Light Fantastique (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

Théâtre Bohème Townhouse, 2 December 1870

Iris had just gotten the last of her notes off the floor and organized when Marie stumbled into their room. She reached out, and Iris rushed to help her to her bed. She wore no cloak, and her face was flushed like she ran from some sort of nightmare.

“Where have you been?” Iris asked and wrinkled her nose. “Have you been smoking opium to get into character?”

Marie shook her head so hard she almost fell over on to her bed. “No, there is a ghost in my dressing room.”

“A what?”

“A ghost who knows all my secrets. Or he will soon. He makes me talk and talk even though I don't want to.”

Iris put a hand on her friend's shoulder and drew back from her fever-hot skin. “Really, Marie, if you're seeing ghosts, you need to lay off the tobacco. Or have you become an opium addict?” Iris knelt in front of her friend and searched her face for the telltale signs of recent opium use. “Whatever you're doing to get into the character of Henriette during the opium nightmare part of the play, it's not worth losing your health over. Or are you ill?”

“Just let me sleep. And ignore anything I might say. And don't tell my mother.”

Before Iris could say anything in reply, Marie rolled over and breathed heavily.

After finding Marie's cheek hot, Iris ran down the stairs. She searched for Radcliffe, whom she found just coming in the front door with Johann Bledsoe. She stopped short on the stairs when she saw the look on the doctor's face, which was of bemused shock.

“Are you sure it didn't have anything to do with her? I treated her fiancé, who is a jealous sort,” Radcliffe said as they hung up their hats and cloaks on the coat rack by the front door.

“I don't know how he would have found out,” Bledsoe replied. “We were discreet. It's a good thing Lucille doesn't keep many servants, makes it easy to get in and out without too much notice.” He looked up, and his eyes widened when he saw Iris, who stood with her mouth agape.

Were they discussing the maestro's female conquests with the air of two men talking about where they could easiest go for a stroll? It seemed a rather indecent conversation to just be having, and indeed, both of them looked like they'd been caught at something naughty from the guilty looks they exchanged.

“Mademoiselle,” Johann said with a bow. “I didn't see you up there. Have you taken to welcoming visitors to the house from the stairs?”

Radcliffe looked at him, and then to Iris with an apologetic shrug. “Forgive us, Mademoiselle. We were not as careful as we should have been with regard to the potential for innocent ears to overhear us.”

There was that innocent comment again, that assumption she wasn't ready for certain pieces of knowledge. “Although I'm not experienced in the ways of the world, I'm aware of them,” she said with a bite to her tone. “And if you're quite finished talking about the maestro's activities, I need your help. Marie is ill.”

Both men rushed to the stairs and bumped into each other at the bottom just below where Iris stood. She held her hand out just short of Bledsoe's chest. “Although you're quite familiar with female anatomy, Maestro, I believe Doctor Radcliffe will be more helpful in this situation.”

Bledsoe had the grace to look abashed, but he still followed Iris and the doctor up the stairs. Iris tried to shoot him “go away” looks. Either he ignored her, or she needed to develop fiercer facial expressions.

“What's wrong with her?” Radcliffe asked.

Iris relayed Marie's strange behavior and comments as well as her observations about Marie's temperature.

“Did she seem ill this morning?” he asked. “She appeared fine at lunch, if somewhat perturbed that she's had to take the role.”

“No, she seemed all right. Well, as much as she could be with the pressure Madame St. Jean puts on her.” She dropped her voice so no one would overhear. “Do you think she's hysterical?”

“She doesn't seem the sort to develop hysteria suddenly,” the doctor said. “Let me examine her, and I'll ask you more questions if needed. Would you accompany me into the room?”

“Of course.” As close-knit as their group was, Iris appreciated the doctor's discretion, at least where she and Marie were concerned.

“I'll come too,” Bledsoe said. “You may need me to help move her.”

When Iris opened the door, the smell of the tobacco hit her with a strange intensity and familiarity. Radcliffe sniffed the air, as did Bledsoe.

“That's an unusual blend,” the musician said. “But I feel like I've smelled it before. Has she taken up smoking to deal with the pressure of being on stage?”

“She said no.” Iris watched Radcliffe as he listened to Marie's breathing and took her pulse. He also opened her eyelids and had Iris hold a lamp nearby so he could check the color of Marie's eyeballs. The light made her murmur in protest but not wake.

“Her pulse and breathing are fine, and her color is good. Keep a cool cloth on her head tonight, and let me know if her condition worsens. Oh, and once we step out, loosen her corset or get it off her if you can. The more air she can get into her lungs the better to clear out whatever put her in this state.”

“So you think it's a substance and not an illness?” Iris bunched the fabric of her skirts in her hands.
Not more poison. I can't watch someone else die in front of me, especially not my first true friend.
“Who would have done this to her? Surely you don't believe her talk of ghosts.” She pressed her lips together before she said more because she wasn't sure she could explain her comment. She sent a pleading look to Bledsoe.

The maestro sat on the chair beside Marie's bed and smoothed her hair back. She muttered something and moved her hands as if to bat his away.

“I doubt she needs your help, Maestro,” Iris said more sharply than she intended. “Even if you are an expert in corset removal.”

“He's probably your best chance of getting it off her,” Radcliffe said and coughed. “But by all means, try on your own first.”

Him and his dry humor.
Iris shooed the maestro away from the bed and took his place on the chair. She first unlaced and removed Marie's boots, which even in her drugged state, Marie had been careful to leave dangling over the edge of the bed. She then covered Marie with a sheet so the men wouldn't inadvertently see too much of her and unbuttoned Marie's blouse. Marie didn't like help getting dressed, so she used a front lace corset. That should have made the process easier, but when Iris tried to untie the laces, Marie rolled on her side, and Iris couldn't get her to roll back for long enough to use both hands to undo the devil of a knot. She found she needed an extra hand.

“Need help?” Bledsoe asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. I suppose you're proficient at undoing tough knots one-handed.”

“I've been known to untie a few, but why don't I hold her in position while you do it?”

“Right.” Iris's neck felt like it was aflame with the embarrassment at having suggested he undress her friend. Of course having him hold her would be best.

With Bledsoe's gentle help and under Radcliffe's watchful eye, Iris got Marie undressed sufficiently that her clothing wouldn't restrict her breath or movement, and she hoped she managed to keep the wanton musician from seeing too much. She was also thankful Lucille didn't come in and find them.

There was one unexpected visitor at the end of the process, when Iris finally got a cool cloth placed on Marie's forehead.

Edward walked in, took one sniff, and asked, “Is she all right? And why does it smell like Parnaby Cobb's tobacco in here?”

* * * * *

Edward felt much better after a good nap and a shave, much more like himself than he had in several months. When he heard the commotion downstairs, his first thought was that one of the steam ravens had gotten in, and he was almost relieved to find that the problem was more human in nature.

Iris sat on a chair by Marie's bed. Pins barely contained her white-blonde hair, and she looked somewhat disheveled, but she maintained a certain angel of mercy look. The thought made him clench at the bottom of his heart-well, the familiar sting of guilt unfurling there. She had been so kind and patient with him, but he knew there was a countdown to their time together, that he would eventually hurt and destroy her.

He shook his head. He had sworn to himself that he wouldn't let these thoughts intrude, that he would enjoy his first meal with others in many days—or had it been weeks?—but something kept him anchored to the past and experiences he'd rather forget. A smell teased his nose, and the memories connected to each other with the inevitable momentum of a boulder rolling down a hill and setting others in motion—the fateful meeting at the Department of Aetherics, the airship, and then Rome, that horrible morning in the underground temple. Of course whether it was relevant or not, all his memories ended up with him looking at Jeremy Scott's grotesquely burned face, his eye sockets and teeth leering at him accusingly.

You did this. You betrayed your beloved science to eliminate me as a rival. Is this what you will do with everything you love, distort and destroy it?

“Edward?” It was Iris, and she stood with a hand on his arm. Her eyes looked tired. They always seemed that way now. “What did you say about Cobb's tobacco smoke?”

“I thought I smelled it. Probably a trick of my imagination.”

Johann wrinkled his nose. “Tobacco smoke, yes, but why Cobb's? Doesn't it all smell alike?”

“No.” Edward sniffed the air again. “It's all a little different depending on where it's grown. Cobb flavored a specific blend.”

“Are you sure it's his?”

Edward's mind clawed for purchase—what made him think he could speak with any expertise on this matter? He wasn't certain of anything right now, only that he had to get the Eros Element to work with the theatre lighting system. So much of everything else was unknown. If there was anything he'd learned in the past few months, it was how much he didn't know about life and people and—he looked at Iris—women.

“No, maybe it just smells similar. But what's wrong with her?” Seeing Marie lying there… She looked broken. Is that what would happen to Iris—that she would break too—from something he did?

“I don't know.” Radcliffe paced the room. “I can't determine what she's been given to make her unarousable.”

“Not Belladonna,” Johann said. “She'll make it, right?”

“I hope so.”

Edward's hands shook, and he shoved them in his jacket pockets before Iris could notice his trembling. The image of her lying broken on a bed pushed at the edge of his awareness. “I need to go.”

He bolted from the room and down the stairs to the receiving parlor. Lucille was just coming in the front door.

“Ah, Professor, it is good to see you out and about, at least outside of the atelier.”

“Marie's sick,” he said.

Lucille's skin paled, leaving her wrinkles deeply shadowed. She moved toward the stairs. “What is wrong with her?”

Iris met Lucille at the top of the stairs and filled her in in low tones. She shot Edward a regretful look and followed Lucille from view. Edward turned toward the fire.

“Are you all right?”

Edward started. There, in the back of the room, sat Patrick O'Connell. The large Irishman seemed less intimidating with his bulk folded into one of Lucille's wingback chairs. He held a book in his lap, but the lamp beside him was off.

“Isn't it dark to be reading?” Edward asked, fixated on this detail. Nothing seemed to make sense outside of the atelier, and he felt the need to return to it, like an itch in his soul. But no, he'd come out for Iris, and he would stay out until they could have a nice, normal meal.

“Just thinking.”

Edward had become accustomed to the Irishman's laconic tendencies in the time they worked together, but in the past few weeks, he'd become more terse.

“Thinking about what?”

O'Connell shook his head. “None of your concern.” But his voice held a heaviness with which Edward was intimately familiar.

“You're lonely,” Edward said.

“We all are.” He pushed himself out of the chair. “If Miss St. Jean is ill, we might be on our own to find dinner. You want to grab something? I know of a cafe that still has fresh meat.”

Edward shook his head. “I'll stay here, thanks, in case Iris needs me.”

“Suit yourself.”

O'Connell walked out of the front door, leaving Edward to wonder what he'd meant.
We're all going stir-crazy here at the theatre and atelier. This siege needs to be over so we can leave.

But England seemed far away with fairytale remoteness, and he knew that even if he were to return, his life would never be the same.

* * * * *

Carriage in Paris, 17 May 1868

Marie struggled in the carriage against the hands that held her across her chest and over her mouth.

“I'm not going to hurt you, Mademoiselle,” a male voice said in her ear. “But I have a favor to ask you.”

Marie stopped struggling. A favor? Who did this person think he was, that he could trap her and ask her a
favor
? She found some strength and wrenched her head to the side.

“You can unhand me. Coachman!” she yelled.

The coach pulled to the side, but instead of releasing her, the hand across her chest moved lower so it was beneath her cloak, and the hand that had covered her face disappeared, but she felt cold metal against the back of her neck.

“If the coachman finds me, you'll be paralyzed or dead before you can say anything. I recommend you make up something to get rid of him.”

Marie couldn't remember what she said to the coachman to get him to start driving again, but the journey resumed. She suspected the coachman must know there was someone else in his coach and that they were in collaboration. That made her feel in even more danger. Plus she hadn't seen the man in the carriage—where had he hidden? But she had also gotten in without checking. It was a mistake she wouldn't make again.