The Thirteenth Earl (6 page)

“I am not . . .”

“Hush, Cassandra. I am tired. Merely mark me that you are not to align yourself with him.”

The warning rang in her head the rest of the night. Should she heed it or not?

Chapter Three

Days passed before they heard from Lucy Macallister, days in which Thaxton honored Miss Seton’s request for distance. He went riding with Spencer, attended picnics with the earl’s extended family, and attempted to be civilized. When asked about his father, he smiled tightly and lied through his teeth. He cut his normal whisky intake in half, a difficult feat when he had to spend meals at the opposite end of the table from Miss Seton. Looking over and seeing her with Miles, while the lout blathered on in attempts to influence and engage people, made Thaxton want to drink. Profoundly.

On the second night, he did. He gave in to the despair again, because even partial sobriety was making reality too real. A letter arrived from London, his secretary of affairs informing him that all was well at home, but it brought no comfort. Thaxton drank himself into a perfect stupor and fell asleep in an armchair, fully clothed, thinking of how Miss Seton’s eyes kept darting to him and then away.

He awoke the next morning, head pounding. Sutton, the valet Spencer had assigned, pushed a mug toward him with a disapproving eye.

“Drink this, my lord.” He set a silver platter down next to the mug. “Sulfate of iron, magnesia, peppermint water, and spirit of nutmeg. It will taste repugnant, but serve its purpose. And you have a note.”

“I will not be going down for breakfast, Sutton,” he said, sitting up with a great deal of effort. “Perhaps not lunch either.”

“I will send your regrets.”

Thaxton pulled the mug toward him. One sniff told him it was the same evil brew he had drunk the morning of Miles’s arrival, so it was best to get it over with—the mixture worked despite tasting abominable. He held his nose and gulped it down.

The note, which he expected was from Spencer, lay folded neatly and unsealed. He snatched it and leaned back in the chair, unbuttoning his waistcoat and letting loose the sigh he had been keeping in while Sutton was in the room. Sutton disapproved of sighing. It mattered little—Thaxton was going to be useless today, elixir or no, and he was considering packing his trunks and leaving. For Spencer’s sake, he had tried, but it was not going to work. The current circumstances created a new form of torture he did not want to endure. He fluttered the note open.

Not Spencer’s handwriting. This was decidedly feminine.

Thaxton sat up.

Lord Thaxton,

Miss Macallister will arrive this evening. Spencer asked that I inform you of the gathering at midnight in the blue parlor. I look forward to our being proven correct.

—CMS

Cassandra M. Seton, middle name unknown. It would not kill him to stay one more night, if only in order to be proven right, as the alluring Miss Seton had written in her own hand. Thaxton crawled back into bed and slept away the afternoon.

He awoke again to the smell of a huge meal, neatly laid out on the table in his bedroom. It had to be courtesy of Spencer, bless him—he knew exactly what was needed in a situation like this. Venison and heaps of potatoes, a giant pitcher of water. The note from his friend appeared here under the platter.

A last meal before your humiliation. The ghosts are not real, but Miss Seton is, so do dress appropriately.

—S.

Thaxton asked Sutton to press his best evening jacket, a high-collared one that he had not worn in a long time, since he had no reason to.

He skipped dinner, being that he was full from lunch and needed more recovery time. He answered his secretary’s letter, tending to tedious bits of business, and read the stack of pamphlets he had been neglecting. He sorted through his father’s correspondence, brought for that purpose. Thaxton had to carefully read anything that the Earl Vane intended to send.

Two made him sad: one to Thaxton’s aunt Emily in which his father complained of the draft in the house, and one that seemed to be a love letter to an invented paramour. His father’s flights of fancy were on the increase, and it often became difficult to tell what he had experienced and what he imagined.

The letter that made him angry, addressed to their solicitor, asked to see a copy of his formal will.
Why would he try to go around me?
Thaxton fumed.
Why wouldn’t he just ask?
Further than that . . . why was the Earl Vane thinking about mortality? At times he barely knew he was alive.

Still, it took forever for midnight to come. He allowed himself to be fifteen minutes early, arriving first in the blue parlor.

The alleged wailing ghost could not have picked a more appropriate place. Already atmospheric with all its gauzy blue curtains and ornately carved furniture, the blue parlor benefited from candles and fresh flowers the countess had added. A bell rested under a jar in the middle of the table, likely one of the “bizarre requests” of Lucy Macallister. Spencer had been complaining about such requests since receiving her reply to the invitation, a letter sent directly ahead of her arrival. Miss Macallister stipulated that only six people be present at the séance, though many other guests had shown interest. She did not want to “upset the balance of the material versus the spiritual” or something of the sort. The room would pass inspection; it was suitably unnerving. The flames of the tapers gave the only light, so shadows clung to their mates all around the room. Miss Seton had kissed him near the landscape painting in the corner.

As if summoned by the thought, she came through the door.

“Lord Thaxton?” she asked, while looking around, her eyes adjusting to the glow. “Are we too early?”

“Both eager for validation, it would seem.” He pulled out a chair for her, opening up the opportunity for him to preemptively stake out the seat beside her. “How are you faring, Miss Seton?”

“Truthfully?” she whispered, peeking out the door. “I am thinking about running away.”

“What a coincidence. So was I. Have you any ideas where to go?”

“Perhaps Ireland. Not that I have the faintest idea how I would accomplish that. Where would
you
go?”

“I was going to go home.” He paused. “I do not like being away.” For the first time outside of talking to Spencer, he wanted to elaborate. He wanted to tell her everything, to explain to her why he was the way he was. The tide of words was about to wash into reality when Spencer walked through the door with Eliza on his arm. Thaxton appreciated the interruption.

“Are we ready to view beyond the veil?” Spencer said, in what he must have thought was a spooky voice. Thaxton rolled his eyes.

“No need for theatrics, Spence. Miss Macallister will tell us if your house is haunted, I will be vindicated, and then we will all go to bed.”

“Or,” Eliza said, sitting down on the other side of the table, “nothing happens, Spencer is right, and we mourn the sleep we sacrificed to this foolish game.”

Miles entered with a petite blonde woman on his arm. She carried a black valise that looked like a doctor’s bag and wore a flowing kimono, orange and red silk rippling as she walked. Miss Lucy Macallister, as she was soon introduced. Thaxton knew many poised ladies, but none so self-assured as Miss Macallister. Her nose, not large but with a decided point, tilted high as she looked around with strange translucent green eyes. She held on to Miles’s arm a little too long. Thaxton bowed his head as Miles introduced him with the same venom as always, and Miss Macallister’s already thin lips compressed in a smile. She moved through the room as if she knew it by heart, though she could have only been in it once or twice that day. She looked, Thaxton thought, more like a governess than a medium.

“Thank you all for having me,” she said, the Scottish lilt lending more gravity to her words. “Before we begin, I must ask if anyone has reservations about what we are to do tonight.”

“What
are
we to do tonight, Miss Macallister?” asked Cassandra, with what sounded to Thaxton like a hint of distrust. He should not be thinking of Miss Seton by her first name, but he felt like they were well past mere acquaintance, even if they were no longer allowed to foster a friendship. Their kiss had been deep enough that he could not help but claim the intimacy of her name, even if it was just in his head.

Miles pulled out a chair for Miss Macallister, then seated himself across from her, next to his fiancée. That completed the circle, and Thaxton found that the Misses Macallister and Seton flanked him. He was distinctly glad he had not gone home, for it was going to be an interesting night.

“Do call me Lucy; I cannot abide by all this formality.” She leaned over to rummage in her bag, fishing out a mix of rose petals and stones, which she arranged neatly around the bell in the middle of the table. They must have been significant to her, but Thaxton could find no reason for it. No explanation was offered. He heard Miss Seton mutter something beside him, and he smiled without looking at her. She seemed unimpressed by the props. Though she had expressed openness to the supernatural, it did not seem she was easily convinced. He felt the same way, he realized.

“Lucy, then. Is contact with the spirits solely accomplished by the use of . . . trinkets?”

“Cassandra,” Miles scolded. “What Lucy does is scientific, tested and proven, and deserves respect.”

“So you have been telling me for days.”

“Now then,” Thaxton said quickly, to cover the combative tone in Miss Seton’s voice. She sounded as if she was on the very verge of her temper.
What must have gone on with Miles? Were they quarreling?
Thaxton dared not let himself hope. “I think we would all feel better if Lucy explained exactly what to expect during the séance.”

“Thank you, Lord Thaxton.” Lucy folded her hands. “I cleansed the room with sage earlier, so no one need dread demonic presence. From what Miles tells me, we are trying to get in contact with a voice you heard in this room. In that case, I will enter a trance, with everyone’s help. We can ask the spirit to show itself and then hopefully ask it yes-or-no questions. The spirits communicate through rapping noises, sometimes using the bell on the table, and rarely . . . through me.”

“They talk through you?” Eliza asked, sounding awed.

“I suppose you could say that. They use me; I never remember what goes on when I go under the spell.”

Thaxton could hear Miss Seton drumming her fingernails on the table, as if trying to hold herself back from saying something. The way she fidgeted, Thaxton got the impression she was antsy, though he could not pretend to know why. Miles noticed, shooting her a look that tensed up their side of the table. There were a few moments of loaded silence.

“How do we help?” Spencer asked, ever the peacekeeper.

“First, we join hands.”

Lucy extended her hands to Spencer and Thaxton. Spencer had already been holding Eliza’s, who took Miles’s, who then took Miss Seton’s. Thaxton looked down at his right hand and Cassandra’s left. He was going to be holding hands with Miss Seton. After a moment of expectant hesitation, he curled his fingers around hers.

Cassandra struggled to maintain a cool expression, as if she were perfectly at ease holding the hands of both her dreary future husband and the gorgeous mess of a viscount. Miles’s hand remained limp in hers with an unpleasant clamminess. Thaxton had begun rubbing his gloved thumb lazily against her palm, doing funny things to her composure.

Lucy closed her eyes and sat up straight.

“Please center your thoughts on the spirits who may inhabit this room,” she intoned.

Far easier said than done. Cassandra had spent the previous days looking forward to the séance as a beacon of light at the end of a tunnel. Miles had turned obsessed with Scotland and Miss Macallister, capable of reciting hours of useless facts about the landscape and history of the country. He had once even called her a Sassenach. So ridiculous, as if he was not English himself.

Never mind that she spent those days mostly wondering where Lord Thaxton was and looking forward to seeing him at dinner, even if he was scowling at the other end of the spread of food. She sensed that he was having the exact amount of fun that she was at the party; that is to say, none at all. The error of their kiss had done something to her brain, rearranged it in an irreversible way.

“It would help if you closed your eyes,” Lucy advised, her own shut tight, her face placid. “I can feel all of your minds wandering.”

Though Cassandra did not believe this woman for an instant, she felt she should give it a go. Miles’s eyes had fluttered shut along with Spencer’s. Eliza looked over at her, lips quirked up to one side. “Nonsense,” the countess mouthed before shutting her own eyes gamely. Cassandra felt Thaxton squeeze her hand, and she turned her head ever so slightly to look at him, the one open pair of eyes at the table.

Concentrate? With him next to her?

He smiled and looked away, his lids dropping. She closed her own eyes, though it seemed ridiculous. Yes, she had heard something in this room, but that something was not going to use Lucy as a conduit from the beyond. It was not possible.

“That’s better,” Lucy said in a softer voice. “Spirits, if you are here, we invite you to be at ease. We mean no harm; we seek confirmation. We would be honored and grateful should you choose to make your presence known.”