Lenore made a mournful sound in her throat. Nathaniel. She closed her eyes, remembering his ready smile and eyes as blue as bachelor’s button. She thought of him every day, but lately, in the weeks following her father’s death, he was constantly on her mind.
She knelt before the chest at the foot of her bed. Inside were stored various keepsakes—sketches her father created for her, letters from Nathaniel posted from Madrid and Provence, St. Petersburg and Milan. Bound to the London suburb of Camberwell, where her longest adventure away from home had been the annual trip to rainy Bath, Lenore had traveled the world through Nathaniel’s letters.
He never spoke of the Redan, and the few times she’d asked him about the dimensional rift and the horrifics, he turned pale and taciturn. Whatever he witnessed during the barrier battles, it was as far removed from the beauty of lavender fields and marble palaces as one could get.
She found what she sought beneath the stack of beribboned letters and books of pressed flowers. Lenore carried the muslin-wrapped package to the table, unwrapping the cloth to reveal a folding case containing her most precious possession. The lamp’s yellow light bathed the ambrotype photograph, highlighting the hand-tinting the photographer had added to enhance the photo.
A man posed next to a desk, dressed in his Sunday finery, elbow resting casually on the desktop as he stared at the viewer with a solemn expression. Sandy-haired and broad-shouldered, he was a fine specimen guaranteed to catch the eye of any woman from fifteen to fifty. He had certainly enthralled Lenore at their first acquaintance. That Nathaniel Gordon seemed equally enamored with her still left her in a state of wonder. And deep sorrow.
She outlined his figure under the protective glass with one finger, recollecting his wide smile and the way he made her laugh with his witty remarks or go round-eyed at the stories of his travels. He had a way of wishing her good day that made her blush and Jane growl under her breath if she chanced to witness it—a flirtatious tipping of his pot hat that managed to convey both humor and keen interest.
A memory superimposed itself over the one of Nathaniel. The tall, elegant Guardian tipping his imaginary hat in a manner that made Lenore’s stomach jump into her ribs. An uncanny mimic; a strange coincidence surely. Lenore frowned, staring into the distance.
It was more than the hat tip. The way he shrugged or tilted his head as he listened to her talk, even the smile—gracing a face that looked nothing like Nathaniel’s—seemed familiar. How did two men, so vastly different, exhibit such similar movements and expressions? Or send butterflies whirling through her chest?
Lenore shook her head, frowning harder. She was spending too much time at Highgate cemetery; it was making her daft and even more melancholy. Despite the puzzling hold he had on her, the Guardian was nothing like Nathaniel Gordon.
She shuddered at the thought of what her mother might say if she knew of Lenore’s fascination for the keeper of the dead and the reasons behind it. A spinster bemoaning her unmarried state so much that she imagined the behavior of a lost love on a being who walked two worlds. That Lenore had no interest in marrying after Nathaniel’s death wouldn’t change Jane’s opinion.
She kissed her fingertip before pressing it to the ambrotype. “My darling boy, you are the husband of my heart. I will love and miss you until they lay me in hallowed ground. There is no shame in that.”
It was still early for bed, but Lenore had promised Constance help in the ironing, and that meant awaking well before dawn if they had any hope of completing the chore the same day. Lenore wrapped the ambrotype in its muslin envelope and carefully returned it to its place in the chest.
The kitchen was deserted, dishes cleaned and put away. Lenore blessed Constance’s name under her breath when she spotted two hot water bottles resting on the stove’s still-warm surface. She wrapped one in a towel to take back to her room and warm the sheets.
A ribbon of light crept under the library’s closed door. Lenore paused in the dark foyer. She hadn’t noticed it on her trip downstairs. The comforting crackle of a fire reached her ears as she drew closer, along with the crisp turning of a book’s pages.
Her breath grew short, dark fancies engendered by hours in a cemetery and conversations with bonekeepers. She eased the door open slowly, half certain she’d find the ghost of Arthur Kenward lounging in his favorite chair by the fire, a book in his lap, his pipe in his hand.
What met her gaze made her throat close and her vision blur. Jane, not Arthur, sat in the favorite chair. A book rested in her lap, and in her hand she held a glass of port instead of a pipe. Firelight caressed her hair, bronzing her long braid where it draped over one shoulder. She had changed for bed, her white gown partially concealed by her robe. She wore Arthur’s dressing gown over the robe. Dry-eyed and expressionless, Jane stared into the fire, sipped her port and raised the dressing gown’s cuff to her nose for a long inhalation.
Tears dripped down Lenore’s cheeks, and she eased the door shut before making her way to the stairs. The spinster wept; the widow did not, but more than one woman grieved the loss of a loved one in the Kenward household.
CHAPTER SIX
“Brandy or Black Strap?” Nettie held up one decanter of brandy and another of port.
“Brandy.” Nathaniel rubbed his aching midriff, still sore from the round of shot she’d fired into him.
Nettie’s hands visibly shook as she poured a dram of brandy into each glass. She passed one to him before taking a seat in the chair opposite his. Her ruddy skin was still pale from shock, and she eyed him as if not quite believing he was real much less the man he claimed to be. “After what you just told me, I need something stronger. I’d pour meself chain lightning if I kept it stocked.”
Nathaniel scowled at her. “Stay away from the stuff, Nettie. It’s poison in a glass, and I’ve seen more families bury a poor lad baned by it.”
They clinked glasses in a silent toast, and Nathaniel sipped his brandy under his former captain’s piercing gaze. Her quarters were peaceful now, completely opposite from the riotous chaos a half hour earlier.
Nathaniel had pressed a hand against his riddled midriff, coughed twice and spat a mouthful of bloody shot pellets into his palm before spilling them to the floor. The wounds made by the ammunition closed up, and the silvery blood flow slowed to a trickle before ceasing altogether.
Nettie watched the entire thing with eyes slitted with fury and her hand steady on the Howdah she aimed at his head a second time. Even when half the ship’s crew threatened to pound her door down, her stare never wavered.
“Cut that racket and go about your business!” she’d bellowed over the noise. The pounding abruptly stopped, and Nathaniel recognized the worried voice of her long-time boatswain.
“Are you all right, Captain? We heard the shot.”