Page 34 of Darkest at Dusk (Revenant Roses)
“Yes, I’m fine,” Isabella managed. She lifted her cup once more and forced a sip. She smiled and nodded as the two women nattered on. She managed a few more minutes, then rose. “Thank you for the visit. I will not overstay. And I must not delay Mrs. Abernathy.”
Both women rose, looking disappointed.
Viola said, “Of course. We understand. But?—”
“—you will return?” Pansy said.
“I will,” Isabella assured them, anxious to be away.
Outside, she drew a breath but found herself choked by all she had learned.
For a man like Hargreaves, Marlow was a far step below London.
How had he come to be here, and how had Rhys Caradoc felt about his presence?
Had Hargreaves been his tormentor, his gaoler, or his savior? The questions bubbled in her mind.
She had come for gossip over tea, and left with poison steeping in her veins.
The return to Harrowgate felt longer than the ride down.
The road curled along the river, gray water scudding under a sky the color of old pewter.
The village fell away. Fields rose and folded.
Hedgerows snagged the mist and held it like uncarded fleece.
The carriage rocked and sighed, each turn of the wheels winding Isabella tighter until her skin felt a size too small.
Dr. Hargreaves.
The name had cracked something she had sealed years ago.
She pressed her gloved fingers to her knee and willed them still.
He could not be the same man, she told herself.
And yet she knew it was he. The London doctor with a narrow mouth and a showman’s cruelty, fallen into disrepute, fetched up in Marlow like flotsam.
And upon his death, Mr. Caradoc—Rhys—had sent men at dawn to take every bottle, ledger, and book.
Why? What had he wanted to find among the dead man’s effects?
The carriage rattled into the yard. Harrowgate rose before her, windows blank as eyes, chimneys inked against the sky. Do return. The command sang in her, bright and thin as a wire. She did not quite know whether the words comforted or bound.
She thought of the Burns sisters, Viola’s steady kindness, Pansy’s appetite for rumor.
She thought of Hazel’s small watercolors and the soft ache of love that had kept a woman in a room where she no longer lived.
She thought Catrin clawing at a barred door until her nails ripped free.
And she thought of Rhys’s father. She had not known he died in that fire.
All of it left her mind churning with a slurry of suspicion, pity, and confusion.
Tom jumped down. Mrs. Abernathy gathered her shawl closer. “You’ll have a sit-down first,” the housekeeper said, a question folded into the certainty.
“In a moment,” Isabella replied. She tried for lightness, but the words took effort. “I’ll go up and put my things by.”
Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Very good, lamb. I’ll see to Cook.”
Her chamber was dim when she entered, the fire laid but not yet lit. She had just slipped off her gloves when a soft knock came and Peg edged in with a fresh ewer of water.
“Thought you’d want this, miss, after a carriage ride,” Peg said, crossing to the washstand.
“Thank you.” Isabella managed a smile though she felt as though her nerves were flayed after all the Burns sisters had revealed, and all they had held back. Questions slithered through her thoughts like eels.
Peg set down the ewer.
Isabella smelled roses and charred wood. Then a frigid breath swirled through the room. Ice bloomed across the surface of the water, crackling in the silence.
With a cry, Peg jumped back. “Miss?—”
The cold was swallowed in an instant by a blast of heat. The walls seemed to swell inward, the air pressing down, heavy and thick.
Peg. A whisper without sound, ricocheting through Isabella’s thoughts, oily and sly.
Peg’s eyes went wide, her freckles stark, her skin white. She flung an arm over her face, stumbling back, mouth open in a soundless cry.
Peg. The whisper came again.
The maid’s braid tugged taut as if an unseen hand had yanked it. With a cry, she grabbed her hair, her breath turning to frost before her lips. Whimpering, twisting, she tried to wrench free.
Isabella caught her by the wrist and pulled her close. Rage struck through her like flint to steel. How dare it touch this girl. Her pulse thundered, her throat raw as the heat seared her. The room shuddered around them.
“Iron to bind. Hearth to keep. Shadows hush. Spirits sleep,” Peg said, the words running together, her voice so low as to be barely audible. “Iron to bind. Hearth to keep. Shadows hush. Spirits sleep,” she said again, and then again, each repetition faster, thinner.
“Let her be,” Isabella snapped, her voice harsh, unsteady, but loud in the stifling room.
For a heartbeat, the weight deepened. Smoke curled low across the floor, veiling their skirts. Peg whimpered against Isabella’s shoulder. The whisper came again. Peg.
Isabella’s fury steadied her fear. “Enough!”
The air cracked, sudden as a whip and the smoke tore apart. The heat dropped away. The room was still.
Peg clung to her, shivering. “You felt it. You heard it,” she whispered, half-plea, half-certainty.
“I did.” The truth burned her tongue, begging to be spoken, to be told in full—the voices, the wraiths—but Papa’s warning clamped her mouth shut. She only pressed Peg’s hand and said, “I will ask Mrs. Abernathy to see about the flue. It must be blocked.”
Peg looked at her a long moment. “But the fire’s not lit, miss.”
Isabella held the girl’s gaze, willing her to hear all the things Isabella dared not say. “No, it isn’t.” She let a moment pass, just holding fast to Peg’s hands, then she said, “Your mam was right. Ghosts can’t hurt you. Only fear can.”
Peg nodded once, fierce despite the tears that brightened her eyes. Then she slipped out, leaving Isabella alone with the echo of the wraith.
She sat long in the quiet, the ewer beading on the washstand, the shadows restless at the edge of the glow from the candle she lit.
Her limbs felt hollow, as though the wraith had drunk the marrow from her bones.
She did not go to the library that night.
She had no strength left for locked boxes and letters that painted only sorrow. They would wait for tomorrow.