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pity. Not only what happened to your brother but what it did to you. Amelie is like you were before . . . before. I don’t want her to change.

    “I need someone who has insight into what my child might be experiencing, who can prepare her for the world before she is put into it.”

    The phrasing struck Francesca as odd, but she was too intrigued by his proposition to question it. She was so tired of being alone. Even married to Alphonse, she’d been fundamentally different, separate. Lonely , an inner voice whispered. Colonel Chase was offering her much more than employment. Still, she had to be forthright.

    “I doubt I am the example for which you are looking,” she said regretfully. “I have hardly made a smashing success of my own entrance into society.”

    He was kind, a little pitying. “You haven’t been in society, my dear. You have been one of its many sideshows.”

    Well, that was bluntly spoken.

    He heard her involuntary inhalation and reached out to pat her hand. It had been years since someone had offered her the comfort of a simple touch. “I am a confoundedly plainspoken man. I am sorry, my dear.”

    “Don’t be.” She met his eye. “I am sick to death of subtlety and equivocation.”

    She meant it. The colonel’s candor was like a cleansing plunge in icy water. Every word Alphonse had uttered, both to his clients and to her, had been framed to suggest rather than affirm, to evade rather than illuminate.

    “Allow me to return the favor,” she said. “I was a willing participant in that sideshow. I helped my husband deceive his . . . our clients.”

    For a long moment, the colonel did not reply. He stared down at the coffee in his china cup. Fanny did not interrupt his thoughts, reflecting on her past.
     
    She’d come to terms with her part in Alphonse’s schemes. She’d been desperate to believe only good of the boyish-looking man who’d arrived at her family’s country estate while her family was in London for Jeanne’s debut. He’d claimed some nebulous family connection, and her elderly cousin hadn’t questioned him too closely, but neither had she.

    He began wooing her almost at once. He’d heard of her through mutual acquaintances and been struck by their similarities. He himself had the power to speak to the spirit world. She wasn’t a freak; she was exceptional. She needn’t hide her affinity with God’s creatures; she must celebrate it. He would teach her how. Such abilities as they possessed were gifts to be used to serve mankind.
     
    The idea seemed revelatory to Fanny. Here was someone who embraced his affliction, saw it as a boon rather than a curse. It never occurred to her that he was lying. How credulous she’d been at seventeen. Even though credulous, she hadn’t been a fool. She knew her parents would never agree to the match. So they eloped.

    Despite his promises, it was quickly clear that Alphonse had had no better idea than she of how to control her affinity with animals. He was disappointed when he realized that it was only when her emotions were completely engaged that creatures answered her call. He bullied, pestered, begged, and cajoled her to find some way to make use of her “gift.” She owed it to him. She owed it to people “waiting for a sign of grace in this graceless world.”

    When she had finally managed the briefest of voluntary connections, Alphonse had been overjoyed. Within weeks he’d figured out a way to put it to use, having her call creatures to the room while he was holding séances, then suggesting to their credulous clients that the sounds they heard had otherworldly origins. A brilliant bit of marketing.

    She hadn’t protested when Alphonse had explained that they were simply aiding the faithless to believe what he knew for a certainty to be true: that angels surrounded the living. Why? Because she was a fool who had for four years pretended she believed him because she desperately wanted to think her life had