Don't Look Back Page 30

  “What is happening inside that hackney?” Tobias demanded. “Tell me everything you can. Be quick about it.”

  “CELESTE STOLE THE BRACELET AND MET YOU AT the empty warehouse.” Lavinia touched the silver pendant. She knew now that Pelling was not entirely impervious to mesmeric suggestion, as he claimed. But he was certainly not an easy subject, especially under these extremely difficult circumstances. The best she could hope to do was distract him and, with luck, perhaps influence his logic to some degree. She was buying time. “Did you murder her because you thought you no longer needed her?”

  Pelling’s eyes darted briefly toward the twisting silver. He appeared confused by it. He looked away and back again.

  He had not heard her, she realized.

  “Why did you murder Celeste?” she whispered.

  He stared at her. “I killed her because she informed me that she wished to alter our bargain.” A mad rage flared once again in his eyes. “The stupid bitch sent word that she wanted twice as much money for the damned bracelet. I agreed to meet her at the warehouse and hand over her fee in exchange for the Medusa.”

  “That’s when you strangled her.”

  “She deserved it. She struggled, of course. Waved that damned fan at me. Tried to put me in a trance. But I killed her before she could utter another word.”

  “And then you realized that she had not brought the bracelet with her to the warehouse that night. You had miscalculated. Murdered her too soon. What a problem you faced. You had no notion where she had hidden the relic.”

  “I tried making a few discreet inquiries the morning after the murder.”

  “But you only succeeded in starting rumors about the missing Medusa,” she said, thinking of Nightingale’s late-night visit to Howard and Lord Vale’s sudden interest in the search. “That was how the rumors concerning the theft of the Medusa got started so speedily.”

  “Yes. And then Hudson hired March to look into the matter. I must admit, it was a rather ingenious move.”

  “Actually, Dr. Hudson employed me to look into it.”

  He ignored the small correction, lost in his tale now. “I searched several of the antiquities shops, thinking that Celeste might have made a more profitable bargain with one of the dealers.”

  Clearly he did not know about Mrs. Rushton’s inadvertent theft of her own relic, Lavinia thought. All he knew was that Celeste had obtained the Medusa, but she evidently had not told him how she got hold of it. Perhaps she had considered such details to be professional secrets.

  Lavinia paused in the act of turning the pendant. “It was you I surprised that day in Mr. Tredlow’s shop.”

  “Yes. I thought at the time that it was fortunate that you did not see me. I did not want to kill you at that point. I wanted you to continue your search. Indeed, I thought it quite possible that with March’s connections the two of you might well find the thing.” Pelling smiled again and raised the point of the knife. “And that is just what happened, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the Medusa bracelet, Mrs. Lake?”

  She drew a breath. “You don’t really expect me to tell you, do you? I know that you will kill me the moment the bracelet is in your possession.”

  “You will tell me,” Pelling promised. Something snakelike slithered just beneath the surface of his eyes. “In the end, you will be only too happy to tell me the location of the bracelet.”

  THE HACKNEY RATTLED TO A HALT A SHORT TIME later. Lavinia could smell the river. When Pelling opened the door, she saw sagging docks and shabby outbuildings swathed in fog. She heard the creak of dock timbers, but the water itself was invisible in the gray mist. There was no indication that anyone else was about.

  She tried to think of what to do next.

  Pelling used the tip of the knife to motion her out of the cab. She jumped down cautiously and looked up at the coachman. One glimpse of his rough features destroyed her small hope of help from that quarter: The man on the box was one of the two men who had attacked Tobias in Maggie’s front hall.

  He did not meet her eyes, his entire attention on Pelling. “This is the end of the matter as far as I’m concerned. Where’s the rest of my money?”

  “Here.” Pelling tossed a small sack at him. “You’ll find that it is all there. Take it and be off.”

  The villain loosened the string that secured the sack, glanced inside, and then nodded, satisfied. He picked up the whip and gave the horses the signal.

  The hackney clattered off and was soon lost in the fog.

  The thickening mist might provide some concealment, Lavinia thought. If she could run fast enough, she might be able to escape Pelling’s knife and lose herself in the gathering darkness. She collected her skirts.

  “Do not think that you can escape me, Mrs. Lake.” Pelling reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and produced a pistol. He smiled again. “You may be able to outrun a knife, but you cannot outrun a bullet. I am an excellent shot.”

  “I do not doubt that for a moment. But if you kill me now, you will never learn where Celeste hid the bracelet.”

  “Rest assured that the bullet I lodge in you will not kill you. Not immediately. There will be ample time for you to tell me everything you know. Now, then, we are going through that door over there.” He pointed with the knife. “Move quickly, Mrs. Lake. I am growing extremely impatient.”

  She touched the pendant again. “You told me that you were a strong man. I believe you, sir. I have great respect for a man of your power.”

  He glanced at the pendant. “Stop fiddling with that damned necklace.”

  “Your power makes me anxious.”

  “As well it should.”

  “It makes me feel small. As if I were far away from you at the end of a very long, very dark hall.”

  “Stop talking.” He jerked his gaze away from the pendant with obvious effort. “Go through that door, Mrs. Lake. Be quick about it.”

  “I know where the bracelet is,” she said gently. “Shall I tell you now?”

  He shifted restlessly and looked away from the pendant. “Where is it?”

  “Celeste hid it well.” She took a step back toward the quay that edged the river. “It is at the end of a very long hall. Can you see the hall in your mind? It is the same hall in which I am standing. I look so small there at the very end of the hall. You will have to come closer to see me.” She fell back another step. “I have the Medusa here with me at the end of the hall. You must come down this long hall to find me and the bracelet—”

  “Bloody hell, cease prattling on about hallways.” But he took a hesitant step, following her as she edged back through the mists toward the river. “I do not want to hear about the long hall.”

  “But you must go down this long, long hall if you wish to find the Medusa.” She continued gliding slowly toward the gray wall of fog that cloaked the river. From the corner of her eye, she watched for an alley or passageway between buildings that might provide cover for a few seconds. “Come with me down this hall. You know it well.”

  “No. No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But he followed, as if drawn by a string. Unfortunately, the pistol in his hand never wavered.

  “It is the hall you go down whenever you find it necessary to beat a woman. It is the place where you are in control. The place where you are powerful. When you are in this hallway no one is stronger than you.”

  “Yes.” He continued walking toward her, moving more quickly now. “I am the strong one.”

  “Women cannot control you when you are in this place.”

  “No. Here I am in command.” His voice altered slightly, rising in pitch. “She cannot hurt me here.”

  “Who cannot hurt you?”

  “Aunt Medusa.”

  Lavinia nearly missed her footing. “Aunt Medusa?”

  Pelling smirked, the giggle of a young boy, not a full-grown man. “That’s what I call Aunt Miranda behind her back. She thinks she ca
n make me stop doing the bad things if she beats me often enough and hard enough. But I won’t stop. Because she’s right, you see. There is a demon in me and he makes me strong. One of these days I’m going to hurt Aunt Medusa so bad she’ll never be able to beat me again. I’m going to kill her.”

  She could not retreat any farther. The river was directly behind her. She could hear it lapping softly, hungrily. The only choice was to walk backward along the stone quay. She edged in that direction. The row of empty warehouses formed a seemingly solid wall facing the river.

  “You are halfway along the long, long hall . . .”

  She moved slowly and carefully, terrified of stumbling over a stone and breaking the fragile trance. She glanced quickly at the closed doors and blank windows to her right, searching for an escape route.

  “I followed her into the kitchen that night after we were alone in the house. None of the servants would live in it anymore, you see. They were all frightened of me . . .”

  The narrow passage between two buildings loomed suddenly. It was the only opening she had seen. She stopped, preparing to run.

  “. . . I stabbed Medusa with the carving knife. There was a great deal of blood . . .”

  The action of taking flight would shatter the crystalline trance that bound Pelling. She would get no second chances.

  “I took everything I could carry and later sold all of it, including the damned stone. She had always told me that the stone possessed certain forces, but I didn’t believe her. I did not realize until many years later when my spells started to get worse that she had told the truth. She came to see me in my dreams. She laughed at me. That was when she told me that I had got rid of the one thing that had the power to banish her ghost.”

  “The Blue Medusa. You set out to find it.”

  “I must find it. She is trying to drive me mad, you see. The bracelet is the only thing that can stop her. You will tell me where it is, damn you.”

  She was preparing herself for the effort when there was a sudden, wild fluttering of wings to her left. A water bird squawked its displeasure and took off, soaring low across the water.

  Pelling came to his senses instantly. He blinked once and then seemed to comprehend immediately that something had gone badly wrong.

  “Where am I? What do you think you’re doing?” He raised the pistol. “Did you think you could trick me?”

  “Pelling.” Tobias’s voice rang ominously in the fog, echoing eerily among the empty buildings. “Stop or I will shoot you where you stand.”

  The threat cast a mesmeric spell over the entire scene. The world around Lavinia went still and hushed.

  And then Pelling whirled around, seeking the voice in the fog. “March. Where are you, damn your eyes? Show yourself. I’ll kill her if you don’t.”

  Lavinia ran for her life, making for the limited shelter of the lane and the protective cloak of the heavy fog. A few feet could make all the difference in determining whether she lived or died. Pistols were notoriously unreliable beyond a short distance.

  “No.” Pelling started to turn back toward her. “You cannot escape me, Medusa.”

  “Pelling,” Tobias called again. The voice of doom.

  Pelling’s pistol roared. For a terrifying eternity Lavinia expected to feel the impact of the bullet in her back. Then she comprehended that Pelling had fired at Tobias, not her.

  “Dear God.”

  But the shot had gone wild, she realized. Pelling could not possibly see Tobias in the heavy mist.

  “Forget her, Pelling,” Tobias commanded in that eerie voice that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. “You must kill me first if you are to have any chance of escape.”

  Lavinia flattened herself against the nearest wall and peeked around the corner. Pelling had dropped the empty pistol and was fumbling frantically to pull a second one from the pocket of his greatcoat.

  “Show yourself, March,” Pelling shouted. Pistol in hand, he turned on his heel, seeking Tobias in the mists. “Where are you, you bloody bastard?”

  “Behind you, Pelling.”

  Tobias emerged at last from the fog, striding deliberately along the quay toward his target. He held a pistol in one hand. The wings of his black greatcoat snapped above the tops of his boots. An invisible aura of power seemed to coil around him, deepening and growing more intense as he neared his victim.

  To Lavinia it appeared as though he gathered energy from the dark mists of the oncoming night and wielded it the way a man wielded a sword.

  She felt the breath squeeze out of her lungs. She had seen him in dangerous moods before, but never one such as this.

  For the first time she sensed the raw, untrained talent in him and shivered. It was just as well that he had never pursued a career as a mesmerist, she thought.

  In that short, dazzling moment of intuitive vision, she knew the shattering truth: Tobias’s wild talents called to whatever it was within her that gave her the ability to practice mesmerism with such power. It was as though the forces of animal magnetism that flowed through him resonated with those that flowed through her.

  Tobias was, indeed, dangerous, and some part of him must have sensed it years ago, she thought, even if he had never consciously acknowledged it. That was why he had taught himself such a degree of self-mastery. She wondered if he would ever come to the realization that his ability to control and suppress the forces at work within him only made him all the more of a sorcerer.

  “Stay back,” Pelling shouted, voice rising. He sounded completely unhinged now. “Stay back, damn you.”

  He raised the pistol and fired.

  “No,” Lavinia screamed.

  Almost simultaneously, a second shot thundered out of the mists.

  Pelling jerked and toppled over the edge of the quay. Lavinia heard a muffled splash.

  “Tobias.” She ran forward. “Are you all right?”

  Tobias looked at her from the heart of the invisible storm that appeared to seethe around him. He held the pistol at his side. For an instant she was sure she glimpsed dangerous currents of energy in his eyes.

  Just your imagination. Get hold of yourself.

  “Yes,” Tobias said softly. “I am all right. His aim was off. I think you shook his nerve.”

  She looked down and saw Pelling floating facedown in the river. She knew why his aim had been off. It had not been her doing. He had been terrified by the sight of Tobias sweeping toward him out of the fog.

  Without another word she went straight into Tobias’s arms. He caught her close and held her against him for a very long time.

  IT WAS LATER, AFTER TOBIAS HAD PULLED Pelling’s body from the water and lashed it to the back of the cart, that Lavinia thought about the warehouse.

  “I want to have a quick look inside,” she said.

  Tobias walked toward the front of the cart to untie the horse. “Why?”

  “He tried to make me go in there.” She looked at the closed door. “I need to know what is behind that door.”

  He hesitated and then retied the reins.

  Without further argument, he went to the door of the warehouse and opened it. She walked in slowly, giving her eyes a chance to adjust to the dim light.

  The interior was crowded with a number of coiled ropes, empty crates, and shipping casks.

  Howard Hudson lay, bound and gagged, in the corner.

  Lavinia hurried forward and removed the strip of cloth that sealed his lips. He groaned and sat up so that Tobias could cut the ropes around his wrists.

  “Thought you two would never get here,” he said.

  Thirty

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER TOBIAS HAD DEALT WITH THE authorities as only he could, thanks to his many connections, they gathered in the parlor together with Emeline, Anthony, Joan, and Vale.

  Her study, Lavinia had quickly realized, was much too small for such a crowd, and it certainly was not impressive enough for the likes of Lord Vale. Not that the parlor was much grander, she thought uneasily
. But at least there was more space.

  In spite of not yet having received any fees to cover the expenses of the affair, she poured everyone an extralarge glass of her precious sherry. Surviving a close brush with a murderer inspired one to be generous, she thought.

  “All three of them wanted the Blue Medusa,” she said, sinking down onto the sofa alongside Joan. “Each for a different reason. Howard, I regret to say, actually put some credence in the legends surrounding it. He wanted it for his experiments. Celeste hoped to sell it in order to purchase another rung on the social ladder. And Pelling, who had become quite demented, had concluded that it would give him power over the ghost of the aunt he had murdered in his youth.”

  Joan shuddered. “It was a near thing. How fortunate that Mr. March arrived at the Banks mansion just as you were forced into Pelling’s closed hackney.”

  “Indeed.” Emeline took a fortifying sip of sherry. “I cannot bear to think about what might have happened had he not seen you and managed to follow you.”

  Vale contemplated Tobias, who occupied the chair across from him. “After this incident you will be obliged to concede that there is such a thing as coincidence, eh, March? Joan is right: If you had not happened to call at the Banks mansion this afternoon, you would never have seen Mrs. Lake getting into the hackney.”

  There was a short pause during which everyone took a swallow of sherry.

  Tobias turned his glass between his palms and looked at Lavinia. He smiled slightly.

  “It was not luck or coincidence that took me to the Banks house this afternoon,” he said quietly. “I followed Lavinia because she had left a note informing me of where she had gone. Just as she had promised.”

  She met his eyes and saw a reflection of the same absolute certainty of knowledge that had coalesced deep inside her. Regardless of the clashes of will that lay ahead—clashes that were inevitable, given their strong temperaments—a bond had formed between them. Tobias was far more than her lover and occasional partner. The metaphysical link was now so strong that she knew it could never be severed.