Page 3 of Unforeseen Affairs (The Sedleys #6)

Charlotte watched the proceedings with interest.

“I suppose this means you won’t be in attendance, then?” Mrs. Gearing asked her son, disappointment plain in her voice.

Sir Colin laughed awkwardly.

“You may invite Lieutenant Pearce,” his mother said hopefully. “I’m sure he would be amenable. His mother and father will be there, though they did not wish to speak for him.”

“Beaky?” Sir Colin said, frowning. “He didn’t mention a thing about it.”

“And,” Mrs. Gearing began, in a tone Charlotte supposed was meant to be nonchalant but sounded very much the opposite, “Miss Pearce has agreed to come as well.”

Sir Colin stilled noticeably.

Mrs. Stone must have picked up on it as well, as she tapped Charlotte’s hand ever so slightly. But Charlotte didn’t need the hint from her mentor—she was more than ready to needle the young man. After all, he’d blushed such a violent red in the hallway only moments ago.

She found it all quite amusing.

“A particular friend of yours, Sir Colin?” Charlotte asked disinterestedly, as if she were inquiring about the weather.

He cleared his throat, the blush returning to his cheeks.

“No more so than her brother,” he sputtered, before adding in a rush, “That is, yes, a dear friend, only that our families have both… we’re both naval families, you see. Were children together and all that.”

Mrs. Gearing watched this speech with the wide grin of a woman eagerly anticipating a gaggle of charming, copper-headed grandchildren.

Charlotte studied the young man as he worked to recompose himself. He’d a guileless charm about him, so earnest and trusting.

“Eight would be an excellent number of sitters,” Mrs. Stone mused in her tiny voice, offering Sir Colin a reprieve. “It’s balanced. Calm. Quite conducive to spirit communication.”

“Is that so?” he said distractedly as he stood.

“Oh, do come, Colin! It’ll be good fun, if nothing else,” his mother pleaded.

“I cannot say, Mama,” he replied, in a jollier tone this time. “But at the moment, I have company of my own waiting in the library, and must beg your leave.”

He bowed once more to Charlotte and Mrs. Stone.

“Yes, yes, darling, go on with your friends, playing whatever you do, talking of what you will. Heaven knows I’ve barely a notion, I’m sure,” Mrs. Gearing said through a wide grin.

“Gunpowder,” Charlotte said calmly.

“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Gearing asked, clearly baffled.

“Gunpowder,” she repeated. “That’s what you were speaking of when I interrupted, wasn’t it, Sir Colin?”

He stared at her as if she were something he could scarcely comprehend. Sadly, though, he did not flush this time.

“Er, yes…” he stammered. “Something like that.”

“Well,” Mrs. Gearing chuckled, “appropriate for naval men, but certainly not a topic to which I could be expected to contribute.”

“No,” Sir Colin replied hurriedly, casting a worried look back to Charlotte.

“Oh alright then, go on.” Mrs. Gearing waved him off.

He glanced once more at Charlotte, his thick brows raised as if in a silent plea. And then finally—mercifully, for his sake—he quit the room for the less inquisitive company of his friends.

Did he truly think she would tattle on him to his mama?

Charlotte reached for her tea, feeling the flicker of a thrill.

She wasn’t, alas, in the habit of gossiping or trading confidences.

No, she was quite the opposite: a hoarder of secrets.

A dragon jealously guarding her trove of information, for her use and hers alone.

Every new insight into an individual was a gleaming bit of treasure to be added to her vault, for her knowledge and enjoyment only.

She’d always been thus. It suited her nature.

Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Gearing had returned to their discussion, planning the various details of the séance: which date would bode well, what type of table should be used, and so on.

Mrs. Stone was incredibly particular about all these things, to the point that the mere mention of her name to a member of the Society for Spectral Research was enough to elicit a sigh of exasperation.

As Charlotte took a sip of her tea, she wondered whether or not Mrs. Gearing would be able to cajole her son into attendance.

Though he appeared reticent, Charlotte read him as a kind and dutiful son, which led her to conclude that Mrs. Gearing would succeed in the end.

It was plain as day; that is, for anyone who took the time to properly look.

Others wouldn’t bother to see beyond his handsome face, with its straight nose and square jaw, not to mention that dashing smile.

But Charlotte saw. She saw how he kept glancing at his mother, Mrs. Enid Gearing, and the way his pleasant, cheerful demeanor faltered ever so slightly as the subject of communicating with spirits was raised.

She read this as concern for his mother’s mental state, rather than merely his own skepticism or distaste for the practice.

And then there was the way he’d been charmingly humiliated upon catching her eye after making such a vulgar toast. It stood to reason that a man who so fretted about the fragile temperaments of females more than likely doted upon his mother.

Charlotte didn’t mind the vulgar, for her part. To act thusly was human nature, after all; who was she to pretend otherwise?

But she had enjoyed his flustered discomfort, especially when she’d prodded him about the young lady, this Miss Pearce, whom he so clearly harbored an affection for.

Still, despite the pleasure she had taken in throwing him off-balance, she appreciated Sir Colin’s protective attitude toward his mother, as Mrs. Gearing had clearly been devastated by the death of her eldest son, Bernard.

For who but a desperate person would seek to reach beyond the veil and commune with the departed?

Charlotte knew something of that kind of desperation.

She felt a dull ache in her heart. She looked down at the remains in her cup, but there were no answers to be found in the tea leaves. Mrs. Gearing was far too competent a hostess to allow the dregs required for that.

Charlotte raised her eyes and studied Mrs. Gearing surreptitiously. With a kind, round face and a wide smile, it was clear that Sir Colin favored her in everything but hair color, for his mother’s was a fading brown, lightened with streaks of gray.

Charlotte thought of her own mother.

It had been years since her passing, yet sometimes when Charlotte closed her eyes she could still see her, could almost hear her voice.

At other times the memory felt unformed and fleeting, like a wisp of smoke she couldn’t quite grasp.

When she was younger, and the grief was still dark and all-encompassing, she would make silent bargains in that last hour between night and early morning, when the spirits were restless.

If only she could come back, I would do everything she asked, and happily, too.

I’d even wash her gloves and stockings without asking.

Of course, it was not to be. Charlotte had known that then as well as she knew it now.

But now, working with Mrs. Stone, she sought a new bargain: if only her mother would send her a message, or just a simple sign. She would do anything to receive such a thing. To know that her mother’s spirit was out there somewhere, waiting to reunite with her one day.

No, she’d no doubt Sir Colin would attend the séance. Everything about him indicated his care and consideration for his mother, and for the memory of his elder brother. Another Gearing who’d spent his life at sea, and in Bernard’s case, had met his end there as well.

The entire house was littered with portraits of them, all pinch-faced, red-haired men donning blue full-dress uniforms. Some wore one epaulette, while others wore two.

Today Sir Colin wore nothing of the sort—only the clothing of any young, sporting man, to go with his kind countenance. Idly Charlotte wondered how he carried himself in the presence of Miss Pearce. She wondered what sort of young lady Miss Pearce was, and whether they suited.

Her musings were soon cut short by the natural end of tea.

She and Mrs. Stone made their goodbyes, and were escorted from the respectable townhome down into their waiting carriage—a hulking, gaudy thing that Charlotte’s father had forced upon her.

She would have preferred to hail a hansom, or even ride an omnibus along with the rest of humanity, but Ajax Sedley had insisted.

If she were to cavort about London, she’d better damn well do it in a solid conveyance with a groom and coachman. So he’d said, anyway.

Charlotte waited until they were in motion before speaking.

“Well?”

“All as to be expected,” Mrs. Stone said, her small voice barely loud enough to be heard over the rattle of the carriage.

Her eyes were shut, as they always were while riding, or whenever she felt overcome.

Another one of her peculiar habits. None of which truly bothered Charlotte, aside from the woman’s insistence that one must beg the forgiveness of every article of clothing one discarded.

That one was far too tiresome to be borne, in Charlotte’s estimation.

But she kept that opinion to herself, for Charlotte knew that Mrs. Stone did not particularly rate her connection to the spirit world, and that the opportunity to travel in this very carriage was the only reason she had taken her on as an assistant.

“I am glad,” Mrs. Stone continued. “The lady is troubled. Plagued by darkness; she exudes it in waves. I’m nearly exhausted just from being in her presence.”

“What sort of darkness?” Charlotte leaned forward, eager to learn. “Like that girl who’d brought a hail of stones upon her own house?”

“No,” Mrs. Stone spoke slowly, scrunching her face as she thought. “’Tis something from within, not a troublesome wandering spirit. Something deeper, something both delicate and intricate…”

The medium’s high, raspy voice pitched higher still as she trailed off, almost a mockery of a child’s voice.