Chapter Five
The Spider
My dear Mary,—Last night I was accosted in a fog by a blind gypsy, and then rescued by a wicked monk who was later discovered to be a viscount. My spectacles, however, did not survive the speeding carriage that nearly claimed my life. London is indeed a strange, dark place; and now blurry besides. Your squinting cousin,
Emma.
Emma was awake long before cockcrow, gasping in the darkness. Cold terror slowly seeped from her rigid bones as the nightmare released its hold.
The blank eyes of the gypsy had turned a ghastly, blood red and followed her into slumber, the gaze crawling over her as she’d lain supine and helpless beneath her sheets. Then, hideous to behold, he’d opened his mouth wide, and from between his teeth he’d disgorged a fat, white spider that had landed with a wet thud onto the floor out of view.
Emma had writhed in panic and revulsion, strangely fixed to her bed, as the white-haired fiend melted back into the darkness until all she could see was his yawning, empty eyes, blinking with inimical fervor. Then the eyes too had vanished. But the sound of the spider, dragging its heavy weight eagerly across the wooden floor towards her bed, the needle-like clicking of its pincers maddening to hear, was somehow more dreadful even than the gypsy. It scuttled up the legs of her bed. Her sheet trembled beneath its dangling weight, slipping slowly down her body before finally falling in a useless heap to the floor with an ominous rustle. The mattress dipped as the spider loomed into view. Emma shrieked and tried to kick at it, but no sound left her throat and her legs gave only an ineffectual shudder as the fat spider pulled itself onto her shin. She could feel its cold fangs grazing her flesh as it tap-tapped clumsily up her thigh and hip. Then onto her stomach where it paused a moment, leering up at her with eight albino eyes, flashing crimson with lurid promise as it continued up her body. Finally, it settled its bulk on her chest.
Emma had come awake in that harrowing moment, clawing up from the darkness with another silent scream before its fangs had descended. Slapping desperately at her nightshift, she’d cried with relief and fright. Fortunately, the thing had vanished along with that terrible nightmare. “Dear God!” Dream or not, she was loath to spend a second longer in the bed she’d been somehow trapped upon.
Unwilling to see either the gypsy or the spider a second time (in fact, she might never sleep again), she had lit a taper and seated herself at the rosewood Davenport to mend her pen. That done, she becalmed her mind with pleasanter thoughts and recorded in a letter to Cousin Mary her fateful encounter with Lord Winterly. And yet she must have fallen asleep again, for she was later startled awake by Milli’s rendition of Robin Adair at the pianoforte downstairs. Her night-rail was divested of and morning attire thrown together before she hastened downstairs.
Her uncle looked up from the sofa with a raised brow as she entered the drawing room. “Fell asleep on your journal again, eh?”
Bemused, Emma paused at the piano and looked a question at her sister. Milli, who was leafing through her music sheets, tapped a finger over her own rosy cheek whilst casting a very pointed look towards Emma’s. Emma glanced over at the pier glass on the wall, and there, in her own reflection, descried a black smudge below her left eye. No amount of rubbing, however, seemed to efface it.
Uncle Haywood set aside the book he was reading and gave his younger niece a long suffering sigh. “Milli, my dear, do play something a little more sedate; it is far too early for your silly Irish airs.”
Milli ceased her playing at once and snatched her music sheets from the rack with a sniff.
Music sheets were rather an expensive commodity and Emma grimaced to see the sheets so roughly treated. “Milli, what has you in a pique?”
“Perhaps I’m not as well rested as I should like to be because someone kept me up all night threshing about in her sleep and uttering gibberish.”
“Don’t be a child.”
“Now, now, ladies,” said their uncle with some peremptory throat-clearing, “it is also far too early for quarrels. Do wait until after I’ve broken my fast.”
“Uncle,” said Emma, still rubbing vigorously at her smudged cheek, “what do you know of Lord Winterly?”
He regarded her archly. “Very little, I assure you.”
“Who is Lord Winterly?” Milli halted beneath the drawing room lintel where she had flown to in high dudgeon.
“That is all very well,” said Emma, “but I am sure you agree that I have every right to find out what I can about the man who saved my life?”
“Who saved your life?” Milli seated herself beside her uncle on the sofa, her gaze flying back and forth between the interlocutors.
Her uncle examined his cuticles, appearing a little flustered. “These great names do jump out at one, you know, though I myself have no opinion of the ton or their fancy titles.”
“Indeed.” It was a good thing her uncle was deaf or he’d have heard Emma’s teeth grinding together in frustrated impatience.
“To come to the point, my dear—”
Yes, please do.
“—I confess I saw the name associated with an unusual shipment newly arrived from the Balkans, of all places; that, as may be supposed, is not a locale from which we frequently receive imports. I inquired after him and my clerk informed me that it was the first time we’d imported goods on behalf of that particular gentleman from so far east along the Danube. So, my dear, now you know as much as I—he imports goods from across the Carpathians, and my company is that which facilitates such arrangements. That is all.”
“I thought you were a China merchant, Uncle?” Milli said, still looking bemused.
Emma waved her sister’s question aside. “But what does he import?”
“Impertinent girl.” Her uncle gave a grunt and picked his book up again. “We do not make a habit of discussing our clients’ business affairs with curious young women.”
Her arched brow proclaimed that she thought otherwise.
His lips twitched before he admitted, “Well, between you and I, the captain of the Astraeus informed me of a boatswain having heard one of Lord Winterly’s crates growling at him. He was looking for one of the steerage passengers who’d gone missing and found himself being growled at by a crate instead! Can you imagine?”
“Growling crates? What the devil is going on?” Milli slapped her palm on the chintz and stomped her foot for good measure.
“Mind your language, Milli.” Emma’s censure, however, was only half-hearted as she waited for her uncle to go on.
Thankfully he did. “Ah, but sailors are a superstitious lot. Best not to take them too seriously. Hornpipes, grog, taverns, and tall tales—that’s all a sailor knows.” Uncle Haywood scrutinized his pocket watch a moment, ostensibly to confirm that the time corresponded accurately with the tall clock striking the hour of nine. “The crates were, of course, inspected by His Majesty’s Customs officers…”
“And?” Milli appeared as invested in the details as Emma herself.
“And you shall never guess what was to be found within.”
“What? What was it?” Milli nearly screamed, she was that titillated. “A deformed circus man, wasn’t it? I just know it!”