Lady in Red: A Novel of Mad Passions Read online

  Mary nodded absently, trying to focus on Yvonne so she could leave the asylum behind her. “Yes. Myself. I’ll take myself.”

  “Of course, my dear. And I shall go with you.” Yvonne stepped forward, her gown shimmering the deep glow of amethyst in the firelight. Carefully, she extended a white-gloved hand adorned with jewels. “Come.”

  Mary stared at it for a moment. She’d trusted only one other person in the last years. Another girl in the asylum, Eva. Though she wished she could reach out and take Yvonne’s sweetly offered hand, she knew it was best not to attempt it. She shook her head gently. “I cannot.”

  Yvonne lowered her arm and a sad smile flickered at her lips. “Of course. I shall lead and you shall follow.”

  Mary nodded, the only action she seemed capable of without shattering to pieces.

  “Oh, and, Charles—Send up hot water for a bath.” Yvonne’s eyes trailed over Mary, a pained expression darkening her eyes. “I think we will need quite a lot of it.”

  Yvonne edged carefully around her, chose a lit candle in a brass holder from the side table, and then took to the back stairs, her steps brisk and firm. Mary followed her, taking each pace with as much care as she would over burning coals.

  She had to stare down, careful not to step on the folds of Yvonne’s stunning swaying skirts. They climbed the steep, narrow stairs in absolute silence. The silence grew heavier with each step and Mary’s heart beat harder against her ribs. Unspoken secrets hung around her like murderous ghosts, each one threatening to steal her life or mind away if she betrayed them.

  When they reached the landing, Yvonne whisked down the cream and gold hallway. Everything was gold. Swirls of it climbed the walls and snaked across the ceilings. And mirrors.

  So many mirrors. Mirrors upon mirrors lined the walls like empty and ever-changing family portraits.

  The faint light of the candle illuminated Yvonne’s beautiful figure, and, ever so slightly, Mary spotted her own small shadow following like some twisted creature.

  Mary stopped. Her heart slammed against her ribs as she slowly turned her eyes to the mirrors to her left and met a pinched face with hollow, darkened eyes. A strangled gasp escaped from her lips.

  Yvonne whipped around. The candlelight now shone fully on Mary’s face.

  “No no no no,” Mary babbled. She looked . . . exactly like her mother. Exactly as she had been at the end. Gaunt, beaten, bruised. A face without any vibrancy, only horrid shadows and emptiness. Slowly Mary lifted her hand to her face. She traced the bones, staring wide-eyed at her ghostly reflection. It was all there. The dark hair, only far too short. The extremely high cheekbones from some French vicomtesse in her distant past. And the eyes. Almond shaped and bizarrely violet. Kashmiri eyes. A gift from her maternal great-great-grandmother, a shocking woman, she’d heard.

  She’d never thought it possible. She’d been determined that she would be stronger than her mother, but her father had truly won. Two women beaten, one in the grave, one dead in so many ways yet still traversing the world.

  “Mary?” Urgency tightened that beautiful voice. “When was the last time you saw a mirror?”

  Mary blinked and lowered her hand from the horror before her. “I—”

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall the large London town house on Wallace Square. That house had had hundreds of mirrors. Even more mirrors than those around her now. Mirrors her mother had danced and preened before while her husband had lounged against a silk chaise, smoking his cigar, drinking his French brandy, enjoying his pretty toy of a wife.

  Yvonne glanced from Mary’s face to the reflection. “It has been some time, I should think.”

  Mary held her own wounded gaze in the mirror. “It has.”

  “Come.” Yvonne held the candle back toward the empty hall, the glow flickering in the mirrors. “We must speak and not in the hall.”

  Mary glanced about and sucked in a harsh breath. If she listened carefully, she could just hear the voices of men and women drifting from the bedrooms and up from the salons below. Although she had never been to Eden’s Palace, she did know it was frequented by the wealthiest men in London.

  Men who might know her father.

  Yvonne bustled down the hall without another backward glance. Mary scurried after her, her own tired legs protesting every movement. At last, they reached a tall set of double doors, carved with a beautiful pastoral scene in which naked men and women lay entwined in the fields.

  Yvonne pushed the doors open and rushed in, quickly lighting the many candelabras placed strategically about the large blue and gold chamber.

  Mary turned and closed the tall doors herself, the panels almost too heavy for her to shut. She hesitated on the edge of the room, feeling utterly out of place in this lush chamber.

  “Sit there before the fire,” Yvonne insisted, pointing to a pair of delicately embroidered slipper chairs before the hearth.

  She had no wish to catch her own reflection again in one of the many mirrors about the room, so she glanced down as she hurriedly crossed to one of the chairs Yvonne had indicated.

  The heat penetrated her body with a delicious caress and she was tempted to relax just a little. It had been almost three years since she had sat before a fire so large, or with such exquisitely carved pale stone about it. Three long years since she’d felt any measure of safety or peace.

  Several moments of prolonged, tense silence—which neither she nor Yvonne attempted to break—passed before Charles entered with a large tray. Three other footmen followed behind him, one balancing a hip bath and the other two carrying large buckets of water.

  Mary recoiled on the chair. Every muscle in her body locked with stillness, as if she could render herself invisible.

  With silence and ease, the servants moved about in a ritualized dance. Charles placed the tray on a gold-rimmed marble table near the empty chair across from her.

  While the footmen worked, Yvonne poured out two large glasses of red wine, the liquid sloshing loudly in the glasses.

  As soon as the servants had silently disappeared, Yvonne handed one of the crystal goblets to Mary.

  Gracefully, she lowered herself into the chair opposite Mary, her amethyst skirts settling about her as if she wasn’t wearing hoops beneath the silk at all.

  Mary clutched the glass in her hands, waiting for the interrogation to begin. Dreading it.

  “Drink,” Yvonne ordered.

  Dutifully, Mary lifted the glass to her lips and took a sip. The heady wine was almost too much flavor for her deadened palate. It burst across her taste buds, filling her mouth with an earthy delight.

  “Your father said you had passed away.” Yvonne toyed with her own glass. “Did you open your tomb and come forth to haunt us?”

  The wine sputtered out of her mouth. Mary gasped and coughed as it stung her nose.

  “Don’t waste it, Mary dear. You need every drop.”

  Mary didn’t bother to pat at the wine on her frayed clothes. Instead, she wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, drawing red liquid from her lips. Red, the color of watery blood, now trickled down her hand. Only it wasn’t blood. Indeed, it was not.

  She kept her eyes wide, determined not to think about blood, or the way it slid along stone floors.

  “You are surprised to hear of your death?”

  Mary laughed, a short, horrid little bark of sound. “It is news to me, I must confess. Unless, of course, I cannot recall my own funeral and Christ has ordained another Lazarus.”

  Playing her fingertip along the crystal rim of her glass, Yvonne said, “When the footman told me you were downstairs, despite it being against all possibility, I somehow felt sure it was you. I had always wondered, you see. The timeliness of your death after your own mother’s demise . . . always struck me as overly coincidental. Your mother had mentioned a few things about your father’s behavior. Before the end.”

  Perhaps Yvonne would believe her if she told her the truth. But she bit back the wor
ds so ready to flow from her lips. She couldn’t trust anyone. It wasn’t safe. Not if Yvonne truly was going to give her refuge.

  “We should go and see your grave. We could place flowers on it.” Bitterness laced Yvonne’s words. “I have these last three years. It is suitably by your mother’s.”

  “My father is a monster.” It seemed the only thing to say short of starting a discourse of anger that might never end.

  “God, I am so glad you came to me.”

  “You were the only person my mother truly trusted.”

  Yvonne smiled sadly. “She was kind to me. Even when your father demanded she give up seeing me, she’d come in secret.”

  Mary fidgeted. It was hard to speak of her mother after what had happened, but Esme Darrel had spoken quietly of Yvonne, of her goodness. As if somehow her mother had known something was going to befall her and knew that Mary could go to the madam if she ever needed help.

  Yvonne leaned forward, her face determined. “What happened, Mary?”

  Mary swallowed down the desire to confess it all. But there was so much she couldn’t speak of. Never could and never would. “I—I can’t say.”

  Yvonne let out an exasperated breath. “Then at least tell me in what part of the country you have been?”

  “North,” she croaked. She took a long, fast swallow of wine, unwilling to let herself taste the rich liquid lest she cough it up again.

  “I see.” Yvonne leaned back, clearly not satisfied with this brief answer. “Does your father know you live?”

  She wished her father did think her dead. At least then he would have no reason to seek her out and condemn her again to unrelenting misery. Mary glanced down, her chest tightening at the very thought of him, before she forced herself to meet Yvonne’s eyes and finally admit, “He was the one who sent me there.”

  “Where, Mary?” Yvonne’s fingers tightened around her glass, whitening at the knuckles. “Where did he send you?”

  Mary shook her head and tore her gaze away. It was as if she was being sucked back into memory and she couldn’t bear it. Her eyes glazed over till the room was but a blur.

  “I’m not going to harm you. No one will, not ever again.”

  Mary stared into the fire, not truly seeing the blazing light. Her eyes burned with the terrifying recollections of that place. Of her mother, of her broken body at the bottom of the stairs; of her father, remorseless and cold. “He sent me where I would be forgotten,” she said simply, the words unleashing a jagged slash of pain, twisting her face as if she might cry. But no tears came. “A madhouse, Yvonne. He sent me to a madhouse.”

  Chapter 2

  Edward slowly lifted his gaze to the plasterwork ceiling, wishing he could sink into the cushioned Chippendale chair. He was just as empty and desperate for any sort of meaning in his life as when he’d begun the night’s revelries. He shouldn’t have come to Madame Yvonne’s.

  He’d finally learned that there was no real peace against the past. Not even the usual choices a man might make to launch himself into mindlessness were taking their effect.

  A scream tore through his head and stole his breath away. Holding his body still, he willed that girlish cry of terror ricocheting through his mind to dim. Would she never cease? Would she never let him forget?

  Edward reached for the brandy on the mahogany table beside him and allowed himself to distance his thoughts from memory. He focused on the drawing room and its striped ivory silk walls. A young blond woman eyed him from her perch on the settee at the far side of the chamber. She shifted slightly, plumping her full breasts against her low-cut saffron silk gown.

  She had yet to find a companion tonight and he was not going to be it.

  He sighed. Once, such a sight would have distracted him. Now, the idea of another empty night just left him . . . well, empty.

  There was no escape from his pervasive certainty that he was a hollow and disappointed man. A man who would never make peace with his failures. Still, the feeling wasn’t quite strong enough to make him regress to a hermit’s existence. He grunted to himself at the thought of being his sole companion.

  His mother’s own attempt at an opium-induced death was proof that solitude was not the answer to trouble such as his. At least he’d had the good fortune to learn from one parent’s mistakes.

  The blond sauntered toward him, her skirts swishing, curls bouncing about her lightly rouged cheeks. “Would you care for company, Your Grace?”

  It was strange that all the girls knew him, as if his reputation passed always before him like a damnable shadow. But his past generosity to the women of this establishment had made them eager for his company.

  She stopped before him, her full skirts lightly brushing his knees. Before she could utter one more word, another light-o’-love slipped up beside her compatriot. This one was a brunette, her russet hair curled softly about her face. She gave him a slow smile and said huskily, “Perhaps Your Grace would care for a good deal of company?”

  At one time he would have said yes. That now seemed like an age ago. “I don’t . . .”

  “Or would you care for a private room to smoke one of these in?” The blond reached across the table to an opium pipe, which the young woman lit with an excitement that surprised even him.

  He loathed opium in all its forms, but even so, he understood its power and siren call. It had never once passed his lips.

  The brunette leaned toward her friend, lifted the carved ivory opium pipe from the blond’s hand, and drew a delicate puff.

  Smoke wafted around them, dancing like demons in the gaslight.

  Edward stood, suddenly unable to bear another minute of it. Why the devil had he thought this place might ease him? It was all so brittle, so false, so utterly without meaning.

  Both girls smiled, assuming he was about to join them. Instead, he shook his head. It had been a mistake coming here. As kindly as he could, he tilted the blond’s chin, angling away from the opium smoke. First he pressed a kiss to her powdered cheek; then he turned, took the brunette’s slender hand in his, and offered a gentle kiss to her palm. The acrid taste of destruction was on her fingertips, but she took the sweet offering as it was meant. A comfort in the cold, hard world.

  “Your Grace,” one of them called coquettishly. “You cannot possibly be finished for the night.”

  “Not a man like you,” the other purred.

  Their uninventive speech only made the evening’s unsatisfactory end worse.

  Heavier tendrils of opium smoke spilled about the air, caressing him with its sickly sweet scent. The noxious stuff reminded him of his mother’s lingering descent and he needed to escape from it.

  Pretending he was perfectly at ease was too tiring. He was exhausted by pretense.

  Yet most of his life was just one great show, a show of defiance against every person who stared at him and thought of his father.

  Himself included.

  “Ladies—” He didn’t smile. It wasn’t something they required, nor likely had been led to expect from him. “You are both lovely, but alas I am tired. However, I shall sing your praises.”

  And he would. He wished them well and hoped that one day they’d find protectors to pull them from this position that drove women into early graves. He doubted they would. Still, he hoped all the same.

  “Until we meet again,” the blond said with what she no doubt thought was temptation itself.

  Edward inclined his head, a courtly gesture he’d give to any lady, then turned on his booted heel and headed into the quiet hall. Striding down the wide way lined with mirrors, he was very careful not to look at his own reflection. He walked quickly, purposefully. Attempting to outpace his perpetual feeling of defeat.

  Once again, London had become an endless, ongoing parade of empty pleasures. Each more debauched than the last, even as his hostesses attempted to freshen his experienced palate. What if nothing could? Is that what had happened to his father? It would certainly explain the old man’s turn to t
wisted play.

  Perhaps he simply needed a sympathetic ear to ease the growing pressure of his demons, and only Yvonne could give him that. The woman truly was a genius of the boudoir, and if she had let him, he would have taken up residency in her room years before. Such a female would have held his interest for some time. But she no longer entertained men, as far as he understood.

  It was just as well. Madame Yvonne was one of the few people he actually liked. Woman of the night though she was, he admired her pragmatism, her shrewdness, and her unwillingness to be bought. In almost any capacity.

  He didn’t knock on the double doors; he was too important a client to give way to ceremony. The lights flickering about the room were seductive and warm. The big bed, laden with red and white silk pillows, was empty.

  The surprising lap of water drew his attention. He turned toward the fire with its amber glow. And there—Holy god. There was hell in the firelight, beckoning even the best of men.

  A creature of pure beauty.

  Her short black hair, terribly unusual, fluffed about her elegant aristocratic face. A face that was far too thin, yet luminescent for that delicacy. Her neck seemed impossibly slender and quite too fragile to hold up her head. The slim lines of her throat tapered to a collarbone so beautiful it was all he could do not to reach out to trace the fine-looking bones.

  Her breasts, small yet rounded perfectly, the nipples pink and hard from the bath, were visible. The shallow water barely covered her hips. If he took a step forward, he would be able to see her mons.

  He didn’t. His interest was far from lust. Her very presence held him with a force that knocked the air out of his lungs.

  Her knees poked up from the water, oddly girlish, like a filly’s. And the longer he looked at her, the more he realized it was not her undernourished body that pulled him into the calm eye of a storm, but the spirit that fairly shone from her.

  “Hello, my dear,” he ventured gently.

  Her piercing eyes took him in with wild alarm. She shrank for a moment before grabbing the sides of the tub. “I am not your dear.”