Mesmerized (31 page)

Irina smiled at the woman. “I will sit with Mr. Babington for a while. You may go. I will call you when I need you again.”

“Yes, miss. Thank you, miss.” The maid got up, putting her mending back into the bag by her chair. “Isn’t it terrible about Lady St. Leger?”

“Mmm. Dreadful.”

The girl gave a dramatic shudder, then bobbed a curtsy and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

Irina went to stand beside the bed, looking down at the still form of Howard Babington. Her lip curled in contempt. What a puny, incompetent nothing the man was! It irked her to think of all the time and effort she had wasted seducing him.

She laid her hands flat on his chest, saying, “You were too weak a vessel, alas. There was not enough strength in you to house my dark lover, was there? I should have chosen a better man. You were unworthy of such a powerful presence. But how am I to get him back now?”

She let her head fall back, her eyes closing, as she said, “Come to me now, my love. My dark prince. Fill this unworthy body again and let me know you.”

She began to chant, ancient, secret words falling from her lips. The air around her grew cold, and the sound of a great wind filled the room, though nothing stirred.

Irina stiffened, stretching up on her tiptoes, then jerked violently and fell hard onto her knees. She
knelt for a long moment, recovering herself. Slowly she rose and gazed about the room. Her face was different from before, her eyes cold and hard as stones.

Her voice, when she spoke, came out a low, rusty growl. “I will have what is mine.”

She turned and walked back to her room, going to a drawer in her dresser. She shoved aside the lacy underthings, going to the leather scabbard that lay beneath. She slid out a knife from the scabbard, and it gleamed. A smile as cold as death lifted her lips.

“I will have what is mine,” she repeated, and put the knife back in its scabbard, shoving it up the sleeve of her dress.

Then she turned and walked out the door.

O
livia walked into Stephen’s study, and he looked up and smiled at her. Then he stood up, came around his desk and pulled her into his arms, laying a soft kiss on the top of her head.

“You are an angel to look after Mother and Belinda,” he said.

“It is no hardship. I am fond of them,” Olivia replied, stepping back.

“How are they doing?”

“I think they will be fine. Belinda has had some hard knocks this week, but she is young and resilient. It will take Lady St. Leger more time. She blames herself for setting the whole thing in motion by bringing Madame Valenskaya here, and she feels much taken in, I fear.”

Stephen sighed. “I hope she will not dwell on it too much.”

“I left them in Lady St. Leger’s room. Your mother is lying down, with a cloth dipped in lavender water
on her head, and Belinda is reading to her. I’m not sure either of them is attending much to what is on the page, but at least it keeps their minds off what happened.” Olivia looked up at him, concern in her eyes. “What about you? How are you faring?”

“I am all right. It was foolish of me not to guess that Pamela was involved in their scheme. Obviously someone had given them a large number of facts about Roderick and the family. Who better than a member of the family? And I knew Pamela’s mercenary nature better than any of them.”

“You could not have known,” Olivia said firmly. “Disloyalty, I think, is too far from your nature for your mind to leap to that sort of conclusion. If anyone should have thought of her involvement, it is I. It is my field of expertise, after all, and as an outsider, I should have been better able to look at the situation logically, impartially.”

She knew, in fact, one reason she had not even considered Pamela to be in league with the medium was that she had been too wrapped up in her own jealousy of the woman. She had had difficulty looking at her as anything but the woman Stephen had once loved and might still.

Olivia took a breath, summoning up her strength. It was not a subject she wished to pursue, but for Stephen’s sake, it had to be done. “You must be feeling a great deal of sorrow. You were, after all, in love with her.”

Stephen looked at her, startled. “You knew that I—”

“Pamela herself told me that you were in love with her, although her story was far from the truth. Belinda told me later what had really happened between you—how much you had loved her and how she had broken your heart.”

“I thought myself madly in love with her,” he agreed. “She was beautiful.”

“Yes, she was.”

“She was even lovelier at eighteen—fresh and blooming. I was a complete fool. I had no idea what sort of person lay beneath her looks. Looking back on it, I have to be thankful that she jilted me. If she had not, I would have married her and been miserable these past ten years, no doubt. I was filled with hurt and rage at the time, of course. I rashly ran off to America, hating my brother, hating her. But before long, I realized what I had escaped, and I was thankful. I only wish my brother had not had to endure marriage with her.”

Olivia looked at him, perplexed. Stephen glanced down at her and smiled. “Why do you look so? Did you think I had been pining away for her all these years?”

“Well, I—I mean, you loved her, and she is—was—so beautiful. I—did you not?”

“Lord, no. I was infatuated with her looks. I scarcely knew her, really. As it is with young girls making their come-out, we were all chaperoned. I
danced with her. I exchanged the kind of polite chitchat that one does. We managed to sneak away enough to share a few kisses. But that was all. I would like to think that if I had actually talked to her, spent time with her, I would have realized what she was like. As it was, I was in love with an image. Nothing more. It died quickly once I was away from her. When I returned, I wanted nothing to do with her. I looked at her and felt nothing.”

“Oh.” Olivia supposed it was awful of her, with the poor woman dead, but she could not help feeling a burst of joy at Stephen’s words. “I see.”

“I am sorry she died,” Stephen went on. “As I would be sorry for anyone. But I do not mourn her as a lost love.”

Stephen took her hand and raised it to his lips. “You are—”

“Ah, there you are,” said a voice behind them, and Stephen released her hand and turned.

“Lord Moreland. Come in.”

For once Olivia was less than happy to see her diminutive great-uncle.
What had Stephen been about to say?

“I hope I am not intruding.”

“Of course not, Uncle,” Olivia lied. “Come, sit down with me.”

His bright bird eyes went from her face to Stephen’s as he came over to the chair Olivia had indicated. They sat in front of Stephen’s desk, and Stephen resumed his seat behind it.

“I wondered what news you had had,” Great-uncle Bellard said. “Has the constable come? Has Madame Valenskaya been found?”

“Yes, the constable and the doctor have both been here. They removed Pamela’s body. As for Madame Valenskaya…” Stephen shrugged. “Rafe has joined Tom and the servants in searching for her, but they have found no sign of her yet. I am inclined to think she probably got well away from the house before we even knew she was gone. Perhaps she even had some sort of conveyance waiting for her. It seems far too organized and efficient for the woman, but it may be I am entirely wrong about her, and she is so clever that she carries on a perfect masquerade as a fool.”

“Do you think she killed Lady Pamela?” Great-uncle Bellard asked.

“I have no idea. I am not even sure that Lady Pamela
was
killed. According to the doctor, she was not shot, nor stabbed nor beaten nor strangled. He is inclined to believe she died of natural causes, probably a heart attack. I did not tell him, of course, that she was in the act of stealing the Martyrs’ treasure. But given that she was, perhaps the fear of being discovered or the excitement of it caused her heart to fail, though no one has ever seen any indication in her of a weak heart.”

“And one has to wonder if Madame Valenskaya would have been able to kill her,” Great-uncle Bellard added. “After all, she was much older than Lady Pamela, who was young and fit.”

“And Madame Valenskaya had been drinking,” Olivia pointed out. “I noticed two nights in a row that there was alcohol on her breath.”

“And why, if they fought over the casket, were there no signs of a struggle, either in the room or on Pamela?” Stephen mused. “Why, having bested her, would the woman not have seized the casket and taken it with her?”

There was a rumble of voices and the sound of footsteps outside, and the three of them turned toward the hall. A moment later, a strange trio appeared in the doorway: Tom Quick and Rafe McIntyre, each with a firm grasp on one arm of Madame Valenskaya, who stood dispiritedly between them.

She was dusty and bedraggled, her hair straggling down from its knot.

“We found her hiding in the unused part of the house,” Rafe said, steering the woman into the study.

“I was not hiding,” the medium protested, pulling herself a little straighter and trying to regain the threads of her dignity. She jerked her arms from the men’s loose holds. “I was lost.”

“Is that right?” Tom asked, grinning. “Then why’d we find you inside that wardrobe?”

“I was frightened when I heard you approach.” Her eyes darted about the room. “Where is my dear friend, Lady St. Leger?”

“You needn’t look to her for help, Madame. She has finally seen how you have deceived her these past few months,” Stephen said.

“What? You lie! I haff never—”

“Be quiet!” Stephen snapped, and, startled, Madame Valenskaya subsided, looking at him warily.

“You have worse problems now than Lady St. Leger discovering the game you and your group have been playing on her. Lady Pamela is dead.”

Madame Valenskaya gaped at him, her face turning white. “Dead! Oh, no! Oh, no! They have killed her!” The medium’s Russian accent had completely deserted her now. She looked frantically about the room as if she was once again going to hide. She grabbed Stephen’s arm. “You must help me. You must protect me.”

Stephen took her arms and none too gently deposited her in a chair. “What do you mean, ‘they have killed her’? What are you talking about? Who killed her?”

“They will kill me, too. You must help me,” Madame Valenskaya repeated, rolling her eyes about in a dramatic way.

“Really, Madame, I have a little trouble believing these histrionics,” Stephen told her sternly.

“No! I am telling you the truth! You must believe me!” Madame Valenskaya looked panic-stricken, and despite her melodramatic way of acting, Olivia had no trouble believing the woman was indeed terrified.

“Then, tell me, of whom are you so frightened?”

“Irene!” Madame Valenskaya said at last, looking around nervously, as if her daughter might suddenly appear in the room with them.

“You are saying that your daughter killed Lady Pamela?” Stephen asked skeptically.

“Yes! Yes! It had to be her. She—she’s—you don’t know her. She looks timid and retiring, but that is all an act. It is what she wants people to think, so they won’t see what’s really inside her. But she is powerful! It was all her idea—it always is. I am only an actress, you see. That is what I did all my life, and I made a living at it. But then Irene came up with this idea, you see—a way for us to make money. I used an accent. In America, I was French, and in France, I was Russian. And here, as well, I was Russian, as it worked so well. Irene pulled Mr. Babington into it, as well. She—she convinced him to join us, to let us use his house.”

“So you’re saying that it was Irina—
Irene
—who set up the tricks?” Olivia asked. “Painting the glove with phosphorescent paint? Hiding a music box about your person and turning it on?”

Madame Valenskaya gaped at her. “How did you know? Yes, she learned how to do all that and showed me. She and Howard rigged up some things in his ceiling, too, so that harps and such would hang from it, looking like they dropped from the sky. She was smart. But she always wanted something more. She would cast stones and lay out those cards.” She gave an outsize shudder. “It scared the devil out of me, I tell you, what I would hear coming from her room sometimes.”

“What do you mean? What did you hear?” Rafe asked.

“Voices…chanting…and once, in one of the upper rooms at Babington’s house, I saw this, this star sort of thing done in chalk on the floor. It fair gave me the shivers, I’ll tell you.”

“She was dabbling in the black arts?” Stephen asked.

Madame Valenskaya nodded her head emphatically. “And after that is when she came up with this idea. This thing about Blackhope.”

“Here?” Stephen looked surprised. “This house specifically?”

“Yes. She went on and on about it. She looked into everything about the estate and who lived here. She was happy as could be when Pamela came to town. She arranged it so she could meet her, but Lady Pamela wasn’t any too interested in the séances. She said she didn’t believe in that nonsense, you see. Irene was furious, only then Lady St. Leger arrived, and Irene learned how it was with her, how she mourned her son, the one that died—more than that Lady Pamela ever did, I’ll warrant you! So she cooked up this scheme to get Lady St. Leger. She got Lady Pamela involved in it, promised to give her some of the money, you know. So Lady Pamela told us all about things at the house and about her dead husband, so I could make Lady St. Leger think I was talking to him.”

“Very clever,” Stephen said sarcastically.

Madame Valenskaya paused and looked at him, seeing the contempt and anger on his face. She lifted her chin and said with some defiance, “We weren’t doing anything all that wrong! It made her ladyship happy to think she was talking with her Roddy, and that’s a fact.”

“And the fact that you were lying to her, playing on her grief to extract money from her, makes no difference, is that it?”

“We didn’t hurt her!” Madame Valenskaya contended. “She wanted to hear those things, and she had plenty of money. It wasn’t as if we took much. She’d give me a ring or a bracelet or some such thing.”

“Nice little items you could sell or pawn.”

“She never missed ’em, she had so much.”

“But what about Blackhope?” Olivia asked, dragging the two combatants back to the subject. “Did your daughter set it up for you to come here?”

“Yes. She worked it around, her and Lady Pamela, so that Lady St. Leger invited us to come here, thinking she’d come up with the idea herself.”

“But why?”

“It was because of what Irene was doing,” Madame Valenskaya said obscurely. “She wanted to find that treasure, her and Lady Pamela both. Irene thought up tricks to make the lot of you think there were ghosts here—the monk in the garden and like that. Lady Pamela told her about the place in the nursery where you could take off a tile and talk and sound
like you were right in the room below. Her husband had told her about you and him playing with it, you see.”

“Yes, of course. I should have realized she was lying about that.”

“But why did your daughter want the treasure so much?” Olivia asked. “I mean, there are more valuable things in this house, as I understand it. Why that particular box?”