Page 19 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

Oliver heard the huge clock in the upstairs hall toll the hour before he made his way to his room. Once there, he sat at the empty desk and stared into his portfolio. Even with a charcoal pencil in his hand, he couldn’t make a mark on the blank page.

All he saw was Maxwell’s sallow face, and then Pearl’s exhausted, beautiful one.

The very air of Shadowbrook seemed to tell him he was making things worse by staying here. His visit, ill-timed and ill-conceived, was only hurting these people he had so quickly learned to care for.

He pressed the charcoal stick to the paper and made a few hasty lines.

Before he fully realized what he was drawing, Maxwell’s room took shape on the page.

In simple lines, Oliver sketched the boy in his chair, firelight highlighting one side of his face.

An attempt to draw Pearl ended in a shadowy blur.

Oliver rubbed it away with his hand, knocking the charcoal pencil to the floor.

Pushing the chair back from his table, he knelt to retrieve it.

The floorboards in his room didn’t have a speck of dust on them.

Even though Oliver had invited himself to his uncle’s house, someone was attending to this space and keeping the room in order.

Someone had been in here recently, and possibly even during his years’-long absence, to sweep and dust. It seemed odd to Oliver, since so much of the house threatened to crumble to ruin.

Now that he thought of it, the rooms he’d spent most of his time in on this visit—Maxwell’s room, several public parlors, his own blank page of a bedchamber—all felt clean and orderly.

The front doorway dropped bricks like old men lose teeth, and the chimneys leaned at dangerous angles.

Piles of crates and boxes lined the walls in several unused spaces, but the rooms that were in use were warm and comfortable.

Young Violet and the rest of the staff working with Mrs. Randle were doing a respectable job, even if at a glance the house looked like a stiff wind would knock it to the ground.

He stood staring at the blank wall for a few moments, trying to call to mind the portrait of his mother that used to hang there. Why had his uncle removed it?

There was no way to know how thoughts might form and develop in the old man’s mind, so thinking about why Uncle Arthur did anything was a waste of time and mental effort.

But their conversation had ended without a signed contract.

They’d failed to make a decision, either about the house or about the boy.

He needed to speak with his uncle again.

He closed the portfolio and took himself up the creaking, dark stairs.

At the upper landing, he realized he had no idea where to find his uncle if he was no longer in the west parlor.

Years ago, he would have been sure the old man sat in his study, but after his recent exploration, he knew the room was now unused.

To the left at the top of the stairs was the short hallway he and Maxwell had explored earlier that day. To the right, his uncle’s personal wing.

The entire hallway carried the echo of warning from his childhood.

Off-limits. Forbidden. Private.

Which one of the doors was the entrance to Uncle Arthur’s bedroom? Would Oliver dare walk up to it and knock at the dark, heavy wood? Too many habits formed in childhood still lived in his muscle memory. Silence. Avoidance. Escape.

Approaching the massive double doors of the study, he reached for the knob again. Maybe he’d missed something when he’d explored the room earlier. A closer look might give him needed information about why his uncle was so angry, so cold toward him.

The doorknob didn’t turn.

Violin music seemed to rise up the stairs, as if someone followed him, scraping a bow mournfully along strings.

He turned. There was no one else nearby.

The sound scampered up the bones of his spine, giving him a shiver.

He knew the reaction was foolish, but knowing didn’t change the way his skin crawled.

How did a simple wind turn to ghostly mystery in mere moments? This house was the least peaceful place he knew. Every part of him—his thoughts, his feelings, even his pounding heart—was on high alert when he was here.

Turning from the locked study doors, he walked along the hallway.

He had never been into Arthur Ravenscroft’s private chambers nor entered any room in the wing, until he explored the empty study.

One of these doors must be his uncle’s bedroom.

Oliver would try door after door until he discovered the right room.

You are no longer a child , he reminded himself. You have business to manage, and the sooner you settle it, the sooner you can move on. He lifted a hand to the door and tapped it with a knuckle. When there was no answer, he tried the knob, surprised when it turned beneath his touch.

The room was piled floor to ceiling with leather-strapped wooden crates. A forest smell, mildewed and slightly fungal, hung in the air. How long had these boxes been stored here?

He moved to the next door. Another rap of the knuckle, another surprisingly easy twist of the knob.

This room might once have been a library.

Books lay in tottering, disordered piles growing up from the floor.

The stacks reminded Oliver of cave formations he’d seen, pillars of sediment rising from years of slow, steady dripping.

Were his childhood books stored here? If he walked between the columns of volumes, would he find remembered stories he’d read beside his bedroom fire at night? Books that kept him company in this lonely house? The thought was almost temptation enough to stop and spend an hour exploring the piles.

But Oliver didn’t have time to spare. Not tonight. There was too much to learn, and he could not make inquiries from here.

He tapped the next door and opened it, this time to a completely empty room. Not a box or a crate. Why was this room kept empty?

His mind was half excitement, half frustration.

Why had he ignored this wing of the house when he’d had years living here to discover these treasures?

No sooner did the question occur to him than the answer came as well.

Entering this section of the house was against the rules, and indignant and resentful though he may have been about it, young Oliver had always obeyed his uncle’s rules.

The next door might hold a dragon’s hoard of treasure, while the next might be stacked floor to ceiling with firewood.

There was no telling what ideas might have sprung from the irrationality of Mr. Arthur Ravenscroft’s mind.

Oliver’s frustration was only partly about the unexplored possibilities.

The rest was for the insistence of his uncle and his employees that young Oliver be kept separate and alone.

Where was his uncle hiding? Oliver threw open the next door without bothering to rap on the wood, and he nearly knocked the old man himself to the floor.

Uncle Arthur stood, a paper clutched in his hands, as though he was on his way out of the room to meet someone.

Oliver’s mind went immediately blank. He stood in the doorway with his mouth open, foolish as he’d ever been. What was he planning to say to his uncle? Why had he barged into the room this way? What was he doing here?

Ah, well , he thought. May as well go on as I have begun.

“Uncle, we must come to an agreement as soon as possible. You know I’ve done the work to find the best outcomes for the house and property, and I hope you understand I’ve tried to find a solution that’s best for you and Max as well.”

It felt strange to refer to Maxwell by his diminutive name. Before this visit, he’d never even seen the boy, yet now he felt a gently protective swelling in his heart for his cousin. He’d hate to see the illness grow stronger while his uncle refused to see sense.

“I need your signature on the contract from the Campbell Company. The offer will not wait.”

A voice in Oliver’s head whispered that his uncle already knew his justification and the timeline. If the man hadn’t been convinced before, a repetition of the same facts and figures wouldn’t change his mind.

Oliver needed a new tactic, and it was a simple choice. It hadn’t left his mind all night.

“I witnessed one of Maxwell’s fits tonight, and I never want to see such a thing happen to the poor boy again.

We need to get him out of this place. He needs the care and protection of a specialist, a doctor who has seen many patients with Max’s symptoms. He needs to be near hospitals and institutions and medical schools.

There are people in London who can help him, and I intend to find them. ”

Oliver realized his voice grew both louder and faster as he continued to speak. He felt strongly about helping Maxwell, but he didn’t want to ruin any chance of his uncle listening to him by being too emotional.

“Please, sir, consider the boy.”

Uncle Arthur seemed to grow several inches taller and wider before Oliver’s eyes, like an animal puffing itself up to terrify its prey.

“How dare you suggest you know better than I how to take care of this house.” He did not shout. Each word came across cold and measured. If any shaking remained in the old man’s voice, it was the tremble of rage.

Before Oliver could point out the damaged exterior walls, the crumbling facade, the tumbledown outbuildings on the property, Arthur continued.

“You have no idea what the house wants. You never did listen. You seem to consider Shadowbrook to be already your own, but this is my house, and as long as I live, I am the one who decides how I will dispose of my property.”

He thrust a bony finger into Oliver’s chest.

“So long as you choose to remain here, you will honor my wishes. You will cease your foolish errand of selling my property, and you will leave all discussion of Maxwell’s care to those who know and understand.”

Habit forced Oliver’s head into a nod.

“You will leave my private wing now.” Uncle Arthur’s words came louder and louder. Surely, Jenkinson waited around some corner or other, and any moment the intimidating butler would come to drag Oliver away from the forbidden hallway.

After an evening so full of emotion, he would be happy to avoid that humiliation. Oliver turned and walked away, past the clock and its straining gears, and down the creaking stairs.

As softly as he moved, his footsteps weren’t silent. Pearl opened her door and stepped out into the hall.

She looked at him like there was something she wanted to say, but when she saw his face, she stopped. “Are you ill?”

Oliver breathed a humorless laugh and shook his head. “Only a terrible nephew. Nothing I try will please my uncle.”

She quirked that lovely eyebrow. “Maybe your efforts are misguided.”

Oliver felt equally amused and frustrated by her dismissal of all his years of work. “Is it impossible to consider I might be right?”

She nodded. For a moment, he was pleased she saw things his way. Then he realized what he’d asked. Her nod of assent meant yes , it was impossible.

His words floated toward her on a sigh. “You are a surprising woman, Miss Ellicott.”

“And you are incredibly frustrating, Mr. Waverley.”

The snap and sparkle in her eye suggested she didn’t mind a bit of frustration.

Oliver considered how to proceed. A list of possible next steps flowed through his mind and then were entirely erased as Pearl took a step forward, went up on her toes, and took Oliver’s face in her hands.

Before he fully realized what was happening, she pressed her lips to his in a kiss as warm and welcome as the first pleasant day of summer.

Surprise did not prevent him responding, and he leaned into the kiss.

When she pulled away, she looked neither embarrassed nor disappointed. She held his gaze in silence. He knew he should say something, but she’d wiped all language from his mind.

“I—I thank you,” he stammered.

Her bell-like laugh rang out quietly between them. “You’re welcome. And you’re still frustrating.”

He felt his face heat with a blush.

“Good night, Mr. Waverley.” She touched his shirt, just above his heart, with a gentle finger before stepping back into her room and closing the door behind her.

A mere second later, he was alone once again.

Had he imagined the whole encounter?

If he had, he’d happily reimagine it over and over as he took himself to his gloomy bedroom and fell asleep.