In the service of their guests’ comfort, she cast aside her memories of the night before, of strange, statuesque figures and red-eyed wives lurking in windows. She gave herself over to the fantasy instead, and for two hours, her guests saw her and did not laugh, and it seemed as if the impossible could become real. It seemed that if she could only contrive to divide the world by zero, she could have everything she’d never thought to wish for.
And then the dinner finished, and her guests rose and retreated back to the sitting room. She could smell tobacco smoke curling in the air as she gathered up the dishes and carried them off to the kitchen. The darkened windows of Lindridge Hall held no figures. The lights remained lit. She had passed through the fire, and on the other side was a better reality.
On her fourth trip to gather dishes, Jane realized the dining room was no longer empty. Dr. Nizamiev sat in Augustine’s seat and caught Jane’s gaze as she inexpertly stacked greasy platters. She rose and approached Jane with such precise steps that she almost seemed to glide across the floor, as she had in the surgery. The image of the figures outside the library returned to Jane, and her stomach turned to lead.
“Dr. Nizamiev,” she said, in proper greeting at last.
“The new Mrs. Lawrence,” Dr. Nizamiev returned, inclining her head slightly. Her eyes never left Jane’s face. It had been barely a week since Mr. Renton’s death, but it felt like half a lifetime away, with everything that had changed. And Jane’s unease with Dr. Nizamiev had only grown.
Given the strange mysteries of Lindridge Hall and her husband’s lies, precisely what kind of specialist had he called forth from Camhurst to see a patient with an impossible ailment?
“How do you find married life, then?”
For all she knew, the question was a trap. “New,” Jane said, hoping to end the conversation.
Dr. Nizamiev laughed. It was sharp and short and, to Jane’s ear, calculated. “So it is. May we speak of your husband, given your better vantage point?”
“I—Yes, though I don’t know what I could tell you that you don’t already know.”
“It is what I can tell you,” Dr. Nizamiev said.
And Jane was caught.
She had no solid ground to stand upon anymore; all her assumptions had been torn apart. She would take all the data she could get to measure out this new reality. Make sure she missed nothing, figured everything correctly this time.
She could see her guests silhouetted in the warm lamplight of the other room, and heard Augustine’s laughter among the voices, but she sat in the chair the doctor pulled out for her.
Dr. Nizamiev remained standing, studying Jane’s face. “I had never thought he would marry again, not after Elodie.”
That unwelcome pang in her chest again; was it growing gentler yet?
“I do not believe he intended to,” Jane replied. “But he did.”
“I take it that your arrangement is … uncommon, given our first meeting.” Her words were clipped and controlled. Cold. Analytical. She sounded like Jane did when Jane was deep in her work, and though Jane had never felt ashamed of it before, now it made her skin crawl.
Dr. Nizamiev saw something. She was at work, even here. Doing what?
“Yes,” Jane said, warily. “Yes, it is uncommon.”
“And do you stay often at Lindridge Hall? Had you visited it before the marriage?”
Jane’s hands fisted in the fabric of her skirts. Her gaze drifted to the window behind Dr. Nizamiev, half expecting to see Elodie there, watching.
Only her reflection looked back.
Dr. Nizamiev canted her head, a falcon judging the distance of its next strike. “You know,” she said after a moment. “You’ve seen things.”
Seen things. An unwise admission to an asylum’s specialist, and yet Jane could not stop her forward lurch, her desperate query of, “You know?” Her pulse began to pound. “He told you?”
“Yes. He’s told me.”
Jane could no more leave the conversation now than she could follow the Cunninghams to Camhurst.
“There are some things you should be aware of,” Dr. Nizamiev said, pulling over another chair and settling into it.
“But why?” she asked. “Why tell me?”
“Don’t you want to understand?” Dr. Nizamiev asked. “I marked you for a creature of curiosity, not a coward.”
Jane bristled. “Of course I want to.”
Dr. Nizamiev sat back with a self-satisfied smile. Her voice dropped low, so as not to carry. “When Elodie fell ill, your husband was a guest at a retreat organized by the others in this house. The purpose of the retreat was to practice magic.”