Page 11 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

“Forgive me.” He set a palm to the side of the barrow to steady it and, with his other hand, steadied her. The touch was light, proper, but the heat of it struck through glove and nerve. He wore his dark coat buttoned high. Rain jeweled the brim of his hat.

“Mr. Caradoc,” she managed.

“Miss Barrett.” He released her slowly, as if attentive to the possibility she might sway. His thumb lifted last, a fraction late, leaving a ghost of warmth behind. “You’re in haste.”

“I have an interview,” she said, because that was true and safe to say. “At a—” She did not wish to name the shop in case she failed there too and had to walk past his knowledge of it later. “—a place that will be glad of me.”

The corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile, but not mockery either. “Any place would be.” His gaze dropped to the ink on her glove and away again, a quick flicker that felt too intimate by half.

She told herself to step past him. She did not. Instead, she looked away.

Across the street, in the shadow of a print-seller’s awning, a man stood where rain did not seem to fall on him. His cap was all wrong, too high on his head, and when a cart rolled through him, his edges trembled like heat above a lamp.

Mr. Caradoc’s gaze followed hers.

“Do you see someone you know?” he asked, and the question landed like a thrown stone breaking water.

Isabella’s gaze flashed to his. “No. I was only…thinking of the rain.”

He did not look back across the street. He looked at her. “Have you given any thought to my offer?” he said.

“To catalogue Harrowgate’s library,” she said, wrapping the words in cool paper. “I have.” She had spent too much thought there, like coins dropped in a well.

“And?”

“And I must make my own way, Mr. Caradoc.” She heard the stiffness in her voice and wished she did not mind being stiff. “I will not be beholden to a stranger because he was kind.”

He started as though the word pained him.

“I was not kind,” he said, very low. “I was—” His gaze cut downward and away, brief and private, before it returned. “—selfish.”

She could not decipher the meaning of that. She glanced away in confusion.

The man under the awning lifted his hand, rain stitching through his hat.

“Miss Barrett,” Mr. Caradoc said softly, his gaze following hers once more. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing,” she said too quickly, then stepped back, as if by changing the angle of her seeing she might change the world.

A cry lifted three doors down, a woman scolding a dog, and an omnibus huffed to a stop, horses blowing, leather creaking.

The driver flicked his whip and the lash whispered over the air where the wraith on the far side of the street stood.

Isabella’s throat closed. It was not the seeing that undid her.

It was the wanting to acknowledge, to answer, to be useful to something that could no longer be helped.

Mr. Caradoc shifted half a pace, deliberately putting himself between her and the street, an easy motion that set his shoulder a little before hers so she would have to look through him to look beyond. The rain gathered and ran off the brim of his hat in one clear thread.

“I must go,” she said.

“Come.” He tipped his head toward the mouth of an alley—not a dark one, not a trap, only a passage running through to Red Lion Square. “It’s a quicker way if you’re bound east.”

She hesitated. Then she nodded, because she had walked that labyrinth of lanes a hundred times and knew the shortcut was real.

He fell in beside her, not close, not too far, matching his stride to hers as if it were second nature, his limp slight.

Now and then, his arm brushed hers, a small contact that made her pulse misbehave.

The alley smelled of coal, cabbage, printer’s ink, damp brick. A cat shot past and vanished into a stack of crates. Above, lines of washing sagged under the rain. She fixed her eyes on the black shine of the cobbles where the rain had smoothed them to glass.

“What will you say if they ask you for a reference you do not have?” he asked, not unkindly.

“The truth,” she said. “That my father is dead and my skills are plain.” She folded her gloved fingers around the damp handle of the umbrella.

“That I can read a hand at a glance and keep an account and mend a book with paste and patience. That I do not trouble employers with inconvenient feelings .”

At that, something like a wince flickered over his face and was gone. “Inconvenient feelings,” he repeated, voice dry. “What a world we have made that would call them that.”

As they came out on the square, a gust of wind capered round and plunged under her skirts, cold as a bucket from a well. At the same moment, a prickle rose at the base of her skull, the thin, bright tinnitus of wraiths drawing near.

A woman stood by the railings across the square, translucent gray, her hair hanging in ropes. She held a basket to her front with both hands, the posture of someone guarding a child. The wail of a babe tore at Isabella’s thoughts. A babe no longer of this world.

Isabella went still. He noticed. His hand hovered, not touching but ready to offer assistance if needed. For an instant, she thought how easy it would be to accept, not only his arm here in the street but employment, safe and familiar.

“Miss Barrett?” Mr. Caradoc said.

She glanced toward the building where a gilt board swung: MRS. ROCHE, Millinery & Mourning . “This is my appointment.”

He stopped beside the door. She had to pass very near him to reach it, and the closeness drew the air tight. She smelled the faintest trace of lemons, light and pleasant.

“My offer of employment stands,” he said softly. His gaze made steady work of her face. “Because you would do the work well. And because you would not be alone.”

The last sentence snagged in her. He could not know where it caught.

“I am not alone,” she said, more quickly than was graceful. “I have always managed.”

“Of course.” He dipped his head the smallest degree, as if acknowledging the truth and the cost both. “My carriage will meet you in Marlow when you arrive.”

His words, so calm and sure, and yes, arrogant, startled a sound from her that might have been a laugh. “You do not think very well of my chances with Mrs. Roche.”

“I think very well of you,” he said simply, and the ring of truth she heard in them confused her. “And I think you deserve employment befitting your skills.”

The bell chimed when he opened the door for her, and again later when she opened it for herself, leaving after having been declined employment.

Days crawled past. Isabella attended at least two interviews daily and came away from each with nothing but a deeper pit in her stomach.

Her spirits were sorely tested, her hopes dashed repeatedly.

Desperation gnawed at her. Unpaid bills sat in a tidy pile on Papa’s desk.

The rent was paid on the house for only ten more days, and then she would need to find lodging as well as employment.

Her first quarterly income since Papa’s death would not come until Midsummer, and that was months away.

Resting her palms on the smooth wood of her father’s desk she stared at the ticket to Maidenhead until it blurred, wondering if she dared accept Mr. Caradoc’s offer. Wondering how she would survive if she did not.

Each letter of rejection, each humiliating interview chipped away at her confidence and hope, leaving her raw.

She began to pack, not because she had any idea where she would go but because the act of folding linens and sorting her father’s belongings allowed her to pretend that she was in control of something.

Now, she opened the lower right-hand drawer of Papa’s desk, intending to separate papers to burn or donate.

Would anyone even want his monographs? Perhaps one of his contemporaries or a museum…

Her hand closed on a stack of letters tied with black ribbon.

Curious, she drew it out and set it atop the desk.

She untied the ribbon and unfolded the letter at the top of the stack.

The parchment was fine, the script bold, the sentences constructed with precision and care.

As she read first letter, then the next and the next, she realized these were the correspondences Mr. Caradoc had sent to Papa, and they were exactly as he had described: offers of employment, nothing more, nothing less.

No veiled messages or threats. No offensive language.

Nothing to raise Papa’s hackles or send him into a rage.

Mr. Caradoc had not lied. The admission both relieved and distressed her.

She sank into the chair behind the desk, the bundle before her, the black ribbon clutched in one hand.

He had not lied about the contents of his letters, but she could not know if he had been truthful about the letters Papa had sent in return. And if he had been, then why had Papa used her as an excuse to refuse, why had he claimed she had a delicate nature?

She sent a note to Mr. Christopher asking for his opinion of Mr. Caradoc. His reply was straightforward.

Mr. Caradoc is a gentleman, Miss Barrett, sharp of mind and possessed of considerable means. I am certain his offer is made in good faith, and you would do well to consider it most seriously.

The wording was careful. Too careful. Polished and smooth. The very fact that the note contained nothing specific, and certainly nothing revealing, lent it a hollow ring. Or was it only Papa’s acrimony toward Mr. Caradoc that made her wary and mistrustful?

The wraith glided forward from the corner where she lurked, eyes fathomless and dark.

“Go away,” Isabella whispered, then clamped her lips shut, appalled that she had acknowledged the creature in any way.

The air chilled, so cold that Isabella’s breath puffed white before her lips. On a dry whisper, the wraith moved closer, stirring the letters on the desk. Mr. Christopher’s note rose on an eddy of air, hovering a finger’s breadth above the desk before falling flat.

And then the wraith disappeared.

Snatching up the note, Isabella stared at it.

Elaborate scenarios spun through her thoughts until she landed on one where she imagined that Mr. Caradoc had some hold over Mr. Christopher, that he had somehow placed the letters ostensibly addressed to her father in the desk while she was away from the house, “proof” meant to lure her into a situation where?—

Where what ? What could his purpose possibly be? What storm gathered behind those gray eyes and that quiet, self-assured voice?

But try as she might, she could not conjure a motive for Mr. Caradoc to create an elaborate scheme in order to lure her to his home.

Unless it wasn’t her he wanted at all—but something of her. Something she possessed . Her fingertips traced the outline of the key through the cloth of her bodice.

He had never mentioned Papa’s secret collection. Yet the possibility nipped at her and clung like a burr: what if the books in Papa’s trunk were his true quarry?

A huff of incredulous laughter escaped her at the folly of her outlandish thoughts. She was not normally one for flights of fancy, and she did not enjoy the melodrama of a penny dreadful or a gothic novel, yet here she was, spinning a tale that would rival those of Radcliffe or Maturin.

She assessed her options. She had few, and none were pleasant. She had not the funds to continue living here. She had neither friends nor relations to turn to. She had thus far found no other options for employment.

Mr. Caradoc’s offer was all she had. The truth of it settled, heavy as a damp cloak.

She rose and went to pack her things.