Page 22 of Unforeseen Affairs (The Sedleys #6)

He’s distracted, Charlotte thought as she surreptitiously watched Sir Colin in the dim light, taking care not to turn her head too much. He’d barely moved since the spirit circle began, and even now, with the performance well underway, he sat rigidly, his hand cold and tense atop hers.

Mr. Bass was currently allowing some nameless spirit to speak through him; for this he affected a hollow, empty tone and a truly odious attempt at a French accent, much to the awe of the assembled party.

“When did you die?” Mrs. Kitson asked, practically vibrating with excitement.

“It has been so long. It feels as if I have always been zis way, madame ,” Mr. Bass said, his eyes vacant and unfocused. “How you say… les cendres aux cendres, la poussière à la poussière .”

An appreciative titter ran through the group.

Finally, Sir Colin glanced sidelong at her.

Charlotte very subtly shook her head, pressing her lips together.

There was nothing to be done with this trick except endure the butchering of the language.

Her stepmother, who had meticulously taught her excellent pronunciation, would be appalled.

Unfortunately, though, what Mr. Bass was claiming to be doing here could be neither proven nor disproven.

“How did you, er, perish?” asked a round, middle-aged man with massive side-whiskers and a walrus-like mustache from across the table.

“A halberd. Between ze shoulders.”

Mrs. Kitson gasped. Several others murmured in low, wondering tones.

Atrocious, Charlotte silently admonished .

“Were you a soldier?”

Charlotte’s head snapped to glare at Sir Colin in the dark. He gave her a sheepish grin and a slight shrug before amending his question.

“Or, perhaps, an officer?”

“ Oui .”

A hush fell over the group. No one made a sound.

All that nervous reticence and he decided to dive in with this? Encouraging Mr. Bass? Charlotte jabbed her knee into Sir Colin’s leg. It felt firmer than she expected.

He jumped.

“Sir Colin?” the gruff voice of Mr. Trenwith asked from somewhere in the shadows behind them. “Are you quite alright? Do you require assistance?”

“Er, no, no. Just surprised, is all.”

“So you perished in a war,” said the bespectacled young woman sitting to Charlotte’s left, so eagerly that her words ran together. “Which war? Was your country at war?”

“Always,” Mr. Bass said, still maintaining his mesmerized affect.

Charlotte wanted to yawn. While the previous spirit circle at the Gearings’ had been farcical, at least Mr. Bass had made an effort to be more entertaining than this .

There he’d done a passable job of describing an entrancing, yet believable vision, almost like one that Mrs. Stone might have.

But now it seemed he was intent on impressing his esteemed repeat guest, and had reined himself in, choosing to be less fantastical while claiming to commune with a military figure.

She had to move things along, to force Mr. Bass into making more of a spectacle.

“Spirit, what is your name?” she piped up, doing her best to appear enthralled.

“Onfroi,” Mr. Bass intoned.

“Onfroi? Onfroi… what? What is your family’s name?”

“De Compans.”

A gentleman with a sorrowful look and a beard that failed to hide his lack of a chin spoke up next. “What was it like, when—”

Charlotte cut him off.

“ Pourquoi êtes-vous venu sur ce monde, monsieur? ”

The chinless man scoffed loudly, but then there was silence. Charlotte waited. Of course, she did not expect to catch Mr. Bass out just now; she only meant to begin putting him off his stroke.

After several seconds, the spirit finally replied, its accent thicker and far more offensive than before to anyone with a passing knowledge of the language.

“I have come… to share news of departed friends. Family no longer with you.”

A handful of participants gasped with excitement.

As was to be expected. Charlotte slowly shifted her leg, so that her skirts would not rustle too much, and leaned it into Sir Colin’s.

Oh, but that feels nice. The sensation of her lower leg pressed against his sent a spark throughout her body.

She pressed harder, hoping to induce enough discomfort to snuff her foolish desire, but it only stoked the flames.

Goodness, was his entire body this hard, this solid?

Frustrated with herself, Charlotte pulled back, then jabbed her knee into his.

He snapped his head toward her, his face stricken.

Charlotte raised her brows, trying to will him to understand her. They needed to get on with this.

His eyes shifted to Mr. Bass, then back to her. He looked at her with an expression somewhere between smile and grimace, as if silently asking what he ought to do.

Curse it all.

“What of my grandmother?” began the sad, chinless man. “Has she—”

“Why not speak to us in your native tongue?” Charlotte interrupted again, since Sir Colin had so utterly missed his cue.

“I say, young lady, wait your turn,” scolded the slighted man. “That’s twice now!”

“I communicate with ze living in ze manner zey would be ze most receptive to,” Mr. Bass said, both impassively and offensively.

A smattering of murmured acknowledgments from the assembled sitters indicated they had been thoroughly convinced by the pathetic explanation. Charlotte stifled a sigh.

Before the chinless man could ask once more about his grandmother, Mr. Bass—or Monsieur Onfroi —spoke again.

“Madame Kitson… you and your husband, I believe, lost a child… an infant.” And then he added, almost as an afterthought, “ Un petite enfant. ”

Mrs. Kitson gave a little cry. Charlotte watched her in the low light, saw her mouth tighten and her gaze grow distant.

“Yes…” the widow breathed. “Several. Never… that is, I…” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “We were never blessed with… a living child.”

Charlotte raged with a burning hot anger.

How dare he? How dare he manipulate this poor woman’s emotions, just to bolster his own ego and reputation?

And no doubt Mrs. Kitson had already given Mr. Bass a generous gift.

For while it was uncouth for a private medium to charge for their services, gratitude was often expressed in other ways, whether it be something like a tie pin, or cufflinks, or even a gold watch chain.

Her own watch fob hung heavy around her neck.

In the space of a moment, Charlotte’s desire to unmask Mr. Bass grew exponentially. Not only did she wish to lift the weight off Mrs. Stone’s shoulders, she could not bear to watch this man exploit someone who had lost not only all of her unborn children, but her husband as well.

A loud gasp from the collective, punctuated by multiple cries of fear, jarred her from her thoughts.

“By Jove, it’s a baby!” bellowed the man with the broom mustache.

“Unbelievable,” murmured the lady in spectacles, clutching tighter at Charlotte’s hand.

An odd little face, surrounded by a cloud of white muslin, peered just over the table’s edge between Mrs. Kitson and Mr. Bass.

That is, it would have been peering, were it actually a spirit entity.

But the face was frozen, its wide eyes unmoving.

It did sway gently from side to side, but beyond that it looked no different from any of Charlotte’s sister Thalia’s china dolls, swathed in a fine, diaphanous muslin anyone could purchase in a decent fabric-draper’s shop.

“Martin?” Mrs. Kitson whispered.

“ Oui ,” said Mr. Bass, still staring straight ahead, his face convincingly empty and passive. “It is your Martin, lost in childbirth.”

Mrs. Kitson attempted to speak, but could manage only a keening noise before her shoulders began to shake with sobs.

Charlotte’s throat thickened, and her eyes felt glassy. A chasm opened in her heart, and every good feeling she had tumbled in, lost to the darkness. Mrs. Kitson would never see her son again. Charlotte would never see her mother again. That door was forever closed to both of them.

“He tells me he misses you dearly, Mama. And that you should not fret, for Papa is with him always now…”

Charlotte could not bear it any longer. To trifle with a mother’s grief was the lowest of the low. She pressed her leg resolutely into Sir Colin’s, then nudged him sharply with her knee.

His hand moved gently atop hers and enveloped it. Time slowed. Charlotte watched as his larger hand closed around her smaller one, his thumb slowly caressing her knuckles.

“He says…” Mr. Bass faltered for a moment, building the tension. “It is beautiful here.”

Mrs. Kitson cried out.

Charlotte returned to her senses, and looked at Sir Colin as she jabbed him repeatedly with her knee. He gazed upon her so patiently, his eyes so kind, his face so open. It felt gratifying, to be regarded by him thus. But what on earth was he thinking?

More importantly, why wasn’t he moving?

Charlotte broke away, and dove across the tabletop.