Beneath a Waning Moon: A Duo of Gothic Romances (3 page)

Following the lights led him past numerous walled gardens until he finally arrived at the back side of the stately redbrick Georgian home belonging to John Robert Shaw. It was handsome but not ostentatious. Respectable but not ancient. He’d watched Shaw exit the front of the house on more than one night, but he’d never investigated the gardens. Declan might have looked through the Shaw books, but it was Tom who gathered information on the ground.

That night, Tom Dargin scaled the garden wall and dropped into another world.

Far from the well-tended, orderly garden he’d imagined from Shaw’s tidy appearance, this garden was a wild tangle of trees and flowers. Statuary hid among rocks tumbled artfully around the bases of trees, giving the dark garden a fantastical appearance. A miniature glass house lit up the center of the lawn, sparkling from the inside with candlelight. Tom felt as if he’d slipped into one of the fairy stories his grandmother had been fond of telling.

For standing in the center of a lush lawn, dressed in a white dressing gown, was a tall woman, as willowy as the trees that lined the garden. She stood, swaying a little, her pale skin touched by the moon’s silver light as she held a book in her hand and turned in place. Her feet were bare, her dark hair fell past her waist, and her long gown was drenched in the evening dew.

It must be Miss Shaw. No servant would take a book out into the garden in the middle of the night. Certainly not in their dressing gown.

“‘But dreams come through stone walls…’” She held up the book to the moon’s light and spoke quietly, though his immortal hearing could pick up the words easily. “‘…light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.’”

She twirled on the lawn, lifting the book over her head and humming a tune as her hair lifted while she spun.

“Dreams come through stone walls…,” she whispered into the night as Tom watched from the dark shelter of a drooping willow.

“Oh, feck me,” he muttered under his breath, letting out a sigh. “She’s mad as a March hare.”

Chapter Two

JOSEPHINE ROBERTA DOYLE SHAW was a practical woman. Despite her rather eccentric writings, she ran her father’s household with quiet efficiency, though she was wise enough to bow to the expert opinion of Mrs. Morse, the housekeeper her mother had hired before her untimely—and, Josephine preferred to think, tragic—death. As her mother had died in childbirth, Josephine had never felt her loss, though she liked to imagine she and her mother would have been the closest of confidantes and the dearest of friends.

As it was, Eloisa Shaw had left her daughter with an excellent and loving nanny, an efficient housekeeper, and an extensive and not-at-all proper library with books in Italian, French, and Spanish, as well as all the more conventional writings. This had motivated Josephine to excel early in languages, and by the time she was thirteen, she could explore the forbidden tomes her mother had left behind.

Josephine had not been disappointed.

As well as firing her imagination in very improper ways, her mother’s own notes in the margins of the most scandalous books gave Josephine a peek into the mind of the woman she must have been.

Which was why when she embarrassed her father—as she inevitably did—Josephine reminded him that he had been the one to marry Eloisa Francesca Dioli Doyle in the first place. Therefore, if any scandal resulted from her reading Italian romances and French philosophy, it was entirely his own fault.

She was sitting in her library when her father presented his latest idea to ensure her future.

“You want me to
what
?” she said, laughing lightly so as not to provoke her lungs. “Marry him? One of your business partner’s brothers?”

He leaned toward her, her gentle father who had always indulged her every whim. If she were a petulant child, he would have ruined her. Luckily, Josephine was eminently good-natured and had been blessed with a very strict nanny.

“Jo, you know you must.”

“No, I don’t know I must. Father, in addition to the rather large fortune you have worked very hard for, I also have my own income, modest though it may be. I will never be destitute. You are fretting for nothing.”

“And when I die? When your cousin tries to take the house?”

She shrugged. “He could try. But if you should pass before me—though I think you are not quite as ill as you imagine—I will sell the house to some eager buyer with Mr. Macon’s help, then I shall take Mrs. Porter and Mrs. Morse with me to the house in Bray. You know I don’t like society.” She let a sad smile touch her lips. “And you know it will not be for long. I am happy as I am.”

“But if you were married…” He sighed. “Jo, I would worry so much less.”

“I know.”

The soft pang in her chest was not only from the tuberculosis that plagued her. For though Josephine Shaw was a practical woman, she also had the fiery heart of a romantic. It wasn’t that she’d never longed for love. She had. When she was younger, she’d longed most desperately! But she’d known by the age of twenty-three that her health was becoming more and more fragile. And by twenty-five that the doctors’ treatments would not save her life. It seemed cruel to hope for any happiness besides her own small fancies.

She wrote her stories, and they were read and enjoyed—or so Lenore claimed—by many. Josephine enjoyed quiet society and music and books and gardening. She loved her father to distraction.

It was with that love in mind that she took his hand. “Father, I promise I will be fine.”

She tried to ignore the tears in the corners of his eyes when he squeezed her hand tightly.

“You deserve much more than ‘fine,’ my dear girl. You deserve a love like your mother and I had. I only had her for four years, but it has been enough to sustain me for twenty-nine.”

“And do you think I will find love in an arranged marriage?” She had to smile. “You cannot make a young man love me because you do. I do not think that is the way love works.”

“If he only meets you, he will have to love you.”

“Oh, Papa!” Josephine laughed harder, and she couldn’t stop the cough that followed. She muffled it in the handkerchief Lenore had embroidered for her. No blood—thank God—yet. “I think you are biased in my favor, but I will take the compliment. Surely Mr. Murphy will love me on sight. But shall I love him? This young man who would agree to a marriage to seal a business deal for his brother? No doubt he sees in our marriage a way to make his own fortune. Not that I begrudge ambition, but it doesn’t lend itself to romance, does it?”

Shaw looked thoughtful. “If it was Declan Murphy, I might say you have the right of it, my dear. But it is not. Mr. Thomas Murphy, the oldest of the brothers, has offered for you.”

“The oldest, is it?” Josephine quipped. “Well then, I might have a chance to outlive him after all.”

Her father was abashed. “Not as old as that. But he is… a mature man. Perhaps in his forties. Not overly talkative. Not a pretty fellow at all, I suppose. Though I’ve noticed the serving girls all take note of him.“

Josephine nodded solemnly. “I do bow to the measured opinion of observant serving girls when I consider suitors.”

Shaw let go of her hand and leaned back, crossing his legs and brushing a hand over his trouser leg. “You’re teasing your father.”

She smiled. “It’s just so silly. Why do I have need of a husband?”

“To protect you.”

“I can protect myself. Or set the dogs on the marauders if they ignore my shrill and desperate cries.”

His lips twitched with a smile. “To make you happy.”

“You have no guarantee this Thomas Murphy is capable of that.”

“Fine.” He took her hand again. “To give your poor papa a measure of peace that I will leave you secure. I don’t have long, Jo. I know that. If the Tetleys lived in Dublin, I would have no worry in your situation, for I know Margaret and Daniel love you as their own. But they do not live here, and you are not well enough to travel so far. All I am asking is that you give this man a chance to win your regard.”

Josephine paused, persuaded by her father’s worried pleas. “Very well, I will meet him.”

“That is all I am asking.”

“But if he thinks this union is somehow assured—”

“Mr. Murphy specifically said he would have you
only
if you would have him. He was quite clear that any kind of coercion on my part was unacceptable.”

“Oh.” That was… rather thoughtful. “I appreciate his regard in that matter.”

“Meet him, Jo. You never know. Thomas Murphy may not be one of your romance heroes, but you might find him far more to your liking than you expect.”

My dearest Miss Tetley,

You will be most astonished to find not only the pages of Mr. Doyle’s latest horror enclosed, but also news of an even more alarming nature.

Father has found a gentleman to marry me!

I know you will be as dismayed as I am, dear Lenore. For herein lies the ruin of our plans in joint spinsterhood. I doubt my domineering (for surely he must be very domineering) future husband will consent to our scandalous plans to run away to the seaside and live out our lives wearing pantaloons.

Alas, no doubt the rogue will lock me in a tower or an attic until I wither away from disappointed love. With my fortune, he will have ample funds to find an appropriate tower or attic within easy distance of town as he is also a man of business and must surely not neglect his familial responsibilities.

I jest, of course. I have only allowed that I will meet Mr. Thomas Murphy, and Father has made every concession to my consent in the matter. I have no cause to presume lack of character in the gentleman, though the housemaids have rumored a rather hopeful and frightening scar on one side of his face. Further portent of illicit intent? Or perhaps a mere carriage accident in childhood? You know which one I would prefer, of course.

Father’s health continues to fail. He is wracked with worry, which is the only reason I have consented to meet Mr. Murphy. I very much doubt a sick spinster of eight and twenty will tempt him, but as he has given his word to offer, it seems the engagement is mine to refuse. I will determine the truth in the man’s face and decide my course. If he is a kind sort of man whose company I could endure, perhaps the engagement will give Father some comfort and me some amusement.

I long, my friend, though I dare not hope. You know that for which I have always wished. Perhaps fate is just cruel enough to see me madly in love before I die.

For I will die. You and Mrs. Porter will accuse me of consorting with the fairies, but I know it. I feel it in the night. I can feel Death’s footsteps stalking me at the edges of the wild, and more and more, I find I do not want to run. I hope I will welcome him when he comes. Perhaps, in that pale lover, I will find the satisfaction that has so long eluded me in life.

Of course, I could also fling myself from the tower window in the midst of a violent thunderstorm. That would have more dramatic impact.

Your faithful (and sadly doomed) friend,

Josephine Shaw

SHE couldn’t sleep, but then, did she ever sleep? Except for some lazy afternoons, Josephine had always been a restless creature, especially at night. By her calculations, if she slept only half as long as the average person, her life would not be cut in half. Merely… a third at the most.

She took an oil lamp to the garden and hid in the small glass house their gardener, Mr. Connelly, had built for her when she had returned from school. It was supposed to be for delicate plants, but it had become, much to no one’s surprise, her own private study. Josephine didn’t store her manuscripts in the glass house because she worried about the damp. But she often wrote there late into the night, the reflection of the lamp on the glass casting eerie shadows around her writing desk.

Josephine had never needed sleep to dream.

That night, she was neglecting her pen in favor of rereading one of the most-favored books in her library. It was a small volume that had appeared mysteriously when she was only fifteen. Josephine still had no idea who had gifted her the lovely horror of
Carmilla
, but she owed her nameless benefactor an enormous debt. Her personal guess was a briefly employed footman who had seen her reading her mother’s well-worn copy of
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and confessed his own forbidden love of Poe.

The slim volume of Le Fanu’s Gothic horror stories had been hidden well into adulthood. As it wasn’t her father’s habit to investigate her reading choices, concealment might have been more for dramatic effect than real fear of discovery.

Josephine read by lamplight, curled into an old chaise and basking in the sweet isolation of darkness as she mouthed well-loved passages from her favorite vampire tale.

“For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me.”

She slammed the book shut.

How had she turned so morbid?