Veil of Shadows Read online

  They returned to the house in silence that was not quite companionable, but that was not nearly so charged as the atmosphere between them had been that morning. Tromley was waiting in the foyer holding a salver with a folded slip of paper on it.

  “A telegram has arrived for you, my lord.”

  Eldren read the simple missive and then turned to Adelaide. “It appears we are to have company. Lord Mortimer will arrive by week’s end with his mystic in tow.”

  2

  That night, Adelaide lay in her bed alone. Eldren was not far away. He was in the connecting sitting room reading correspondence and avoiding her. They had crafted a tenuous peace on the beach that afternoon, but things were not where they had been the day before and not where she wanted them to be, certainly.

  Knowing that it would be hours yet before he came to bed, Adelaide turned the lamp down and settled back against the pillows. She was all but willing herself to sleep, to feign indifference to his attempts to sustain the current distance between them. Regardless, it stung. While she understood his reasons for it, ultimately his refusal of her was a rejection. Perhaps there was just enough doubt and shattered confidence inside her thanks to Muriel’s harping that the sting of it was greater that it might otherwise have been.

  Despite her turmoil, Adelaide managed to fall into a fitful slumber. Restless and dreamless, she tossed and turned in the bed until she felt a familiar weight behind her. The mattress dipped and the covers slid back as Eldren eased into the bed. She didn’t smile in welcome, nor did she turn to hm as she might have on any other night. Instead, she kept her back to him and feigned elusive sleep. Even when she felt his hand gliding over the curve of her hip and along her thigh, she made no outward response. Still, her body thrilled to it. Blood rushed in her veins, sending heat spiraling through her.

  The touch was intended to entice, and it did. She longed for his touch, to be close to him. It wasn’t simply the pleasure he could bring her, but also that sense, for those few moments, that she wasn’t alone in the world. When they were straining together in the darkness, both of them seeking pleasure in the other, for those moments, Adelaide felt almost whole.

  As his fingertips glided over her flesh, her pulse quickened, her breathing altered and she pressed back against him. Their disagreements and tension forgotten in the moment, she wanted only to feel his skin on hers, the heat and rush of it all consuming her.

  Adelaide started to turn toward him, but the hands that pressed against her became less than gentle. They dug painfully into her flesh. An awareness settled over her then of all the things she had missed in her half slumbered state. She couldn’t feel the heat from his body, that comforting warmth that always settled over her when he was near. The fingers that gripped her were bony and cold, tipped with sharp, dagger like claws that threatened to pierce her skin.

  “Adelaide.”

  Her heart thundered in her chest. That single word, whispered in a low tone, had not been uttered by her husband. It was not Eldren who had climbed into the bed with her, who had touched her so intimately, who had tempted and seduced her, even momentarily. Revulsion washed through her.

  She didn’t scream. Instead, she simply jumped from the bed, propelling herself as far from it as possible. The scrape of those hideously sharp claws over her skin left stinging marks in their wake, but it was worth whatever flesh she might have lost in the process to put distance between herself and It. She managed to move with sufficient enough force that she sent the table and chairs that rested before the hearth careening wildly as she turned back to the bed. Her back was pressed to the stones as she fumbled for the poker. The weapon would offer some sense of security even if it was false.

  But as she faced the bed, there was nothing. No form. No visual disturbance. The bedding was rumpled from her own restlessness, but there was no evidence of anything else there. It was as if the entire terrible event had occurred only inside her own mind. And perhaps it had. Perhaps that was the worst part of it all. She shuddered in disgust, feeling violated and somehow tainted by what had occurred.

  The door from the sitting room opened and Eldren appeared. His hair was tousled but he was still fully dressed and had clearly not intended to join her in bed. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  She didn’t want to tell him. In part because she was mortified by what had occurred and by her own initial response to it and in part because she knew what he would do. He would remain at her side to soothe her fears, to protect her, to provide some buffer between her and the darkness that was so determined to destroy them. She didn’t want him to stay to protect her. If he stayed, she wanted it to be because he wanted to be with her. “I had a nightmare,” she lied. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “You didn’t,” he said, offering his own lie. “I was about to come to bed anyway.”

  “Of course,” she said, but made no move to return to the bed. Instead, she turned to face the low blaze in the hearth. The idea of climbing back into that bed, after what had just occurred, was more than she could face at the moment.

  “Are you certain everything is all right?” he asked again.

  Adelaide could hear him moving around behind her, removing his clothes and preparing for bed. “Would our relationship have ever progressed as far as it has if we hadn’t been perpetually thrown together by this awful thing?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She turned to him then. “I asked you to stay with me because I was afraid and you did. You stayed with me night after night in this forced intimacy that I now realize led to even greater intimacies. If I wasn’t so afraid, if you hadn’t felt obligated to protect me—.”

  “We would be where we are anyway… maybe not now, not yet. But it would have happened regardless, Adelaide. I was losing the will to resist you almost from the moment you stepped foot in this house. All of my good and honorable intentions would not have withstood the temptation that is you. Not for long, at any rate. Come to bed.”

  Adelaide hugged her arms about herself, more for comfort than to ward off any chill. Then he stepped towards her, his chest bare and his trousers hugging his lean waist and long legs. He halted when he was directly in front of her, only scant inches separating them.

  “Tell me what happened,” he urged.

  “I can’t,” Adelaide whispered brokenly. She reached for him, pressing her face against his chest and clinging to him. “But I’m very glad that you’re here. Whatever your reasons for being in this room with me, I’m glad you’re here now.”

  * * *

  Eldren held her, feeling the tremors that wracked her. Whatever had occurred, it had shaken her in a way that nothing else had, not since that awful night in Chester. But unlike then, she didn’t have the trust in him to share it. That her lack of trust and faith in him was a direct result of his own behavior toward her stung more than he wanted to admit.

  “Let’s sleep in another chamber tonight… one that doesn’t have so many terrible feelings associated with it.”

  “None are cleaned and ready,” she protested.

  “A little dust is the least of our worries in this house,” he offered with a smile.

  A nervous laugh escaped her then. “I suppose that’s very true.”

  Leading her down the hall, he opened chamber doors until he found the one least filled with dust. It was an older room, not redecorated for years, and most of the furniture draped in holland cloths. Lighting the lamp on the table, he tugged the dust covers back from the bed and dropped them in the corner of the room. “This should do.”

  “It should,” she agreed. “Thank you for this.”

  “For being willing to sleep in the dust?”

  “For understanding. For knowing that I needed to be somewhere—anywhere—else tonight. And I realize it’s only the illusion of safety, that there is no place in this or even beyond it now that this thing cannot reach us, but it does help.”

  Eldren closed the distance between them, pulled her ag
ainst him and just held her. “There is nothing I would not do for you and nothing I would not give you if it were in my power to do so.”

  “I know that,” she whispered. “But for now, let’s just focus on what we can have, what we do have. And the rest will work itself out.”

  He took her hand and drew her toward the bed. As they lay there in the darkness, he held her in his arms. It wasn’t about passion or pleasure. It was about comfort, about connection, about the things he felt that he was not truly free to express to her. Not yet. He didn’t want to tell her how much he’d grown to love her, how she had invaded his very soul, because until they could find some semblance of control over what was occurring within the walls of Cysgod Lys, he wasn’t free to love her as she deserved. And she’d already been hurt by half measures too much already.

  * * *

  Frances slipped through the darkened halls of Cysgod Lys. Servants cowered in their beds at night. Eldren and Adelaide would be somewhere mooning over one another. Her own husband was too drunk to notice her presence or absence. The end result was that she was free. Only in the darkest hours of the night did she dare to roam the halls, touching the stone and wood and feeling the power of it all seep into her through the tips of her fingers.

  “I know you hear me,” she said, her voice coming out in a hum.

  I do. What do you want of me?

  “To free you,” Frances said. “To give you all that you want.”

  And what do you want in return?

  Frances opened the door to the cellars and slipped down the still damaged stairs. Her feet moved unerringly, never once stumbling over or striking the loose stones that still littered the area from Eldren’s minor explosion. “I want what I have always wanted. To share in your power and your glory…We are the same, you and I. Are we not?”

  No. You are what I once was.

  Frances smiled as she reached the center of the dark cellar. The heavy grate there was locked, thick chains holding it in place. Dropping to her knees next to it, she lifted her arms skyward. “And I am what you long to be again… Flesh.”

  I have no need of flesh! I have power you cannot even dream of!

  The voice inside Frances’ head was no longer a whisper. It was a shout. It roared like an angry, bitter wind inside her skull.

  “You have power, but you cannot feel. You know hunger that cannot be slaked. Thirst that cannot be quenched. Need that can never be fulfilled. I offer you the chance to be reborn, to share your powers with me and take the flesh that I offer you!”

  You would grant me your body?

  Frances smiled. “No. Not my body, but the child that grows within it. It is the perfect way for you to be reborn… and for your power to course through my body.”

  And when I am birthed, it will remain with you. Will it not?

  “A portion of it,” Frances bargained. “Only a portion of it. It is a fair price to pay, is it not? I will nourish and protect you. I will give you life once more. And in turn, you will give me the power I crave. Together we will take back Cysgod Lys from the Llewellyns’ and you may rule here forever!”

  There is no forever if I am flesh. If I am flesh, I will wither and die. Again.

  “Unless we take the bodies of others. We could be eternal… mother and child, over and over again. Isn’t that what you envisioned all those centuries ago?”

  You think yourself clever, Frances.

  She was clever, but she knew better than to say so. Their deal was not sealed just yet. “Not so clever as you. Not so strong as you. But necessary to you, just the same.”

  For now. For now.

  The power was gone in an instant. The ancient force of it receding into a place where Frances could not call it forth. But she’d tempted it, and she knew that. It had been her plan all along after all. Rising to her feet, she pressed one hand to the small mound of her belly. The child that grew there was nothing to her beyond a bargaining tool. If it served its purpose, then she would love it. She would cherish and protect it. But for the moment, it was just an alien thing growing inside her that might some day be useful.

  Turning, she made her way back upstairs to her chamber. She would spend yet another night lying next to her drunkard of a husband wishing him and his entire family to the devil. They had so much at their disposal and would not use it. The power that flowed freely through Cysgod Lys, the entity that existed within its walls, was something that could have been harnessed and used for centuries to amass wealth and power. Instead they had bemoaned its presence and allowed madness and misery to take them. She would never be one of them. And as soon as the world was rid of the lot of them, she would be happier for it.

  3

  John Tremaine, Lord Mortimer, arrived by train with an entourage in tow. His valet was there, as well as Madame Leola, a mystic of some renown. She traveled with her ladies maid and an assistant. All of them descended on Machynlleth in the middle of the afternoon only days after he’d received the letter from Adelaide Llewellyn nee Hampton Parke, the new Countess of Montkeith.

  Madame Leola, in her intricately embroidered and somewhat eye catching garb in a rather shocking shade of crimson, created a stir wherever she went. Dark haired, lovely and with the manners of a fine lady, there was still something very much of the harlot about her. Not that it mattered to him. His interest in Madame Leola was strictly professional. He’d witnessed her ability to commune with spirits first hand. While she was far more theatrical about it than was strictly necessary, he found him convinced of her genuine gifts.

  Of course, Madame Leola wasn’t the only who was gifted. John’s own gift had always been his ability to sense such power in others, to differentiate the charlatans from the genuine article. It was what had made his meeting with Miss Hampton Parke so memorable. She was gifted, he was certain. He’d known her as a child, been friends with her father and her mother, as well as acquainted with her stepmother. But whatever strange abilities she possessed, they had not manifested in her yet, of that, he was certain. Of course, such abilities were to be nurtured if they were to reach their full potential and he doubted that her pragmatic mother and father, or her greedy stepmother, would have seen any purpose to that. The latter he had little regard for. In his estimation, Muriel Hampton Parke was the worst sort of woman, a fortune hunter with no regard for manners and decency.

  Their bags stowed in wagons and the servants riding along with them, he climbed into the hired carriage with Madame Leola. She was unusually quiet and he knew that was a matter of significance. When they were alone, he asked her rather pointedly, “What is it? Are you sensing something?”

  Her gaze turned toward him, connecting with the same jolt it always did. She was a beautiful woman. Had he been a different sort of man, that might have been the reason for it. But it wasn’t simply her appearance. There was something magnetic about Leola, about the power that seemed to eddy and swirl about her. Still, in that moment, she appeared troubled and vulnerable, something he was unused to seeing from her.

  “I am sensing many things, my lord,” she replied softly. “The dead linger here. Generation after generation, it seems. They are all around us and it is very difficult to make sense of it all with the lot of them whispering and shouting at me,” she said. “But there is something more. Something that feels infinitely older and much darker. It hides from me now. But I will soon discover the reasons for it.”

  “And Miss Hampton Parke… forgive me, Lady Montkeith. Can you sense her?”

  “There are two living beings here who possess great power. But my strongest gift has always been my ability to speak to the dead. The other questions I will only be able to answer after meeting them,” Madame Leola said.

  “Of course. Then let us proceed to Cysgod Lys and determine what manner of beings we are dealing with.”

  John stared straight ahead, but after a moment he became aware of a coldness beside him. The air was chilled beyond what the temperature of the day would allow for. Despite that, he did not fe
el alarmed. There was no sense of foreboding, only a sense of peace. Glancing at Madame Leola, he noted the sad smile that curved her lips.

  “She’s here isn’t she?”

  “She is always near you,” Madame Leola replied. “But yes, she is here. There is something about this place, the power of it, that allows her to come through more strongly. I can see her quite clearly.”

  And yet he saw nothing. He felt her presence. He knew that his dear Venetia was beside him. How many times had he felt her presence? The faint cold chill, the whiff of her perfume, the knowledge that he was not alone—and yet, as always, he was denied the vision of her face, the ability to look once more into her lovely blue eyes. It was maddening and frustrating beyond belief.

  He missed her, more than he’d ever thought it possible to miss a person. And yet despite that, the pain of grief was fading. He could picture her now with fondness and with a wistful sort of longing, but it was no longer accompanied by the vicious pang of regret and loneliness that had been his constant companion for so long. In many ways, the lessening of his grief was the hardest part of it all. It signified that his purpose in life, the thing that had driven him for nigh on a decade, to find some way of once more reaching her, was coming to an end. Not because he had succeeded, but because the need for it was fading.

  “Why can she not show herself to me?” he demanded. He had seen no spirits in his life. Never once had they appeared to him, but that had not swayed him from their existence. There were senses that he trusted more than something so easily manipulated and so fallible as vision.

  “Because it isn’t time,” Madame Leola replied. “You will see her when you need to see her.”

  “I need to see her now. I’ve needed to see her every day since she departed this world,” he snapped bitterly.

  “No, my lord. You did not. You wanted to see her. You longed to see her. But the need to see a spirit, when you are not cursed as I am, is not determined by you,” Madame Leola said sharply. “Have a care with your words. They upset her. And take comfort in her presence for she has remained a glimmer and shadow in this world when something far more beautiful awaits her beyond it.”