women who would become a man’s mistress, but the way Rubey had looked at Voss and the ease of manner between them—along with the very low line of her bodice—made her wonder. She’d spoken of services and of settling accounts.… Angelica became more suspicious.
“Rubey owns the place,” Voss told her. “One of several, in fact. She’s agreed to let you stay here until I can make other arrangements.”
“Is she your mistress?” Angelica asked. “Or is this a brothel?”
The slight widening of his eyes was the only indication of his surprise. “I didn’t believe young, well-bred women knew of such things.”
“Am I to presume that is a confirmation?” she asked, trying to decide why she felt so uncomfortable. Right in the pit of her belly.
“You needn’t presume anything of the sort,” Voss said. “Rubey is merely a woman with many skills and assets—not unlike yourself, Miss Woodmore.”
She couldn’t help but wonder just exactly what sort of skills and assets Rubey had.
And then she realized that, a moment earlier, he’d called her Angelica. Now it was back to Miss Woodmore.
Angelica frowned and all of her warm thoughts dissipated.
But Voss didn’t seem to notice, for he continued. “In fact, I was hoping you might use one of your talents to assist me.”
Her attention flew to him, but his expression was neutral. Perhaps even…apprehensive. For the first time, she noticed that despite his easy manner, his eyes held weariness. “What exactly do you mean?” Angelica asked, resisting the urge to ask if he hadn’t slept well.
Voss shifted in his seat, his long legs ruffling the lacy table cloth, causing the glass bottles to clink gently. “You foretold the death of my associate Lord Brickbank. And I understand that you have been able, in the past, to predict or foresee the death of others.”
When she would have spoken, something like dismay and perhaps anger bubbling up inside her, he continued. His voice lowered and became…tentative. “I confess, it was more than a bit of a shock to me—that which happened with Brickbank. You’d warned us, you’d foretold it…and yet we couldn’t prevent it.”
His face seemed to sag in the uneven light. Emotion clouded his eyes, and the bit of annoyance she had with him ebbed. “Perhaps not,” she said, but gently. “If you had stayed away from the bridges—”
He looked sharply at her. “But you clearly said which bridge. We went nowhere near it, and he still died in the manner you’d foretold.”
Angelica eased back against her pillows, closing her eyes briefly. Yes, that very same realization had settled uncomfortably in her thoughts, as well. It made her fingers grow stiff and icy, despite the mild summer day, and her insides tighten.
There was no escaping fate.
And she was fated to bear its knowledge.
“How do you manage it, Angelica?” he asked suddenly, as if it burst from him. Earnestness and something much deeper blossomed in his gaze. “Seeing death at every turn?”
She sensed that he needed the answer; that it was a need for him as much as an understanding about her. “It’s become part of my life,” she said. “Since I was very young, I would touch something and sometimes the flash of a vision would rush through my mind. I didn’t understand what it was at first.”
“The first time you realized it was something more, you must have been quite distraught.” His voice had gentled.
“I was perhaps five or six. One of the footmen had dropped a glove and I picked it up. The vision was very strong and it startled me. I had an image of him lying on the floor of the stable. He looked odd, but I couldn’t have known it was because his neck and legs were broken. I returned the glove to him and two days later, he fell from the loft of the barn.”
Voss’s eyes glinted golden-green. “Were you the one to find him?”
Angelica shook her head. “No, I was spared that, at least. But I’d told Maia about the vision, and she had managed a peek into the stable when all of the activity was happening. She wouldn’t let
Voss wondered if Chas had been tossed in the privy his first week at school, or if that sort of tradition had gone away with powdered wigs and knee breeches. Regardless, having encountered Chas more than once, Voss was inclined to suspect that he’d not been subjected to such an indignity at that age. He might even have been one of the ones doing the dunking of pretty but scrawny underclassmen.
Or, more likely, he allowed reluctantly, the pulling of them out of the muck.
Removing himself from such circuitous musings, he asked, “What happened after you made the connection between the vision and the groom’s death?”
She understood what he meant. “Maia, and later, Chas, knew about it, but I never told my parents. They were still alive then.”
He stilled, arrested in the midst of a movement on the short stool. “Did you know they would die?”
Angelica focused on her fingers, playing with a loose thread on the coverlet. “It was another year before it happened again. I was playing with my cousin’s coat and wrapped myself up in it while we were playing hide-and- seek. In the dark corner under the piano, I was hidden and had to remain quiet…and that was when my mind—it was rather like it opened. I saw him in his bed. His face was pale and his lips and eyelids blue. At the time, he was nine or thereabouts, but in the image, it was clear he was some years older.”
“He died, then? A few years later?”
She nodded. “I didn’t tell anyone about the vision that time because…well, I didn’t really know what it meant. But later, my old Granny Grapes came to me. She knew about it. She’d figured it out.”
“Granny Grapes?” A smile flickered in his eyes.
Affection swarmed her. “She died five years ago, but she was the one who inherited the Sight in our family from her mother. She was part Gypsy.” She’d been the one to help Angelica understand, learn to accept and control her gift. If it hadn’t been for her wisdom and knowledge—
“How do you live with it? With knowing that everyone you meet will die?” His voice was filled with compassion, but also with need. He needed something…but she didn’t understand what it was. “Don’t you ever wonder what happens after?”
Angelica looked at him. Their eyes met, but not in the sort of heated, explosive way they’d done at the masquerade ball or even when he came into the chamber just now. Something tugged, soft and deep, inside as she connected her gaze with his. “Everyone dies, my lord.”
His handsome face seemed bleak. “Why must they?”
“It’s the natural way of things, the cycle of life. To everything there is a season, and a time.” She dropped the little thread she’d been curling around her fingers. “If there is one thing I’ve learned from this gift I have, it’s that one cannot fear death. It’s rarely pleasant or expected or convenient. Most times it’s tragic and painful. But we can’t avoid it. And for some, it can even be a relief.”
She nibbled on her lip, thinking about how long it had taken for her to become comfortable with her Sight. How many nights of worry and anguish she’d slogged through in darkness—both literal and figurative—before Granny Grapes had taken her under her wing and helped her to understand that death was merely a transition to another part of life.
Voss didn’t say anything, and she was struck by what seemed to be deepening shadows beneath his eyes.
“I don’t mean to sound nonchalant or uncaring,” she told him when the silence stretched moments too long. “I didn’t always feel that way.”
“Didn’t you try to block it out? Did you not try to keep it away? Or did you revel in the knowledge?”
“Yes, and yes…and, at times, yes.” She spread her hands. “I’ve become comfortable with it now. I’ve learned to control it, and I’m judicious in my use of the Sight. Careful with how and when I call on it.”
Except…she hadn’t controlled the image of Lord Brickbank falling to his death. That had been visited upon her in her dreams.
She’d never met the man, never touched any of his belongings.
