Page 62 of Unforeseen Affairs
“Someone else?” Beaky looked up, his eyes lit with curiosity.
“Yes,” Colin stammered, still feeling a deep ache in his gut. So casually would Beaky throw aside their long friendship; he had more interest in wheedling out gossip than repairing their connection. Colin had known it would be so, but even still…
“Who is it?”
“I… I’m not at liberty to speak of it…”
Charlotte hadn’t said as much, but Colin would not divulge the slightest thing about her to someone as hateful as Beaky. Never again. He thought of her eyes, ablaze as she triumphantly held up the seized puppet, and his heart swelled. She was far too magnificent for people as small as Lieutenant Abdon Pearce.
But Colin watched as a look of recognition dawned on Beaky’s face, and he knew he remembered.
“It’sher, isn’t it?” Beaky croaked. “The medium’s assistant? The Sedley girl?”
“It’s no one for you to know,” Colin said icily.
“I knew it,” Beaky laughed hollowly. “Sir Colin Gearing, too good for my sister, for the likes of us. But not too good for aSedley.”
Colin stood up in a rage, though he was far better than Beaky at keeping his composure in spite of it.
“I will not hear this,” he growled, looking down at his former friend with his most disapproving glare. “I will expose Mr. Bass. But after that, consider my vow fulfilled. Do not write me. Do not call upon me. We no longer know each other.”
At that, finally, a small look of pain crossed Beaky’s face.
Colin felt as if a deep, long-buried reservoir of spite had finally broken through. He threw his napkin to the table.
“If you find yourself wanting for companionship, you might consider a dog. I believe spaniels are nice and loyal.”
Colin did not bother waiting to see Beaky’s reaction. He left, fury still singing in his veins and tightening the vise inside his head.
When Charlotte arrived at The Black Candle, Mrs. Stone was scrying.
She allowed herself a shadow of hope, that the temperamental medium might one day soon resume her communication with the spirit world, to reach out and…
Charlotte shut her eyes and took a steadying breath.
She tiptoed about so as not to disturb Mrs. Stone, choosing to tidy the front room as quietly as she could. She’d never been interested in scrying herself; it seemed pointless to her, for if one could know the future, would one not then have the power to change it? But if Mrs. Stone had felt the pull to the shallow bowl of water and seen fit to sit staring into it, then it stood to reason that she might be on the way to feeling herself again.
Which meant that she might soon be capable of seeing something of Charlotte’s mother. Charlotte tried not to get her hopes up, but if Mrs. Stone could sense that she was out there, either somewhere in the ether or in the hazily defined Heaven her stepmother spoke of…
Maybe there was a chance it could happen. And if not now, then perhaps once Charlotte was able to deliver news of Mr. Bass’s downfall.
And perhaps then she could feel at peace.
She set down the damp rag she’d been polishing the oak counter with and took hold of the watch fob around her neck. The carnelian, though also polished, appeared dull, having little light to reflect from the dim surroundings. Charlotte frowned and examined it more intently. If only she possessed the tiniest pinch of Mrs. Stone’s talent.
She lifted the carnelian closer to her face. It had a pleasing color, the deep orange-red of burnished copper… of Sir Colin Gearing’s thick, shiny hair. Charlotte bit her lip.
She started at the sound of the shop door opening. The watch fob fell from her hands, hitting her chest with all its considerable weight.
There he stood, upon the threshold. He looked wary, with his hand still on the banged-up brass doorknob as if undecided as to whether he should enter.
They stared at each other, and the air in the room perceptibly changed—charged with the knowledge of each other’s lips and the feel of their bodies against one another. And something else. Something potent, yet unidentifiable.
It was she who finally broke the silence.
“Hello,” she said. It came out sounding hoarse, to her slight dismay.
“Miss Sedley,” he replied with a nod, stepping within at last and shutting the door behind him.
