past. In Harcastle House, that meant everything that wasn’t nailed down and some things that were if it could be managed.
A moan sounded from beyond the curtain and set his skin prickling. Ah, the spirits stirred. A short silence followed, then as the tension was fading, another low keening, the sound undoubtedly eerie but undeniably arousing. The moaning continued, slow and measured but so like those pleasure-pain sounds a woman made in bed.
Ellis shifted uncomfortably. Embarrassed, no doubt.
Carter remained absolutely motionless, probably for the same reason. Only the boy looked bored, the only person here too inexperienced to think what Alex was thinking.
Nightingale gave nothing away. Like Alex, he managed to appear at ease, neither unnaturally still nor restive. Both watched with sober, professional interest. They might have been attending a simple tea party.
Inside, Alex was burning, his mind teeming with thoughts of what had almost happened behind the curtain, of her slim, shapely legs and how badly he’d wanted to trail his fingers higher, how sure he’d been that she’d be wet and aching for him. As perhaps she still was.
He wanted to kneel between her delicately parted thighs and kiss and suck. Make love to her with his fingers and his tongue. He’d never done such a thing to a woman in all his well-mannered affairs. There was nothing polite about his feelings for Evie or the things he longed to do to and with her. His arousal grew painful as he listened to the sounds she made. Did she know? Was she doing this to him on purpose?
So distracted was he that he might not have seen the glimmer of light there on the floor if not for Carter and Ellis’s simultaneous gasps. A tiny spot on the floor in front of the cabinet, but growing, growing all the time.
Abruptly, Evie’s moans ceased. Throttled mid-cry. The silence seemed loud in their absence as the pool of light slowly expanded outward and upward. Not bright and clean like daylight. This emanation possessed a sickly green tinge, unwholesome and disquieting. A tinny, not quite musical sound started up, discordant and jangling. For several moments he remained disoriented, unable to pinpoint precisely what he was seeing.
It looked almost like… Was that a face?
Yes, a face on the floor but obscured by gauze. Or lace? And glowing steadily, its light rising and expanding until it was the width of a woman’s shoulders. Before his eyes he was witnessing a woman rising through the floor. Yet he knew there were no trapdoors in this room. Evie had hung curtains and ordered carpet installed, but had called for no carpenter, no plasterer. The ceiling downstairs remained intact. How then?
The answer would be simple. They always were. The tricks were minor. The cracking of an ankle joint could be mistaken for ghostly communication. The observer’s imagination did the real work. But now, with this ghostly apparition forming before his eyes, he couldn’t think how it was done.
“Is that fabric?” Carter sounded equally fascinated, his physician’s mind groping for sense in the madness.
Yes, Alex saw it too. The movement of gently swaying fabric. Something light, like a nightgown. Or a shroud. Up, up the thing came until she stood as tall as he. As tall as Helen. Soon he must rise and pull back the curtain. There he would find Evie, her bonds cut through, playing with wind chimes or a xylophone. But he almost didn’t want to. There was magic in this performance. Not magic as the world understood it and not the magic he’d been searching for, but magic nonetheless. Artistry. For the first time in his life, he hesitated to shatter an illusion.
Nightingale muttered an oath. He was fiddling with something on the floor. A gas lamp, Alex realized, as the other man held the now lit lamp aloft. He must have taken it from the mantelshelf before sitting down.
What was he about?
With the extra light, the vague outline of Helen’s facial features showed more clearly through the layers of her veil. Alex tensed but she was not so visible that he would have been able to identify her, his own sister, if he hadn’t known it was her.
Nightingale cried out and stumbled backward, overturning his chair. “You!” he cried, his voice filled with pain and horror. He dropped the lamp and sprang forward, clearly intending to grab Helen, perhaps rip away her veil.
Fortunately, Carter was there. He lunged, and before Nightingale could take more than a step, pulled the man’s left arm back so sharply it was a wonder it didn’t break. He kept it there, pulled at that unnatural angle. He didn’t speak, didn’t say anything to give Helen away. He was simply a gentleman defending a lady.