decided, by a particularly rough bit of wool that had scratched against his
chest. She was now feeling, with her own hands, any material that would come
into contact with her beloved’s body.
I heard Lawrence speak of how John was learning everything he could, and he was
learning it quickly. And that was why, he said one evening at dinner, that we
saw him so rarely. He was busy. And I knew that was good that he wasn’t often
around, and I hated it, which made me an idiot.
Days would pass without my seeing him, and that was good, too. I knew that. The
other things that were also true that I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to
explore, I locked firmly away.
The elegant little derringer that Mr. Forrester had fetched me himself from York
was safe under my pillow, wrapped in one of my handkerchiefs. Grandfather had
taught me to shoot. I went out only one afternoon to practice with my new gun.
A week later, Lawrence suggested that I invite Peter home for Christmas. I
immediately wrote a letter, and Lawrence franked it. He was a splendid man, my
husband. So very thoughtful. And I could never forget that. What John had said
to me that day by the stream?that my fear of men had directed my life, had
resulted in my marriage to his uncle. I knew it was true, but I didn’t want to
change anything, except in moments when I was lying in my bed at night, trying
to sleep and John would slip into my mind and I felt a deep hard stroke of pain
and regret that left emptiness. And, in the light of day, I remembered who and
what he was. He was big and dangerous. If there was darkness deep inside me, as
he had said there was, it was because of what he was, because of what every man
was, that had put it there.
I myself was very busy, planning for the big ball. All of us were involved. The
guest list was made up and refined, argued over, added to, and finally the
invitations were sent out, many of them delivered by messenger. Lawrence was
pleased about the preparations. The menu was selected. I asked if we could have
the orchestra that had played for my comingout ball two years previously.
Lawrence, my very kind husband, had Swanson, the estate manager, see to it.
So much to do, thank God. The Black Chamber and its malignant presence faded
from my mind. I never went back there. As for the empty room that had once been
Caroline’s music room, I never went close to that, either. And I locked the door
to The Blue Room, religiously, every night.
Three days before the ball, Amelia’s parents arrived. Her father, Hobson Borland,
Viscount Waverleigh, a man so preoccupied with his own thoughts and ideas and
internal discussions on otherworldly phenomena, was so distracted, that within
five minutes of meeting the family, he walked into a door, poured his tea in a
lovely big potted plant just beside the settee where he was sitting beside his
wife, Julia, and stared fixedly at the far corner of the drawing room.
Strangely enough, or perhaps not, Amelia’s father was every bit as beautiful as
Thomas. The viscount was utterly immersed with the spirit world, and Thomas, his
equal in male beauty, was absorbed with his health?as mysterious as the spirit
world, some could argue.
It was also interesting that Amelia appeared to treat her father’s
eccentricities just as she did Thomas’s, with love and tolerance and endless
patience.
Viscountess Waverleigh said, after she managed to pull her husband’s attention
back to her, “Hobson, my dear, there are mysteries here for you to solve. Do you
remember? Your daughter, Amelia, wrote to you about them. She said she needed
you to solve otherworldly problems.”
“Amelia? Yes, yes, a lovely daughter that I managed to bring into this magical
world myself when the damned physician got himself thrown into a ditch and
finally brought himself to see to you after three days, his arm broken.”
“Yes, and you did splendidly.”
“Am I not here because Amelia asked me to be?”