Page 45 of Unforeseen Affairs
“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—orMonsieur 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.
Howdarehe? 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…”
