Page 8 of The Lady Sparks a Flame (The Damsels of Discovery #2)

8

All sure in their days except the most wise…. He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt.

—Michael Faraday

Sam peered at his warped reflection in a spotted looking glass. Squinting, he tried to discern if his tie were properly knotted. Though he’d been happy when cravats went out of style, he wasn’t certain he approved of the more casual ties for dinner.

“Cor, listen to me,” he said to his reflection. “I sound like me da.”

Huffing, he untied the length of satin, shaking his head. Talking to himself. Jumping at every gust of wind, turning around when he heard the laughter of children, sneaking past mirrors and keeping his eyes firmly on the ground in case whatever lurked in the silvered glass might stare back out at him; either Sam was acting the fool or Prentiss Manor was ensorcelled.

Of course, that wasn’t true, though there were legends that the first of the Hunts was indeed a sorcerer. There was nothing preternatural about this place itself. Rather, it was the effect the manor had on its occupants.

The wind picked up outside and icy fingers of a draft pulled at the warped window sash. Sam took his lamp and went downstairs, grateful for the bowled glass protecting the sickly flame. Every so often he passed by a window slightly open or a door swinging on its hinges propelled by an unseen breeze.

The place was a dark and scary old icebox, and frankly, Sam hated it here.

“Good evening, Mr. Fenley.”

Sam nearly pissed his pants.

Lady Fallowshall had been standing so still without a light source, he hadn’t seen her pressed against the wall of the corridor outside the dining room.

“Good evening, my lady.” Sam managed to lower his voice to a normal register, though he’d been close to squeaking.

Fecking aristocrats and their haunted manors and eccentric ways.

He’d gone trailing after Lady Karolina this afternoon, touring the west wing of the house to help her list the valuables. For the first twenty minutes or so, he hadn’t heard a word she’d said to him, deafened by the lightning that had struck him when he’d touched Lady Phoebe’s skin. The sensation was like the shock he’d felt when accidentally grabbing the wire in one of the scientists’ experiments with electricity.

Only, this shock was pleasurable.

“You are enjoying your visit to Prentiss Manor, Mr. Fenley?” the marchioness asked, yanking him back to the present. The dark, cold, unnerving present.

Ugh.

Sam searched for something nice to say about this morose heap of plaster and frost.

“I am surrounded with beautiful, witty women,” he said instead, offering Lady Fallowshall his arm. “How can I not enjoy my visit when it is filled with such loveliness and grace?”

Her mouth dipped into a genteel smile, and a vague protectiveness filled him. Something in her manner suggested she’d a weak tether to the earth. That it would take only the slightest harm to send her sailing off into the ether.

They walked together into the dining room. Lady Karolina and Lady Phoebe had already arrived. Both stood in front of a pitiful fire. When the marchioness went to stand with her daughters, the meager firelight limned their mauve silk gowns. Sam marveled that they wore those confections without shivering. The marchioness’s and Lady Karolina’s dresses were au courant, with lower necklines and mourning-gray organza drapery. Lady Phoebe’s was older with more of a shawl shape to the bodice and less embroidery.

“You ladies look lovely this evening,” he said, accepting a glass of sherry from Lady Phoebe as he drew closer, the goose bumps on the skin between the full-length gloves and their short sleeves apparent.

“As grateful as I am that you’ve gone through this trouble for dinner”—Sam gestured to the elaborately set dining table, where piles of forks and spoons and unfamiliar instruments shone dully in the light of a tarnished candelabra—“I am happy to eat less formally in a smaller room.”

“We can afford to give you at least one decent dinner,” Lady Phoebe chided him. Lady Karolina beamed, and the marchioness blushed, nodding.

This ridiculousness, miles of porcelain and minted silver forks, shivering in the dark and who knew what sorts of cold dishes to come—this was decent?

So fiercely Sam longed for his family—for uncomplicated beef and turnips, for grumbling and swatting and even for when his sisters turned on him at once and buried him beneath their talk of creams and politics and suppositions on the secret life of library mice—that his stomach pained him.

If he were home right now, bathed in the orange glow of coal fire and paraffin and the terrible watercolors his mother had framed, what would these women be doing? Sitting in darkness with their silken gloves and the sibilant hiss of the wind finding its way in under the doors and beneath the windowsills?

This place inspired the most morbid of fantasies, and Sam was leaving. He’d been gone from London for too long. He would mention his businesses as an excuse, assure them he would sell whatever they wanted without even looking at it, and be quit of this place tomorrow by midafternoon.

Until then, Sam drank his sherry and gently teased Lady Karolina about her disdain for coffee.

“You cannot convince me that nasty brew will ever become as popular as tea,” she insisted. “It smells like…like food.”

“Perhaps that is why people drink copious cups of it in the coffeehouses,” he mused. “It fills them up for less than a proper meal would.”

Sam’s teasing trailed off when one of the stocky servants he’d seen only glimpses of entered with a small soup tureen.

The marchioness muttered something under her breath and Lady Phoebe shushed her. Upset the meal was being served before they sat at the table, Lady Fallowshall looked over her shoulder at the bare wall above the mantel apologetically. Where a portrait or mirror might have hung, only a hole in the plaster remained.

Sam walked her to the head of the table. Before he pulled out the chair, Lady Phoebe tilted her chin and gestured at the chair to the left of the head.

Once he seated the marchioness, Lady Phoebe and Lady Karolina took their seats quickly. There was no place for him to go but the head of the table. A cold sweat broke out beneath his stiff linen dress shirt, but Sam forced himself to smile. Head of the table meant he was served first. What if he couldn’t hide his disgust at one of the dishes?

These women ate fried cheese curds and jam. For breakfast. Without gagging.

The maid ladled a benign-looking lukewarm soup into their bowls, and the marchioness again raised her eyes to the blank wall.

Sam knew he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t stand it. “What—”

Oh, for the love of Christ, he needed to cultivate a poker face. Having followed his glance, Lady Phoebe silenced his question by running her finger across her throat in a gesture anyone with an older sibling knew well.

He was not supposed to ask about the obviously missing portrait that once hung there. Sam wasn’t supposed to ask anything at all, it seemed, for the ladies ate their soup seemingly unconcerned with the silence.

This was the life so many coveted? This was how titled folks ate and drank?

No. Sam had dined with his sister and brother-in-law many times. Their dinner table was a place for good food and excellent conversation.

Sam took two bites of his soup and laid his spoon aside. Without a word, the door opened, and Jonas stalked in with a covered tray, followed by Cook, who carried a bowl full of boiled potatoes.

At least, in the murk of the dining room, Sam assumed they were potatoes. They could be anything.

Boiled gnomes.

Troll eggs.

The marchioness said something to Jonas in a gently scolding tone, then gestured at the seat to the left of Lady Karolina.

Jonas shook his head, his eyes set on his task of serving the dead gnomes. Potatoes, rather. Lady Phoebe gently placed her hand on her mother’s arm and said something to Jonas in a soft tone unlike her usual crisp and cutting consonants.

Looking up at whatever Lady Phoebe had said to him, Jonas stared at the marchioness with an expression of affection, but again, he shook his head in the negative and left.

Without a word, Lady Phoebe leaned to the right, her shoulder pressing against her mother’s shoulder. Lady Karolina watched the two of them, and Sam was put in mind of a tableau such as those he’d seen in Greycliff’s home. Three goddesses, each representing a season or some such, sitting together but looking in opposite directions.

The ladies again ate in silence until Sam could take it no longer.

“One day there was a boy walking down the road when he spied a frog. The frog hopped over to him and said, ‘Boy, if you kiss me, I will turn into a beautiful princess.’ The boy smiled and picked up the frog, then put it in his satchel.”

As they were wont to do, the Hunt women froze, the marchioness with a piece of fowl speared on the end of her knife, Lady Karolina with a napkin halfway to her mouth.

It wasn’t as funny as his story about the priest and the nun, but Sam kept going.

“After a while, the frog called out to the boy. He took the frog from its satchel and the frog said, ‘Boy, if you kiss me, I will become a beautiful princess and gift you with a treasure.’ The boy smiled at the frog and put it back in his satchel again.”

The marchioness dropped her knife, knocking over her wineglass.

“What are you doing?” Lady Phoebe hissed at him.

“I’m telling a funny story,” Sam said.

“A funny story?” she repeated.

“Yes,” Sam said, his voice echoing off the empty spaces in the godforsaken room. “You know, to entertain you all. It’s not naughty, if that’s what worries you.”

“Why does he keep putting the princess in his satchel?” Lady Karolina asked.

“Why does he—it’s in the story? Don’t you all…” Sam waved his hands in consternation while the marchioness righted her now-empty wineglass. “Don’t you have fun ? Tell funny stories? Joke? Laugh?”

“Laugh when the man traps the poor princess in a dark bag?” Lady Karolina asked, voice heavy with censure.

Sam looked to Lady Phoebe for support, but she was staring at her knife.

He gulped, rubbing his forehead as though the answer to what plagued these women might pop out with enough pressure. “It’s a funny story because he doesn’t kiss her. A talking frog is more profitable than the princess and her riches.” Holding out his palms in supplication, Sam asked, “Do you see? It’s only a story.”

“A story where a woman is forced to be displayed.” Lady Karolina set her napkin on the table and stood. Lady Fallowshall said something in Lithuanian, and Lady Karolina flinched but held her ground. “A story where she begs to be kissed and the man can only think of imprisoning her for profit.” Despite the dark, splotches were visible on Lady Karolina’s cheeks.

Poise deserting her, she resembled an outraged girl looking exactly like one of his younger sisters that time he told them the butter fairies had stopped working until they received higher wages, and no one would get buttered toast for breakfast ever again.

“I must apologize,” Sam said, gazing around as if someone, anyone, might come to his rescue and right reality, which had somehow become awkwardly skewed. “I thought it was a story about a talking frog.”

The marchioness rose and went to Lady Karolina’s side. “They only ever see a frog,” she whispered, taking her daughter’s hand.

Without once looking back, they left.

“Holy…” Sam whispered, falling back into his seat. “I swear to God above, the boy never did anything bad to the frog.”

Lady Phoebe had a hand over her mouth and made a noise like a pained sneeze.

Sam stared at her, then leaned forward, the better to see what she was…she was…

“You’re laughing,” he said in a shocked whisper. “You…evil, evil woman.”

“I can’t…” She’d a laugh like an angry goose—a honking out of proportion to her elegant bearing and exquisite face.

Sam threw his napkin across the table at her, shaking his head. “You could have said something or done…something. I made your sister angry, and I don’t even know why.”

Tears sat in Lady Phoebe’s eyes, but they were the kind one gets when one is laughing one’s arse off.

“I’m sorry, Sam, but I didn’t know you would tell a story about a princess in peril.” Lady Phoebe’s laughter trailed off from honking to a hiccup.

Like a frog’s call, in fact.

“Well, Phoebe . I’ve gone and stuck my foot in it,” Sam bit out, heedless now of tears or laughter or knives or what have you. “Do you want to explain this to me?”

Phoebe’s long satisfied sigh worked like a single silken finger down Sam’s spine.

“Shall we take a tour of the manor while I explain?”

Sam shook his head. “Take a tour of this place at night? No, thank you.”

The last echo of her laugh fell and broke into tiny shards and disappeared as Phoebe stood.

“What’s wrong, Sam? Afraid of ghosts?”

Without waiting for an answer, Phoebe lit a penumbra lamp from a side table and held it up so her eyes glittered like amethysts. Sam gestured for her to lead, then followed her from the dining room.

What he should be doing was following Lady Karolina and offering an apology. Or finding Jonas and asking him to replenish the stock of viryta at the drinks table.

What he should not be doing was hanging back to admire the way Phoebe’s paper-thin evening dress showed her delightful figure. Nor fixing his stare on the bare swath of skin visible over the disappointingly high neckline of her gown.

“Ghosts. Not afraid of those,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m more afraid of the folks living among them.”