Come Near Me (30 page)

“Edmund, Richard. It makes no never mind.”
Lady Jasper leaned forward, motioned for Adam to lean forward as
well. “They’re the same person,” she whispered hoarsely. “They’re
the Devil, Daventry. He’s the Devil. Learn it, know it, or you and
your so-innocent little wife are destined to be forever damned.
Like me.”

Adam felt Chollie collapse onto the cushion
beside him, even as he continued looking deeply into Gytha Jasper’s
dark, burning eyes. “Go on,” he said, his voice so quiet it could
barely be heard above the chiming of the mantel clock. “I’m
listening. Perhaps if you were to start at the beginning?”

“That’s my book,” Lady Jasper said, motioning
toward the black-leather-covered volume that seemed to throb with a
life of its own as it lay on the table. At least Chollie seemed to
think so, for he took a cushion from the couch and covered the
thing up so that no one could see it. “Don’t remember where I got
it, it’s been too long, but I was young then, and stupid. I read
what I had your idiot friend read just now, but I didn’t believe
it. So I summoned him. Summoned the Devil.”

Chollie quickly touched a hand to his
forehead, his chest, his left and right shoulder. Then he spat on
the floor.

“It isn’t hard at all, you know,” she went
on. “He’s more than happy to come. I called on all the devils of
hell one after the other, the crown princes, as it were. Lucifer.
Satan. Belial. Leviathan. And the next day? Well, the next day
Edmund Burnell came knocking on my door.”

Adam held out his hands, asking her to be
silent for a moment. “Edmund Burnell, Lady J? When was this?”

“Forty years ago,” she said, sighing. “And,
before you interrupt me again, I’ll tell you that he looked nothing
like he does now. Didn’t call himself Edmund Burn-in-hell then,
either. I’ve seen him so many times, when he’s come
collecting,
and he never looks the same, never has the same
name. But he’s always pretty. Stands to figure, doesn’t it? I mean,
he was once God’s favorite archangel, if you’ve been reading your
Bible, and let me tell you, boy, I have been. Makes sense that he’d
be the prettiest one.”

“That does make sense, doesn’t it, boyo? If
you could look like anything you wanted to, who’d want to have
horns and a tail, I’m asking?” Chollie leaned forward, rested his
elbows on his knees, clearly captivated. “Go on, Lady J. You tell a
good tale, so far. You called forth the Devil. Then what
happened?”

“This happened, you drooling dolt,” Lady
Jasper said, spreading her arms to include the whole of the room,
the whole of her town house, the whole of her life. “Or did you
really think I got that old idiot to marry me for my beauty, my
nonexistent dowry? I got everything I asked for and nothing I
didn’t. Made a few mistakes there, let me tell you. And all I had
to do was trade my soul for the whole of it. Now I want it
back.”

“After you made the trade, had yourself forty
good years?” Chollie asked, winking at Adam. Clearly his friend was
caught between his superstitions and his love of a fine joke. “That
doesn’t seem fair to the Old Boy, now does it?”

“Let the woman talk, Chollie,” Adam
whispered, as Lady J took recourse to her wineglass once more.
Confession might be good for the soul, but it also appeared to be a
thirsty business, just as she’d said. “She recognized Richard
Brimley’s name. Mad as a hatter or not, she knows what we need to
know.”

“If you say so, boyo,” Chollie shot back at
him. “But I don’t like all this talk about Old Nick. This whole
thing is giving me a grand case of the fidgets.”

It seemed clear to Adam that Lady Jasper had
finished her tale, sketchy as it was, so he felt free to ask her a
few questions. “Why is Dickie—why is Edmund after us? After my wife
and me?”

“You’ll have to ask him that,” Lady Jasper
said, waving away the question. “Maybe because, unlike me, you
aren’t such easy pickings. But what makes you think he’s after you,
too? What you really need to know is how to thwart him. Thwart the
Devil. Do it and, according to that book, anyone he’s come to
collect this time is free as well.”

“Meaning you?”

“Meaning me,” she answered, smiling. Her
smile was most unpleasant. Adam would rather strike allies with a
cobra. But, he thought, only with an ounce of humor,
needs must
when the Devil drives.

“So, how do we thwart the Devil, as you call
it?”

“Tie a dozen rosaries around your neck?”
Chollie offered.

There was the sound of a carriage being
halted outside, followed by the opening and closing of the front
doors on the ground floor.

“It’s him!” Lady Jasper exclaimed, turning a
sickly pale gray. “We’re just visiting, that’s all. Aren’t we? Just
visiting, and waiting for him to return.”

“Of course,” Adam agreed, afraid she would
have an apoplexy if he didn’t. “But tell me, quickly, please. How
do we thwart the Devil?”

She shot a look toward the door, then
searched inside her bodice for the key, tossed it to Chollie so
that he could undo the lock. “Love, Daventry. Something few of us
have. Pure, unselfish love. Never faltering, never wavering. I’ve
thought and thought, and it’s the only answer. It’s the opposite of
every human vice that draws him to us, us to him. Make that wife of
yours fall back in love with you, want babies. A happy woman who
has everything she wants doesn’t need the Devil. Think about it,
Daventry. Think, and act.”

~ ~ ~

“Well, other than scaring me out of a year’s
growth, what good did that do us, boyo?” Chollie asked, as they
rode back to Grosvenor Square.

“Only a year, Chollie?” Adam teased absently,
remembering every word Edmund had said during their short visit,
every expression, every smile. “He knows, Chollie. He’s not the
Devil—Lord knows Lady J has lost her mind to believe such
nonsense—but he knows we’re onto him. Him, and Richard Brimley, and
whoever else might be involved.”

“Involved in
what,
boyo?” Chollie
asked, turning on the seat to look at Adam. “You know nothing more
than you did before. Maybe less. Because, like it or not, and I
most certainly don’t, unless Lady Jasper is telling the truth,
there’s no good reason for anyone to go to such extremes to destroy
just you. Which, if I heard her right, isn’t true at all. He—they,
whoever—is also after Sherry.”

“I know that now, and I’d like to kill both
Brimley and Burnell at this point. But are you willing to say then
that Edmund Burnell is the
Devil,
Chollie?”

His friend puffed out his cheeks, shook his
head. “All I’m saying, boyo, is what my dear mama used to say.
Seeing as how I’ve never met this Brimley fellow, then it’s better
the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” He laughed,
hollowly. “I wonder what she’d say about a whole host of devils
mucking about, don’t you?”

“Know one, Chollie, and know them all. At
least Lady Jasper says they’re all the same person, entity,
whatever,” Adam reminded him, then slapped a hand against his
forehead. “Would you listen to me? I’d half expect you to believe
Lady J, Chollie. But not me. Not me.”

“Then maybe you
do
believe her, or are
at least thinking about believing her?” Chollie rubbed a hand
against his waistcoat pocket. “I don’t thank you for saying that,
boyo. Truly, I don’t. Um... do you think your man could drop me by
that small Catholic church in Spigot Lane? I’ve a sudden need to
light a brace of candles, I do. Been a long time between visits,
but—” He stopped speaking, his eyes wide as saucers. “Wh–what’s
that? Sweet Christ, boyo, never say you did that!”

Adam turned the small black book over and
over in his hands. “Do you think I’ll be sent screaming down to
Hell for taking this, Chollie?”

Chollie took the small leather bag from his
pocket and gave it a kiss. “It’s slapping you straight into Bedlam
that could happen, that’s what I’m thinking. What are you going to
do with that terrible thing?”

“I’m going to read it, Chollie, of course.
What was it your dear mother said? Better the devil you know? I
think she was right. If Dickie and Edmund are playing at some new
sort of Hell-fire Club devil worship, devilish games, or whatever
in—excuse me for this, Chollie, but—whatever in
hell
they’re
doing, at least should know the rules.”

~ ~ ~

Sherry all but paced a hole in the
drawing-room carpet as she waited for Adam to return from wherever
he and Chollie had gone off to more than an hour earlier.

How could he have left her alone like
this?

Didn’t he know?

Didn’t he care?

Court her. That’s what he’d said. He was
going to court her. Hah! That was rather difficult to do, when they
never seemed to so much as be in the same room at the same
time.

And what would she tell him, when he finally
did come home? That she’d all but chased Rimmon out of the house?
How was she going to explain that to him?

She couldn’t keep taking to her bed,
pretending that the child made her faint. She and Adam had to talk
sometime. Sometime soon. So how was she going to explain the dead
roses, dismissing Emma? Explain questioning Edmund as if he were an
enemy, not a friend?

How was she going to explain any of it? She
didn’t understand anything herself.

“Where is everyone? No Edmund, no Chollie,
not even Rimmon. Here I am, ready to be wept over, and
congratulated, and there’s no one about to see me. Except you, of
course, sweetheart. I think you’ll do.”

Sherry whirled around to see Geoff standing
just inside the doorway, leaning heavily on a pair of canes.
“Geoff!” she exclaimed, her fears forgotten as she ran to him,
gathered him close in her arms. “I can’t believe it! You look
wonderful. Wonderful!”

“Taller, certainly,” he said as she backed
away, stood looking at him in wonder. “Now, if you don’t mind a few
weak whimpers and some rather grotesque expressions on my otherwise
adorable face, I think I’ll hobble on over to that chair and sit
myself down before I fall down. Would you be so kind as to fetch me
a glass of wine? It dulls the edges of the pain.”

Sherry hastened to do as he’d asked, kneeling
beside him as he stood in front of a chair for a moment, then
dropped, all at once, onto the cushions. “Ahhh, that’s better. The
leech says I’ll be improving every day now, if I’m good.” He smiled
at Sherry. “I wonder if I’ll improve twice as fast if I’m bad,
don’t you?”

“Gudgeon,” Sherry accused, handing him the
wineglass. “Does it hurt very much, then?”

“Ah, pity. Just what I like to see in my dear
sister’s eyes. Yes, pet, it hurts quite a lot. My muscles cry out
to be sat down, left to rot as they’ve been doing, but I must
ignore their imploring voices. Again, that’s what my leech tells
me. He also tells me I’m not to sit in that Bath chair again, as
that sort of coddling is all behind me now, should have been behind
me a month ago. Do you mind, Sherry? That means I’ll be giving
tonight’s masquerade a miss, as I don’t think I could manage these
canes for the entire evening.”

“The masquerade?” Sherry frowned, having
forgotten the evening’s entertainment for a moment. How could she
have done that? How could she
not
have forgotten it, when
she considered how full her plate already was, how muddled her mind
always was with things much more serious than a masquerade ball.
“Oh, no, Geoff, I don’t mind in the least. In fact, I am not at all
excited about the evening. Perhaps we could all stay in with you
and just play chess or some such thing?”

“No, no, don’t do that, sweetheart,” Geoff
said, patting her hand. “Edmund would be most disappointed, seeing
that he went so far as to gather up costumes for everyone. I really
feel someone must attend.”

Sherry’s smile faded. It was ridiculous,
really, but she agreed with Geoff. They were rather beholden to the
man, since he had gone to so much trouble. Just as if he wanted to
be very certain they’d attend tonight’s ball. “Oh, yes. Edmund. Of
course. He did mention something earlier, when he was here. I
believe he’s very much looking forward to the evening.”

“And you aren’t? That would be a pity,
darling, as I also find myself quite looking forward to the evening
Edmund seems so anxious for us to have together. Are you saying
you’re still unwell?”

Sherry watched as Adam strolled into the
room. He seemed very much in control of himself, confident, very
unlike the frightened, angry man who had come to her rooms last
night, demanding to know about Emma Oxton and dead roses. She
couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him.

She wet her lips, looking to Geoff for a
scant moment, then quickly back to Adam. “No, I’m feeling quite
well, actually.” She mentally shook herself, unable to believe what
she was seeing in his face, although she’d been wishing for it with
all her heart, for all of these past long, dark weeks. “But
look—Geoff is walking with his canes today, Adam. Isn’t that
wonderful?”

“He already saw me, early this morning,”
Geoff said, lifting his wineglass to his brother. “And straightaway
offered to buy me a new curricle and pair, if I promise to behave
myself in the future. It’s probably unnecessary to tell you that I
promised to never be such a sad nodcock again, is it?”

When Sherry didn’t answer, he looked up at
his sister-in-law, and then at his brother, who were looking at
each other. “I say, is anyone listening to me at all? No. I didn’t
think so. Adam—I say,
Adam.”

“What is it, Geoff?” Adam asked absently as
Sherry felt her eyes welling with tears. Because her husband was
looking at her with such love, such wonderful, sweet love that she
could almost feel his arms around her. He’d looked at her this way
a lifetime ago, and she’d never forgotten it. “Can it wait?
Because, if you’ll excuse us, my wife and I are going upstairs
now.”