A Great and Terrible Beauty - Page 23/116

"Stop. Please." The voice is young, male, and vaguely familiar.

A match flares in the darkness. My eyes follow the light as it fills the chamber of a lantern. The light spills out, catches the outline of broad shoulders, a black cloak, before rising to frame a face with large dark eyes fringed in a halo of lashes. I'm not imagining things. He's really here. I jump up but he's faster, blocking off all access to the door.

"I'll scream. I swear I will." My voice is no more than a scratching sound in the dark. He's tensed and ready, for what I don't know, but it makes my heart hammer against my ribs. "No, you won't. How will you explain what you're doing here with me in the middle of the night without proper clothes, Miss Doyle?"

Instinctively, I put my arms around my body, trying to hide the shape of me beneath my thin white gown. He knows me, knows my name. My pulse throbs in my ears. How long would it take for my scream to reach someone? Is there anyone out there to hear me?

I step behind the altar, putting it between us. "Who are you?"

"You don't need to know who I am."

"You know my name. Why can't I know yours?"

He ponders this before answering with a curt reply. "Kartik."

"Kartik. Is that your real name?"

"I've given you a name. That's enough."

"What do you want?"

"Just to talk to you."

Keep thinking, Gemma. Keep him talking . "You've been following me. At the train station today. And earlier at vespers."

He nods. "I stowed away on the Mary Elizabeth in Bombay. Rough passage. I know the English are terribly sentimental about the sea, but I can live without it." The lantern casts his shadow up and across the wall like a winged thing, hovering. He's still guarding the door. Neither of us moves.

"Why? Why come all this way?"

"As I told you, I need to talk to you." He takes a step forward. I shrink back and he stops. "It's about that day and your mother."

"What do you know about my mother?" My voice startles a bird hiding in the rafters. Panicked, it flaps to another beam in a flurry of frantic wings.

"I know that she didn't die of cholera, for one thing."

I force a deep breath. "If you're hoping to blackmail my family"

"Nothing of the sort." Another step forward.

Against the cool marble of the altar, my hands tremble, unsure whether they'll have to put up a fight. "Go on."

"You saw it happen, didn't you?" "No." The lie turns my breath shallow and fast.

"You're lying."

"N-noI"

Fast as a snake, he's up on the altar, crouched before me, the lantern inches from my face. He could easily burn me or snap my neck. "For the last time, what did you see?"

My mouth has gone completely dry with the sort of fear that will say anything. "I I saw her killed. I saw them both killed."

His jaw clenches tight. "Go on."

There's a sob riding hard on my ragged breath. I push it down. "I I tried to call out to her, but she couldn't hear me. And then"

"What?"

The weight in my chest is unbearable, making each word a struggle. "I don't know. It was as if the shadows started to move I've never seen anything like it some hideous creature." For some reason, it feels good to pour out to a complete stranger what I've been holding in from everyone else.

"Your mother took her own life, didn't she?"

"Yes," I whisper, astonished that he knows this.

"She was lucky."

"How dare you"

"Trust me, she was lucky not to be taken by that thing. As for my brother, he was not so fortunate."

"What is it?"

"Nothing you can fight."

"I saw it again. On the carriage ride here. I had another vision."

He's alarmed. I can see the fear in him, and now I'm sorry I've told him anything. In one move, he's off the altar and in front of me. "Listen to me well, Miss Doyle. You are not to speak about what you've seen to anyone. Do you understand?"

Moonlight pokes through the stained glass in weak slices. "Why not?"

"Because it will put you in danger."

"What was that thing I saw?" "It was a warning. And if you don't want other, terrible things to happen, you will not bring on any more visions."

The night, the pranks, the fear and exhaustionthey all collide in a sneering laugh I can't seem to stop. "And how, pray tell, am I supposed to do that? It's not as if I asked for it in the first place."