Page 9 of Unforeseen Affairs (The Sedleys #6)

Mr. Bass had begun offering seats to the attendees. He was clearly doing his best to appear solicitous, but Charlotte knew this to be another layer of deception. The most eager believers would flank him, while the most skeptical would no doubt be seated farthest away.

The anguish coming off Mrs. Stone was nearly unbearable; Charlotte felt the woman’s humiliation and despair as acutely as though it were her own.

Mrs. Gearing was already seated next to Mr. Bass, while Miss Pearce, having accepted the offer of the chair on his other side, made a show of sitting down bashfully.

Knowing what Charlotte did of Mr. Bass, he’d likely flattered the girl to such heights that she’d never say a cross word about him for as long as she lived.

“We ought to leave,” Charlotte said.

“Such vanity. Such hubris,” Mrs. Stone whispered, her voice shaking. “It is all so unseemly.”

“He is charming,” Charlotte observed flatly.

“He always has been,” Mrs. Stone groused.

Charlotte turned to look at Mrs. Stone, curious.

Anyone running in spiritualist circles in London would know the name of Thaddeus Taggart Bass, the most renowned medium of the age.

But something told Charlotte that Mrs. Stone was speaking from more personal experience.

Could she have more of a history with Mr. Bass than she’d let on?

Charlotte supposed anything could be possible.

They were of an age with one another—similar to her own father, who was approaching fifty.

The words of Lord Byron came to mind: ’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction; if it could be told.

It was an aphorism Charlotte had held close to her heart, helping remind her to keep her eyes open to every wonderful possibility the world had to offer.

Yet Mrs. Stone’s face gave nothing away, and she made no move to further explain herself.

Charlotte decided to put that question aside for the moment, and she turned her attention to Mrs. Gearing, who sat looking beseechingly at Mr. Bass, desperate for some sort of miracle.

It was difficult to reconcile the sweet, hopeful woman with her broken promise to Mrs. Stone.

She wished with all her heart that Mrs. Gearing had not gone back on her word.

“Do not judge her too harshly, Miss Sedley,” Mrs. Stone said, guessing her thoughts. “It is her grief, thick and suffocating, that clouds her reasoning.”

Suddenly feeling choked herself, Charlotte looked away from the table.

Mr. Trenwith stood against the wall, with the plain black bag he’d gone to fetch tucked behind him.

He caught Charlotte eyeing him, and his face hardened.

Never one to be shamed by a glare, Charlotte stared him down.

Finally Mr. Trenwith looked away, and a few moments later he pushed the bag farther behind him with one foot.

“We will stay,” Mrs. Stone declared.

Charlotte looked back to her, eyebrow raised. Mrs. Stone had regained her composure and returned to her usual placid, slightly distant self.

“It is not the first time I have arrived at a séance to find I would not be running it as had been previously agreed upon.”

Very well , Charlotte thought. If Mrs. Stone could swallow her pride, then so could she.

The spiritualist community, for all its flowery language and lush descriptions of the Summerland, was just as disorganized and petty as the world at large.

And just as in every other aspect of life, it did not serve one to dwell upon every minor dispute.

Even still, she wished Mrs. Stone would for once take a stand.

She’d never regain her footing and rejoin the Society for Spectral Research at this rate.

And if she simply stopped practicing altogether…

Charlotte pushed the worry from her mind and followed her mentor, who had taken a seat to one side of Sir Colin Gearing, directly opposite Mr. Bass. Naturally.

Charlotte took the only vacant chair remaining, on Sir Colin’s other side.

“Ah, excellent. Excellent,” said Mr. Bass in a deep, sonorous voice.

“I feel this evening is promising. This circle, fortuitous. Nine sitters. Nine—a number of import. Vast import, in fact, to wanderers such as ourselves: seekers of truth, desirous to cross the bridge between this mortal coil and that undiscovered country.” He looked meaningfully at each of the assembled party in turn.

“Nine, the completion of one revolution. And, dare I say, the beginning of another.”

The room suddenly darkened, and Miss Pearce let out a small cry.

Immediately both she and the gentleman to her side, whom Charlotte recognized as one of Sir Colin’s naval chums from the library, burst into the same nervous laughter. Brother and sister, she supposed, on account of their shared hair color and similarly wrought faces.

Mr. Bass smiled patiently.

“Fear not; it is only Mr. Trenwith dimming the lamps.”

“Would he not make us ten in number?” Sir Colin piped up next to her in a skeptical tone.

“Ah, but Mr. Trenwith is meant to stand sentinel, not participate,” Mr. Bass explained. “Think of him as akin to a footman.”

Charlotte thought she saw Mr. Trenwith flinch at such reductive language, but it was difficult to be certain in the low light.

“Ought we not have total darkness?” Mrs. Gearing asked.

“No, it’s quite alright. While other mediums,” here Mr. Bass pinned Mrs. Stone with an accusatory look, “might deem the cover of darkness a necessity to commune with the spirits, a bit of light, thankfully, has never hindered me,” he boasted, clearly impressed with himself.

The truth was that Mrs. Stone never required darkness either, and only agreed to it if the other sitters requested it. But Charlotte said nothing; it would be pointless to defend her mentor to someone predisposed to think poorly of her.

“Now, where were we? Ah yes, the completion of one revolution,” Mr. Bass said in a low voice, his cadence rhythmic as if in prayer. “And the beginning of another.”

The group fell quiet, and Mr. Bass allowed the silence to linger, and the anticipation of the sitters to build until the atmosphere shifted, as if something mystical had passed between them all.

No longer were they a tittering audience sitting around a table; they were now a reverent company of new adherents.

An excellent delivery of his lines, Charlotte noted. Expert timing.

“Please, join hands, all,” Mr. Bass instructed.

Charlotte rested her hands upon the tabletop, palms upward.

She had not been introduced to the older lady to her right, but she was obviously a dab hand at spirit circles, for she correctly placed her fingers gingerly atop Charlotte’s.

Just enough to provide a connection—a conduit—but well within the bounds of propriety.

Sir Colin, meanwhile, completely covered her other hand with his.

Charlotte started slightly, feeling a small hiccup deep in her belly.

But then, ever so gently, he closed his fingers around her hand, then turned it over until he’d fully clasped it. As if he were her lover.

She suddenly felt strangely and unexpectedly alert.

Mr. Bass began singing— Nearer, My God, to Thee —in an annoyingly lovely voice. Other voices soon joined in.

Sir Colin’s grip tightened. Was he mocking her?

Charlotte felt her cheeks burning. With outsized effort she glanced at Sir Colin, not knowing what she would see, let alone what the man could be thinking.

But there was no triumphant smirk, no wolfish leer upon his lips.

His expression would have been difficult for most of the others to see in the dim light, but up close, Charlotte could make it out. Sir Colin was looking not at Mr. Bass, but at his mother, his eyes wide with concern, his mouth twisted in a grimace.

Charlotte looked back at her hand in his.

His grip was tightening to the point of pain. She glanced back at his face once more, and the heat dissipated from her cheeks, along with the tautness in her middle.

Sir Colin was not clasping her hand in a misguided attempt at a romantic overture.

He was holding on for dear life.

“Sir Colin,” cried Mrs. Stone in a voice that recalled the sound of a yowling cat, “you need not crush my hand!”

Colin suddenly realized he’d violently seized both Mrs. Stone and Miss Sedley’s hands, as if they were a length of rigging he’d caught to avoid being pitched overboard in a storm.

Quickly he released them both.

“Maintain the circle, please!” barked an unfamiliar voice, which after a moment he identified as that of Mr. Trenwith.

The singing tapered off, and Mr. Bass chuckled good-naturedly.

“Yes, please maintain contact,” Mr. Bass explained. “You might not be aware, Sir Colin, as this is your first spirit circle, but it is paramount to maintain the flow of a companionable energy, to beckon the spirits forth.”

His mother released an exasperated sigh, and Colin felt his anxiety grow even more.

When she had received the news about Bernard, she hadn’t left her room for three months. Or at least, that’s what the housekeeper had told him. Colin had been away at sea.

He hadn’t even learned of his elder brother’s fate until they’d docked at Portsmouth weeks later. Nearly all he could think about in the months afterward—aside from Bernard—was his mother, who’d been forced to bear her grief all alone until Colin returned from his posting.

“So sorry,” he apologized, mainly for his mother’s sake.

“Of course, of course,” Mr. Bass said, humming before he added, “Mr. Trenwith, as you can see, will oversee things, to make sure that everything is, er, above board, as they say. Pay no mind to his… brusqueness.”

Someone, likely Mr. Trenwith, snorted derisively at that.

“I should also explain, Sir Colin, that when contacting the dead, we must give them voice by whatever means possible. They typically knock as a way of answering. One knock is a no, two knocks a yes.”

Colin nodded politely, as if Mr. Bass had just commented on something as banal as the weather.