Page 30 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

“Of course.” Mrs. Abernathy nodded. “But you’ve been here for weeks now and not taken so much as a half-day. A bit of fresh air will do you good, lamb. Besides, Wednesday is market day. So many people milling about. One never knows what one might see…or hear.”

Isabella studied Mrs. Abernathy carefully. The woman’s expression was calm and placid, but there was something in her eyes, something watchful.

“And one never knows what answers one’s questions might yield?” Isabella asked cautiously.

A flicker of approval crossed the housekeeper’s face.

“People talk at market, Miss Barrett. They speak freely when they think no one is listening. Stories spill like grain from a broken sack.” Mrs. Abernathy’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“But not all stories are true. And not all truths are meant to be heard.” She rose, smoothing her apron with her palms. “Not everything you hear in the village will be true. But some things will be. And it’s knowing the difference that makes all the difference. ”

Evening gathered in the library, the fire sunk to a velvet glow.

Isabella capped her paste pot, set a blotter beneath two dampened boards, and smoothed her palm over the ledger to press a fresh line of ink flat.

The room had learned her habits these past weeks…

straightened piles, swept hearth, the consoling breath of beeswax and old paper.

She rolled her shoulders, her day’s work done.

Again, she had lost herself in her tasks and worked without pause.

Now, her neck and shoulders cried their protest, and the growl in her belly reminded her that she must eat.

She tidied the desk and rose. In her fatigue, she knocked the brass box with the back of her hand, sending it tumbling to the floor.

She hurried around the desk and bent to retrieve it, the weight of it settling in her hands. Tiny scarab eyes looked back at her. The key at her throat felt warm against her skin. Would it fit? Would it turn? Would it unlock whatever secrets the box held?

The keyhole beckoned.

“Don’t,” she told herself. “They are not your secrets.”

As if in agreement, the lamp flickered, once, twice, the flame shrinking small and sullen. A draft crept along the floor and breathed across her fingers. The whispers thinned, not coaxing but cautioning, a hush settling with a start, like a palm had been pressed across a mouth.

Isabella set the box on the desk and pulled her hands away. When had she become a woman who would open a drawer and read a man’s private correspondence? Who would try to unlock his possessions and rummage through his life?

When she had come under his roof, under his power, she answered herself.

She stared at the box. Almost did she turn away. Then she set her hand upon it again.

Rhys had wanted her here at Harrowgate. He had tried to entice Papa and when that had failed, he had enticed her . He was a man with secrets, as was his right. He had no obligation to share them with her. Unless they involved her, and she felt certain they did.

Her thumb stroked a scarab at the corner of the box.

She should leave it. The right thing to do was leave it. But courtesy was a luxury, safety was not.

She could not be sure that his secrets, in the end, would not do her harm.

Her fingers disobeyed common sense and decency. She drew the chain over her head, freeing Papa’s key. It slid into the escutcheon with indecent ease.

From the corridor came the creak of a floorboard, a weight shifting just beyond the door, like a warning, one she had heeded when last she held this box in her hand. This time, she chose to ignore it, the key biting cold between her fingers.

The turn was smooth, the click soft as the lock yielded.

At the sound, the draft grew hot, the whispers bolder, clear in their disapproval. Which made her want to view the contents all the more.

Heat suffused the brass as if the box sat in full sun. She lifted the lid.

Inside lay a careful stack of letters. The paper was creamy wove, edges worn from handling, the ink gone tea-brown with age.

On several of them, a second slant of cross writing ran over the first. All were written in a feminine hand, an elegant, right-leaning copperplate, with narrow ovals and capitals looped like ribbons.

Guilt surged. She closed the lid. Opened it the smallest crack. Closed it again.

But written words were witnesses. Ink told tales. Just as Rhys’s letters to Papa and Papa’s replies had offered her clarity and certainty, so, too might these letters offer her insights.

She opened the lid and the name on the topmost letter caught her eye. Rhys.

Curiosity surged. She set the box down, drew forth the top letter, and read.

Harrowgate, 4 th October 1830

My dearest Rhys,

I write at once, though I scarcely know how to set down what must be told.

Your aunt, our sweet Helena, is gone. A fall upon the stair.

The physician says she missed her footing and, oh, my dear, I cannot bring myself to say more.

Your uncle is quite undone. Your cousin, though no child and older than yourself, cannot be brought to sense.

She wanders after him, calling for her mother.

We shall manage until you can be spared, though your father insists you must not be sent for, that you have examinations and obligations, and all that business men make of propriety when their hearts are breaking.

Forgive so plain a recital. If I knew how to soften it, I would.

Your most affectionate Mother

P.S. Your father bids me add that you are to attend to your books and keep to your hours. He will write in a day or two. If you have need of anything, send word to me directly.

Isabella read the woman’s grief in the lines she had written and those she had not, the kind of grief that comes when news arrives and there is nothing to be done but bear it.

She pictured a boy in a narrow school chamber, a single candle guttered low, the letter open beneath his hand, reading it then as she read it now.

But for him, the world had tilted under news he could not fix.

She lifted the next from the stack. The hand was the same, clear and feminine, the descenders long and steady. The wafer’s red shell had cracked and reset when someone had opened it before. She smoothed the fold and read.

Harrowgate, 14 th November 1830

My dearest Rhys,

It grieves me more than I can say to tell you that your Uncle Owen has gone after our sweet Helena.

The physician calls it an Apoplexy, taken on Tuesday, yet I think it was sorrow that struck him under his ribs.

We laid him yesterday beside her. The earth was iron hard and the bells very soft.

I know how dear he was to you, and I fear this blow will find you where your studies cannot shield you.

Your father is sorely struck by his brother’s death.

He does all that must be done, but I see the blow in the set of his mouth and the long nights he keeps.

Your cousin Catrin is with us now. She is brave to outward show, but her grief is profound.

Will and Ned are very quiet. Both ask me daily when you will come home. Your brothers miss you sorely. I have told them you will come to us at Christmas.

Your most affectionate Mother.

P. S. If you have the heart, write Catrin a few lines addressed here. Your hand will do her more good than physic.

The library blurred and steadied. Sorrow rose, clean and unexpected.

He has known grief, she thought, not the gentleman’s abstract kind, but the raw kind that leaves fingerprints on a life.

She pressed her thumb to the tidy signature, then folded the sheet along its old wound and laid it back as she had found it.

Her fingers hovered over the next letter, one corner already bent back as if in invitation, or dare.

As her fingertip made contact with the letter, the fire gave a quick, low crackle. A wave of heat rolled through the room then fled, leaving the air cold as a mid-winter night. The lamp at her elbow flared and guttered. Somewhere in the walls, a metal flue ticked.

Across the room, a book toppled from a high shelf and hit the floor with a solid thud.

Another slid after it, landing atop the first. Beneath her hand, the brass box shuddered, and she snatched her fingers back as the lid snapped shut.

The skin of her palm prickled as though it had been kissed by steam.

The air grew heavy with the stink of wet ash and old roses rotting on the stem.

Isabella surged to her feet and turned toward the library door.

The girl she had seen before stood between Isabella and escape.

She looked older now, not a child anymore, but neither was she an adult.

Her nightgown hung straight from narrow shoulders, pink satin ribbons at the throat and cuffs, the hem singed black.

She lifted one pale hand and at the lazy sweep of her fingers the nearest shelf bucked and swayed, pitching volumes from their places, leather and paper drumming the floor with muffled blows.

Fear rose cold and clean to shiver along Isabella’s skin. All her life the wraiths had been a constant, thin as frost, insubstantial, sighing and silvery, there but not there, unable to so much as lift a curl of hair. She had borne them, endured them, pitied them sometimes.

This one was not that. This one had weight. It occupied air. It cast the faintest shadow where no shadow ought to be. And it could move items in the physical world at will.

“Who are you?” Isabella asked. “What do you want of me?” Because there was the truth of it. This creature wanted something from her.

The girl stared at her with fathomless eyes.

Her head turned to the right, chin grazing the line of her shoulder.

Then, obscenely, it kept turning, slow and deliberate, until her nose pointed toward the small bumps of her spine.

From her wrist, a pink ribbon slipped free and slithered to the floor, crawling across the carpet to touch the tip of Isabella’s boot.

There it lay like something shed, pale satin against burgundy nap.

The wraith’s head unwound and with a sharp snap faced Isabella once more.

The ribbon struck, snake fast, coiling Isabella’s ankle, climbing her skirt, biting tight at her wrist. With a gasp, she jerked back. Heat and cold flared together. Pain lanced to the bone. A stink rose, like tallow and charred meat and for a terrible instant, she thought it was her own flesh.

A crackle ran the ceiling followed by a roar. A wall of heat slammed her. Isabella jerked her arm up to shield her face and stumbled back.

“Enough,” she said, and heard her father’s tone from that day at St. Jude’s in her own voice.

The ribbon slackened; the heat dropped away. Somewhere, a latch lifted with a soft click and the crushing pressure in the room released. Isabella steadied herself with a hand against the desk and looked about.

The library was empty.

Would that she could pretend she had imagined the whole of it.

But the books from the nearby shelf lay scattered across the floor and a single length of pink satin ribbon lay at her feet, burned black at one end.

She bent with shaking knees, wrapped it once around her fingers, and slid it into her pocket.

Anger bled through what fear remained.

“You want something of me,” she said into the hush. “Whatever it is, you will not win by terror.”

She went to the box and turned the key, locking it once more then slipped the chain back over her head and tucked it away so the metal lay against her skin. Lifting the lamp, she set her shoulders and left the library.

Somewhere deep in the house, metal scraped along stone once, twice, and then stopped, satisfied as a cat that had trapped the mouse.