Wild:. Noelle Mack

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      Not until morning. The sun would most likely shine strongly tomorrow after such a heavy rain, with matter-of-fact cheerfulness that would erase her weariness and her strange thoughts. Her restless hours of sleep had been worse than none at all. Exhaustion was causing her to imagine things.

      Vivienne stood, stepping carefully around the book, and went to the mirror on the study wall. Her hair was half up and half down, badly tangled where her head had pressed against the pillow. She lifted the lid of a small box that contained a hairbrush and ivory hairpins, and set to work.

      When her dark chestnut hair was once again arranged and pinned up to her satisfaction, Vivienne smoothed her rumpled dress. If a servant should come in, hard at work before dawn to clean the grates and lay new fires, she would not look too disheveled.

      Of course, she was not supposed to care what servants thought, but the role of mistress of a household was still new to her. The Cheyne Row house was hers, certainly. Horace had deeded it to Vivienne at the conclusion of their love affair.

      She had furnished it to her own taste with the large sum of money he had given her as well. Owning things that were new and entirely hers was a very great pleasure. That was why no man had yet slept in her rose-curtained bed—knowing that Kyril was likely to be the first made her smile at her reflection.

      It had been worth enduring the duke’s awkward caresses now and again. He had become her lover because she was beautiful and remarked upon by everyone—a female worth having simply because everyone wanted her. Easily distracted, he had moved on eventually to someone else, an event that had troubled her not at all.

      His regretful letter of farewell had explained everything. She remembered it but hadn’t bothered to keep it.

      I shall remain, my dear Vivienne, ever your champion and obedient servant, and wish you happiness in each and every day of your life without me. Do understand that it is I who am unworthy, and not you. But I have met…

      A brassy-haired actress who had all of London at her rather large feet. Vivienne had seen her, but only from a distance.

      She did not miss the duke as a lover, if that word could be used to describe him. But she was very grateful to him. She straightened up tall as she looked at herself in the mirror. Being bought off was not the worst thing that could happen to an intelligent and independent woman. The philandering duke had provided handsomely for her.

      Vivienne went to the shelves and began to set her other books to rights, tucking in the ones that went on and off the shelves, novels and the like. Their worn covers showed her affection for them. She blew the dust off more worthy volumes, leatherbound and ponderous, that she had yet to crack. She felt calmer now. What she had seen was only an illusion.

      Seen, heard, smelled, said a little voice in her mind.

      She ignored it. Her fatigue—and frustration had left all her senses overly stimulated. In any case, the volumes of folktales was a thoughtful gift and could not be left on the floor. She pushed over the leaning books on one shelf, and slanted one to hold a space open. Then she went to where the book still lay facedown, picking it up.

      How silly she was to imagine herself bewitched by it. Forcing her actions to seem casual even though there was no one there to judge her, she slid a finger between its pages, hearing a familiar crinkle of transparent paper. Another illustration. She flinched when she opened the book to look at it.

      It showed a Roemi warrior, fallen in battle, his broken body lying alone upon the killing field. His wounded face was still beautiful, even in death.

      She dared not touch the page. The hand-colored blood seemed so fresh as to be real. As respectfully as one might shroud the dead, she covered the valiant hero with the transparent paper again, half-expecting to see the scarlet pigment seep through.

      It did not. The blood—the paint, she told herself fiercely—was quite dry.

      Very slowly she looked through the pages and found the first Roemi warrior she’d seen.

      He had thrown his spear.

      Vivienne gave a soft cry. If this was a trick, it was a very good one. Kyril must have expected that she would say something about it to him, but she simply accepted his gift at the time, feeling awkward for weeks afterward because she had not yet read it. Not even skimmed it so that she could pretend she had.

      Was Kyril only a conjuror and a charlatan, and not a rich Russian gentleman, after all?

      His air of mysteriousness had been noted and commented upon nearly as often as his sexual magnetism. That too could be practiced just like magic, she thought. He had been charming women ever since he arrived in London, according to all reports. Perhaps his paramours each got a little book like this.

      No. The old volume was unique, and probably quite valuable. There could not be others like it, not with richly colored illustrations like that.

      She turned the pages again, looking only at the pictures. The words behaved themselves, staying on the paper in neat rows of black type. Then she came to the concluding illustration.

      Scolding herself for being so gullible, she lifted its protective page and gasped. Her eyes widened. The picture showed a wild and desolate land, buried in towering drifts of snow and ice.

      She snapped the book shut. It was the otherworld she had glimpsed in Kyril’s eyes.

      2

      After Kyril’s departure from Cheyne Row…

      He asked not to go north to his house near Grosvenor Square as his coachman expected but to the east, following the road along the river. Tom Micklethwaite hunkered down as if his massive shoulders could protect the rest of him against the rain, and urged the four black horses on with a slap of the reins. No whip. His master did not like animals to be mistreated.

      Miles away, an hour or more later, he stopped where Kyril had told him to, pulling up the reins and looking about nervously. They had come out from under the storm. Here, the wind was blowing from the opposite direction, pushing the clouds and rain back.

      Tom heard his master open the door and step down quietly. The coachman reached for the stout cudgel that he kept under the seat. In sight of the Thames, the ramshackle houses leaned upon each other and there was no telling who lurked in the alleys between them. If heads had to be broken, he would break them and ask no questions.

      Kyril looked up and saw Tom slap the cudgel against his rough palm. Once. Twice.

      “I hope we will not need that, Mr. Micklethwaite. But the boat is coming. I will soon be on my way and you can go home.”

      The coachman peered into the darkness, seeing nothing out on the water. They had stopped by a flight of stairs leading down to the river, slippery with moss and filth. Someone had left a lamp there, but its light was feeble.

      Kyril gave a soft halloo when a bright point of answering light appeared in the distance, reflected in shattered fragments by the black, rushing water. Little by little, the light came closer and he heard the soft dip and splash of oars.

      “Here he is.”

      “An invisible man,” the coachman grumbled, “in an invisible boat. I wish you luck, sir.”

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