Mesmerized

“Ready for what?” Desmond asked vaguely, and had to be reminded of his promise to star-watch with his wife and the twins. He seemed, however, quite pleased with the notion once he was told about it. “Jolly night for it. Not often you get such a clear sky in the city. Do you have your telescope?”

It seemed the boys did, tucked under the staircase, where it could come to no harm during their jumping from the stairs, and they had also brought a blanket, a lantern and a small sack of fruit for a midnight snack. They asked Olivia to join them, but although she normally would have done so, she demurred, pleading tiredness from her own adventure that evening.

In truth she was not tired so much as desirous of being alone. She wanted to think about the evening and go over what had happened and what had been said. The feeling she had experienced when she looked into Lord St. Leger’s eyes had been so odd...and though she was certain that it was nothing to do with being attracted to the man, either emotionally or chemically, as her sisters had suggested, she was not sure to what she could attribute that brief frisson of awareness that had run through her.

So she went upstairs and undressed, then sat by the window, wrapped in a brocade dressing gown, and brushed out her long hair. She typically did not require the attendance of a maid, for she wore her hair in a simple, practical style, low on her neck in a bun, that she was able to put up and take down without assistance. She also favored pragmatic clothes, with bodices that buttoned up the front and no whalebone corset that had to be yanked and tugged and tied into place to give her a minuscule waist. It was another of her mother’s dicta, adopted by her daughters, not to endanger one’s health with constricting corsets for the absurdity of an eighteen-inch waist. Therefore, she rarely needed help in getting undressed, either. Olivia deemed a personal maid an unnecessary luxury for herself, and besides, she usually preferred to be alone with her thoughts rather than listening to a maid’s chatter.

Brushing her hair normally relaxed her, but she found that this evening it did not, and her thoughts remained unaccustomedly scattered. She could not seem to concentrate, and she rose more than once to pace about the room. She could not figure out why she had felt as she did when she first saw Lord St. Leger, and it irritated her that she was so concerned with the subject. She kept thinking of things she should have said or done, witty remarks that would have put the man in his place. It was some time before she settled down enough to go to bed, and even then, it took her some time to fall asleep. It was another disagreeable problem to lay at Lord St. Leger’s door, she thought. She wished she could see him again, just to give him a piece of her mind.

She spent a rather restless night and arose early the next morning. The only person at breakfast was her great-uncle, Bellard, who smiled with pleasure at seeing her. He was a quiet man usually, but Olivia was his favorite relative, and today he was full of news about the arrival the day before of his latest acquisition, a full complement of French and English soldiers, made out of tin and perfectly replicated down to each tiny ribbon or epaulet the armies of Napoleon and Wellington at Waterloo. Her uncle was a history buff, and his particular pleasure was recreating famous battles in history. On the third floor in this huge house, not far from the nursery, was a huge room given over entirely to tables on which the terrain and participants of such epic clashes as Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, in which glass painted blue carried replicas of the ships involved, and Churchill’s win at Blenheim were laid out with exactitude.

A thin man, somewhat hunched over from years of poring over books and tabletop armies, Bellard was often subject to chills, especially in the poorly heated upper reaches of the house, and he was given to wearing a soft cap over his wispy white hair. A beaked nose gave him a look somewhat reminiscent of a bird, but the smile beneath it was so gentle and sweet that no one who saw it ever thought of considering him odd. He was simply Great-uncle Bellard, and his great-nieces and -nephews loved him.

After breakfast, Olivia returned with him to his workroom to review the tin figures he had unpacked, and then she left the house, a plain brown bonnet on her head to match her plain brown dress, whose severe lines were softened only by a conservative bustle in back, below which the garment fell in rows of ruffles of the same material, its one touch of frivolity. Her only ornamentation was a sensible gold watch hanging from a brooch on her chest.

The ducal carriage took her, as it did every morning, and deposited her in front of the door of a modest building containing a few offices. Olivia climbed the stairs to her second-floor office, where the door sported the same discreet title as her business card.

“Hello, Tom,” she said as she reached the door, taking out her key to unlock it.

Tom Quick, her assistant, sat on the floor beside the door, his shaggy yellow head turned down to the book in his lap. He jumped up at her words, grinning, and closed the book. “Good morning, miss. ’Ow are you this fair day?”

“Well, I believe, Tom. No need to ask you. You are obviously in good spirits.”

“Not from any misdoin’,” he assured her quickly.

Tom had been one of her brother Reed’s projects, a pickpocket whom he had caught attempting to steal his wallet some years ago. Reed had recognized the bright mind behind the dirty face, and instead of turning the lad in to the authorities, he had provided for his schooling. At her brother’s suggestion, Olivia had hired him for her office assistant two years ago and had never regretted it. No one, including Tom, knew his actual age or name; Quick had been an appellation given him for the speed with which he could pick a pocket. He was, Olivia judged, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, with a worldly-wise view of life far beyond his years. Slavishly devoted to both Reed and Olivia, Tom refused to leave her, though Olivia was sure that he could have earned more as a clerk for a larger firm. She also suspected, though she had never confronted him about it, that Tom and Reed considered his job more one of unobtrusively protecting Olivia than of actually clerking.

“‘Ow’d it go last night?” Tom asked as she unlocked the door and they went inside.

He went around raising the shades on the windows while Olivia walked over to her desk. “Not well at all, I’m afraid.” She described as briefly as she could the contretemps that had arisen at the séance the night before, spoiling her plans.

Tom reacted with appropriate shock and dismay. “That’s ‘orrible, miss. Wot are you goin’ to do now?”

“Forget Mrs. Terhune, I’m afraid. It wasn’t even a paying case. I am just so incensed at her foisting those obvious daguerrotypes off as ghosts. Anyone can see that they are flat.”

“Anyone except her followers,” Tom pointed out.

“I know. I suppose I should let them be deceived, if they are so foolish.” Olivia sighed.

“There’s some as are born marks, miss, and that’s the truth.” He came over and perched on the edge of her desk. “I guess we’ll ‘ave to start lookin’ into somethin’ else, wot do you say?”

“I’d love to,” Olivia admitted, glancing over her tidily arranged desk. “The only problem is, I haven’t any cases.”

The business, never robust, had trickled down to almost nothing in the past year. Olivia had spent much of her time conducting investigations on her own, compiling evidence of the tricks used by the mediums.

“You’re never thinkin’ of givin’ up, are you, miss?” Tom looked faintly horrified.

“No. I won’t give up. I cannot stand to think of these people fleecing the bereaved, taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable.... It is just that I am at something of a standstill. We have no new cases. I have done research until I’m not sure what to look into anymore. I cannot force my way into people’s homes and say, ‘Look here, let me prove to you that that man is lying when he says he can communicate with your dead mother or husband or whoever.’”

“Well, look on the bright side. We might get a new customer any time now. Until then, we’ll just make do.”

“Yes. Of course, you’re right.” She gave him a smile. “I shall get to work writing up my experiences last night, and we can close that file.”

She pulled out a sheet of paper and dipped her pen in the inkwell, then settled down to do as she had said. She found it rather difficult, however, to put into words what had happened the night before without it sounding completely foolish and unscientific. No matter how she couched it, she could not get around the fact that Lord St. Leger had grabbed her arm, and she had screamed, and they had wound up getting thrown out of the séance.

Olivia had finally finished sweating through the report and was tucking the file away in a cabinet marked Closed when there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. She could not help glancing up expectantly, waiting for the steps to stop outside their door, even though she knew that there were two other offices on this floor and more above it, and the odds were the steps would not stop here. Indeed, hardly anyone ever came here, except members of her family now and then.

There was a sharp rap at the door, and Olivia jumped, startled. She glanced over at Tom, who nodded at her with a grin before he jumped up and walked over to open the door. He pulled it open to reveal a tall man standing in the hall. The man looked at Tom, somewhat surprised, then past him into the office, his gaze coming to rest on Olivia.

Olivia simply stared at him, stunned. She had never expected to see this man again. Excitement leaped in her stomach, even as the rest of her seemed frozen. Her reaction annoyed her. She swallowed and forced her legs to move, propelling her up and toward the door.

“Lord St. Leger,” she said, pleased that her voice came out cool and calm. “What a surprise. Please, do come in.”

St. Leger took off his hat and stepped past Tom, who was regarding him with great interest. He stopped and glanced around the office somewhat awkwardly. “I...um...”

“Are you in need of some investigating, sir?” Tom jumped in, reaching to take Lord St. Leger’s hat and hang it on the rack by the door. “You’ve come to the right place, then. There’s none better than us for tracking down those psychic phenomena.”

“Are there any others?” St. Leger asked, faintly surprised.

“Well, um...” Tom looked abashed, but quickly recovered. “No, you’re right. We’re not only the best at it, we’re the only.”

“Lord St. Leger, please, sit down.” Olivia gestured toward the chair beside her desk, ready for a customer to sit down and spill out his problem. She cast Tom a quelling look.

Her assistant cocked an eyebrow but hung back, sitting down at his desk and pretending to be busy sorting papers.

Lord St. Leger went to the chair Olivia had indicated, politely waiting for her to take her seat behind the desk before he sat down. Olivia looked at him, waiting. He looked at her, then away, then cleared his throat. An awkward silence stretched between them. Across the room, Tom moved restively in his seat.

Finally Olivia said, “Is there some way that I can be of assistance to you, my lord?”

“I—” He looked at her and sighed. “Frankly, I don’t know. Lady Ol—”

“I prefer Miss Moreland,” Olivia said. His eyes, she thought, were really a most extraordinary color, even brighter here in the well-lit room than they had been last night. Silver—or perhaps pewter was a closer color.

“Miss Moreland,” he repeated. “I—I am afraid that we got off on the wrong foot last night.”

“You might say that, if you consider seizing me and accusing me of being a charlatan and later calling me mad ‘getting off on the wrong foot.’”

Faint color stained his cheekbones, and he looked abashed. “I did not mean—I was simply surprised when I realized who you were, and the phrase popped out. It was something I had heard over the years, and, well, in my surprise, I didn’t think. I apologize sincerely, and I assure you that I do not think that you—or your family—is insane. I am sure no one does. It is merely a—a silly appellation.”

Olivia continued to gaze at him coolly, and finally he went on. “I apologize, too, for accusing you of being Mrs. Terhune’s assistant. However, you have to admit that there were circumstances that made it seem that you were.” His eyes flashed as he said, “The scene at the séance was not entirely my fault.”

When Olivia did not answer, he sighed and stood up. “I can see I am wasting my time here.”

“No! No, wait.” Olivia popped up, too, and extended a hand as if to detain him, then blushed and let it fall to her side. “I accept your apology. What is it that you want? What can we do for you?”

He hesitated, then sat back down. “I’m not sure—well, what exactly is it that you do here?”

“We investigate the occurrence of certain odd and inexplicable events.”