Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [98]
Very slowly they turned to face the door.
Paul Alaric stood there, black outlined against the sun.
“Well!” he said softly, stepping in and smiling.
Charlotte and Emily stood so close together their bodies touched. Emily was gripping hard, fingers digging in like claws.
“So you’ve found it,” Alaric observed. “A little foolhardy, wasn’t it—to come looking for such a thing, and alone?” He seemed amused.
At the back of her mind Charlotte had always known it was foolish, but curiosity had driven out awareness of danger and silenced warning in her brain. Now she stared at Alaric and felt for Emily’s hand beside her. Was he the head of them, the warlock? Was that why Selena found it credible that he should have attacked her—or was it why Jessamyn knew he had not? Or could it be that the head was a woman—Jessamyn herself? Her mind whirled around all kinds of ugly thoughts.
Alaric was coming toward them, still smiling, but with a slight furrow between his brows.
“I think we had better get out of this room,” he said gently. “It’s an extraordinarily unpleasant place, and I, for one, do not wish to be found here if one of its regular users should chance to come.”
“R—regular?” she stammered.
His smile broadened into a harsh laugh.
“Good heavens, you think I’m one of them! I’m disappointed in you, Charlotte.”
For one idiotic moment she blushed.
“Then who is?” she demanded defensively. “Afton Nash?”
He took her by the arm and led her into the sun, Emily only inches behind her. He pushed the door closed and continued along the path between the bitter herbs.
“No, Afton is far too bloodless for anything of that sort. His form of hypocrisy is much subtler than that.”
“Then who?” Charlotte was sure enough it was not George to be unafraid of his answer.
“Oh, Freddie Dilbridge,” he said confidently. “And poor Grace studiously turns a blind eye, pretending it is just a normal excess of the flesh.”
“Who else?” Charlotte kept up with him, leaving Emily behind on the narrow path.
“Selena, certainly,” he replied. “And I should think, Algernon. Poor little Fanny, before she died—at least, I would guess so. Phoebe knows about it, of course—she is not as innocent of nature or people as she seems—and Hallam without doubt. And naturally Fulbert knew, from what he said, even though he was never invited.”
It all fitted into place.
“What do they do?” she asked.
His mouth turned down at the corners, rueful, a little contemptuous.
“Nothing very much, play at a little wickedness, imagine they conjure demons.”
“You don’t think it could be—real?” She hesitated to ask such a question outside in the summer garden with the beach hedge fluttering green above them. It was getting hotter and stiller, and there was a faint overcast across the sky. The thunderflies were worse.
“No, my dear,” he said, looking straight at her. “I don’t.”
“Pheobe thinks so.”
“Yes, I know. She imagines a foolish and rather sordid game that has suddenly summoned up real spirits, and set them loose in the Walk, to bring murder and insanity up from the dark regions of the damned.” His face was wry, utterly reasonable, dismissing such things to the realms of hysteria.
She frowned.
“Is there no such thing as black magic?”
“Oh, yes.” He pushed the door open in the hedge and stood back for them to go through. “Most certainly there is. But this is not it.”
They emerged into the color and normality of the garden party again. No one had seen them leave the beach hedge and pass along the herbaceous walk. Miss Laetitia was listening dutifully to Lady Tamworth expounding on the evils of marrying beneath one’s station, and Selena was having what appeared to be heated words with Grace Dilbridge. Everything was as usual; they might only have been gone for moments. Charlotte had to shake herself to remember what she had seen. Freddie Dilbridge, standing so casually with a glass in