“Miss Reed, Mrs. Deveridge, how kind of you to stop by today.” Augusta Moss, large and dignified looking in the flowing apron that covered much of her gown, emerged from the fragrant regions at the rear of the shop. “So good to see you both. It has been a while, has it not?”
“Indeed,” Bernice said cheerfully. “But I am in need of several types of herbs, so Madeline and I thought we would pay a call on you today.”
Mrs. Moss inclined her head. “Excellent. What herbs do you need?”
“Madeline has not been sleeping well of late.”
“A pity.” Mrs. Moss made a small clucking noise that conveyed sympathy and understanding. “A sound night’s sleep is so vital to good health and strong nerves.”
“It certainly is.” Bernice warmed to her favorite topic with relish. “I have supplied her with my usual remedies, but they have failed. I thought to try some Vanzagarian herbs that I experimented with once or twice several years ago. One burns them to form a soothing vapor that induces sleep. Do you happen to have any in stock?”
“I know the type you mean. Quite rare. I am able to get them only two or three times a year. However, I do not have any in stock at the moment.”
“Oh dear,” Bernice murmured. “I am sorry to hear that. There are so few apothecaries in town who stock herbs from Vanzagara. We have already been to the others, and none of them have had a shipment for months.”
“It is very unfortunate that you did not stop by a fortnight ago. I had a large supply at that time.” Mrs. Moss’s eyes went regretfully to an empty jar at the end of the shelf. “A gentleman who is a member of the Vanzagarian Society purchased all that I had on hand.”
Madeline held her breath and was careful not to exchange a glance with Bernice.
Bernice raised her brows. “You say your new client purchased your entire supply? Whoever he is, he must have great difficulty with his sleep.”
Mrs. Moss shook her head. “I don’t think that sleep was a problem for him. I believe he intended to use them in some experiments. He has developed an interest in the production of visions and hallucinations, you see.”
“I wonder if this gentleman would be willing to let me have some,” Bernice said thoughtfully. “Perhaps if he knew how much Madeline needs them, he would be good enough to part with a portion of the supply he purchased from you.”
Mrs. Moss shrugged. “No harm in asking him, I suppose. I sold the herbs to Lord Clay.”
Madeline rushed through the door behind her aunt. She looked at the housekeeper. “Has Mr. Hunt returned home yet? It is urgent that I speak with him immediately.”
“There is no need to look for me.” Artemas said from halfway up the stairs. “I am right here. It’s about time you returned. Where the devil have you been?”
His voice was the distant drumroll of thunder that heralds the oncoming storm: close enough to gain your immediate attention but not yet a dire threat.
Madeline looked up sharply. She saw at once that while his tone was still under full control, strong emotions already darkened his eyes.
“How fortunate that you are here, sir.”
Bernice gave him a bright-eyed look. “We have had quite an eventful day. Madeline has much to tell you, sir.”
“Does she indeed?” Artemas did not take his eyes off Madeline as he came down the staircase. “You will join me in the library, Mrs. Deveridge. I am extremely eager to hear all about your eventful day”
Mrs. Deveridge. No doubt about it, Madeline thought as she preceded him into the library. He was not in a good mood.
“There is no need to snap at me, sir.” She turned to look at him as the door closed, leaving them alone in the library. “I do not appreciate it. If the strain of recent events has begun to take its toll, I suggest that you try one of my aunt’s tonics.”
“I believe I shall stick with my brandy.” He walked around the corner of his desk.
“Sir, I can explain—”
“Everything?” His brows rose. “I certainly hope so, because I have a great many questions. Let us begin with the most pressing matter. How dare you leave the house without telling me where you were going?”
She stood her ground. “Sir, your tone of voice is quite annoying. I am prepared to be patient and understanding because, as I just mentioned, recent events have put a strain on everyone’s nerves. However, if you continue to carry on as though you were …” She stopped.
“As though I were what, madam? As though I were concerned?” He flattened his hands on the top of the desk. His eyes were hard. “As though I had every cause to be alarmed? As though you had behaved in a willful, headstrong, utterly thoughtless manner?”
It was too much on top of everything else. Her temper flared. “I was about to say, as though you were my husband.”
A stunning silence descended. Even the clock seemed to stop. Madeline would have given anything to recall the words, but it was far too late.
“Your husband,” Artemas repeated in a perfectly un-inflected tone.
She stiffened and concentrated on loosening the fingertips of her gloves. “Forgive me, sir. I got a bit carried away in my analogy It is just that I have discovered some very important clues today. We cannot waste time with arguments.”
He ignored her words to inquire with icy curiosity, “Am I truly acting like your husband? I believe you have described him as a murderous villain of the first order.”
She felt light-headed with remorse. “Don’t be ridiculous, sir. Of course I was not comparing you to Renwick. He was a complete bastard, totally lacking in honor. Quite the opposite of yourself.”
“Thank you for that much, at least,” he said through set teeth.
She concentrated fiercely on peeling off her right glove. “As you know, my memories of my marriage are not happy ones. It is possible that I overreacted a moment ago when you began to shout at me.”
“I did not shout.”
“No.” She went to work on the left glove. “You are quite correct. I misspoke. You did not shout. I doubt that you ever raise your voice, do you, Artemas? It is probably quite unnecessary. You are perfectly capable of freezing a person in his or her tracks with only a word.”
“I do not know about freezing a person in his tracks, but I can assure you that when I arrived home a short while ago and discovered that you had left the house, the news froze me to the bone.”
She frowned. “Didn’t the housekeeper inform you that we took Latimer and Zachary with us?”
“Yes, and that is the only thing that kept me from sending the Eyes and Ears out to search for you.”
She dropped one of the gloves. For a few seconds the only thing she could do was stare at it where it lay on the carpet. Then she raised her eyes slowly to look at Artemas. She tried to read the emotions that glittered in the depths of his gaze.
It was not easy He was a man who had long ago learned to close himself to the world. He lived far inside himself, hidden behind locked gates, shuttered windows, and high stone walls. But he had a core founded upon honor and integrity. Unlike Renwick, he was not a beautiful, hollow statue who cared only about himself. Artemas understood the demands of responsibility. All she had to do was look at Zachary and Henry Leggett and the others who served him with such obvious loyalty and affection to know the truth about him.
Above all, he knew the pangs of guilt and failure, just as she did.
“Please accept my apologies, Artemas.” Forgetting about the glove at her feet, she took an impulsive step closer to the desk. “I lost my temper. Husbands are a sore point with me.”
“You have made that very clear.”
“Latimer and Zachary were both armed, and I had my pistol and my knife. I am not a fool.”
He watched her steadily for a long while. “No, of course you are not a fool. You are an intelligent, resourceful woman who is accustomed to making her own decisions.” He straightened abruptly and turned toward the window. “Obviously, I am the one who is overreacting.”
> “Artemas—”
“Pursuing this argument will gain us nothing.” He clasped his hands behind his back and gazed fixedly out into the garden. “Let us move on to a more useful subject. Tell me what was of such great interest to you that it drew you out of this house today.”
He had to be one of the most stubborn men on the face of the earth. She raised her eyes toward the ceiling, but there was no divine inspiration to be had from that source.
“Yes, indeed, sir,” she said briskly. “By all means let us move on to a less inflamed subject. Nothing like a little pleasant conversation about murder and dark plots to lighten the mood, I always say.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder. “A word of advice, madam. Do not press your luck. You may be accustomed to making your own decisions, but I assure you that I am equally accustomed to being master in my own house.” He paused to raise one brow in a meaningful manner. “And at the moment, you are living in that house.”
She cleared her throat. “You make an excellent point, sir. You have every right to give the orders here. You have my word that I will not go out again without making certain that you are aware of my destination.”
“I suppose I must be content with that. Now then, tell me about your adventures today.”
“Yes, well, to be brief, it occurred to me that there are very few apothecaries in London who stock Vanzagarian herbs, and of those, only a small number keep a large quantity on hand. Whoever burned the incense in Pitney’s maze in an attempt to render us unconscious must have had a rather sizable amount.”
He was silent for a few seconds as he absorbed the implications of her logic. “So you set out to see if you could discover where the herbs had been purchased?”
She was pleased to see that he had grasped the import of her plan so quickly. “Actually, I had a fair notion of where to begin. This morning my aunt and I visited those apothecaries we thought most likely to have sold the sleeping herbs.”
He turned around fully to face her. She realized she had finally got his interest.
“Go on,” he said.
“As I said, there are very few apothecaries who stock the herbs. Several months ago one of them was slain in his own shop.”
“I heard about that murder.” Artemas narrowed his eyes. “There was a rumor that it was connected to the Book of Secrets.”
“Yes. But most of the gossip evaporated after Ignatius Lorring took his own life.”
“I wondered at the time if there might have been a link between Lorring’s suicide and the rumors about the Book of Secrets” Artemas said thoughtfully. “He was one of the few men in all of Europe who might have been able to decipher it.”
She shrugged. “If Lord Linslade is to be believed, we are once more dealing with rumors of that wretched book. In any event, Bernice and I decided to call at Mrs. Moss’s shop to inquire about the sleeping herbs.”
He rubbed the back of his neck absently. “I know of Moss’s Apothecary. When I crafted my own meditation candles, I purchased the herbs I needed from her.”
“Many Vanza scholars have patronized her establishment over the years. Indeed, she once mentioned that Lorring himself bought herbs from her. Be that as it may, she told me that although she stocked the sleeping herbs, she was temporarily out of them because she had recently sold her entire supply to a gentleman who was a member of the Vanzagarian Society.”
Artemas definitely looked intrigued now. He left the window and crossed the room to face her across the desk. “Who is he?”
“Lord Clay.”
Artemas appeared briefly startled. Then he scowled. “I have met the man once or twice. He is pleasant enough, but somewhat vague. In your terms, he is merely another crackbrain member of the Society. As far as I am aware, he has no great interest in the old tongue of Vanzagara. I find it difficult to believe that he would pursue something as arcane as the Book of Secrets.”
“Nevertheless, it appears he is in possession of the only large amount of Vanzagarian sleeping herbs available in London at the moment.”
Artemas picked up the letter opener and absently tapped the end of it against the blotter. “Not much to be going on with.”
“Can you offer anything more helpful?” she asked bluntly
He tossed aside the letter opener. “No. Very well, we shall pursue your clue.”
“How? We can hardly search his house. It is not empty as Pitney’s was. It will be filled with servants at every hour of the day and night.”
Artemas smiled slowly. “There is an old bit of Vanza wisdom that holds that an overcrowded fortress is as vulnerable as an empty one.”
She frowned. “I have never heard that saying.”
“Probably because I just made it up on the spot.”
She gazed steadily into the flame until it expanded to fill her entire field of vision. The scent of the candle, delicate and complex, infused the air of her bedchamber.
A few minutes ago she had closed the heavy curtains and locked the door to ensure privacy The bedchamber lay in deep shadows. The muffled noises of the household and the street below her window faded into the distance.
Her father had taught her the art of Vanza meditation many years ago, but it was Bernice who had selected the herbs to blend into the special tapers. The fragrance was gentle and soothing to the senses. Like the scents in Mrs. Moss’s shop, it brought back memories that linked her to the past. Fleeting images drifted through her mind: her father bending toward her as he explained how to decipher a particularly difficult passage in an old text.
There were no images of her mother, who had died a year after giving birth to her, but there were many of Bernice.
It was Bernice who had moved into the Reed home to take care of her grieving older brother and his little daughter. It was Bernice, buoyant and cheerful and warm and loving, who had proved to be the steady anchor the household had needed in the wake of Elizabeth Reed’s death.
Bernice had taken Madeline into her heart and given her the love and affection of a mother. She had supplied the chaotic household with firm direction. She had forced her devastated brother to emerge from the abyss into which his wife’s death had plunged him.
In the end it had not been her father’s lifelong study of Vanza that had saved the family in its time of crisis, Madeline thought. It had been Bernice.
Gently she eased aside the images from the past and let the scenes from the hellish landscape of her recurring nightmare drift, ghostlike, through her mind. She did not want to examine her dream again, but she had no choice. There had been something different about the last one, something she knew she needed to comprehend.
Time passed. She sank deeper into the visions in her head; so deep that she was once more aware of the crackle of the beast of flame; deep enough to feel the iron of the key in her hand. She caught the glint of gold on the carpet.
She felt herself grow cold, just as she did when she dreamed the images in her sleep. Her fingers trembled but she did not turn away from the images.
It had been Artemas’s questioning that had given her the notion of looking at the scenes of the nightmare while in a meditative state. Last night her description had been interrupted by Zachary’s appearance at the kitchen door. All day long she’d had the uneasy sensation that she had failed to tell Artemas something important about the slightly altered version of the dream.
He had been most curious about Renwick’s walking stick, but that was a common feature in the nightmare and she had no interest in taking a closer look at it. The elegant stick was not important. It was simply a manifestation of Deveridge’s vanity.
It was the key that bothered her today. She had dreamed the dreadful nightmare many times in the months since the fire. There were occasional variations in the images, all of them saturated with her growing fear that she would not be able to unlock the bedchamber door.
But she did not recall any version of the dream in which Renwick’s dead hand had reached for the key, which kept falling fro
m her grasp.
She did not try to force the scenes. With the aid of the candle and deliberate concentration, they appeared readily enough. The flames, Renwick’s harrowing laughter, the smell of smoke; they were all there in her head.
The key fell from her hand. She bent to retrieve it
Renwick laughed. She turned her head to look at him.
He reached for the key with dead fingers….
A scream reverberated in the bedchamber. The candle flame flickered and vanished. The room was abruptly overwhelmed by deep shadows.
She barely had time to realize that she was the one who had cried out and knocked over the candle before she heard the thud of boots pounding on the stairs. A moment later a fist slammed against wooden panels.
“Madeline! Open this door at once!”
Breathless and drenched with a cold sweat, she scrambled to her feet and hurried to unlock the door. She threw it open and was nearly run down by Artemas as he came through the opening.
“What the bloody hell—?” He halted just inside the bedchamber and swept the room in a single glance.
“It’s all right,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry about the scream.”
He glanced at her and then he crossed to the window in three long strides. He yanked aside the curtain and checked the locks. He swung around and looked at the extinguished candle.
“I was meditating,” she explained. “Trying to recall images from the dream.”
Bernice appeared in the doorway. Her face clouded with concern. “What in heaven’s name is going on here?”
“I say, something amiss?” Eaton Pitney, arm in a crisp white sling, arrived behind Bernice. His bushy brows snarled in a thicket of alarm. “Was it the Stranger?”
“No, no, no,” Madeline said. She groaned when she saw that Nellie and the housekeeper had also materialized in the hall. “I was meditating. Something startled me. Please, there is no reason to be concerned.”
“I will deal with this, Mrs. Jones,” Artemas said to the housekeeper. “Kindly inform the staff that all is well.”