did want to communicate in some way, it was highly unlikely that she would do so through Mrs Foster, with whom Lady Catherine Armstrong had never, to the best of Caro’s knowledge, been acquainted. So spoke Caro’s sensible self, but her secret self was slightly desperate and could not help but hope.
‘Let us all join hands.’
Mrs Foster had surprisingly large, meaty hands, more suited to a butcher than a medium. Her fingers, which rested on Caro’s, were warm in contrast to those of the man seated on her other side, which had the quality of parchment and made her shiver. Like someone walking over your grave, melodramatic Cassie would say. Could this woman really conjure voices from beyond the grave? As the room grew suddenly cold, Caro began to think it possible.
‘Concentrate,’ Mrs Foster intoned in a deep, sonorous voice, ‘concentrate on summoning the spirits of the dear departed.’
The silence intensified, becoming thick as treacle. A smell, a terrible noxious stench, horribly like something emerging from a crypt, drifted into the room, carried on wisps of strange white smoke. One of the women seated round the table began to whimper. Caro’s hand was clutched painfully tight by the man at her side. On her other side, Mrs Foster’s hand had become icy and cold, like marble.
Caro tried not to panic. Part of her was sure it was a charade, but another part of her was afraid that it was not. She had assumed that speaking to Mama would be reassuring, that knowing Mama was there for her would make it easier to bear the absences of those who were not—Papa, Cassie, Celia—and accept the presence of the one person she wished really would go away, Bella. But whatever presence was in this room, it was not benevolent.
The smoke drifted towards the ceiling, and the smell changed, from acrid and dank to something sweeter. Lilies perhaps? The clutching man next to her gasped, making Caro jump. Of its own accord, the table rattled, and the muslin curtains at the long windows blew gently as a light breeze wafted through the salon. One of the female guests squealed. Caro, her leg pressed too close to Mrs Foster’s voluminous skirts, had felt the woman’s knee jerk upwards, but was it before or after the table moved? She could not be sure.
The medium began to speak, her voice tremulous. ‘I have someone standing behind me. Catherine.’
Catherine was Mama’s name. A cold sweat prickled Caro’s spine.
‘Catherine.’ The medium’s voice grew higher in pitch, like the whine of a recalcitrant child. ‘Is Catherine there? She wishes to speak to Catherine.’
To Catherine. The disappointment was so acute that it made Caro feel sick and slightly silly. It hadn’t occurred to her that Mama may have to wait her turn, if she appeared at all. She almost jumped out of her skin when the woman on the other side of the table spoke up, claiming this ghost as hers.
‘Mama?’ the woman said uncertainly. ‘Mama, is that you? It is I, Catherine. Kitty.’
‘Kitty.’
The voice, the same strangled, whining voice which had emanated from Mrs Foster, now seemed to be projected from the other side of the room. A trick? Surely it must be a trick. Had the medium’s lips moved? Caro couldn’t see.
‘Catherine. Kitty. It is your mama.’
A muffled shriek greeted this statement. ‘I am so sorry for our quarrel, Mama. Can you forgive me? I know you disapprove of my—my career, but it has brought me prosperity and security. Please try to be proud of me.’
‘Of course I am, my darling daughter. I am at peace now, Kitty. At peace.’
The voice trailed away. Still, Caro could not tell if it came from Mrs Foster or some other presence. The table rattled again. The smell of lilies grew sickly sweet, and the medium spoke once more, this time in a deep growl. ‘George?’
There was no answer. The attendees waited, it seemed to Caro, with bated breath, until the name was uttered again. More silence.
‘Edward?’ Mrs Foster ventured, in that now familiar high-pitched voice.
The clutching man at Caro’s side let go of her hand. ‘Nancy? Could it be my Nancy?’
‘Edward, it is your Nancy. It is I, my dear.’
She wanted to believe it, but it struck Caro that Mrs Foster’s messages from beyond the grave seemed to rely on information provided by the audience rather than the spirit world. It had to be a trick. Of course, she’d known it would most likely be so, but all the same...
Her fear turned to anger. It was not fair, to give out the promise of false hope. What an utter fool she had been to think it could be otherwise. Even if Mrs Foster hadn’t been a charlatan—yes, there went the table again, and this time Caro was sure that the medium’s knee jerked before and not after—even if she had been bona fide, even if Mama had made contact, what comfort could she have given her daughter? Bella still hated her. Papa still acted as if he cared nothing for her—or any of his daughters. And Caro was still faced with the prospect of either making a good match to please him or spending the rest of her life looking after Bella’s many progeny. Her stepmother had already given birth to two boys, and she was increasing again. Killellan stripped of all of her sisters would be unbearable. Cressie, in her second Season, was bound to make a match in the near future, and Cordelia made no secret of her desire to wed as soon as possible in order to escape home, where Bella and her infant sons ruled the roost. Caro sighed. Why was it that doing one’s duty seemed sometimes so unrewarding?
Having assured George that his Nancy, like Kitty’s mama, was very happy and at peace, Mrs Foster slumped back in her chair with a deep, animalistic groan which distracted Caro from her melancholy thoughts. Her hand was released. As if by magic, though obviously with the impeccable timing of practice, the maid appeared to turn up the lamps. Caro rubbed her eyes. Across the table from her, a woman was sobbing delicately into her kerchief. The aforementioned Kitty, she presumed, and obviously wholly convinced that she had just communed with her mother. Lucky Kitty, to be so easily placated.
Caro stared at her, fascinated. The woman was voluptuously beautiful. Tears sparkled on her absurdly long dark lashes, but signally failed to either redden the woman’s nose or make tracks down her creamy skin. When Caro cried, which she hated to do, her nose positively bloomed and her skin turned a blotchy red.
A prickling feeling, a sense of somebody watching her, made her drag her eyes away from the beauty to the man at her side. Her heart did sickening somersaults as she looked quickly away. It could not be he, it simply could not be. She sneaked another glance. It was him! What on earth was Sebastian doing here? Surely not, like her, in the hopes of communing with his dead mother!
It was almost four years since they had met, four years since she had tumbled headlong into that girlish crush which she ought to have recovered from long since. Which of course she had recovered from! It was a shock, that was all, seeing him here, looking even more raffishly handsome than she remembered. He had garnered a frankly wicked reputation in that time, while she had turned him, in her imagination, into her dashing knight in shining armour, riding to her rescue in her dreams, taking her away from the tedium and loneliness of her life at Killellan.
Kitty appeared to be his companion. There was something proprietary about the way the woman put her hand on Sebastian’s arm. And something not quite proper in the way she was dressed. Too much bosom on display, even if it was quite magnificent. Caro’s eyes widened. She must be his mistress. Yes, definitely his mistress, and a—what was the saying?—yes, a pearl of the first water, more than worthy of Sebastian’s reputation. Of a certainty, someone
