Quicksilver - Amanda Quick [56]
She went down a corridor lined with offices and demonstration rooms. A familiar voice drifted out from behind a closed door. Dr. Gatwood was giving a lecture to a group of fellow researchers.
“It is clear from my investigations that psychical energy is similar to electrical energy, but rather than passing through wires, it flows in the form of currents through the ether.”
She went past the door and on down the hall. When she reached Mrs. Fordham’s office she raised her hand to knock. For a few seconds she hesitated. What would she say to the sister she had never met?
Before she could come up with an answer, Jasper Welch opened the door of the neighboring office.
“There you are, Miss Dean,” Welch said. He was a serious, scholarly looking man in his early thirties with nondescript light brown hair that was starting to thin. He peered at her through his spectacles. “I see you got the message. Mrs. Fordham tells me the young lady is most eager to speak to you.”
“I must thank Mrs. Fordham for being so prompt,” Virginia said.
Welch lowered his voice and cast a meaningful glance at the closed door of his assistant’s office. “Mrs. Fordham informs me that the young lady is obviously very well bred. The girl wouldn’t give her name, but Mrs. Fordham suspects she is the daughter of a very fine family. Just the sort of people Mr. Leybrook likes to encourage as clients, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, Mr. Welch, I know what you mean. If you’ll excuse me?”
“Of course, of course. See you at the reception tomorrow evening.”
“Certainly.”
Welch popped back into his office and closed the door.
Virginia took a deep breath and knocked.
“Come in,” Mrs. Fordham called, her crisp, no-nonsense voice tinged with impatience.
Virginia opened the door. Mrs. Fordham was at her desk. She was a woman of a certain age, prim, gray-haired and a model of painfully erect posture. She regarded Virginia with sharp, birdlike eyes.
“Miss Dean,” she said crisply. “This is the young lady who is asking for you.”
She inclined her head toward the girl, who sat, stiff and uncertain, in a wooden chair.
“Miss Dean?” Elizabeth asked with an air of barely suppressed hope. “I am Elizabeth.”
My sister, Virginia thought.
“Hello, Elizabeth,” she said quietly. “Your mother has been very worried about you.”
Elizabeth blinked, startled. “She spoke with you?”
“Yes.”
“I did not want to alarm her. But I had to meet you, and I knew that she would never approve.”
“I am aware of that, but I must tell you that I sent word to her when I learned that you were here. She is no doubt on her way to collect you.”
Tears glittered in Elizabeth’s eyes. “But I must talk to you, Miss Dean. I do not know where else to turn.”
“Why don’t we go downstairs and have some tea while we wait for your mother?”
The tearoom was located on the ground floor of the Institute. The high Palladian windows looked out onto a large garden planted with a wide variety of herbs and plants reputed to have psychical properties.
Virginia and Elizabeth sat at a small table, cups and saucers, a pot of oolong and a plate of small, dainty cakes between them. The room was lightly crowded with a mix of outsiders who had come to attend the lectures and demonstrations, as well as a scattering of practitioners and researchers.
“When I first began seeing lights around people, I thought it was rather entertaining,” Elizabeth said. She munched a bite of cake. “But Mama got upset when I told her about it. She said I must not tell anyone what I could see. Her reaction frightened me. I tried to stop seeing the lights.”
“But you could not stop perceiving the auras,” Virginia said.
“Well, I could stifle the urge for a time, but it was like closing my eyes or holding my breath. After a while I just had to look.”
“That is because using your talent is as natural and intuitive as using any of your other senses, like vision or hearing or touch. It must have been very difficult for you, coming into your new senses with no one to guide you.”
“Mama said it was just my imagination. She said that if I told other people,