Page 16 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

Back in his gloomy room, Oliver removed his necktie and ran his finger beneath the collar of his shirt. An evening within these lonely walls might allow him some rest. With all the research, letter writing, and meetings he’d done in the past months, a quiet night was truly welcome.

He settled himself into the chair beside the fire but had barely placed his feet upon the footrest when there was a knock at the bedroom door.

Was it Pearl? He jumped from the chair to answer her knock.

He hadn’t made it more than two strides before he realized it couldn’t possibly be her.

He slowed his steps. Not only was she angry with him, but she was also a woman of education and breeding; she would not come to his bedroom door for a visit.

Unless something had happened to Maxwell and she needed his help.

He quickened his pace again. Or maybe it was Maxwell at the door, feeling stronger and wishing to continue their conversation.

He wrenched the knob in anticipation of a visit from either and found himself looking into the unsmiling face of Jenkinson.

“Mr. Waverley,” Jenkinson said in a toneless voice. “Mr. Ravenscroft will see you in the west parlor.”

Finally. This was welcome news.

“Of course. I’ll be downstairs in ten minutes.”

Jenkinson gave a single jerk of his head. “Now.”

With a splutter of badly withheld frustration, Oliver gestured to his rumpled shirt and loosened collar. “I can be ready soon.”

“You will come when you’re called,” Jenkinson said.

Oliver grabbed his small portfolio from the table and hurried after Jenkinson. Not that he was nervous to walk the halls of Shadowbrook alone, but Oliver wasn’t sure which was the west parlor. Drawing room, sitting room, receiving room, morning room? Each wing of each floor held several.

He followed Jenkinson down the stairs, the butler standing as straight and tall as he always had.

The man seemed not to have aged a day in all the years Oliver had known him.

His hair was the same bristly thickness.

No smile lines marred his face. He’d lost none of his rigidity.

His shoulders widened to an almost impossible degree, a figure more like a boxer than a butler.

Oliver was very aware of his own posture, loose and flowing. He’d have considered the way he carried himself comfortable , except he’d once heard his uncle call him slovenly. A boy didn’t forget something like that, even when he’d become a man.

With an effort, he lengthened his spine and held his trunk straight, not even allowing his chest to expand and contract with his breathing. Watching Jenkinson walk down the stairs, Oliver was sure if he tried to keep his own legs so stiff, he’d tumble directly into the butler’s back.

Fine. The upper half of him was a good place to start. If the west parlor was in view of the main staircase, his uncle would see him in at least partial rigidity.

At the main entry, Jenkinson took a left into a hallway lit by gas lamps.

The yellow light and steady hissing made Oliver shudder.

There was something serpentine about the whole arrangement of twisting hallways lit by small golden orbs, as if the eyes of great snakes watched him in constant disapproval.

When Jenkinson finally stopped in front of a doorway, Oliver nearly bumped into the man’s back. He stopped himself just before contact. Hurriedly, he checked that the buttons of his waistcoat were fastened and pushed the hair off his forehead.

“Mr. Waverley, sir.”

Jenkinson moved aside, and Oliver stepped inside a room he was sure he’d never been in before. His uncle sat in a deep armchair, the soaring back rising above his balding head.

In this light, his uncle looked ghastly. If Jenkinson hadn’t aged at all, Arthur Ravenscroft had done so in double time. Oliver attempted to hide his shock at the full view of the skeletal figure being swallowed by his chair.

He moved toward his uncle, holding out his hand. “Uncle Arthur, it is so good to see you. I am thankful to you for calling for me.” Both statements were untrue in their way, but Oliver delivered his words with what he hoped was a confident smile.

Uncle Arthur didn’t take Oliver’s hand, didn’t rise, didn’t smile. Two spindly fingers gestured to a chair.

Under the scrutiny of a gaze that had only ever found him lacking, Oliver perched at the edge of the cushion and held his portfolio to his chest.

One or two stiff breaths were all it took for him to realize this would never do. He was not a naughty child. He’d done nothing for which he should be reprimanded or punished.

With that thought in mind, Oliver sat back into the chair and relaxed the muscles of his neck.

He’d arrived at Shadowbrook as both heir and counselor, ready to help his uncle take the ancestral home into the twentieth century.

Not that Uncle Arthur looked as if he’d make it that long.

Twenty years seemed a great way into the future when a man appeared as frail and pitiful as Arthur did.

But when he spoke, there was nothing frail or pitiful in his voice.

“You asked to come here to bring me a plan for the future of my house. Let me see it.”

The long-fingered hand, knuckles like pebbles beneath his skin, gestured impatiently for Oliver to hand over the portfolio.

That was not part of Oliver’s practiced presentation.

“Indeed, I have a very exciting possibility to introduce to you. Tell me, what do you know of the garment industry?”

Oliver had rehearsed his speech many times, speaking the words aloud and imagining his uncle’s reaction to his opening line.

At no time had he expected his uncle would stare at him without the slightest hint of interest or curiosity.

In his mind, this was when Uncle Arthur would say, “I know very little. Please, tell me more.”

In reality, the man only continued to stare.

Oliver leaned forward, reasserting a physical confidence even if he felt none.

“Over the past few years, manufacturing has moved from simply making cloth to producing ready-to-wear items. At first, these were mainly soldier’s uniforms, but many merchants in the north are now selling ready-made pieces to shops. ”

Oliver swallowed but never took his eyes from his uncle.

“Mass clothing production is only a step away, and there is no reason it all needs to stay in the north. Here in Hampshire, we have an untapped workforce, a population ready for change, and a shipping lane that’s not controlled by the Manchester mill owners.”

Feeling himself getting excited, he watched his uncle’s face for any sign he’d caught the vision.

Nothing.

“The Trowbridge family has already sold, as I’m sure you know, and their deal was incredibly lucrative.”

Still his uncle did not respond.

“When the Campbell Clothing Company secures a sufficient sector of riverbank lands, they’ll be able to convert the houses into factories.

Offer employment to dozens, possibly hundreds of local families.

The company will thrive, and so will the surrounding villages.

Shadowbrook has been more than you can handle for years, and as time goes on, it’s going to become harder to keep it from tumbling into the river.

We can set you up in comfort. Looked at in any kind of logical light, this is the solution we’ve all been waiting for. ”

He continued talking, explaining, justifying. Words flowed from him.

Was he speaking too loudly? Too fast? He was sure he’d overlooked many of the descriptive phrases he’d planned. When Oliver finished, Uncle Arthur seemed to sink into his chair as if to escape Oliver’s verbal onslaught.

“Well, Uncle? What do you think?”

The old man took a handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and dabbed at the corner of his mouth. He lay the cloth across one knee, pressing it flat with both hands as if the conversation would go much more smoothly if his pocket square had no wrinkles.

Ravenscroft then removed a pocket watch on a chain, glanced at it, and compared the time to the clock on the mantel. He made a small adjustment to the pocket watch.

A tug to each sleeve, pulling his cuffs down his bony wrists seemed to take hours. Oliver was nearly jumping out of his skin—or at least out of his seat—when his uncle finally spoke.

“I am unconvinced.”

Oliver steadied himself, took a bracing breath, and closed his eyes for a second. “I have significant further evidence. Allow me to show you some drawings—”

Was that a scoff? Did the dismissive sound mean what it had meant so many years ago? Uncle Arthur had never thought much of Oliver’s drawings, once chiding him to put down the pencils and do something worth his time.

He pretended not to have heard the noise. It was better to ignore his uncle’s reactions and continue the presentation as he’d rehearsed it, by assuming he was either alone or with a welcom ing audience.

He opened his portfolio to a pen-and-ink drawing of Shadow-brook as it appeared on Oliver’s last visit.

The drawing was done from the dock at the river, the house looming atop the high bank.

The moon lit the house from behind, highlighting each crumbling turret, each jagged angle where stones fell and chimneys tilted.

Oliver remembered sitting on the dock, his legs crossed beneath him, as he stared up the bank at the ruined corners and edges of the house.

He remembered moving his pen across the paper, carefully following each line of deterioration.

It was no masterpiece, but it was a faithful representation of Shadowbrook as he saw it. As it was, and as it had been.

Overgrown gardens and fallow fields added to the mood of decay in the drawing. Oliver didn’t feel words were necessary to accompany this picture of devastation, so he turned to the next page of the portfolio.

This drawing, from the same perspective of the riverside, showed what might be: a clean, angular, modern brick building placed on the same site, solid and handsome, reaching toward a cloudless sky.

Sunlight glinted off windows drawn at regular intervals, suggesting an interior full of bright light.

A graveled road curved from the side of the building down to the dock, which filled the foreground.

Drawings of wagons filled with textiles showed how busy an industry this could be, all in the space now wasted and rotting.

As Oliver explained the scope of the Campbell Company’s plan, outlining their desired timeline, his uncle sat in silence. When he dared look up, he saw Uncle Arthur studying the drawing.

Was he preparing a criticism of the drawing, or of Oliver’s presentation in general? Either possibility was likely. Not interested in waiting for his uncle’s disapproval, he made his final statements.

“We have reason to believe the Campbell Company has made their most generous offer. They are eager to move quickly, and the offer must be signed before the end of the month.”

Oliver paused to collect his thoughts. What else did he need to say? He believed he’d touched on each relevant point in favor of selling—and doing so as soon as possible.

He looked up to meet his uncle’s eye, but the old man was still staring at the drawing in Oliver’s hand. Unfolding his spindly arms from around his waist, he held his hand out for the portfolio. Oliver slid it across the low table between them, watching anxiously for any sign of approval.

Uncle Arthur stared at the drawing for several long moments before turning the page back to the rendering of Shadowbrook as it now stood.

Seeing the picture from this angle, upside down and across the table, Oliver recognized he’d used a heavy hand in its execution.

How dark the clouds. How tangled the encroaching woods.

The house itself, which he thought he’d impartially represented, was in fact shown in its worst possible light.

Oliver didn’t regret such a decision; how could he?

That was how the house lived in his memory, and nothing on the outside had improved in the time he’d been away.

Something tickled the corner of Oliver’s mind, however. Something about candlelit tables and platters of lemon cake. Something about fires banked in bedrooms. Something about a smiling governess and a laughing child.

Uncle Arthur still said nothing, and Oliver could wait no longer. He fired his most likely shot. “This isn’t only about you and the building you’ve lived in all your life. You need to think of the boy.”

The old man’s eyes snapped to Oliver’s. A fire burned there, surprising in its ferocity.

When he responded, the words carried to Oliver in a hissed whisper. “I do nothing but think of the boy.”

Oliver could not sit there and listen to such an expression of self-deception. “Obviously not, or you would take him to the city for treatment. His illness is clearly serious and only worsening, and keeping him locked up in this house another winter isn’t going to heal him.”

Another of Arthur Ravenscroft’s sounds of contempt preceded his next command. “Do not speak of what you do not understand.”

“What I understand is that this is no place to convalesce. There are many options in London for treating childhood illnesses. Sign the contract. Leave this horrible house. Take the boy to the city. Give him a chance to grow up strong.”

Uncle Arthur stood from his chair, waving his arm in Oliver’s face as though it was a saber. “You have been here only a few days. You know nothing of the care Maxwell receives.”

“You are correct that I’ve been here only a few days, but it took me only minutes to recognize that this house is not safe for Maxwell.

It’s a terrible place to recuperate from an illness.

But it’s more than that, and you know it.

His situation is dangerous, and having him here is doing you and the household no good.

Shadowbrook is dying, and the only thing that could hasten the process is to keep a dying child imprisoned within its walls. ”

A crash and a gasp stopped Oliver’s torrent of words, and he turned to the parlor’s doorway.

There stood Pearl, her face pale and angry, her hands covering Maxwell’s ears, as if such a precaution might keep Oliver’s outburst from being overheard.

A large leatherbound book lay at the boy’s feet, its spine stretched wide, pages splayed.

Oliver jumped from his seat and hurried toward Pearl and Maxwell. Before he could reach them, Pearl swept the boy into her arms and ran from the room.