Page 13 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House
Oliver knocked on Maxwell’s bedroom door. It was so quiet in the hallway he could hear the trees scratching along the glass of the windows. Leaves and twigs dropped as fast as the raindrops might later in the afternoon if the heavy, dark clouds were any indication.
It was interesting that a visit with the boy was exactly what Oliver knew he needed.
How could he tell? What was it about Maxwell that made Oliver feel this whole endeavor—the sale of the property, tearing down Shadowbrook and making it something positive—was worthwhile?
He’d wakened from sleep that morning with an echoing suggestion in his head to seek out Maxwell.
Almost as if the words had been spoken aloud.
The boy didn’t answer Oliver’s knock. Had Max gone looking for Pearl?
Oliver had seen her leave the house, a small basket over her arm and a drab hat covering her raven-black hair.
She was out, and Maxwell was presumably somewhere in the house.
Oliver had no idea where Max might be exploring, so he made his way into a small parlor in the east corner of the main floor and sat facing the window. To wait.
He reminded himself several times he wasn’t watching for Pearl’s return. He simply looked out at the lane that approached the house. Not for anything in particular. If he kept thinking such thoughts, he might convince himself.
A young girl in a serving uniform stepped inside the room. She didn’t look much older than eleven or twelve.
“Forgive me, sir. I was going to set a fire, but I’ll come back later.”
He shifted in his seat. “No, please stay. It’s chilly here. I’d love a fire. Thank you.”
He needed to stop speaking so fast. Why did he feel nervous talking to one of his uncle’s maids?
After a moment, he realized he was a bit afraid of her.
Not the child moving to the fireplace, but the idea she represented.
Servants. He couldn’t imagine how he could ever manage workers the way his uncle had to.
Oliver was sure he’d be terrible at directing a household staff.
He couldn’t even speak to Jenkinson without feeling like a small child who’d broken a priceless vase.
Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be living here. He wouldn’t need to administer the work of the manor. Soon there would be no more Shadowbrook House to run.
That thought gave Oliver a thrill of both excitement and dread.
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions while you work? It’s much too quiet in this house, and all the silence makes me feel as though I’m underwater.”
She gave him a quick smile. “Of course not, sir.”
“Have you been here long?”
“Just over a year. My older sister worked in the kitchen until she married. I’ve taken her place, but I’m not much good at cooking. So I have other responsibilities.” She indicated the fireplace and the iron bucket of wood in her arms.
“And what’s your name?”
She glanced over her shoulder, trying for a curtsy as she hurried to lay the fire. “I’m Violet, sir.”
“I’m Oliver.”
She nodded at the fireplace. “Yes, sir.”
“I’m here visiting my uncle.”
Violet nodded again and laid a knot of old muslin on the freshly swept stone.
After a moment of awkward silence, Oliver spoke. “I wonder if you happen to know where the governess has gone today?”
“Into town, sir.” She added a few small pieces of kindling across the muslin and paper.
“All the way to Portsmouth?”
The girl covered her mouth to hide a smile. “Oh, no. That’s much too far. Just to Riverwood. She goes each week.”
Oliver wondered if Maxwell missed his governess when she was away. “And you? Do you ever go with her?”
She shook her head and turned back to the fireplace, laying a midsized log on top of the others. “She doesn’t take anyone with her.”
“Not even Maxwell?”
Violet turned to look at him, confusion on her face. “I thought you were part of the family.”
Oliver shifted in his seat. “I am.” Could she hear the false note in his assertion? Impending inheritance aside, he didn’t feel like a Ravenscroft.
“In that case, you know how ill Maxwell is. He must never go to town.”
“He didn’t seem ill at all when I was with him last night.” He immediately regretted his defensive tone. Clearing his throat, he began again. “I don’t know Max very well. I was happy to find him strong enough to play and explore.”
Violet nodded. “He’s doing quite well right now, thank goodness. But in winter, he must be cautious. We all must be. When illness strikes anyone in the house, as it always does, he can’t leave his room. What shows up in one person as a chill could very likely kill him.”
Oliver shook his head, thinking the girl was being dramatic. “Surely he’s not so frail.”
Violet struck a match and held it to the tinder. “We must all take care. The master couldn’t live without young Max.”
Fire lit, she stood and gave Oliver a short bow. “Good day, sir.”
“Thank you, Violet.” He spoke without looking at her, almost without thinking, as her last words echoed in his mind. Arthur Ravenscroft couldn’t live without Maxwell.
Was it true? Did his uncle love the boy so much?
Oliver was uncomfortable with the very idea. Uncle Arthur had never loved Oliver, had barely tolerated him. But he adored his grandson enough to protect him, keep him safely in this house?
Not that Maxwell didn’t deserve such adoration. He was a bright little chap, clever and funny. If Oliver had been more like Maxwell when he was a boy, would his uncle have liked him more? Would he have wanted to see him, to know him?
He couldn’t imagine it. Not after years of living in this house, ignored and overlooked.
Sitting alone in the small room, Oliver stared into the fire, listening to the snap and clatter of twigs burning. Then he realized he was hearing something else, something soft and unfamiliar beneath the fireplace sounds.
Laughter. Light and high-pitched and free. Oliver had heard that laugh the day before, sitting at a laden tea table in a hidden room. The voice sounded like Maxwell’s.
He stood from the chair and walked to the door, listening carefully.
He tried to follow the sound, but as he crossed the hallway, the laughter died away.
He walked back inside the empty room. The sound seemed to follow him, growing louder as he moved toward the outer wall of the room.
There was no connecting room on this side because he’d been watching for Pearl’s return through the south-facing window.
Nevertheless, the sound of Maxwell’s laugh seemed to grow stronger as Oliver approached the window.
Maybe what he heard wasn’t Maxwell after all.
He stepped quietly from one side of the wall to the other, and there—the laughing was loudest directly in front of a portrait of a pair of young boys dressed in matching costumes.
The older had his hand on the younger’s shoulder, and both boys looked as if they were stifling their smiles.
Like they were trying not to giggle. A prickling sensation crawled up Oliver’s neck.
Maybe what he heard wasn’t Maxwell’s voice. Was the painting laughing ?
He stepped away before he realized he was going to do it, bumping into the back of a chair placed near the fire. Stumbling while trying to right himself without touching either the chair or the wall, he kept his eyes on the portrait.
Another peal of childish laughter sent a shudder across Oliver’s shoulders, but the sound that followed was even eerier than a laughing painting.
This sound was rusty and creaky and entirely unnatural.
A wheeze accompanied each percussive beat.
Oliver couldn’t stand it. He reached out and pulled the frame as if to yank it from the wall.
Instead, it swung open like a door on a hinge, exposing a narrow hallway where both the wheezing and the laughing blew toward him on an internal breeze.
He paused only a moment before stepping inside.
The narrow hall bent and turned, and Oliver wondered what he might find at the end.
The sounds he followed continued to float toward him, and he was even surer than before that he heard Maxwell’s voice.
Another turn in the passage and he stood facing a wall, but one with a series of slits in the wood.
Light leaked through into his corridor, and he pressed his face close to the plaster--daubed surface.
Maxwell sat on a low couch, his feet tucked up beneath him, a book on his lap and a grin overspreading his face. And beside him, partially visible to Oliver from his hiding place, was a stooping, silver-haired figure who could only be Uncle Arthur.
He hadn’t seen his uncle in years, but the curve of his neck and shoulders, the bend of grief, was the same.
Now Oliver saw where the terrible wheezing, crackling noise came from. The old man was trying to laugh.
It wasn’t as if Oliver had believed his uncle was incapable of emotions other than frustration and exasperation.
He’d simply never considered the man might enjoy .
. . anything. In all the time Oliver spent within the walls of Shadowbrook, there had never been a hint of affection in the old man’s treatment of Oliver.
In fact, he’d been clear that Oliver was better off anywhere but Shadow-brook: school, Cambridge, the city, it didn’t matter.
He was unwilling to take young Oliver in and eager to see him off again.
They’d never rested together on a couch, laughing over a story.
Yet here the old man sat, one arm draped over the thin, frail shoulders of little Maxwell. The old man smiling. Laughing. Embracing.
Such tender attention. Oliver would have paid any price to feel that arm across his shoulders in his youth. What had changed? How had Arthur Ravenscroft come to this?
It had to mean something, but all Oliver’s assumptions made him feel alone and tired.
Oliver stood many minutes with his eye near the slit in the wall before retreating from the spot. So much guilt propelled him back through the twisting passages, he hardly noticed the sounds that followed him.
And how foolish he’d been to consider the painting as the source of the laughter.
Nothing so mystical. Only another instance in which he was not the kind of person his uncle could love.
On the day he left Shadowbrook to attend school, he’d made himself a promise.
Oliver Waverley would become his own kind of man—one who didn’t need to depend on his uncle for support.
He’d learn. He’d make connections. He’d discover the paths to independence and the new industry signaling England’s future.
Shadowbrook was the past—and not only that, it was the worst echoes of every terrible time in Oliver’s life. Despair and devastation had always hung like a fog within the walls of the house. But he was no longer the needy, terrified child he’d been at the death of his parents.
He’d show Uncle Arthur. He’d made something of himself, and now he could earn his uncle’s respect. He’d make sound financial decisions and take this heap of stones and turn it into a prospect worthy of the future.
If he had to do it all behind his uncle’s back, he would gladly do so. And there would be money enough to buy the best care possible for what ailed Maxwell, to see Uncle Arthur established in a house in which he could be comfortable, and for Oliver to walk away once and for all and never look back.