Page 17 of Unforeseen Affairs
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.
