The Spiritualist Read Free Page B

charming as Atherton has always said you were.”
    Another surprising statement. My husband came up beside me, Benjamin in tow. Peter settled his hand rather possessively at my waist and said, “I confess it was her charm that captured me. You must watch out for Maull, my dear. He has quite a reputation for pretty women. I would hate for him to steal you away.”
    “Consider me on notice.” Maull smiled at Peter’s gentle teasing.
    My husband’s words were so unexpected, and the way he pulled me close so out of character, that I could only gape at him. He had ignored me for months. The Peter I was looking at now reminded me of the man I’d married, a man I’d nearly forgotten existed. My hope for this night returned with an almost painful acuity.
    “Let’s begin,” Dorothy called out breathlessly as her attendants settled her in the large armchair that had been pushed up to the table, along with an embroidered footstool for her feet. When they hovered around her, tucking and clucking, she waved them away. Her eyes were sparkling now. The pain I’d seen in her face earlier was gone.
    Michel said, “Shall we?” and motioned to the table, and they hurried to it like ants to a much anticipated picnic. Then he turned to me. In a low voice, he said, “As our special guest, I’d be honored if you would sit beside me.”
    There wasn’t a society event I’d ever attended that seated husbands next to wives, and usually I would not have hesitated. But Peter’s mood was so strange that I looked uncertainly at him. “Well, I—”
    “Yes, of course,” he said, releasing me, though he was frowning, and he said nothing more as Michel led me to the table.
    “We must have positive and negative influences, alternating, as in electricity,” Michel said, and I noticed that the others were arranging themselves so—alternately, male, female. He pulled out a chair for me, and as I sat, he took the one beside, with Dorothy on his other side, and Peter next to her. Benjamin sat across from us. Grace Dudley went around the room, turning the gas down until it was nothing but a faint glow about the perimeter, and most of the light came from the candles on the table. Michel leaned close and said, “Is there someone in the spirit world you wish to contact?”
    I laughed. “Me? No. No one.”
    “A pity. It would help.”
    “How so?”
    “The spirits sense hesitation. Any unwillingness to believe—”
    “I’ve promised not to be a doubter tonight, Mr. Jourdain.”
    He said nothing, only looked at me so thoughtfully I had to turn away, and then he said, “Very well. Let’s begin.”
    He motioned to the candles, and those on either side of the table blew them out. I had not realized how blazing their light had been until it was gone. Now the room was in shadow but for the soft glowing gaslight. My uneasiness returned, though I knew that this was only a show; there was nothing true in it.
    “You must take your gloves off, Madame ,” Michel whispered to me, and when I looked at him in surprise, he explained, “The energy must flow through us, with no impediment, eh?”
    When I looked around the table I saw that everyone was taking hands, and no one wore gloves. It seemed indecent, but when I caught Peter’s glance, he nodded curtly, and I peeled mine off, though they fit so tightly it took some doing. Then Robert Dudley, who sat on my other side, took my hand. To touch strangers like this—skin on skin—was not done, and I found it uncomfortably intimate, though it was vaguely titillating as well. The atmosphere felt charged with anticipation, like the air before a lightning storm, and when Michel Jourdain took my other hand, I jumped—it seemed I felt that charge leap between us. He grasped my bare fingers tightly, and pressed his arm against mine in a fashion that was far too familiar.
    He said, “Let us pray for divine guidance in our search tonight.”
    In the time it took me to understand him, there was a rustle of