Page 23 of Unforeseen Affairs (The Sedleys #6)

Several things happened at once.

Miss Sedley threw herself across the table and seized the supposed spirit baby, which somehow caused Mr. Bass to fall backward in his chair, straight to the floor.

Mrs. Kitson began shrieking at a volume Colin had not thought possible from a human being.

For his part, he’d taken hold of Miss Sedley, for his lap was full of her legs and petticoats and it seemed the only way to prevent her from sliding off the table and joining Mr. Bass on the floor.

Everyone else had pushed up from their seats in the fracas and begun voicing their opinions all at once; the room had devolved into sheer pandemonium.

“Miss Punch! Let it go!” a man was yelling over everyone, quite violently. “I say, Miss Punch, unhand him!”

“The baby! She’s killing that baby!” a young woman cried.

“No, no,” another gentleman scolded. “Don’t be daft, Mary, it’s already dead!”

Mr. Bass awoke from his trance.

“I say, what the deuce?”

Colin, for his part, held on tight to Miss Sedley.

Still the lamps were not turned up, as Mr. Trenwith was on the floor as well, pulling at Mr. Bass from under his arms and attempting to bring him upright.

He was not making much progress, as Miss Sedley had her arms wrapped around one of Mr. Bass’s feet from her position atop the table, preventing him from getting off his back.

But, no—it wasn’t Mr. Bass she was holding onto. It was the spirit, the bundle of muslin, which was… attached to Mr. Bass? At his foot?

What in the world? Colin thought, trying to make sense of what his eyes appeared to be seeing. It was like a ridiculous pantomime. And then he realized—the spirit was nothing more than a puppet, one that Mr. Bass appeared to have been wearing on his foot.

Miss Sedley slid to one side of the tabletop as Mr. Trenwith yanked on Mr. Bass. Colin held fast to her as the purple cloth slid off the table and puddled on the floor.

“Sir Colin! Control your companion!” Mr. Trenwith growled. “She’s gone mad!”

He felt a surge of anger, tightening the muscles in his jaw and throat. How dare he say such a thing, when it was their shameless fraud that had brought everyone here in the first place?

I bloody well won’t, you bastard , he thought. And then, with every ounce of his strength, he pulled back, praying he wouldn’t hurt Miss Sedley in the process. Something gave way, and he stumbled backward with Miss Sedley in his arms, both of them crashing to the floor.

It ought to have hurt, landing in a heap with a young woman atop him.

But amid the cacophony of screaming and shouting that whirled about them, Miss Sedley slid an arm around his shoulders and pulled herself tight against him, her face resting just between his shoulder and his neck.

Colin felt his body relax. He rested his hand upon her back.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his collar.

A shudder ran through his body, and he pulled her closer.

“Get her out, get her out of my house!” screamed Mrs. Kitson, breaking the spell.

“No, she’s, she’s… she’s got the baby!” a man cried.

Colin looked down. In her lap, Charlotte held a bundle of vaporous white cloth, looking like an armful of spun sugar.

“The spirit child!” Mr. Bass sputtered.

Once more they were caught in a cyclone of confusion.

Miss Sedley sat up from Colin and hoisted the drooping clouds of white muslin triumphantly above her head, like Perseus wielding the head of a gorgon.

“It is not a spirit child,” she said defiantly, awkwardly pushing herself up to standing as she held the offending object high. “It is a trick, a gaff—nothing more than a mere puppet.”

To punctuate her point, she threw it onto the tabletop, which caused the last of the purple cloth to finally give up the ghost and fall completely to the floor.

Mrs. Kitson snatched the puppet and clutched it to her chest for the briefest of moments before crying out and dropping it as if it had burned her.

The group once again began speaking over one another in a frenzy, trying to make sense of it all.

“Why, it’s nothing… nothing but a doll!”

“Why bring a doll to the spirit circle? It makes no sense!”

“Perhaps the spirit manifested it?”

“My grandmother was awfully fond of dolls.”

“Mr. Bass! How could you?”

Suddenly all eyes were on Mr. Bass, who looked wildly about the room, hands upon his head in a commendable performance of perplexity.

“Yes, Mr. Bass,” Miss Sedley said, enunciating every word, her eyes fierce. “How to account for it?”

All of Colin’s earlier thoughts about Alice, then of swabbing the deck and taking first watch onboard a ship, had vanished without a trace.

Miss Sedley alone now occupied his mind as she stared down Mr. Bass with proud and defiant eyes.

Colin wanted to go to her. He wanted to stand proudly beside her as she gave Mr. Bass hell and then take her away from here, far away, and push her back against a wall somewhere, their faces level, their breaths catching, and…

He swallowed.

“What has happened?” Mr. Bass said in a voice so convincingly baffled that Colin almost bought it himself.

“The spirit… ’twas not a spirit!” cried Mrs. Kitson, her hands flapping before her chest. “It was… it was…”

The rotund, mustachioed man stepped forth and seized the offending puppet from the tabletop. He thrust it into Mr. Bass’s face.

“Explain this!” he harrumphed.

Miss Sedley crossed her arms and lifted her chin.

Colin wanted to kiss her.

Mr. Bass turned slowly, ominously, his face darkening until his gaze fell upon his assistant.

“Mr. Trenwith? What is the meaning of… this ?” Mr. Bass practically growled the last word, pointing at the puppet—the puppet that, until a few moments earlier, had been affixed to his own foot like some kind of macabre boot.

Mr. Trenwith stared at him, stunned.

“I cannot condone this trickery! Not from my assistant!” Mr. Bass boomed.

The room fell silent.

“What? Me?” Mr. Trenwith replied, dumbfounded, hands splayed before him in a paltry defense.

“Yes,” Mr. Bass said, his voice rising in both volume and aggression. “Trenwith. How could you? I trusted you! I marked you for a true believer!”

Colin heard Charlotte scoff at that.

“Mr. Bass,” Trenwith began, his voice hollow, as if the name were both familiar and unfamiliar to him. “I have never meant to do anything but assist you, sir. Always that has been my one aim—”

“Assist me?” Mr. Bass spat.

The attendees were all staring at the medium, wide-eyed.

But Colin never saw the rest of the fallout, nor heard what excuse Mr. Bass was about to concoct for having the puppet on his foot, for just then a door opened and a pair of servants rushed in. Almost immediately, both he and Miss Sedley were flanked by two apologetic footmen.

“If you’ll come with me, sir,” the one on his arm said, gesturing toward the door.

Before either of them could protest, they were efficiently and unceremoniously taken away.

“They threw us out.”

It was a pleasant spring evening. The air was mild, the sun had only just set, and the large street lamps hissed, their flames dancing behind glass.

“Of course they did,” Colin said gently. “We caused a…” He shut his mouth as the reality of the situation hit him like a crashing wave.

“A ruckus,” Miss Sedley said wistfully.

They were standing on the pavement a short distance down the street from Mrs. Kitson’s home, whose doors had just been emphatically shut against them.

“You took Bass’s puppet,” Colin said, almost to himself.

He shut his eyes. What tale would Mrs. Kitson tell of the matter?

But even before that, what lie would Mr. Bass spin for her?

Colin could not begin to imagine an explanation that could plausibly absolve Mr. Bass of blame for the puppet on his foot, but judging from the credulousness of the audience back inside, Colin had little hope that any one of them would hold Mr. Bass’s feet to the fire.

Instead, it seemed that Mr. Trenwith, culpable though he undoubtedly also was, would somehow be the one to take all the blame.

And Mr. Trenwith, though he was Mr. Bass’s assistant, was not the man who had made false claims about Beaky. If Mr. Bass were to be successful in blaming the deception entirely on him, then Colin and Miss Sedley had failed. And they would certainly never be invited back for another chance.

Colin wanted to yell out in frustration.

“No,” Miss Sedley said, brushing a speck of lint from her pale blue sleeve, “Miss Punch took Mr. Bass’s puppet.”

And to think, mere hours ago that shade of blue had seemed so cheerful and optimistic on her. Now it only looked dreary and sorrowful.

“Undine,” he said, indulging the failed charade. “Undine seized the spirit.”

“Well,” Miss Sedley said, with one last glance over her shoulder at the house they’d been ejected from, “she would not have needed to if only you had done your part.”

Then she turned away, and began walking south toward Hyde Park.

“Hang that, if I had done my part?” Colin said defensively as he ran to catch up with her. “What, pray tell, is that meant to imply?”

Miss Sedley sighed heavily. “I knew we ought to have practiced.”

Colin stole a glance as he kept pace alongside her.

She appeared equanimous, as always. It rankled him.

His chest tightened, and he looked forward again.

He wasn’t used to being so suddenly and urgently seized by emotion.

But now, it seemed, every time they were together he found himself thrust fore and aft, his body battling with his mind, fighting against its ironclad restraints.

Restraints against what?

She turned down a narrow alley that ran behind a large home with rich-looking brickwork on one side and the plain walls of a mews on the other.

In the dusk the alley felt cramped and gloomy, devoid of pedestrians and the lamplight that illuminated the main thoroughfare.

Colin could hear horses whickering beyond the high, unadorned walls of the stable yard as they walked alongside it.

“When dissecting a failed operation, it is hardly informative to fling blame haphazardly about,” he said sternly from a few steps behind Miss Sedley.

Ahead of him, Miss Sedley shrugged her shoulders elegantly. But she did not turn to speak.

“I assume your allegation is that I was meant to seize the doll?”

Still she did not respond. Colin frowned.

“Miss Sedley,” he said, exasperated. He sped up to overtake her, halting her mid-stride as he, in one smooth motion, whirled around her and planted his hand flush against the wall, blocking her path.

Their sudden proximity sent a slight rush through him.

Over the wall in the mews, one groom called out to another to water some horses. Somewhere nearby a coach was passing, the tack jangling and the wheels crunching against the street.

Miss Sedley looked to the wall where his hand was and appeared to study it, allowing Colin a moment to do the same with her profile. So elegant and remote, in the fading light she looked like a spirit herself. And then she turned to meet his gaze, her eyes black as night.

“You were correct. We did not practice,” Colin murmured, recalling his own failure. “We ought to have practiced. I am at fault for that.”

At the séance she’d twice pressed her leg into his, and she’d jabbed him with her knee at least three times.

But he’d only seen her face—her glassy eyes and slightly parted lips, as though she were on the verge of tears.

He’d been thinking only of his concern for her, his protective nature running roughshod over his attention to the task at hand. He’d only wished to comfort her.

“I wasn’t thinking of the plan,” he admitted. “Only… you appeared to be in distress.”

“What?”

A flash of emotion flickered in her eyes. Anger? Worry? Embarrassment? But it was gone in a moment, out like a lamp as quickly as it had appeared.

“When Mrs. Kitson spoke of the child—children—she’d lost.” He paused, wondering how to put it all. He was not used to speaking this candidly about such a delicate subject, and he did not want to say the wrong thing. “You seemed… dismayed. Well. I wonder…”

“Was I?” she challenged, her face aggressively blank.

Colin wanted her to open up to him, he realized. He wanted to help her. But she would not yield. He wet his lips, feeling a failure on more than one front.

“I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to assume. And in doing so I lost focus. Forgive me.”

She watched him silently for what felt an eternity.

It wasn’t her rash decision that had driven a coach and horses through the entire thing; it was his own damned forgetfulness. “We ought to have practiced,” he repeated, his body so taut and anxious he knew not what to do.

“Why did you not wish to practice?” she finally asked, dropping her gaze to his mouth.

“I… I did not think it a good idea.”

She looked back to his eyes. Hers were wide open, searching.

“Why not?”

“Because you… you are a charming, handsome young lady with many prospects and… we are barely acquainted, and I… for us to be so close, so intimate like that, I… I…” Something was drawing him closer, some unseen force pushing him forward, so gradually that before he could mark it his face was perilously near to hers.

He swallowed as he hovered inches away, his hand still braced against the wall beside them. “And… it would be…”

“Would be what?” A small, mischievous grin just touched her lips.

What was it about her demeanor that could make him forget everything he strove for, everything he thought mattered in life? Just who was Miss Charlotte Sedley? Why did he feel this curiosity, this yearning ? And all the while she was so placid, her thoughts well-concealed.

Of all the women in the world. Of all the times.

“Improper,” he whispered feebly.

She reached for him, her hand steady as it came to rest upon his shoulder.

His gut tightened into a tiny ball as he felt an exhilaration he’d never experienced before.

Miss Sedley slid her hand up his neck to his jaw, where her thumb caressed the faint stubble of his night whiskers, her fingers ghosting along his cheek.

He closed his eyes against it, relishing her touch.

“And is this,” she said in a hushed voice, each word dripping with tension, “improper, Sir Colin?”

Yes. Extremely so.

His mind reeled, rattling off every possible negative outcome if he did not put a stop to this immediately. Tell her! Say it, and cease this madness! But he didn’t.

Instead, he caught her about the waist and kissed her.