𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐩𝐞 𝐍𝐨𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐦

Act I, Scene I

"She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
Was not this love indeed?"
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

__________

London, England
Late October, 1899

*

The day had been grim and tiresome.

Sleep eluded her.

Days were always tiresome for Lucy, as it was unnatural for her to be awake during the daylight hours. Or when daylight hours ought to occur, at any rate.

For nearly a fortnight, an eerie and pestilent fog had enveloped London. So dreary and dense was this blanket, that the nights were inky black, and the days, even at the noon hour, were an unrelenting twilight.

From a third-floor window of Wilhern Manor, Lucy stared out at the veiled sky. She watched in silence while the half-light turned to darkness. As the minutes passed, she could make out the reflection of her anomalous pale skin and blonde hair far clearer than anything beyond the thick windowpane. She should have been able to see the River Thames and Tower Bridge, but all she could see was gray. Dark, insidious gray.

She sighed, resting her forehead on the cold glass. Her fingertips grazed the side of her neck. She shivered.

The view, so spectacular under normal circumstances, was not her view. The bedroom in which she stood was not her bedroom. The master of the house, Sir Victor Wilhern, was no relation of hers, but the father of her late fiancé, Arthur.

Sir Wilhern knew what Lucy was.

In spite of that fact — or, perhaps, because of it — he had taken Lucy in as his ward. A self-proclaimed "collector of the strange and unusual," Victor Wilhern relished in surrounding himself with individuals of "special talents." The other members of his curious hodgepodge household were proof of that.

Two floors below her, the brisk click of high-heeled boots on the floorboards and the melodic murmur of a feminine voice crescendoed into clarity.

"...promised to pay an obscene amount of coin for my services, therefore I'll likely not return until morning." There was a pause. Then a huff. "Gil? Are you listening?" the woman's voice demanded. "I said I'm off."

"And I could not be less interested," a monotonic male voice droned in response. There was a rustling of paper. "The appeal of your habitual after dark exploits is lost on me, Evelyne. If you're so eager to share your willingness to peddle your legitimate conjuring abilities for pocket money so that the wealthy can chat with their deceased relatives, tell Victor."

There was a sharp thud as the doors of the armoire in the grand entrance hall slammed shut, followed by the swish of fabric.

"Victor is resting," Evelyne snapped. "As his live-in physician, I would think you'd know that, Doctor Rosencrantz."

"I am well aware of our proprietor's routine, Miss Ives," came the apathetic reply. "Enjoy your evening escapades."

An exasperated sniff and the scratch of a pen against paper drifted up the staircase and through Lucy's bedroom door. Her keen ears now captured even the most minute of sounds. Eavesdropping on her housemates brought shameful warmth to her cheeks, but the intrusion was unintentional. The strength of her newfound sensitivities seemed unable to be dampened. As a result, hardly a day passed in which she did not overhear a tiff between the erudite Gil Rosencrantz and flamboyant Evelyne Ives.