Page 33 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)

Chapter Fourteen

T he carriage rattled into Great Marlow’s High Street, wheels clacking on the cobbles. Isabella paused as she stepped down, looking about. Red brick fronts and timbered gables pressed close; painted signboards creaked on their irons. A brewer’s cart went by and left malt on the air.

People were out, but welcome was not. Heads bent, steps quick, they cut sidelong glances at the carriage, wary.

As Tom helped Mrs. Abernathy down, Isabella’s gaze fell on a little boy standing by the horse trough, hair plastered to his head, clothing wet, the building at his back showing clean through him.

Her breath hitched, then steadied. Habit returned, and she let her gaze pass over him as if he were not there.

Relief and unease tangled in her chest. After Harrowgate’s drought, the ordinary presence of wraiths was almost a comfort, or at the very least a familiar discomfort.

The house was starved of them, save the ribboned girl.

What lived in those walls that barred every other ghost but made that one so terribly strong?

“Miss Barrett?” Mrs. Abernathy’s voice was gentle. “Shall we?”

As they walked, the market unrolled with greens and eggs and wool, bolts of fabric, neat stacks of staves, a peacock bolt of worsted that caught the eye.

Isabella noticed that conversations paused as they drew near, resuming once they had passed; she realized she was unlikely to garner any answers here.

After had walked a bit, Mrs. Abernathy paused and glanced at Isabella. There was a flicker of deliberation in her eyes. “I recall you mentioning that you shared the post-chaise from Maidenhead with the Burns sisters, did you not?”

“I did,” Isabella replied.

“They’ll be glad of a visit, I’m certain,” the housekeeper said. “Cheerful company, those two.”

A visit with the sisters would be a perfect opportunity to ask questions. “Do you think I ought?”

“I do. Their cottage is but a short walk from here.” She pointed the way, and after taking her leave of the housekeeper, Isabella made her way down a narrow lane where the noise thinned to the soft slap of boots on stone and the drip from a gutter beating time.

The Burns sisters’ cottage sat at the end of Chapel Lane. Ivy clung to the walls, lace curtains crowded the windows, and china teacups made a regiment along the sills. Isabella rapped twice.

The door creaked open on Pansy, pink-cheeked and flustered, flour on her apron. “Oh! Miss Barrett, you’ve come!”

“I hope my visit is not inconvenient,” Isabella said.

“Not at all.” Pansy fussed her in, warning her, “Mind the step. It will kill us all one day!”

Inside lay tidy clutter: bunches of drying thyme and mint, a narrow hearth, books stacked where a table would have been sensible. Viola sat by the fire, feet tucked under her, needles clicking.

“Miss Barrett,” she said, warm and glad. “How lovely to see you. Sit you down, do.”

“Mind your skirts,” Pansy added, fluttering toward the kettle. “The hearth spits.”

On the far wall hung four small watercolours. One was hedgerows under a bruised sky, another the river clotted with reeds; a third a lane in late afternoon with light like honey in the ruts, and, last, the square in summer, bursting with color.

“They’re beautiful,” Isabella said.

Pansy’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh,” she said, voice breaking on the single syllable. “Our Hazel painted those.”

Viola’s needles paused. “Our sister,” she said sadly. “She passed?—”

“A year ago last Michaelmas,” Pansy finished for her.

The room cooled, though the fire held steady.

A figure stood at the edge of Isabella’s sight, an older woman, hair in a tidy bun, cheeks round.

Hazel, Isabella thought, looking at her sisters with a love so simple it made the air ache.

It was longing that kept her. Love, and the habit of staying.

Isabella turned her face slightly and let her gaze slip past as if no one was there.

“Tea?” Viola said, recovering, and set out the cups. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Both, please.”

They spoke first of small things. Viola mentioned the baker’s new boy. Pansy mentioned how the river had swelled after last week’s rain, then told the tale of the vicar’s cat learning to open doors with her paw. Viola eased the talk along, smooth as butter on bread.

Pansy tipped her head, peering at Isabella with those pale blue eyes that missed little. “How do you find Harrowgate, Miss Barrett?”

And here it was, the entrée to the topic Isabella most wanted to broach. “Large,” she said, deciding how best to word her inquiries.

“My dear Miss Barrett,” Pansy said, kind but incapable of leaving a thing on the bone. “You did not come all this way for cats and weather. Ask your questions. Best to have them out.”

“Pansy,” Viola cautioned.

“Well, she’s here now. She might as well have what she came for.”

Isabella stared down at her tea. She thought of locked doors, the scrape of metal on stone, a girl in a gown tied with ribbons whose head had turned past the limit of its hinge. “I don’t know precisely what to ask,” she said honestly. “Only…what you know. Of the house. Of the…fire.”

Viola’s gaze slid to the hearth. “It’s an old place,” she said. “Old places hold?—”

“—echoes,” Pansy cut in. “And more than echoes.”

“Fire leaves scars,” Viola murmured.

“—as deep as caverns,” Pansy finished. “Folk remember. And not just the fire.” Pansy leaned forward, her voice a quick whisper meant to carry. “That house has known too much darkness, too many graves dug in too short a time.”

“So much sorrow,” Viola said.

Pansy nodded. “But there’s more.” She lifted a finger and tapped the air to emphasize her point.

“The men sent to mend the north wing after the fire say their lines went wrong and their tools walked. The chimneys howled down a cold flue. Hot breath burned the backs of their necks though no fire was near. In the end they packed their carts and wouldn’t go back for love or money. ”

“Stories,” Viola said. “Tales told one to the next until they grew themselves a second head.”

“These didn’t need growing,” Pansy said. “They came up quick as nettles and true as the north star.”

“I’ve heard some of that,” Isabella said carefully, recalling Peg’s words.

Pansy drew a breath and Isabella found herself holding her own. “Kin of Mr. Caradoc’s died in that fire. His father.” She leaned closer. “His cousin. Catrin.”

Isabella went very still. A line in a letter: Your cousin Catrin is with us now. She is brave to outward show.

“They say,” Pansy went on, voice dropping, “he barred the door. Locked it from without.”

The words landed like a slap. Rhys’s coat warm on her shoulders. Rhys’s mouth sweet with sugared lemon. Rhys’s hand steady when the air turned wrong. The picture would not fit the frame Pansy built.

“People say all manner of things when they are afraid,” Isabella managed.

Viola’s needles clicked once, hard. “That they say it doesn’t make it true,” she said. “We don’t know who barred that door.”

Isabella’s heart skipped a beat.

“We don’t know that it wasn’t him,” Pansy replied, mulish. “What we do know is what they found when the fire cooled. Lock and latch scorched. The poor girl by the door, nails torn, wood gouged. And her—” She stopped, swallowed. “Burnt black, she was.”

Heat tore through Isabella like a wave, then fled, leaving her cold.

The singed pink satin in her pocket seemed to pulse against her thigh like a second heart.

The back of her throat burned with bile.

Still, she could not make the picture fit.

But the North Wing had burned, and a girl had died whether or not she believed the rest.

“And that poor maid died there as well,” Pansy said.

“She took a fever and wandered out,” Viola snapped. Then her gaze shifted to Isabella. “There was no harm done her by anyone.”

Pansy sniffed but did not argue the point. “Still and all,” she said, “folk around here have no liking for Harrowgate.” She spread her hands. “That house is not right.”

Viola’s needles clicked, steady. “Old houses carry their histories.”

“Their ghosts,” Pansy said.

Viola only rolled her eyes.

“Our Hazel used to say some hauntings are greedy,” Pansy said. “Take all the air from a room and call it peace.”

Isabella thought of the hush that fell like a shroud when Rhys Caradoc was near. The closest to peace she had known. Was it a reprieve or a mark of danger?

“And then there’s the doctor,” Pansy went on.

“Oh, hush now,” Viola said. “He had nothing to do with anything. He only came to Marlow years after the fire.”

“You hush,” Pansy said, and turned back to Isabella. “A doctor from London he was, once a man of consequence before scandal clipped him. Took a post here in Marlow.”

Viola nodded. “He kept rooms?—”

“—off the High Street,” Pansy said. “When he died, men with wagons came for his things at dawn, quiet as thieves.”

Isabella sipped her tea, only half listening, her thoughts spinning with what they had revealed about the fire.

“Carried off every cabinet, bottle, ledger, and book,” Viola said.

“Men Mr. Caradoc hired,” Pansy said. “That’s what folks say.”

Isabella nodded, trying to look interested.

“Don’t know what he wanted with Dr. Hargreaves’s things?—”

“Dr. Hargreaves?” Isabella interrupted, the name catching in her throat. The room tipped a fraction.

Tap…tap…tap. Doors with wired windows. Screams echoing from the bowels of the building. A door slamming shut, trapping her inside. I have consulted my colleagues. I know what you’ve claimed. Hearing voices. Seeing people that are not there. No, surely not. It could not be the same man.

“From London? From St. Jude’s?” she asked, her voice strained.

“Indeed,” Pansy said. “Do you know of him?”

“Oh, my dear Miss Barrett, are you quite alright?” Viola asked. “You’ve gone pale.”