The Other Side of Mrs. Wood by Lucy Barker EPUB & PDF

The Other Side of Mrs. Wood by Lucy Barker EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online

• Status: Available for Free Download
• Author: Lucy Barker
• Language: English
• Genre: Women’s Historical Fiction
• Format: PDF / EPUB
• Size: 2 MB
• Price: Free

FEBRUARY 1873
27 CHEPSTOW VILLAS, NOTTING HILL
Mrs Wood’s séances took place in the dark, just as all interesting things
should.

That evening, as the last candle wavered on the sideboard in the smart
Notting Hill villa, London’s most influential and affluent believers held
their breath. In a few moments, the corridor to the Other Side would open
and any one of their desperately missed beloveds might make their way
through.

Taffeta shifted and bracelets shivered amidst a flurry of cleared throats
but the Great Medium Mrs Wood was in no hurry. She sat calmly in her
ornate chair before them all, her flickering shadow cast long against the
closed shutters of the bay window behind. She drew in a long, slow breath,
her eyes moving easily over the faces turned expectantly back. She was
their sun, and they were her blooms.

There were, as usual, twenty-four guests, poised for an evening of spirit
and spectacle. Most were patrons, their gems signalling to her in the gloom,
but here and there were the unfamiliar faces of those grieving souls who
had applied to enter the monthly ballot for one of only eight seats available
to the masses at each of her monthly Grand Séances.

Tonight, Mrs Wood looked for those carefully selected eight for whom
she had tailored the evening. In the front row, she noted a pocket-eyed
woman clutching a carte de visite. Beside her sat a man of clearly moderate
means, a careless nature betrayed by his unappealingly splayed knees.
Behind them she took in the mother and daughter in twee matching dresses,
and another man a little further along the row whose jacket was coming
unstitched along the left lapel. A well-padded woman sat in the back row,
fanning herself with a ringless left hand. And there, in the far corner, a
young couple.

There they were.
So easy to spot in the end: the only two people in the entire room not
staring back at her. Instead, they sat pressed together staring silently into
their laps, their sadness so captivating that for a moment she was snared,
unable to look away. But then the faintest of coughs by her ear returned her
to the room and, drawing in a long breath, she released one last enigmatic
smile.

‘The candle, Mr Larson,’ she said, and her candle-snuffer extraordinaire
leapt from his seat at the end of the front row, docking the final flame and
plunging the room into a darkness as absolute as death.
Mrs Wood inhaled the collective frisson before exhaling loudly and
pronouncing: ‘We begin, as always, with the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father …’
It took only a few moments from the end of the prayer for Mrs Wood to
descend into the trance that would link her to the Other Side.

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