couldn’t be watching for her here.
With relief, she emerged from hiding and started toward the doors. She was almost halfway across the courtyard when she heard him sprinting behind her.
She didn’t look back, but instantly broke into a run with the aim of reaching the door ahead of him. Alas, she did not. He caught her arm and spun her around, almost popping the joint in her shoulder. He had a disheveled, furious look to him. He tried to drag her across the courtyard and away from the house. She dug in her heels, and after a yard or so her feet shot from under her and she sat down hard.
It didn’t make him release her. But he couldn’t do anything with her, either. So he let go of her arm and hit her, aiming the flat of his hand at the side of her head, with Evangeline managing to deflect some of the blow as she threw her own hands up to cover her face.
“Where is it?” he said.
“What?”
“You know what I mean,” he said, and raised his hand to hit her again.
“I know!” she said quickly. “I know what you want.” She fumbled in her coat.
He held off from hitting her and leaned in close, breathing hard and making a low, tutting, hissing sound through his teeth that was like the impatient tic of an eager snake. When she had to switch sides, he followed her hand.
When he had the button, what then? He’d have one piece of necessary business left, the disposal of the witness.
“Here,” she said. Looking up at him, showing a face that was eager to please, Evangeline brought her hand out of her coat. He leaned forward as he saw the glint of metal in her hand. She looked away and rammed her suffragette pin all the way into his left eye.
It was nine-karat gold. With imitation amethyst, peridot, and seed pearls. Though for Sir Owain’s man, the important element was the two-inch steel pin that came at him ahead of the rest.
He screamed. Like a hare being torn by dogs. But he didn’t let go of her, and he didn’t fall. He clapped his hand over the damaged eye and went at her with redoubled fury. She’d expected to disable him but had only increased his rage to a degree that overcame all pain. He was cursing, calling her names, laying into her with one fist and then with both; she rolled over and made herself as small as she could and drew her arms up to protect her face, taking most of the punches on her back and feeling that her heart would burst in her chest at each jarring blow.
Then he stopped. She wanted to scramble away but she couldn’t move. He was rising to start kicking her now, she knew it. She wanted to call for help from the house, but he’d beaten the breath out of her.
Instead of receiving a kicking, she felt herself seized by the collar and hoisted into the air. He was dragging her across the courtyard like an ungainly sackful of limbs, aiming with purpose for the horse trough. She realized his intention and tried to fight back. But he managed her easily, never letting her find her balance or gain a purchase on the ground.
She did not get a chance to take a breath. When they reached the trough he plunged her in headfirst and held her under. The shock was enormous. She tried to grip the rough edges of the trough and force herself back, but she hadn’t the strength. He was going to hold her down until she was fully subdued, or worse.
Evangeline let her hands fall from the edge. She stopped fighting and tried to relax. If she could deceive him into thinking that she’d lost consciousness while she still had a spark of it left, she might yet prevail.
Was that her plan? Or was she in fact merely clinging to hope while experiencing her life fading in reality? Some people said that drowning sailors experienced bliss, though how those people came by the knowledge, never having drowned nor spoken to anyone who had, she could not imagine. She felt no bliss, only panic and fear.
Her ruse was not working. She could not manage the necessary stillness. Once more she started to resist, but he’d taken the opportunity to force her farther under. She opened her eyes. The water was cold and foul and silty, swirling about her like Greenwich fog. She was there once more, on the terrace of the Trafalgar Inn, watching for Sebastian Becker’s boat as the ghost ships passed by. The heavens split, and it started to rain.
The rain was red. It fell slowly through the fog all around her, like hot cinders through half-frozen slush.
The smell should have warned him. There they stood, their heads fused, their arms around each other. Freaks out of their bottle. Their skin was soft and pliable and completely without color, much as he imagined those bamboo grubs to have been. Rank spirits of alcohol were pooling around their feet. Sebastian couldn’t work out what they wanted.
When he’d asked for their forgiveness, they hadn’t responded. So it wasn’t that.
The face they shared had no expression. All bent out of shape, it was like a reflection in an oily puddle. No clues there. But then one arm came up and beckoned, and the pair attempted an awkward turn. They didn’t lead him onward, for which he was grateful. The smell of their preservative almost overpowered him as he eased by them. Once past, he did not look back.
This corridor led to the conservatory. Along the walls hung more of Sir Owain’s sentimental art collection; pet dogs, girls in gardens, boats at sea. On a plinth stood a strange piece of marble. It was of a child wrapped in a thin shroud, a stone carver’s technical exercise with the child’s features showing through the folds in the cloth. From the corner of his eye he saw the stone child turning its head to watch him as he passed.
The conservatory opened out before him. A soaring structure in cast iron and glass, a temple of light and dense, humid air. Within it was contained an entire world in miniature, a jungle facsimile of palms, orchids, lianas, and ferns. A pathway wound through to its center. Sebastian’s heart was beating, faster and faster.
Elisabeth was waiting.
There she stood, her back toward him. She wore a plain high-collared blouse and a long, light dress the color of smoke. Not as he’d seen her last, in the somber luxury of a chapel of rest, but as in life, unharmed. She seemed not to be aware of his approach. Her head was tilted, as if listening to music.
As soon as he saw that, he heard the music too. He remembered another Sunday in Willow Grove Park, a trolley ride out of Philadelphia, with Sousa on the bandstand. He’d worn a suit and a straw boater. They’d been younger then and, had they only known it, very happy. It seemed to him that Elisabeth looked exactly as she had on that day.
It took him a surprising amount of courage to speak.
He said, “A woman once told me that a man who can dance is always going to be in demand.”
She didn’t look at him. But she showed no surprise. She’d known all along that he was there.
Reaching out to touch the dull, spiky flowers on the towering grasses that grew beneath the palms, she said, “A wise woman. What happened to her?”
“She left when I wasn’t looking.”
“That’s not your fault.”
“It feels that way.”
She let the drab petals trail through her fingers. “Did you know,” she said, “that when bamboo goes into flower, it flowers at the same time all over the world? No one can explain it. But somehow it knows.” And she started to move away.
“Wait,” he said. “Please.”
Elisabeth stopped. She looked at him then, with those large gray eyes he remembered so well.
“What?”
“I know it’s too much to ask,” he said. “And I know it can’t happen. But I so want you back.”
“Good-bye, Sebastian,” she said. “This hour must pass. It’s time to let me go.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Please. I don’t want to.”
“I know,” she said. “But you must do it anyway. For both of us.”
FIFTY-TWO
Sir Owain was awake and alert when Sebastian finally returned to the stairs landing and dropped back into his place on the floor beside him. The man didn’t seem to have much strength for rising, and didn’t try. But his
