The Dark Between (27 page)

“Elsie, the school is fenced, but it’s not a prison,” Kate had told her the day before. “One
can
walk out the door and away from Summerfield without scaling walls or breaking locks.”

“How do you manage it without getting caught?”

“You wait until night and you stay in the dark as much as possible.”

Elsie had done as Kate described, walking quietly down the two flights of stairs and out the door, taking the garden path through the darkness to the unlocked side gate. She hadn’t expected to encounter the bicycle.

So
that
was how Kate had traveled to Castle End so easily. And on this night Kate was ill—Elsie hadn’t seen her all day—so she shouldn’t mind if Elsie took the contraption out for a spin. It would be a much quicker trip on a bicycle, even one this rickety.

She’d dressed simply in a white muslin blouse and dark
skirt, the plainest petticoat she owned, and a light cloak. She was forced to pull the gown up to her knees to straddle the bicycle, but the cloak hid her display of underclothes. If she kept to the dark she wouldn’t call too much attention to herself.

A mixture of excitement and terror at seeing Simon so late at night had numbed her to the dangers of cycling alone in the near darkness. She knew exactly where Stonehill lay, and in her mind she could see that familiar door open and Simon glancing out. Would he smile? Surely he’d be shocked. She’d rehearsed gentle, reassuring words—words that would convince him to let her inside.

As it happened, her head emptied of all these words when she found herself leaning the bicycle against a tree and standing before the front door at her aunt and uncle’s former home—a place she’d visited before, but never like this. Through the drawing room window she could see the flickering light of a lamp. He was there.

And yet she was frozen.

She stepped closer. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the knocker and tapped three times.

After an agonizing pause, she heard footsteps. The door opened a few inches, revealing a sliver of Simon’s face. He stared through the opening for a moment, frowning in confusion. When she pushed back the hood of her cloak, his eyes widened and he swung the door open.

His face was pale, his usually sleek hair awry. She smiled at the thought of him tearing at it as he’d worked upon some difficult task. He’d not shaved that day. His shirt was rumpled, and he’d shrugged out of his braces, which now hung at his sides. He looked boyish and vulnerable—more frightened to see her on his doorstep than she was to be there.

“Hello,” she said softly.

“Elsie?” He smoothed his wild hair. “I mean, Miss Atherton?”

“May I … Simon, may I please come in?”

He hesitated, seeming to regain some of his composure. “Your aunt would have my head on a platter if she knew you were here so late.
Alone
.”

“She’s asleep. Neither of them knows I’m here, and they never shall. Please don’t shut the door on me. I only wish to talk with you.”

He stared at her. After a long pause, he finally waved her through the door.

“I’ve always loved it here,” she said softly as he guided her toward the drawing room. She glanced at the desk and the flickering lamp that cast shadows on the books and papers strewn over its surface. This house had not yet been fitted with electricity. The thought of long nights spent working by lamplight made her heart warm even more to him. She loved his grand theories, his determination to know more than it was thought possible to understand.

He gestured at a faded settee, and she let the cloak slide from her shoulders. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not sit. I wish you would instead take me out to the back garden.”

“Elsie, this is very strange.”

“I’m a strange young lady, remember? But I don’t bite. I just want to see the place where I was so happy as a child.”

The faintest smile played upon his lips. “Let me get the lamp.”

She followed him to the back door. When he opened it for her, she stepped out into the night air. “It’s too cloudy to see the stars tonight,” she murmured.

“I still can’t believe you came so far, and in such darkness, on your own.”

“It seems much as I remembered out here. The trees don’t
tower quite so much as they did then, but they still make me feel safe.” She turned to him. “And I feel safe with you, of course.”

“Your reputation won’t be safe if anyone learns you’ve been here.”

She waved a hand. “No one will know. Please don’t say any more about it.”

“But I still want to know
why
.”

She stepped closer to him. “I had to see you alone before you left Cambridge. I feared that if I didn’t, we’d never have the opportunity to speak about that day by the river.”

He looked away. “I owe you an apology. I took liberties.”

She laid her hand on his arm. “You didn’t. I wanted you to kiss me. Simon, I am no good at being coy and elusive. I felt very close to you that day. I’ve felt drawn to you since the day we met.”

“When you crashed into me at the museum.”

“Yes, and I had that horrible seizure. You were kind. You didn’t look at me like I was damaged or pitiful.”

“You were in distress. And those words you spoke haunt me still.… May I ask you about them?”

A flush of heat swelled from Elsie’s chest, warming her neck and cheeks. “You may.”

“Did you see a spirit that day? A young woman?”

She studied his face. It was open, his eyes trusting. After a moment she nodded.

He sighed deeply. “I have so many questions.”

“Take me upstairs.” When he opened his mouth to protest, she continued quickly. “I wish to see where my brothers and I used to sleep, and then I will tell you more.”

“Of course.” His smile tightened.

She followed him up the staircase. At the landing, she
reached for the lamp. “May I?” He handed it to her, his eyes troubled in the flickering light.

She walked down the corridor, past the closed doors. One door was open at the very end. She peered inside, holding the lamp out to illuminate the room. Then she crossed the threshold, setting the lamp on a trunk that sat just inside the door.

“You sleep in the very room that was mine when my family was here,” she breathed.

It may have been true. So many years had passed that she couldn’t remember exactly which room had been hers. She merely recalled her brothers chasing her in and out of all the rooms on this floor.

The small bed was unmade, the coverlet twisted and the pillow smashed as though Simon writhed during his sleep. Clothes were draped untidily on a chair. Books lay in stacks on the floor. The room smelled like sleep … and like him.

Her heart pounded when she felt the heat of his body behind her. He stepped even closer and lightly touched her hair. His hand moved to her shoulder, fingers brushing the side of her neck like a kiss.

She held her breath.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he murmured at her ear.

“I chose to be here.” She turned to face him. “Are you asking me to leave?”

His eyes were wide, the pupils fully dilated in the dimly lit room. “With you standing so near, so warm … I don’t think I can.”

She placed her fingers on his cheeks and stepped forward, closing those final inches between them. Their bodies nearly touched. “Good.”

She smiled as he pulled her to him.

Kate woke to darkness and quiet. She lit her study lamp and peered at the small clock on the desk. Nearly eleven o’clock. She’d intended to take a short nap after her early supper, but apparently she’d slept for hours, fully clothed.

As the fog of sleep cleared, Elizabeth Gardner’s cruel words came back to her. Had she really deserved to be called a “conniving little slut” and “naughty blackmailer”? The Gardners had riches to spare, and she’d only meant to keep herself clothed and fed without taking charity. As it was, she barely held on to her dignity. Begging would snatch it from her forever. And yet … there was poor Billy’s example. Blackmail could prove deadly.

Kate shuddered.

The scheme had failed and she couldn’t think of another that would fund her escape from Cambridge. If she asked the Thompsons or Elsie, they would bog matters down with their questions and deliberations, giving Eliot enough time to learn her name and report her to the police.

If only Tec hadn’t behaved so queerly. Why would he run from
her
? Had someone else been in pursuit? Perhaps he’d been trying to lead Kate away from danger.

She sat up, a strange determination pounding in her blood. She would try one last time with Tec. She would search him out in his Castle End cottage and do her best to convince him they must leave for London together. Immediately.

She rose from the bed, laced on her boots, and walked softly across the floor to collect her wrap. The night air would be damp and the wrap would come in handy for concealment. Once again she placed Billy’s knife in her pocket. There was nothing else she wished to take with her.

She crept down the stairs, avoiding the creaky step third
from the bottom. Letting herself out the side door, she walked south, past Summerfield Hall … only to find herself staring at an empty patch of grass.

The bicycle was gone.

“Damnation,” she muttered.

It would take nearly half an hour to walk to Castle End, and she would have to make her way along the Backs, which she knew were dark and sinister at night. It was bad enough on a bicycle. And yet she had no choice. Eliot could come for her tomorrow.

The night sky was cloudy, but the faint gas lamps gave off just enough light. When a horse approached or a group of men walked in her direction, she stepped into the shadows. Fortunately, few people were on the road this late at night, and those she did encounter took little notice of a small figure wrapped in a shawl, walking in the shadows and doing her best to keep invisible.

More people—men and ragged boys—milled about the cottages on Castle End, muttering and laughing in clusters. She kept her head down and her pace lively. When a boy called out to her, she continued as if she hadn’t heard him.

Tec’s door was shut but not bolted. She swung the door open and breathed in the fumes of bacon and boiled cod. A lamp and matches stood on a table near the door. Once the flame was lit, she looked about the room. The view did not reassure. Fish-and-chips wrappers, greasy and cold, lay strewn about the floor. Quilts that in the past would have been neatly folded in a corner had been left in rumpled piles near the stove. Tec’s wool cap, always on the nail by the door when he was home, was gone.

It looked more like a stranger had been squatting in the cottage. Tec usually kept his living space orderly, if not entirely
clean. Perhaps something
was
wrong with him. For whatever reason, he would have to be terribly distracted to allow this disorder. Someone had been in the cottage recently—there were hot coals in the stove. Perhaps if she waited he eventually would come home.

She went to the table and checked the drawer. The bundle of tools still lay there exactly as she’d left them. She looked around the room again before shoving the bundle into her free pocket. It hung awkwardly at her side, overbalancing the pocket with the knife.

She wasn’t stealing. She was merely keeping the tools safe until Tec was in his right mind.

Kate glanced at the chair near the stove, where Elsie had the vision of Billy. After a moment she stepped toward the chair and eased herself into it. Could it be possible to fall to that other realm like Elsie? Would she hear Billy’s voice? She sat tensely, opening her mind to the possibility.

Nothing happened.

She slumped in the chair. Poor Billy, clever enough to launch a blackmail scheme but still too much of a child to carry it out safely. If only he’d told her more about it, she might have stopped him.

She tried to remember the details Elsie had given. Billy found some papers, and they gave him an idea for a scheme. They must have been incriminating in some way, or why else take them? He’d hidden them, but hadn’t said where.

Billy didn’t have a home. He didn’t have a permanent place to kip other than Tec’s house.

Could he have hidden those papers here? Tec hadn’t mentioned it, but then again, Billy might have kept it from him. He’d promised to share the proceeds with Kate—no one else. Her gaze moved from the ragged quilts on the floor to the
sooty windows. Where would he hide papers so that neither Tec nor the other boys would find them?

She stood and walked about the cottage, imagining possible hidey-holes. The cabinets and larder shelves were rather obvious, but she checked them anyway, to no avail. The walls were bare and smooth—no possible hiding places there. She studied the seams on all the quilts and the undersides of the chairs and table. Plenty of dust and fluff, but no papers. Before she could search the wood floor for loose boards, she had to collect the scattered fish-and-chips wrappers and toss them into the stove. Once the floor was cleared, she walked up and down each board, testing for weak spots. The floor sagged, but the boards were nailed tight. Could Billy have hidden the pages somewhere outdoors? That certainly didn’t seem the ideal way to preserve paper for a blackmail scheme.