C. Harris - What Darkness Brings

He had intended only to send up his card along with a note of condolence. But he was met at the door by a breathless, half-grown housemaid who dropped a quick curtsy and said, “Lord Devlin? Mrs. Wilkinson says to tell you she’d be most pleased to see you, if’n you was wantin’ to step upstairs?”

And so he found himself following the housemaid up the bare, narrow set of stairs that led to the shabby apartment to which Rhys Wilkinson’s continued illness had reduced his young family.

“Devlin,” said Annie Wilkinson, both hands extended as she came forward to greet him. “I was hoping you’d come. I wanted to thank you again for trying to-for looking-” Her voice cracked.

“Annie. I’m so sorry.” He took her hands in his, his gaze hard on her face. The freckles were still there, although faded to a sprinkling of cinnamon dust across the pale flesh of her high cheekbones and the thin arch of her nose. As a girl, she’d been awkward and almost funny-looking, all skinny arms and legs and a wide, toothy grin. But she’d grown into a delicate beauty, her form tall and willowy, her features unusual but exquisite, her hair a rich strawberry blond. “Tell me what you need me to do,” he said, “and I’ll do it.”

He felt her hands tremble in his. “Sit and just talk to me, will you? Most of my acquaintances seem to assume that I’ve either dosed myself senseless with laudanum, or that since this is my third experience with widowhood then I must be taking it comfortably in stride. I can’t decide which is most insulting.”

She led him to a sagging, aged sofa near where a curly-headed little girl was playing with a scattering of toy horses. “Come and make your curtsy to his lordship, Emma,” she told the child.

Pushing to her feet, the little girl carefully positioned one foot behind the other and bobbed up and down with a mischievous giggle. She was tall for her age, and skinny like her mother, with her father’s dark hair and gray eyes, and a roguish dimple that was all her own.

“Hello there,” said Sebastian, hunkering down beside her. “Remember me?”

Emma nodded her head vigorously. “You gave me my Aes-hop’s Fables ,” she said, stumbling over the pronunciation of the name. “Daddy tells me a story every night.” A faint frown tugged at her gently arched eyebrows. “Only, he didn’t come home in time last night.”

Sebastian glanced up at Annie’s stricken face. He had brought the child the book some months before, when Rhys invited him to dinner one evening. “I could read you a story now,” he said, “if you’d like.”

“That’s all right,” said Emma with a wide smile that was more like Annie’s than that of her dead father. “But thank you.” She dropped another curtsy and went back to her horses.

Sebastian rose slowly.

Annie said, “I told her, but I don’t think she really grasps what has happened. How much of death do we understand at the age of four?” Her voice quavered again, and Sebastian reached out to recapture one of her hands.

They sat for a time in silence, their gazes on the child, who was now whispering, “Clippity-cloppity, clippity-cloppity,” as she pushed a small bronze toy horse mounted on wheels along the pattern of the threadbare carpet. Then Annie said, her voice low, “Did he kill himself, Devlin? Tell me honestly. I wouldn’t blame him if he did-he’s been so dreadfully unwell. I don’t know how he stood it so long.”

Sebastian knew a moment of deep disquiet. It was one thing to harbor such suspicions himself, and something else again to hear them voiced by Wilkinson’s own wife. “I didn’t see anything to suggest it, but it’s impossible at this stage to tell.”

Her freckles stood out, stark, against the pallor of her face. “There’ll be a postmortem?”

“Gibson is doing it. I can stop by his surgery and let you know what he’s found, if you like.”

Nodding, she swallowed hard before answering. “Yes. Please. I’d like to hear it from you. . if it’s true.”

“Annie. .” He hesitated a moment, then pressed on. “I know things have been hard for you, since Wilkinson was invalided out. I wish you’d let me-”

“No,” she said forcefully, cutting him off. “Thank you, but no. I’ve a grandmother in Norfolk who offered years ago to take me in, should I ever find myself homeless. When this is all over, Emma and I will go to her.”

He studied her tightly held face. “All right. But promise me that should you ever find yourself in need, you’ll let me know.”

“I’ll be fine, Devlin; don’t worry.”

He stayed talking to her for some time, of happier days with the regiment in Italy and the Peninsula. But when he was leaving, he touched his fingertips gently to her cheek and said, “You didn’t promise me, Annie.”

She crinkled her nose in a way that reminded him of the near child she’d been when they first met. “I’ll be fine, Devlin. Truly. “

He forbore to press her further. Yet as he hailed a hackney and headed toward home, he could not shake the conviction that he was somehow failing both her and his dead friend.

Sebastian lived in a bow-fronted town house on Brook Street, near the corner of Davies. The house was elegant but small. Once, it had suited him just fine. But since his marriage six weeks before to Miss Hero Jarvis, he’d been thinking he ought perhaps to consider moving to something larger, grander. Only, when he’d mentioned it to Hero, she’d simply looked at him steadily in that way she had and said, “I like our house.”

He found her now seated sideways at the bench before her dressing table. She wore a very fetching emerald green walking dress trimmed with navy braid and had her head bowed as she worked at closing the fastenings of a smart pair of navy half boots. He paused for a moment, one shoulder propped against the doorframe, and watched her. Just for the pleasure of it.

She was a woman in her twenty-sixth year, generally described as more handsome than pretty and taller than most people thought a woman ought to be. She had inherited her aquiline profile, fierce intelligence, and a certain chilling ruthlessness from her powerful father, Charles, Lord Jarvis. But her Enlightenment-inspired beliefs-and her conviction that with affluence and privilege came an obligation to fight for the rights of society’s underdogs-were unique to her.

Sebastian hadn’t liked Hero much when they first met. Since he’d been holding a gun to her head at the time, he suspected the antipathy had been mutual. Respect had come gradually, even grudgingly; the intense physical attraction that accompanied it had surprised-and dismayed-them both.

Their marriage was as complicated as the reasons that had brought it about, and they were still working their way toward understanding and something else, something deep and powerful that both beckoned and scared the hell out of him. Passion came easily; trust and openness took time and effort and a leap of faith he wasn’t certain either of them was yet ready to make. There was still so much she didn’t know about him, or he about her. And it occurred to him now that he was about to jeopardize all that they had so far managed to build between them by what he was about to do.

Just as he knew he had no real choice.

She looked up, caught him watching her, and smiled.

“It’s a nasty habit you have,” she said, “sneaking around, spying on people.”

“I wasn’t sneaking. I made quite a bit of noise, actually.”

She let out a genteel huff. “We don’t all have the eyes and ears of a bird of prey.” Still smiling, she rose to her feet and came to rest her hands on his shoulders, her gaze on his face. Her smile faded, and it occurred to him that perhaps she knew him better than he thought she did, because she said, “Your friend is dead, isn’t he?”