CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Ceci
Ceci heard Voss before she saw him. His voice carried up through the stairwell, smooth as a hand laid over a mouth.
“I would not have disturbed the household at this hour if the matter could wait.”
Margaret’s answer cut through the hall.
“You disturbed the household the moment you put your hand to that bell.”
Archie, one step behind Ceci, gave a faint sound that might have become laughter if pain had not caught in it first.
“God bless Margaret,” he murmured. Duncan looked back at him. “Careful.”
“I am being careful.”
“You are listing to the left.”
“I contain asymmetries.”
Ceci turned just enough to see him. In the dim light of the stair, Archie looked pale beneath the warmth of his skin.
His mouth was swollen from kisses and split from the fight in the cellar.
His shirt collar sat open, and the bruise at his ribs was hidden now by fabric, though she could still see it in her mind: dark violet, blue at the edges, proof that danger had already put its hands on him.
Her own hands tightened on the banister.
Ten minutes ago, Duncan had been unbuttoning her dress with his mouth against her shoulder.
Archie had been on the bed, laughing through pain because desire had found them in the middle of fear and insisted on making a claim anyway.
She could still feel them. Archie’s lips on her wrist. Duncan’s fingers low on her back.
The heat of being held between them, wanted by them, known by them in a way that had made the room feel less like sin than shelter.
Now Voss stood below them. Ceci descended another step, and the warmth left her body as if the house itself had opened to winter. At the foot of the stairs, the hall had gathered around the intruder.
Margaret stood at the open front door in her dressing gown and slippers, one hand braced against the carved edge as if she meant to keep a whole army out by force. Rain blew in past her shoulder, fine and silver under the porch lamp. Voss remained outside on the top step.
He had removed his hat. His dark hair was damp at the temples. Water shone along the shoulders of his coat. He looked cold, composed, and faintly amused, which made Ceci want to pick up the nearest heavy object and become absurdly violent.
Grace stood halfway down the corridor in a robe the color of old cream, her braid falling over one shoulder. Sabrina had appeared at the library door in black silk, bright-eyed and furious, as though she had been expecting some variation of disaster and resented this one for lacking imagination.
Voss’s gaze lifted.
He saw Duncan first.
Then Archie.
Then Ceci.
The pause that followed was slight. Too slight for anyone who did not know how rooms could be read by predatory men. Voss took in Archie’s open collar, Duncan’s missing waistcoat, Ceci’s loosened hair, the red at her throat, and the fullness of her lips.
He understood.
A tiny smile touched his mouth.
“Well,” he said. “I had hoped to speak with Miss Bishop. I see I have reached the center of the matter instead.”
Archie’s smile turned brilliant and poisonous. “How bold of you to bring manners to a trespass.”
Voss looked at him. “Mr. Booker. Still alive.”
“And still prettier than you. I call that a full victory.”
Duncan moved past Ceci to the bottom of the stairs. He had the pistol in his right hand, held low, the barrel angled toward the floor.
Voss noticed.
“Captain Carlton,” he said. “You are taking this very seriously.”
Duncan’s voice was flat. “I have met you.”
“Then I shall avoid sudden movement.”
“Wise.”
Margaret looked at Duncan. “I told him he was not coming in.”
“Thank you.”
Ceci stepped down beside him. Duncan shifted at once, enough to place his body between her and the open door. He did not touch her. That made it worse. He was careful even in panic.
Archie came to her other side, close enough that his sleeve brushed hers. He stood too straight, which told her how much the ribs hurt. Voss watched the three of them arrange themselves without speaking. Something sharpened in his expression.
“You are doing it again,” he said.
Sabrina stepped into the hall. “If you have come to narrate our posture, I promise we can survive without the service.”
His eyes moved to her. “Miss Gladstone.”
“Still.”
“I had wondered whether you might retire after this evening’s embarrassment.”
“And miss the pleasure of seeing you increasingly desperate? Never.”
Grace looked between them. “He has something in his hand.”
Everyone stilled.
Voss lifted his left hand slowly. A folded paper rested between two fingers.
Duncan raised the pistol.
Voss stopped moving.
“A document,” he said. “Nothing more.”
“Lay it on the step,” Duncan said.
“I brought it for Miss Bishop.”
“You brought it to my door. Lay it down.”
For a moment, Voss did nothing. Then he bent with exquisite care and placed the folded paper on the wet stone at his feet. Rain dotted the outer fold immediately. Margaret made a disgusted noise, swept forward, snatched it up before Duncan could stop her, and stepped back inside.
“Margaret,” Duncan said.
She shut the door halfway, leaving Voss visible through the opening. “If he meant to shoot us, he would have done it before I started insulting him.”
Archie looked faintly delighted despite everything. “That is battlefield logic.”
“That is household logic,” Margaret said. “More reliable.”
She handed the paper to Duncan. Duncan did not open it. He looked at Voss. “What is this?”
“A kindness.”
Ceci laughed. The sound came out hard and wrong. Voss’s eyes returned to her.
“You object to the word.”
“I object to you using humane language.”
Archie’s hand found hers at her side. It happened quietly. His fingers slid around hers, warm and firm, and she gripped back before she could think better of it.
Voss saw that too.
His gaze lowered to their joined hands, then moved to Duncan, who had not missed the contact. A flicker crossed Voss’s face. Interest. Calculation. Satisfaction.
Ceci hated all three.
Duncan opened the paper.
His face did not change at first. Then every bit of warmth left it. Ceci felt Archie’s hand tighten around hers.
“What?” she asked.
Duncan looked at her. Then at Archie. For one terrible second, he seemed unable to decide which of them the page would wound more.
He held it out.
Ceci took it.
The paper was wrong.
She knew that before she read it. It was not paper from this house, nor paper from this year.
The texture was too smooth, the type too clean, the spacing too modern in its ugliness.
The upper corner had a blurred institutional mark she recognized only as an archival reproduction, a scan printed and carried through too many impossible places. Her eyes found the names.
Captain Duncan Alexander Clifton Carlton. Missing, presumed dead, 1941.
Archibald Elias Booker. Civilian consultant attached to intelligence operations. Killed during enemy action, 1942.
The hall bent around her.
No.
She did not say it. Her body said it badly enough. Archie pulled the paper from her hand. His eyes moved over it once, then again. His face went still in a way she had never seen before.
“Well,” he said lightly. “Civilian consultant is offensively dull.”
Grace took one step forward. “Archie.”
“I would have requested something with more dash.”
His voice held, but only because he was strangling it into shape.
Duncan stood motionless.
Ceci could not look at him. If she looked at him, she would see the whole thing: uniform, duty, sacrifice, the neat historical appetite that ate men like him by the thousands and called it necessity.
Voss spoke from the doorway.
“You know enough to recognize probability when you see it.”
Ceci lifted her head. “You forged this.”
“Perhaps.”
“You planted it.”
“Possibly.”
“You expect me to believe it.”
“No,” Voss said. “I expect you to fear it.”
At least he had stopped pretending. Sabrina moved closer to Grace and read over Archie’s shoulder. Her face altered, little by little, as the page became clear to her.
Grace whispered, “No.”
Voss looked at her with mild irritation, as if grief from the wrong person had interrupted his preferred staging.
“War is efficient,” he said. “It makes clerks of prophets.”
Duncan’s pistol rose again.
“Speak one more sentence like that,” he said, “and I will test whether the future still wants you in it.”
Voss looked at him with the first trace of real pleasure.
“There. Better. I had begun to wonder whether Miss Bishop had made all of you soft.”
Ceci stepped forward before Duncan could answer.
Archie’s hand held hers.
Duncan’s free hand came to her back, steadying her without quite pulling her away. She felt both of them and understood what Voss had come to do. He had not come only to frighten her. He had come to point at the exact shape of her love and call it a liability.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“The gate is waking.”
The words struck the hall silent. Ceci felt it again as he spoke. A pull low in her body, deeper than hearing, older than thought. The red gate. The wet grass. Stone under her hand. The impossible sense of a door beginning to remember her. Duncan’s hand pressed once against her back.
Voss watched the movement.
“Yes,” he said. “She feels it.”
Sabrina’s eyes cut to Ceci. “Do you?”
Ceci swallowed. “Yes.”
Grace’s hand went to her mouth. Margaret looked toward the windows as if she might see Old Hawarden through the walls.
Voss continued, voice calm and terrible. “Vale thought the traveler might synchronize with repeated exposure. He was timid in his conclusions, but he reached the outer edge of truth. The opening strengthens around strain. Fear. Desire. Grief. A life divided against itself.”
Ceci’s skin crawled.
Archie said, “You make physics sound like bad poetry.”
“You mistake discomfort for wit.”
“No, I use wit to make discomfort tolerable. It is called charm. You should try it back in whatever pit you crawled from.”