The Twisted Tragedy of Miss Natalie Stewart Page 5

  “I advise you to pray.”

  “I do.”

  “Good, then.”

  I was relieved by the mercy of not being questioned further and excused myself to attend my sleeping “cousin.” The moon had turned wide expanses of cornfields into dark plains of rustling velvet.

  Mrs. Northe once told me that the spirit of my deceased mother told her that “the mysterious and wondrous and, yes, the truly terrible” would be laid at my feet. And that it would be best if the world left me to it. She had spoken grandly of a future, but what sort of future was this, veiled in nightmare? Is this what my mother wanted for me?

  I’m seventeen. Eighteen in nine months. What match am I against dark forces?

  ***

  There have been such advances since the transcontinental rail was completed more than a decade ago. Some trains reach eighty, nearly a hundred miles an hour on their express routes. It’s nearly inconceivable that the whole of the country is laid open so swiftly.

  Ever eastward, the behemoth steam engine roared me home. With every mile the towns grow more populated, the gravity of New York City calling souls from every walk of life. It was as if everyone in the whole world, if they strained to hear it, could feel the heartbeat of New York. Gazing out the windows, I saw the density of the city exploding around us as if we were plunged into a forest of brick and cast iron.

  All tracks led to Grand Central Depot. From there, Jonathon and I will part ways. The thought has cast a pall over the entire trip; neither of us has wanted to speak of it.

  As if Jonathon could hear my thoughts, he turned to me. “I’ll miss you,” he breathed as he brushed his lips against mine. I caught that tantalizing taste of bergamot from his Earl Grey tea.

  This parting was inevitable. The pit of my stomach wrenched. I had to let him go to England alone, but since his welfare had been my personal responsibility since we met, letting him go was not easy. But he was no longer trapped in a painting, and I couldn’t treat him as if he were. “Promise you’ll return to New York—” I choked out.

  That was my great fear: I’d lose him to London and he’d never come back, as if he were a dream that never really existed after all.

  “You’ve got to show me Central Park, remember?” he said. “And all our adventures? At least ten world tours? It’ll take years. We’ve so much to do.”

  He pulled me into his arms, as if the tighter he held me, the surer he would be to return. “If you don’t come back, Jonathon Whitby, I will hunt you down—”

  He drew back with a laugh. “Oh, I know you will. In disguise, no less. Wielding a dagger. I know better than to cross you, Natalie Stewart. You’re too clever for me by half! And I love you for it.”

  Love. I blinked back tears. We gathered our belongings and opened the train car, our last vestige of privacy for a long while. It took everything inside me not to shove him back inside, lock the compartment, and hide us away from the world and everything in it that could harm us. But Jonathon, full of determination, was already heading down the aisle.

  “I miss you already, so you’d better write soon,” I warned, watching him move further up the aisle, a hat low over his beautiful face. “And keep a low profile.”

  He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out and put on the ridiculous eyeglasses. “Of course, my Wilhelmina…”

  I laughed. The depot clattered and roared, thronged with passengers from every walk of life. Cornelius Vanderbilt needs to expand his station here, much like in Chicago. Jonathon stepped back to take my hand and lead me down the train steps onto the platform.

  “Will you be all right to go home on your own?” he asked.

  I nodded, gesturing to the streetcar line. “Shop girls and garment workers. It’s the close of their shifts. Working- and middle-class girls, we ride together all the time with strangers as chaperones. Although I wish you could just stay the night—”

  “This isn’t the time to meet your father. I want to be on better footing.” Glancing at the large clock on a depot truss, he sighed. “I’ll just catch the next departure.”

  “Go…” I say quietly.

  “Kiss me,” he demanded. I obliged. We got a scolding from a woman in a Salvation Army uniform. We kept kissing. A train whistle screamed. He pulled away.

  “Keep busy.” He flashed a grin, stepping away and up the platform. “You’re less troublesome when you’re busy.”

  “I am not troubleso—” My protest trailed off at his grin. He was absolutely right.

  He blew me a kiss. I caught it and sent one back. He caught it and turned away, putting my kiss in his pocket and disappearing into the crowds.

  The tears I had held back now rolled down my cheeks. I loved him more than I could say. Indeed, I hadn’t even said those three words to him during this journey. I wanted to call to him, but the station was so loud and my voice failed.

  “I love you,” I murmured with a fervent prayer that he’d return to me in one piece.

  Chapter 6

  There were the sights of home first. Then the sounds.

  Ah, the hiss and scrape of the elevated rail on Lexington Avenue. The clang of trolley-car bells, the myriad clops of horse hooves and carriage wheels, the city of eternal motion, a city that barely rests. The city of humming noise. Music to my ears.

  I realized then that I could never choose quiet over this thrum of life. But I truly appreciated having had the opportunity of experiencing otherwise. Just like a person chooses a partner and friends, perhaps given the chance, one chooses the home of his or her heart. Or has it affirmed. Even if New York would not have me again (I wasn’t sure I would be welcomed home), I’d try to have New York once more.

  Block by block, my pulse quickened. My hand shook as I put the key in the lock of my own home. It wasn’t that I was frightened; I was nervous.

  What sort of daughter brought curses, mediums, magic, and nightmares into her home?

  Still, I was home, a place of safety and love. While my condition of mutism made life difficult and painful for me, leaving me often alienated, I knew I was loved in this house. This quiet home, while touched by loss, was safe shelter. So as I turned the key in the lock, I thought about how much I feared to bring anything untoward to this sanctuary. I feared supernatural influence. I had to at least warn my father about what we were being dragged into.

  Bessie poked her head around the banister and gasped a few choice phrases pulled from both her mother’s—descended from slaves—and her German father’s—descended from farmers—sides of the family. We weren’t wealthy enough to have servants, and my father chafed at the idea of them anyway. But Bessie had been a friend of my mother’s, and after her husband died helping build the Brooklyn Bridge, she was refused compensation for his death due to the color of her skin. With no place to turn, she had asked my father if he or any of his associates might need help around their homes. I was away at school at the time, but when I returned for the holidays she had seamlessly become a fixture in our home.

  Bessie didn’t run to hug me—I thought she might have swatted me—but went to the back of our flat and declared me to my father before I could even surprise her with a spoken hello. In fact, as I stood there in the entrance room that served as a modest parlor, the hello died in my throat, as if I’d forgotten how to speak again, as if all my advances were for naught. My hands clenched and unclenched in the muslin folds of my skirt.

  Father appeared in his beige linen summer suit, freshly cleaned, one he usually saved for company. He was well-groomed and sported a loose, blue silk ascot. I stood at the door like a guest. He moved toward me warily, as if he thought I might bite.

  What was wrong with me? A moment of truth: Lord knows I’d spoken when my life was on the line, but all Father had wanted was for his daughter to be normal, to communicate, to not be flawed, and here I was, healed. Yet nerves rattled me and I couldn’t seem to prove my progress to him. Perhaps because it was so personal, perhaps because losing what I’d gained was my gr
eatest fear.

  “Natalie…” He approached. “Tell me you’re here to stay. Tell me.”

  If he was angry, he kept it well hidden. In that moment he sounded desperate. And it was that sentiment that had frozen me.

  “Mrs. Northe told me everything,” he continued, “and while I hardly believe it, I choose to believe that you did act for your safety, rather than as a fool girl in love.”

  He grabbed me by the arms and hugged me. And once I was spared from having to look at him, then the words came out in a torrent.

  “Father, I-I’m sorry for everything, but yes, all of it was true. But I’m scared what I might be bringing upon you. There are so many odd goings-on, and I’m not sure the danger has passed yet. Mrs. Northe is caught up in it too. I adore her, but I’m also frightened that if you court her…I’m just not sure, as well-intentioned as she is…I’m afraid we’re omens of terrible luck—”

  “Ill luck? I’d hope you’d think better of yourselves, and of me, than to assume that,” came a voice from another room into ours. Her voice.

  Father drew back sheepishly. I turned red.

  “Mrs. Northe, I’m…”

  “Sorry, I’m sure. And since I’m in your home, you ought to call me Evelyn, shouldn’t you, or do you fear familiarity with me, after all I’ve done to help you?” Her tone was distinctly hurt.

  She stood at the sitting-room threshold, a vision. She was tall and elegant in thin charcoal silks, skirts gathered into a bustle at the back, a long-sleeved bodice with many buttons accentuating her slender limbs, and black trim around a small V-line waist. Her long neck was accented by a wide black choker, and dark blond hair with a few strands of gray was piled artfully atop her head. She stared at me, hazel eyes wide and luminous with fierce intelligence and self-assurance. She was compelling and breathtaking and everything I wanted to be someday.

  My emotions upon seeing her were complex: hesitation against admiration, fierce longing for her to be a mother-confidante and a best friend, envy at her ageless statuesque beauty and her ease and confidence in the world, and fear for the things we’d been a part of together. I hated to wound her with my words, and yet she herself had said that sometimes darkness attracted darkness. What if she’d become some sort of inadvertent collector?

  “There is some sense in what you say, Natalie,” she continued finally. “I will give you that. But I ask you to give me a bit of credit.”

  I nodded. There was nothing I could say.

  “It’s good to have you home, child,” my father said, and that was likely the best thing to say. But here came the anger, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d flouted every rule society demanded of a proper young lady. “But you are under my roof. You have always been under my roof and under my guidance. Don’t think this little adventure of yours has liberated you into an adult who does not still need the permission of her father. Until you are married off to a man I approve of, you are still subject to my will, young lady. Is that perfectly clear?”

  I stared at him, at the green eyes and high cheekbones I’d inherited from him, at the smile lines around his mouth and the few gray hairs around his temple—a few more since I’d left—and I saw a man who had tried hard to do right by me, even if he was often at a loss.

  There was a comfort in this, his laying down of the law. It meant he cared, that I was never alone. Despite his hard tone, I smiled. It was good to be loved. Good to be a daughter. He must not have expected my smile, but I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much I’d missed him, missed that chiding fatherly voice, and he found himself smiling back at me.

  This eased us into a modicum of comfort while Bessie brought us coffee, pausing only to touch my cheek fondly, a glimmer of a tear in her eye. Perhaps she’d been afraid she’d lost me, too. The coffee could only distract us for so long. There were a thousand questions.

  “So. This…Lord Denbury of yours. Is he…with you?” Father asked warily.

  I suppose that question could have meant many things.

  I replied carefully. “He is in London, dealing with the unfortunate affairs that robbed him of his estate and spread lies about his death.”

  “Ah, but will he reveal himself as who he is?” Father queried. “The case here was closed, but uneasily. Mrs. Northe saw to wrapping up details, but is it wise for your…young lord…to show himself?”

  My father didn’t know how to speak about Jonathon. His daughter had been courted by a soul in a painting when the man’s body had been at large. It was hardly proper. He’d have to meet Jonathon. No father could refuse a man like Lord Denbury.

  “Lord Denbury moves with caution and care. He’s more patient than I am,” I said, chuckling. “I daresay you’ll meet him soon. He plans to return for me.”

  “Well, patience is…commendable,” Father murmured, as if trying to convince himself to like Jonathon. “But if he returns for you, he does so through me.”

  “Didn’t you see his letter to you, Father? Sent with the diary?”

  “I did, but anyone can write a letter. He needs to say things to my face that I can believe.”

  “Where is that diary? I’d like to have it back.”

  I blushed, thinking of how I’d described our first kiss and many others. Wondrous as they were, such things were private. I hoped to God my father had respected my wishes and only read the pertinent bits about the case. Otherwise he might meet Jonathon with a gun. But truly, we’d only kissed—and touched. There really wasn’t much harm in that, was there? I wasn’t ruined. I was wrenched from this reverie by my father’s reply:

  “Your diary is in the care of the New York Police Department.”

  I felt the color drain from my face. Police officers would certainly read the kissing bits…“What? But I’m—”

  “You’re fine, yes, but I didn’t know that immediately. You could have left a note, you know,” he accused. “I went right to the police department to report your disappearance.”

  Thinking of the telegraph in the Chicago station, I sipped my coffee and picked at a cucumber sandwich. “Yes, I could have…but it was a…difficult night—”

  “I’m just glad you’re safe. But all of us acted in the spirit of survival and instinct. You would not expect a father not to report his daughter missing.”

  Mrs. Northe sat and watched our exchange. Knowing her clairvoyant tendencies, I wanted her to share what was on her mind, but the faraway look on her face meant she wouldn’t be forthcoming, only maddeningly mysterious. So I turned to her.

  “It was Rachel you wired me about, wasn’t it?” I asked. “I think she’s in danger.”

  “Yes, I believe she is. When she came to call, inquiring after you, she was so surprised that I could sign that she quite opened up about her situation. I didn’t like what she had to say about her employer.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “Dr. Liam Preston.”

  I clapped my hands over my mouth in shock. Father looked at me in alarm. Mrs. Northe sighed. “I take it, by your reaction, that this is no coincidence.”

  “He…Preston was there!” I gasped. “In St. Paul. He was visiting Lord Denbury’s friend, Samuel Neumann, another doctor, en route to learn from a family of doctors in Rochester. That’s why we weren’t comfortable staying. Jonathon saw an aura crackling with fire around Preston—same as the demon’s but to a lesser degree. And he recognized Preston from a visit he’d paid to Lord Denbury’s clinic in London. He was asking for bodies. Jon—Lord Denbury sent him away empty handed. He thinks that’s when he was first targeted, and while Samuel wasn’t there at the time, Preston went for him now.”

  Mrs. Northe whistled low, shaking her head. “A resurrectionist added to the mix,” she mused. “The plot thickens.”

  Father kept looking between us and finally burst. “What the devil is this nonsense all about, you two?” He leaned toward me, his fair skin pinking. “Ever since the business with that blasted painting, you’ve had some secret self, full of codes and ridicu
lous notions as if supernatural espionage was your new profession, and I won’t stand for it!” He whirled suddenly on Mrs. Northe. “And, Evelyn, you do nothing but aid and abet. You’re at the very heart of it. Natalie is right in questioning you…”

  Evelyn? She was Evelyn now? Did she call him Gareth?

  “Why Gareth, we’ve been over this. You heard Helen.”

  She was calling him Gareth. And Helen…did she mean my mother?

  “Through a strange deaf girl,” my father countered. “How on earth could I trust information from beyond the grave that you might be influencing?”

  “Because she said things, through Rachel, that Rachel could not have known.”

  I stood, this news like a slap in the face. “Wait just one moment!” I cried. “You had a séance? You contacted Mother? Rachel did? Why didn’t you say so?”

  “We’re saying so now,” Mrs. Northe retorted. “After you left, this was the only way I could calm your father and not have him running off after you. He needed to understand that some things were beyond him. We didn’t conspire to keep anything from you.”

  “I planned to tell you, Natalie,” my father contributed. “You only just now walked through the door.”

  I sat, stung. Suddenly, I felt as my father must feel, kept ignorant and left out, and I hated it. “Well, what did Mother say? Lord knows I’ve asked her to talk to me! How could you do that without me?”

  “I didn’t think I needed your permission to talk to my dead wife,” my father snapped. “You’re hardly in a position to take offense, Natalie, after what you’ve put me through—”

  “Your mother repeated what she said to me when you were solving Denbury’s mystery, Natalie,” Mrs. Northe replied calmly, diffusing the tone. “You’re meant for battles she could never have fathomed. She has seen great things between life and death. You are meant to be a messenger and soldier. We must leave you to the circumstances presented to you and help you as best we can.”

  That sounded biblical, like I was some prophet or tragic martyr. I didn’t want to be either, and I most certainly didn’t want to be a “soldier.” But what else could I say or do? And Father was right. I was in no position to be angry, considering that most fathers would, after my antics, send me away to some sort of ward for misbehaving girls.