The Highland Dragon's Lady (4 page)

“I realize,” said Mr. Talbot-Jones, after tapping on his glass a few times with his knife to get the table’s silence, “that custom dictates we allow the ladies to withdraw to the drawing room at this point, but this gathering is hardly customary.”

Custom also would let Edmund escape the company of two eligible young women. Pater probably wouldn’t have violated it for that reason alone, but Reggie, watching him speak, had no doubt that he was glad of the opportunity. Even as he spoke, Pater’s eyes kept darting to Edmund, looking for any sign of interest in Miss Heselton. Even Mrs. Osbourne or Miss Browne might have done in a pinch, though one was a paid companion and the other was old enough to make the heir-and-a-spare business chancy.

“Instead,” Pater went on, “we will
all
repair to the drawing room, where Mrs. Osbourne has graciously offered to lead us in a séance. Naturally, any who feel uneasy about such activities may make use of my library, or indeed any other part of the house that they wish.”

Now he glanced toward Mr. Heselton, who smiled and shook his head. “I should be glad to observe,” he said, pleasant and firm.

“Yes. Good. Very well, then.” At a loss now that the pressing business was concluded, Pater cleared his throat and looked down the table. The wife traditionally led the charge away from dinner. He stroked his beard and waited.

More gray stippled that beard than had been there the last time Reggie visited. Pater’s hair was lighter too, and rapidly receding from his brow. An acquaintance, even a friend like Heselton, wouldn’t have been able to tell, but she noticed in her parents the change she didn’t see in their house, no matter how much she wished otherwise.

Standing up on her mother’s cue, she couldn’t help sighing.

“Don’t worry,” said Colin as they came around the table, “I’ll stand between you and any vengeful spirits.”

His voice drew Reggie out of her thoughts, and her smile had more warmth than teasing in it as a result. “How chivalrous of you.”

“One does one’s best. Like Lancelot or Percival or one of those other chaps, though I could do with fewer gory deaths at the end of the saga and altogether less charging about looking for Holy Grails and things.”

“Only rescuing maidens, then?” Heselton asked.

“Or slaying dragons?” Reggie put in, unable to resist the urge.

“That depends on the dragon,” Colin said, his eyes bright with knowing amusement, “and the maiden.”

* * *

For as long as Reggie had been at Whitehill, the right-hand drawing room had been a place of spotless, formal respectability. Done in pink and white, with flowered paper, low sofas, and a crystal chandelier hanging low from the center of the ceiling, it was very different from the dark parlor in the London house of Reggie’s youth, but there had always been a stiffness about it, a sense that this was a place for Following Rules and Best Behavior.

With the drapes drawn, the gas lamps blazing, and the furnishings pushed off to the sides, the drawing room gave the impression of some grand dowager shocked by a piece of modern impertinence. Stepping inside, Reggie half expected to hear a phantom voice launch into a speech that began with “Young lady, are you aware…” and lasted for five minutes.

She hoped any actual ghosts would be a little less proper.

In the middle of the room sat a vast round table made of polished dark oak. The footmen must have moved it in during dinner, Reggie thought, and grimaced in sympathy. She’d have to remind Pater about this event come Boxing Day; it was a wonder nobody had broken any bones setting the room in order.

“Make yourselves comfortable as far as you can,” said Mrs. Osbourne. “Men and women alternating is best, but”—she did a quick count of the room, minus the Heseltons—“I’m afraid we’re off by one. It’s not likely to make much difference.”

“You should’ve brought down another friend,” Reggie told her brother.

“I prefer to limit the number of people who think I’m mad, thank you,” he said. “Besides, the house couldn’t support half of ’em. They’d eat everything in the larder by the end of the day.”

“Do you know human beings or hordes of locusts?” Miss Browne asked. She’d been lighting a pair of candles in crystal holders, but she looked up with a grin, match in one hand.

“I’ve wondered that sometimes myself,” said Edmund.

The Heseltons perched on one of the couches in the corner, and everyone else settled into a circle around the table. Reggie dropped into an empty chair, then looked to her right and found Colin taking a seat next to her. Immaculate and slim in black and white evening dress, he could have been a newspaper sketch: Today’s Young Society Man. His skin lent some color to the picture, though, and his hair, up close and in decent light, had a blue tone to its blackness. Perhaps that was a dragon thing.

“Turn down the lamps,” said Mrs. Osbourne. Seated at the head of the table, she surveyed the room with narrow eyes. An air of authority hung about her, of being quite aware of her surroundings and yet attuned at the same time to events and forces that nobody else could see. Reggie never would have associated such an attitude with the genial, humorous woman she’d sat near at dinner, but now it felt natural. If Mrs. Osbourne was a fraud, she was a very good one.

Reggie’s skin prickled with tension, but Colin was at her side and Miss Heselton was watching from the couch. She wouldn’t flinch before those two pairs of eyes. She watched Lily, the housemaid, turn down the gas, saw the candlelight throw everyone’s face into weird relief, and tried to act as if she were watching an interesting new play.

“Take hands,” said Mrs. Osbourne, and Reggie surreptitiously pressed her palms against her skirt first, certain they’d be damp.

Colin’s wasn’t. His skin was warm and dry, his grip firm. The fingers that folded over Reggie’s were long and slender, and her skin tingled anew where they touched. Almost absently, Colin slid his fingertips down to her wrist and back: a light caress, but enough, even through satin gloves, to make Reggie catch her breath.

“Nervous?” On her other side, her father spoke, and Reggie snapped her head around to face him, trying not to look guilty. Pater wasn’t the horsewhip-and-shotgun sort where young men were concerned, any more than Edmund was, but it still wouldn’t do to flirt so blatantly while he was standing nearby.

She shook her head. “Should be fun. I’ve never been to a séance before.” She squeezed Colin’s fingers in a signal he seemed to understand, since he resumed a still and decorous grip. Reggie smiled her thanks back over her shoulder.

“I would have thought that your crowd had them often,” said Miss Heselton from her couch. “One hears a great deal about spiritualism and the artistic set.”

“One does,” said Reggie, “but it’s never been my cup of tea. Had a lady read the crystal ball for me once, on a lark.”

“Hush now,” said Mrs. Osbourne as Lily left the room on tiptoe and with wide eyes. “Fix your minds on the candles. Let your spirits travel through the flame and into the World Beyond.”

Flames danced in Reggie’s vision, blurred when she focused her eyes too much, and showed no real indication of any world other than the one where she sat. Either she was going about the whole business the wrong way or Mrs. Osbourne didn’t intend this step to do anything but shut her audience up.

On the latter point, it worked well. Silence spread outward from the candle flame, thick and soft. Reggie could hear everyone else breathing. When a rhythm developed in their breaths, Mrs. Osbourne spoke again, and not to them.

“The door is open,” she said. “I seek beyond it. Abhimanyu, are you there? Will you aid me tonight?”

For a few more breaths, the room kept its silence. Reggie bit her lip to hold back her questions. Who was “Abhimanyu”? Why was Mrs. Osbourne calling on him? Reggie was fairly sure there’d never been anyone by that name living in Whitehill.

Then Mrs. Osbourne spoke, but her voice was an Indian-accented baritone.

“You have brought me to a fell place, Daughter of the West. What would you have of me?”

Fell
place
—well, Mrs. Osbourne had known the house was haunted. They all did. It was just different to hear as much in “Abhimanyu’s” voice and in the dark, still room. Reggie suppressed a shudder.

“Find the spirit that haunts this house,” said Mrs. Osbourne in her own voice. Looking away from the candles, Reggie saw that her eyes were closed, and her lips moved only very slightly. “We would speak with it.”

“Are you certain?” The voice came again, but Reggie couldn’t see Mrs. Osbourne’s lips move at all. “It has no love for the living, this spirit. I know as much even now, though I have not seen it.”

Mrs. Osbourne opened her eyes—were they glowing, or was that the reflection of the candle flames?—and sent a questioning look toward Mr. Talbot-Jones. He nodded.

Away from the warmth and wine of the dining room, Reggie began to wish she’d brought a wrap with her. The night air was cold on her shoulders and neck, and her gloves didn’t do nearly enough to keep her arms warm. She leaned toward Colin, who gave off more warmth than a normal man would have done. She would have tightened her grip on his hand, but he would think she was scared.

In the depths of her mind, she had to admit that her nerves
were
playing up. Séances acted that way on plenty of people, even people who didn’t live in haunted houses.

Nonetheless, she held still and steady, waiting.

“I ask once more,” said the man’s voice, “is this truly your will?”

“A third time I tell you,” said Mrs. Osbourne. “Do as I bid you, pray, and with all due speed.”

“Powers light and dark guard you, then,” said Abhimanyu.

The temperature in the room plummeted. Within a second, Reggie might have been standing outdoors in December. She heard Pater gasp. More alarmingly, she heard Miss Browne’s voice, faint and uncertain, and she didn’t think it was an act. “Helen?”

Mrs. Osbourne didn’t respond. Under her closed lids, her eyes rolled rapidly back and forth. Small half syllables came from her mouth, but nothing coherent.

Then her head fell back and blood began to run from her nose.

“Helen!” cried Miss Browne. She dropped Edmund’s hand and turned to her employer, seizing Mrs. Osbourne’s arm.

The candles went out.

Reggie was across the table from Mrs. Osbourne, too far to do anything directly for the woman. She could at least get some light into the room. Dropping her father’s hand gently, and Colin’s with unexpected reluctance, she stepped back. One of the gas lamps was only a few feet away, and if she didn’t run into an end table and break her leg—

“
Mine
,” said a voice from where Mrs. Osbourne had been sitting. It might have been human once, this voice. Now it was thin and shrill, the malicious whine of the wind during a blizzard, and the only thing that kept Reggie from screaming was that it didn’t sound entirely conscious. “Mine. You. You’ll…you have…you…won’t…”

And then, rising to a shriek: “
BLOOD.
”

A glowing face stretched itself across the darkness, a human face with the eyes black holes and the mouth opened in an impossibly wide scream. Reggie screamed too, adding her voice to a panicked chorus, and felt a wave of some force, like wind but not, slam through the room, lifting the table off the floor and hurling it toward Mrs. Osbourne.

Colin leaped forward. Reggie felt his body brush against hers in a lightning-quick motion. It wasn’t quick enough, whatever he was trying to do. Even over the screaming, Reggie heard the next few sounds clearly as they all happened together.

The table hit the wall with a crash.

Crystal shattered and fell with a series of tinkling sounds.

Mrs. Osbourne cried out. She didn’t do it very loudly, though. She didn’t sound as though she could.

Ah, damn
, Colin thought, and dropped his hands from the table’s center support. He’d managed to hold it back a bit—which was why Mrs. Osbourne still had lungs to scream with—but he hadn’t been quick enough or strong enough to prevent all of the damage, and he wasn’t doing any good now.

He’d felt power building throughout the séance, though he hadn’t been able to sense its source or its form. As soon as the table hit Mrs. Osbourne, that power had vanished. The spirit, having done its malign work, was either exhausted or satisfied for the time being. Colin wasn’t sure which to hope for. Was it better if the phantom could kill them all but didn’t want to, or the other way around?

After that first scream, Mrs. Osbourne went silent, sagging downward from where the table had crushed her against the wall. Colin’s human eyes weren’t much better than a normal mortal’s in darkness, but he could just make out the shallow rise and fall of her chest. She’d probably fainted from shock and pain.

He didn’t know what to do next.

Moving the table might be helpful, or it might kill the woman; he didn’t know more than the very basics of medicine. He’d never learned magic to deal with hostile ghosts, and physical battle would have been impossible, even if he’d wanted to change shape in front of an audience and had known where the spirit had gone.

“Helen?” Colin recognized Miss Browne’s voice, desperately struggling for calm. “Helen, are you there? What’s wrong?” The woman stumbled forward and then crashed into a bookcase with a small cry of pain.

Belatedly, he remembered just
how
bad mortals’ vision was in the dark.

Now he heard other noises as well: Miss Heselton’s sharp, quick breathing and her brother’s low and urgent repetition of the Lord’s Prayer. In ironic counterpoint, Edmund was swearing steadily. Mr. Talbot-Jones was simply moaning, his hand over his eyes, and his wife sat where she had been, frozen and silent.

Colin turned to look for Reggie.

Light flooded the room from behind him. Objectively, it wasn’t very bright at all. A single gas lamp never would be, no matter how high one turned it up. Coming unexpectedly out of the darkness, though, it made Colin wince and close his eyes.

“Oh,” said Reggie, dropping her hand from the lamp. It was more of a sound than a word, really: a dismayed little exhalation full of confusion and alarm. Through half-shut eyelids, Colin saw her clap a hand to her mouth. He took a step toward her. He could handle damsels in distress.

Just before he reached out, she shook her head, swallowed, and said clearly, “Someone had better go for the doctor. Is it still Brant, Mater?”

“I—yes,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones.

“Then you’d best do it, Edmund. My motorcar will never manage the roads, a carriage won’t get here anything like soon enough, and you’re the only one who could ride double with the doctor on a fast horse.”

Thus galvanized, Edmund was on his feet even before Reggie had finished speaking, and the room came back to life in his wake.

“Anyone else badly hurt?” Reggie asked and then looked absently down at her hand. Now that the light was on, Colin could see a shallow but long cut on the back of it. Mrs. Talbot-Jones was pressing a handkerchief to her cheek, and Colin, seeing both wounds, noticed a dim pain in his own forehead. Putting a hand up, he was unsurprised to feel blood.

“I’m afraid the chandelier’s a lost cause,” said Mrs. Talbot-Jones. “Pity: I always liked it. Other than that, no. Just…” Her voice died away and she looked back to Mrs. Osbourne.

“Should we move the table?” Mr. Talbot-Jones asked. “I know one isn’t supposed to remove a knife, but I’m not sure—”

To widespread surprise—or at least to Colin’s astonishment, and he rather assumed to Reggie’s and Edmund’s as well—it was Miss Heselton who answered, shaky but coherent. “Yes. Crushing is different. If some of you gentlemen could assist?”

All of the gentlemen assisted. Colin’s chief effort lay in holding back and letting the other two think that he was no more than a wiry young man. The table tilted back and away in a matter of seconds, and gasps of horror went around the room when it did.

The front of Mrs. Osbourne’s body, from her forehead to her waist, was a pool of blood. Colin couldn’t even see her clothing beneath it. One arm hung limply in front of her, also covered in blood, and with a white glimmer of bone protruding above the elbow. Even he had to wince, and he’d seen plenty of human death over his lifetime, much of it nasty.

“Oh God,” said Miss Browne. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

“We don’t know that,” said Mr. Heselton. He’d already been on his way to Mrs. Osbourne’s side. Now he stood there beside Miss Browne, face pale and rather green. “It may not be as bad as it looks. We’ll just have to hope—and pray.”

He knelt in the classic pose of bowed head and clasped hands, and Miss Browne knelt beside him. She took Mrs. Osbourne’s limp hand between hers, and her lips moved as well, though even Colin, who could faintly make out Heselton’s quiet prayer, couldn’t tell if she was joining him or saying something else altogether. He turned away.

“We could at least try to stop the bleeding,” said Reggie. She looked at Mrs. Osbourne and chewed pensively at her lower lip. “I’d never make a nurse, but—”

“I did, or nearly,” said Miss Heselton. She turned to Mrs. Talbot-Jones. “Have one of your maids bring us some clean sheets and towels, and boil some water.”

“Good thought, that,” said their hostess, rising and assuming command with a single tug of the bellpull. “It’ll keep the girls occupied too. They’ll have vapors otherwise.”

Colin thought of how his sister-in-law—who’d been a scholar’s secretary before marrying Stephen, and whose sister was in service herself—would have reacted to
that
comment, and bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a smile. “You might ask if any of the servants can help us,” he said. “They might know a thing or two themselves.”

“Most of them
were
local girls,” Mr. Talbot-Jones said, nodding slowly. “Farmers’ daughters. Practical wenches, I’d think.”

“Someone around here has to be,” said Reggie.

The next few minutes became as frenzied as those just after the séance had been frozen. Mrs. Talbot-Jones gave orders with a speed and decisiveness that Wellington might have envied. A variety of maids came in and variously looked faint and left, brought supplies, stayed and rolled up their sleeves, or went to fetch steadying beverages. Miss Heselton and Emma—the maid who’d pitched in—sponged, pressed, and wrapped, taking care not to move Mrs. Osbourne too much. The medium’s eyes opened a few times during the process, and once she regained consciousness long enough to make a feeble sound of alarm.

“Helen, we’re here,” said Miss Browne. She choked up then, unable to continue, and simply squeezed the hand she held.

Mr. Heselton took over. “The doctor’s on his way,” he said in a low soothing voice. “Amelia and Emma are seeing to you in the meantime. Just lie as still as you can,” he said, “and drink this if the pain is bad.”

Calmed by sentiment or laudanum, or both, Mrs. Osbourne closed her eyes again. Activity went on—and left Colin standing in the corner of the room, a glass of brandy in his hand.

Reggie drifted to his side, her elaborate hairdo collapsed into a straggling fall down her neck, her satin gown crumpled and ripped at the hem, and her dark eyes half-glazed. She held a cup of tea, and the fingers of one glove showed that she hadn’t entirely been holding it steady.

“Be a gentleman and trade, will you?” she asked, after a quick glance around. “Mrs. Kelly doesn’t approve of spirits for women unless we’ve fainted in the last minute or two.”

“Mrs. Kelly?” he asked, passing over his glass but waving off the offered tea.

Reggie gulped brandy and handed the glass back. “Housekeeper. She brought in the, er, refreshments.”

“Ah,” said Colin. “Old-fashioned sort?”

“Very. And I don’t feel like an argument tonight.”

“I’d rather think not,” said Colin. “How are you faring?”

“Bloody useless, just now,” said Reggie, looking back over her shoulder. “Nothing like a disaster for showing the value of a classical education, what?”

“I was thinking something of the sort myself,” Colin replied. “About me, that was, not you.”

“
Your
education,” she said, with another look around to make sure nobody else was in earshot, “might be helpful here, at least in the long term.”

“Only so helpful. I haven’t generally had much to do with ghosts. We have a few back home, but they just appear”—Colin held a hand out and then flipped it over—“and then disappear again. No phantom wasps. No flung tables. And magic, as such, hasn’t had a great deal to do with them, either.”

“Really?” Reggie put her free hand on one shapely hip and peered up at him. “How can ghosts not have much to do with magic?”

“Easily enough. Magic involves finding secret rules to this world, often rules that break the ones we already know. Sometimes it involves creatures or forces from other worlds that don’t have the same rules, but all of them are alive—for some value of life. Ghosts aren’t. By definition, rather. You can use magic to talk with them, but it’s a chancy business.”

“Then what about séances? What would you call them?” Reggie asked. Her eyes were brighter now, more alert.

“A radical new development. It might be magical. It might be scientific. There might not be much difference. We’re finding out new things every day. You said as much at dinner.”

Dinner seemed like a year ago to Colin, and Reggie clearly felt the same. She had to pause and blink several times before she smiled uncertainly. “Oh—so I did. Never thought of mediums as the frontier of knowledge before.”

“Some aren’t. Most, I’d say,” said Colin. “Like most magicians. But there are more and more of the genuine article these days. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to be present tonight.”

“I’m glad you were,” said Reggie, and before he could ascribe any meaning to that, she added, “and so should Mrs. Osbourne be, though of course I won’t tell her. You caught that table, didn’t you?”

“Not fast enough,” said Colin, “or with enough force.”

“You’re not blaming yourself, are you?” Reggie’s eyes widened and she stepped toward him. “Listen, there’s not a man in the world—”

Normally, he wouldn’t have disillusioned a woman who was about to offer comfort and praise. This was different—or maybe Reggie was, because she knew more. Either way, he couldn’t help speaking. “That’s what’s worrying me. And I’m not blaming myself.” It was Colin’s turn to look around for witnesses. The room was safe, though it wouldn’t be soon. Edmund and the doctor would be arriving any minute, if the heavy footsteps in the hall meant anything. “If any single man had thrown that table, even the strongest and fastest man in the world, I would’ve been able to keep Mrs. Osbourne from getting more than bruised. If two or three men had been behind it, perhaps she’d have cracked some ribs.”

Comprehension left Reggie very still for a minute, then she drew a long, dismayed “Ohh” from her mouth.

“Aye,” said Colin in the last moments he knew he had before Edmund and Brant came through the door. “I’m not blaming myself. I’m thinking that we’re in the house with a very strong creature.”