Darker Still (6 page)

I write this en route to Mrs. Northe’s residence, my mind whirling and my stomach in a knot. A dark cloud hangs about this painting and about all those who come across it. Will all of us end up like Crenfall, odd and inept and slave to this beautiful man? Or am I the only slave among us? I cannot get Lord Denbury out of my mind’s eye for a second, even in sleep.

Though I find Denbury a handsome, dashing man, I can only liken his effect to a siren as in the myths of old, meant to lure a hero toward danger. And I’ve arrived at his threshold once more.

Later…

Can you tell from my script how my hand trembles? The painting moved again! And this time I find there’s no other way to interpret the signs. Somehow this painting wants
me
, wants something of me. It is, in fact, calling to me.

Perhaps by writing down the events, I can achieve some sense of things.

Father and I were shown immediately to Mrs. Northe’s sitting room, where she stood to greet us, looking as charming as ever, if not a bit tired. Her vibrant eyes were ringed by faint dark tinges, as if the event had aged her slightly. It was the first time I’d seen her without Maggie present.

“I’m terribly sorry that you should have had to deal with such a matter as an intrusion. It rattles the soul,” my father said quietly.

“Indeed, Mr. Stewart. But what good cheer to have friends on hand to banish the terrible thoughts from one’s mind.”

We sat and busied ourselves with tea. Father paced a bit before sitting down, his verbal awkwardness as much a handicap as my inability to speak.

I finally signed to Mrs. Northe, asking how she was faring and if there was any word from the police about the wounded intruder.

“Not a thing. It’s as if he vanished into thin air. If you want my opinion, it’s someone Bentrop hired. He’s very angry we’ve made such a public and strong claim on the piece and will resort to trickery to come by it.”

“Is it really so valuable?” my father asked, an eyebrow raised.

I made a face just as Mrs. Northe scoffed.

“Really, Mr. Stewart, you surprise me. You don’t believe its composition, brushstrokes, and essence of life are unparalleled?”

My father nodded and sipped his tea. Clearly he was not as enraptured by the portrait as we were. But that was just as well. He didn’t know it was alive.

“Then why didn’t he simply outbid you if he feels it’s that valuable? Why go to all this trouble and risk a potentially damaging criminal record?” he asked.

“Certain objects, Mr. Stewart, will attract darkness. Something terrible happened around this painting and has imprinted the very fabric of the canvas. Not that the painting itself is to blame, but perhaps what happened to Denbury. Some people love to collect such objects and will use dark means to get them.”

My father couldn’t have looked more skeptical. “I fail to see an imprint, Mrs. Northe.”

“Then, indeed, its dark clouds will hardly be noticed in the grand company of other works at the Metropolitan. Let’s talk numbers, shall we? Natalie, darling, while I realize your new work is in acquisitions, I’ll not trouble you with monetary trivialities. Give us a moment to ourselves, would you?” And she nodded toward the hall. In the direction of the painting.

I nodded, rising slowly and setting down my tea. The truth was that I longed to run from the room and to Denbury. Having him to myself again for a moment was a thrilling prospect.

I moved toward the grandiose staircase where a great purple curtain was hung on the landing with the portrait behind it.

Climbing the stairs seemed to take forever. The gas lamps were trimmed low, and I kept glancing around, afraid the house staff would disturb my moment alone with Denbury, afraid I’d be told to keep back, afraid some sort of trap had been set on the velvet drape.

I tossed caution aside as I slid back the curtain. Seeing him again was every bit as breathtaking as the first time. Would it always be so? The hairs on my neck stood, I blushed, and my breath was short. He was so exquisitely rendered that his presence was truly
felt
. His luminous eyes set a claim on those who looked at him. The painting had a seductive quality that made the rest of the world drain away. When one looked at Lord Denbury, nothing else existed.

And then I noticed that much like with Mrs. Northe, Denbury’s eyes looked a bit darker, a bit older, and weary. Though he was still devilishly handsome, something had changed about him.

I studied the particulars of the scene. The book
The
Girl
remained jutting out from the shelf.

And then I noticed a new shift. Something else out of place. Different.

On his desk, the pristine blotter bore droplets of ink, and the quill was lying on its side rather than upright in the shaft of the inkwell. Two words seemed to scream up at me from a note that faced my direction on his desk.

Yes, you!

I nearly fainted.

I scrambled backward, my small bustle grazing a potted fern that would have toppled to the floor if the corner of the balustrade had not caught its fall. I tore off my gloves and hastily gathered up the bits of soil that had spilled onto the floor. Perhaps, I thought, when I turn back to the painting, that note will not be there and this whole ordeal will prove to have been a welcome hallucination.

But no.

I looked again at the note and then up at Denbury. I
swear
to you that he stared back at me. I could just hear his ghost, who had indeed said the portrait was watching me.

My shaking hands closed his curtain again, and I had to hold the railing as I descended the stairs.

Standing outside the sitting-room door, I wanted to slip inside and continue on as if nothing had happened. But intruding would be improper when I had been excused, not to mention that I’d surely appear as though I’d seen a ghost. Because I had, in a way. One of them, at least, was reaching out to me in an unexpected, impossible way. I kept looking around for Denbury’s corporeal ghost, he of the stifling presence and disturbing intent. Thankfully, the darker Denbury did not show himself.

My trembling stride took me into the first lit room I came across a gilt-bedecked room filled with books, the gas-lamp sconces of beveled glass glittering and inviting. It was a room full of heaven. I’d have killed for such a library. Some cases were enclosed in glass and had locks. I was tempted to pull on the knobs to see if Mrs. Northe had indeed locked them. Were precious volumes of all manner of occult things within?

Snatching up a paper closest to me, I found it was a spiritualist tract.

I was fascinated to read about the idea of one’s essence being
more
, that life was more than simply our mortal coil. I was disappointed that the tract was about the cleanliness of the soul and maintaining a positive presence in the world for the benefit of one’s self and others. There was not a word about communicating with the beyond. Ashamed, I realized that I, like Maggie, was more taken with the sensational aspects of spiritualism. The dead. Séances. Haunted objects.

But if life was more than just a body, something of Lord Denbury’s essence lived on in a canvas and another part was walking somewhere around Manhattan. I liked his painting part a deal better than the other. Like a séance luring out the dead, was there somehow a way to bring his canvas to life?

June 9

The plot has thickened, and how. Lives, sanities, and the very fabric of reality remain on the line.

The day began simply enough. Would that it had ended so!

Mrs. Northe came to call under the pretense of mere friendship and a sense of newfound “familial” duty. I heard her declare herself my new aunt to Bessie, our housekeeper of several years. Bessie simply nodded, happy that at least someone female was entering the house.

She had lectured Father countless times about the dangers of too many male scholars around a pretty girl my age. The damage had already been done with Edgar. Bastard heartbreaker. If only he’d ruined me, it would have been truly tragic. But I think Bessie would’ve killed him if he’d even tried. If Bessie had been around when I was a child, I wonder if I would have talked. If for no other reason than out of exasperation.

Seeing that I was alone in the house, Mrs. Northe promptly told Bessie that I would be in her capable company for the rest of the afternoon and escorted me outside. When I inquired after Maggie in sign language, Mrs. Northe replied, “While I do appreciate that my niece so admires and enjoys my company, I have to now and then return her to her own mother.”

When the driver helped us into Mrs. Northe’s fine carriage, I realized this wasn’t just a friendly call. Mrs. Northe had a certain look on her lovely face, with something urgent signaling in the way her lips were pursed and her hazel eyes flashed.

“There’s something I’d like you to see,” she said quietly.

I didn’t move to sign or act like I knew what she meant. Perhaps I hadn’t left the spiritualist tract exactly where I’d found it, and she’d scold me for snooping. Maybe she meant the painting…

The staff in the Northe residence was curiously out of the way when we arrived. Actually, when I thought about it, I realized they were usually out of sight. Perhaps that’s how Mrs. Northe liked it. But she was so friendly to them that I couldn’t imagine their not appreciating her company. I’d even wondered if I should offer myself to her in employment if my father had another crisis about what to do with me. But no one greeted us at the front door once the driver hurried up the stoop and opened it for her, bobbing his hat and clearing our path.

Perhaps they felt the chill in the air that I felt as I walked through. Perhaps they’d noticed how the light curiously seemed to hover, hang, and direct one’s eye immediately to the grand staircase and the purple velvet curtain, as if nothing else in the entire house was of importance.

Mrs. Northe watched my gaze.

“It’s like he’s magnetic, isn’t it? He compels us, doesn’t he?” she murmured. I nodded. It would do no good to pretend I wasn’t fascinated; it was far too late to hide that.

“Did you notice anything different about the canvas? I highly doubt you passed by last time without peeking.”

I wondered if besides being a spiritualist, she was a mind reader. I blushed, and that was enough for her to smirk.

“I’d be disappointed in you if you hadn’t,” she continued, and we were silent as we ascended the stairs to his level, as if ascending a dais to the throne of a king. He would have made a good king, I thought, wistfully imagining myself as one of his loyal subjects, falling upon my knee to kiss his smooth, white hand. My blush persisted. This painting had done wonders for my already overactive imagination.

We stood on the landing, and she drew the curtain back. Were I in the habit of making noise, I would have gasped aloud. But I did so inwardly with a small contraction of my rib cage and a skip of my heartbeat. Even though his face was emblazoned upon my memory, every time was like seeing him for the first.

This, I determined, was what it must feel like…

I was in love.

With a two-dimensional object. A mute in love with a painting. Lovely. Just
lovely
. I could do nothing but stand there and accept my absurd fate.

A healthy, rosy color was high on Lord Denbury’s cheeks, as if he too were blushing, those blue eyes so bright and so alive.

Mrs. Northe was watching me curiously, and remembering myself, I turned to her, ready for her commentary. She pointed to the book and then to the paper. She saw the clues that I had glimpsed. They were there still. I hadn’t dreamed them.

“I am not a girl,” Mrs. Northe said pointedly. “And so I can only think that he means you. Ever since you and Lord Denbury were introduced, this painting has taken on a whole new life. Truly. And it can’t have been Maggie. She’d seen him plenty of times before we met you. He’s never
reacted
to anyone but you. You are the one he’s chosen.”

I looked at Mrs. Northe helplessly, my heart pounding in my chest. “What…does he
want?
” I signed.

“Why, I’ve no idea,” Mrs. Northe replied. “Have you asked him?”

I looked at Mrs. Northe as if she were daft. She pursed her lips, refusing to let me think she had insulted me and added, “He spoke to you via note. Why don’t you do the same?”

I again stared at her blankly. She was speaking to me as if this were commonplace. I wondered if she was as mad as I was. Perhaps we both ought to throw ourselves into the nearest histrionic ward. She stared at me for a long moment, then up at Denbury, and then back at me.

“Our world is new, Natalie,” she mused, staring at the painting. “Magic truly does exist. Though I’ve never seen any like this. Have you?”

I shook my head. “But I saw his ghost,” I signed. I bit my lip.

Mrs. Northe cocked her head. “His ghost?” she breathed. I nodded.

“In the Art Association,” I signed, my hands shaking. “He passed and spoke to me. Different. Not…a gentleman. He was frightening. His eyes were…off.”