Light Fantastique Read online

  Then he asked himself how he could use the situation to his advantage. Not getting kicked out and having to return to England and face the men who wanted to kill him seemed beneficial enough for the moment. Not that he was going anywhere during the siege. No one was, at least not unless they could bribe their way on to an airship.

  “I’ll look at the score,” he said, unwilling to give all the way.

  “Bien.” She walked to the orchestra pit—without the aid of her cane, he noticed—reached down to a shelf, and gave him a first violin score. “This should not be difficult for you.”

  “I’m sure it won’t be.” Especially since I’ve played the Symphonie Fantastique before. But again, he wasn’t going to say it. He’d learned the hard way not to reveal all his advantages in antagonistic situations like this. But he also knew there was more to the situation than Madame St. Jean let on.

  * * * * *

  Iris ascended the steps to the multi-story townhouse Madame St. Jean owned next to the theatre. A year ago, Iris had been living in a modest but nice house in a little town in England with her father. She had few friends since other young middle-class women didn’t share her interests in archeology and science. Now she attended the new French Ecole d’Archaeologie and shared a room with—how scandalous!—an actress, who also served as a maid when Iris needed some extra help, although she was proud she could mostly take care of herself. And she had friends, a strange group, to be sure, but friends nonetheless.

  The first person she saw when she crossed the threshold was the member of the group she liked least but perhaps understood the best, for they’d both had to deal with the aftermath of dangerous secrets coming to light. She tried to be pleasant to him for that reason and because he was the best friend of her almost fiancé, Professor Edward Bailey. And today she was happy to find him alone because a question had grown in her mind over the past few months since she’d returned to Paris after her father’s funeral.

  “Good afternoon, Maestro Bledsoe.”

  “Good afternoon, Mademoiselle McTavish.” He sat in the parlor with his violin on its stand beside him and a score spread on the table in front of him. “How were your exams?”

  “Fine. We should have our results by the end of next week.” She tried not to say too much about her studies because she didn’t want to bore the others. She’d alienated friends in the past by going on too much about sarcophagi and coins. Now she tried to figure out the best way to broach the subject on her mind. Heart, really. “What are you doing?”

  He looked up from the music in front of him and ran a hand through his hair. It had gotten long in Paris, and he’d grown a beard. He looked like a bohemian musician, particularly when agitated gesturing made his curls loosen and stand in a blond nimbus around his head.

  Like he’s the scruffy angel of the Théâtre Bohème.

  Her cheeks heated with the thought.

  “I’m being put to work with the orchestra,” he said. “Madame St. Jean is impatient. We’ve not made enough progress with the lighting system to please her.”

  “Oh.” Iris glanced up the stairs, where she knew Professor Edward Bailey, the author of her greatest joy and anxiety, toiled in his laboratory in the converted attic workshop. Or at least she thought he was. She tried not to disturb him, but the few times she’d been up there to tell him it was a mealtime or bring him a delivery, she’d found him gazing at the biscuit-sized swirling aether in its glass globe. He never seemed to move much beyond that. As for Patrick O’Connell, the tinkerer/engineer who was working on converting the theatre’s lighting system so it could be used once Edward made enough aether gas—whenever he figured out how—Iris suspected he protected Edward out of sympathy for his mental state. She’d come to find the Irishman liked to exaggerate for dramatic effect, but also to shield those to whom he was fiercely loyal.

  “Yes,” Bledsoe said with a sigh, “have you heard the Symphonie Fantastique by the late Hector Berlioz?”

  “Only the snippets they’ve been rehearsing for the production.” Iris imitated the disapproving look on her former headmistress’s face and intoned, “Young ladies do not listen to scandalous music from the continent.”

  The musician’s beard made his smile seem all the wider and emphasized the evenness of his teeth. “So you’re getting an education in many things these days.”

  And many things I’m not. With that thought, Iris placed her books on the hall table but didn’t enter the parlor so she at least wouldn’t be unchaperoned in the same room as a bachelor with a rake’s reputation. Her current living situation had caused her to become good at finding loopholes to Victorian convention, particularly since the French had a tendency to flaunt silly societal rules. So she continued to talk to him from just beyond the doorframe and fidgeted, wanting to ask him but not wanting to seem foolish.

  Finally, she blurted it out.

  “Why hasn’t Edward kissed me since Italy?”

  All right, it was a clumsy way of asking, but she’d got it out.

  “Doesn’t he still love me?” she clarified. She wouldn’t meet Bledsoe’s eyes, and the music she focused on blurred so the notes slid across their scored terraces.

  “I believe he does still care a great deal for you. You know his limitations,” he said, but his tone was gentle, not chiding.

  “Everything seemed fine when I went back to England for father’s funeral. And Jeremy Scott’s,” she added. “But when I came back, Edward was different, distant. Was it because I went to Jeremy’s funeral? I didn’t want to tell him, but I promised I’d never lie to him ever again, and…” She had to stop and breathe. She could understand Edward’s reticence on some level. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake the feeling that if she had handled the situation differently, the odious Lord Jeremy Scott would still be alive and with a better understanding of her. Intellectually she knew his death at Edward’s hands was the best possible outcome—aside from Edward having a part in it, of course—and that he would have never ceased pursuing her, but she couldn’t shake the memory of his heartbroken family.

  “Yes, you had to tell him you attended Lord Scott’s services,” the musician said in a gentle tone. “Edward broke the strictest of his rules in the underground temple, and it’s taking him a while to recover. Radcliffe said that sometimes when someone has experienced a great upheaval, they snap back to their previous way of being in spite of progress made.”

  “But how long is it going to take before he returns to how he was?” Iris chewed her lip and reminded herself not to. It was a bad habit she’d picked up since coming to Paris.

  “Has another young man caught your fancy?” Bledsoe asked.

  “N-no,” Iris stammered. Although she thought his beard quite dashing, she didn’t feel that way about Bledsoe. And the young French men in the archeology institute generally ignored her in favor of the few French women there. She didn’t mind—she was accustomed to being an outsider—but she was glad for the holiday break.

  “You’re sure.”

  Iris blinked, but not fast enough to keep the tears inside her eyes. She wiped them from her cheeks, which stung from the salt sliding across the sensitive skin—the air had teeth lately. “Yes! How could you be cruel like this? I care for Edward. I had just hoped…”

  He stood and crossed the room so he stood in front of her. He tilted her chin up with one finger so she had to meet his eyes. “You hoped that something in you would transform something in him, like the meeting of two elements to make a new substance,” he finished for her.

  She pulled away and looked down at the pattern on the rug. “It sounds so ridiculous when you say it like that.”

  “Your hope isn’t ridiculous. But like the aether experiments, it will take time before the effect you have on Edward becomes something of significance.”

  “Why are you being so kind?” she asked and moved away from him. “
It will ruin your reputation as an insensitive cad.”

  He glanced back toward the theatre, and his grin returned. “Perhaps I like to keep you guessing.”

  Iris shook her head and grabbed her books from the table.

  Men are incomprehensible.

  * * * * *

  Edward heard Iris’s voice below talking to Johann. He couldn’t make out the words, but she sounded upset. He put his head in his hands. She never showed that side of herself to him, not since returning from her father’s funeral in England. Now he only saw the false bright smile she put on every time she saw him.

  As much as he tried not to be jealous of his friend and the ease with which she spoke to the musician, he was. But he didn’t want to frighten her with his dark thoughts, and they had become dark indeed since his first attempt at integrating the aether into a mock theatre lighting system a few days before. Patrick O’Connell, his partner in engineering, hadn’t said anything, but he’d been remarkably absent since.

  Edward tried to do something himself earlier that day, injecting a little of the aether gas into the part of the system they had set up in the corner, but he could only get so far with just two hands and his improving but still basic understanding of engineering.

  The footsteps that ascended the stairs was too heavy to be Iris but too light to be the Irishman. As Edward anticipated, Johann poked his head around the laboratory door, his lips drawn back in a grin too wide to be innocent, but not big enough to hint at diabolical scheming. Wary, Edward drew back.

  “I thought you couldn’t do the experiments without sunlight,” Johann said and moved toward the window, which was covered by heavy curtains.

  “Don’t touch that. The aether light is fine.” Edward gestured to the writhing opalescent mass of light and color in the center of the glass globe in front of him. “I’m seeing how long it takes for it to decay without light. I’m still unsure what its fuel is.”

  Johann sat on the stool beside Edward’s. “That makes sense. Wouldn’t want it to disappear in the middle of a performance. How long has this one been going?”

  “One week.” Yes, keep talking about the experiment. Don’t make me discuss other things.

  Now Johann raised an eyebrow. “You must be anticipating some long plays.”

  “I’m being thorough.” There, that would keep the questions coming. There were always questions. He used to like being the one to ask them, but now…

  “Or you’re avoiding something.” Johann stood and walked to the window, where he yanked back the curtains. Watery late autumn sunlight poured through, and Edward squinted.

  “Now you’ve ruined my experiment!”

  “It’s been a week, Edward. We don’t have time to waste.”

  Edward decided not to argue about how he spent his days because then he would have to talk about things he wanted to ponder further. Thus, a change of subject was in order. “Your hair and beard are getting longer,” he said. “You look like a wastrel.”

  “You have no room to talk—you look like a vagabond. How long have you been up here without a break?”

  Edward looked at the aether mass. “I don’t know. The servants bring me food and take the trays away. They also manage water for quick washes and the chamber pot at the appropriate times. O’Connell reminds me when I need to rest. What more do I need?” He stuck his shaking hands between his legs and squeezed so his friend wouldn’t notice his tremors.

  “What more, indeed? You’ve reverted back to how you were before we left England last summer. Worse, actually. At least then you’d talk to people.” Johann resumed his seat and leaned in close to the aether chamber. “I could watch this stuff all day.”

  “Don’t get so close!” Edward shoved him away.

  “Fine, I’ll wear goggles.”

  “You’ll need more than goggles if it destabilizes,” Edward gasped. His lungs felt too big for his chest, and he could barely expand them to breathe in the tight space they inhabited. His heart thumped in time to the aether’s undulations, and he again squeezed his hands between his legs to stop their shaking and tingling.

  “Edward, what…?” Johann stood and searched for something. The room spun, and Edward barely stayed on his stool. Something covered his nose and mouth, and he breathed into the paper bag his friend held to his face until his lungs shrank back to a reasonable size and he could take more than mere sips of air.

  “Do I need to call Radcliffe?” Johann asked.

  “No,” Edward said. “I’m all right now. Just don’t get close to it. How many times do I have to remind you it’s dangerous?”

  “And how many times do I have to tell you that it’s not going to act like it did in Rome?”

  “How do you know? You’re not an aetherist. A stray frequency, a rumbling outside… It’s not safe to move forward with it.”

  Instead of arguing as he usually did, Johann paused and gave Edward a measuring look. “Is that why you’re stuck? You’re afraid it’s going to do something unpredictable?”

  “Everything is predictable.” Like my inevitable descent into madness and Iris’s disappointment in me.

  “So what is it, then? Madame is getting impatient.”

  “Science takes time.” Edward couldn’t help a little grin, remembering an argument from another lifetime.

  “And money doesn’t grow on trees,” Johann replied with an answering smile. “But it has to come from somewhere. We’re reaching the ends of our expedition fees from Cobb. I have to join the orchestra for the upcoming performance so Madame doesn’t kick us out.”

  “Don’t worry, no one will recognize you. We haven’t seen any clockworks since returning to Paris. The Prussians have scared them away.”

  “They’re more persistent than you give them credit for.” Now Johann’s expression mirrored Edward’s doubt.

  A flapping noise outside startled them both. A raven sat on the roof between the townhouse attic and theatre and gazed at them with glowing red eyes.

  Chapter Three

  Rue de Gris, Paris, 1 December 1870

  That evening, Marie paused outside Corinne’s apartment building. Situated in an older part of Paris, it didn’t match the bright, sparkling nature of the actress who lived there.

  But how many of us match on the outside what we keep within?

  Marie found Corinne in a flurry of packing. She raised her eyebrows at some of the dresses the woman had laid out—silk and satin, which she’d either had since before the siege began or had made from materials flown in by airship during the cover of night—but didn’t say anything. She was here to cajole, not antagonize. In any case, they were much more expensive than an actress, even the premiere femme of the Théâtre Bohème, should have been able to afford.

  Ah, right, she has been seen with the marquis…

  “I am not coming back,” Corinne said and flung ribbons, gloves, and stockings into a trunk. “I don’t care if the Prussians shoot us down. I am leaving Paris.”

  “Is something else going on?” Marie asked. “I’ve never known you to turn down a part, especially not a lead role.”

  Corinne sat on the chaise, and her face crumpled. It wasn’t a pretty crying face, so Marie suspected the woman’s tears were real this time.

  “Today was not the first time I’ve seen the angel of death.”

  “Oh? When else did it appear to you?”

  Corinne shook her head so vigorously hairpins clattered to the floor around her. “He has never appeared to me before today. But I have seen him. Yesterday in my dressing room, he was in the mirror beside me, but when I turned, no one was there. And I didn’t hear the door open.”

  “In your dressing room.” Marie knew that room well. The door squeaked horribly no matter how many times they oiled it, and it opened on to a busy corridor. Even if someone had managed to go in or out quietly, they would have be
en seen, and a person in a death costume, even if there was one in the current production, would have been remarked upon. Plus there was the irritating issue of the fact the costume had been sold and not replaced for weeks.

  “Si, and last week, he appeared in the hall where the musicians come and go from the stage.” She lowered her voice. “He came out of one wall and walked straight into another one.”

  “Have you been drinking the marquis’s brandy again?”

  “Non.” Corinne stood and put her hands on her hips. “If you have just come to mock me, I will not speak to you. How do I know this wasn’t a trick for you to get to play Henriette, and now you are here to gloat?”

  “Because I am not interested in taking the stage again.”

  “Why not?” Corinne leaned forward, her eyes wide and nostrils flared, a predator on the hunt for gossip. “You keep saying that, but I don’t know whether to believe you. You were once Fantastique, the greatest actress in the city.”

  Marie didn’t care to explain, especially not to someone who wouldn’t understand. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened so I can convince you to come back. You’d make a much better Henriette than I. I’m too tall. Poor Gerard will have to wear lifts in his shoes.”

  Corinne wrinkled her nose. “Yes, all the tall ones have gone to war. You would think Death would be busy enough at the front without having to bother a poor actress like me.”

  Or even a good one. Marie didn’t voice the thought. “So about you returning…”

  Corinne stood, all trace of warmth gone from her face. Marie wondered if she’d been taking lessons on expression severity from Lucille.

  “You can ask all you want,” Corinne said and placed a slender hand on her not-so-slender throat. “I will never return to the Théâtre Bohème lest Death claim me once and for all.”

  “But how do you know it’s truly Death?” Marie asked. “It could be someone playing a prank on you.”

  “That is a good prank, Mademoiselle St. Jean, if a man can walk through walls.”