Page 20 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

When she awoke in the morning, Pearl listened to the sounds of Shadowbrook House. The wind seemed to whisper her secret into the room around her. She lay in her bed a few moments longer, reliving her stolen moment with Oliver.

It wasn’t a dream—she’d really done it. She’d kissed Oliver Waverley.

The thought made her blush at her own presumption.

But not with any sense of repentance. Not a single regret.

He may be the most infuriating man she’d ever met, but he was also the most handsome, and, despite his tendency to sometimes say thoughtless things, he acted with kindness and care. She liked him a great deal.

She’d been so bold. And he’d been so willing. She put a finger to her lower lip, remembering the feel of his mouth against hers, and traced the line of her smile.

She dressed quickly and went to Maxwell’s door, pausing only a few seconds in the spot outside her room, just there where her feet had been planted so near his. The place she was sure she’d stop and remember every day from now on.

In his bed, Maxwell lay with his arm across a large pillow, his face still pale, but breathing gently.

Water oozed from the damp spot in his ceiling, and she hoped a few days of warm fires and any stray sunlight she could coax inside might dry the leak.

The sharp tang of mildew hung stronger in the room this morning.

She would need to gather some pine boughs to repel the unpleasant scent.

She pulled aside his window curtains and greeted him with a smile, hoping her expression hid any lingering fear about his health. “Good morning, Master Ravenscroft.”

“Hello, Pearl.” His voice was quiet, but not as ragged as it often was the morning after a prolonged coughing fit.

She rested the back of her hand against his forehead, finding him warm but not overheated. “How were your dreams? Did you embark on any grand adventures through the night?”

It was their usual morning conversation, but Pearl wished for once he might ask her about her dreams. Or even about what might have preceded them. Not that she’d share many details with Maxwell. But the temptation to tell someone of her moment with Oliver was strong.

“There was a flood in my dream. The river rose higher and higher over the banks until the main floor of the house was entirely underwater. But we didn’t mind. All the staff moved upstairs into the rooms beside ours. Oliver and I stood at the landing and cast fishing lines down the stairs.”

Pearl laughed. “And did you have any luck?”

Maxwell shook his head. “Before we could catch anything, Oliver dove down the stairs and swam away. I tried to catch him with my pole, but I didn’t want to hurt him.

Only bring him back.” Rubbing his fists against his eyes, he asked, “Will you go get him and bring him to me? I want to tell him about his terrific dive.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Let’s get you dressed and go out to the dock. Oliver can meet us there, and you can tell him.”

Maxwell shook his head. “I want to stay inside.”

Pearl knew Maxwell felt most safe and comfortable indoors, but she was sure a walk in the fresh air would help him breathe easier. She put a singsong lilt in her voice. “We can’t stay inside all the time.”

“Maybe you can’t, but I can.”

She didn’t want to begin the day with arguments, but there was one angle she hadn’t tried. “Should we ask Oliver if there’s anything on the property he’d like to show you? A place he loves?”

“I don’t think Oliver loves the house at all. I think he’s afraid of it.” The boy’s voice softened to a whisper. “I think he’s a bit afraid of me, also.”

It might be true. Maybe Oliver’s thoughtless comments last night were based in a worry he didn’t even know he had.

Instead of answering, she lay her cheek against his hair and stayed silently beside him for a few moments.

“Would you like to look at your new book?” Pearl recalled she’d not even been able to show him the puzzles Nanette had chosen for him.

Maxwell slid down deeper into his covers. “I should sleep.”

“You’ve had a lovely rest. Let’s get up.”

He shook his head against his pillow. “The house wishes me to sleep more.”

Such talk wasn’t a good sign. She did not like to hear him say these things.

After a bout of illness, sometimes Maxwell wallowed in his bed for days.

She knew rest was helpful, but only to a certain point.

Afterward, too much time in bed seemed to make him weaker.

And lately he’d taken to telling her it was what the house wanted. What the walls told him.

When he spoke this way, she shuddered. His conversations with voices she couldn’t hear was a childish fancy, but she wished it would stop. When she asked, he told her the house had always spoken to him. Didn’t it talk to her?

She refused to engage further about it. Not only because it frightened her, but because she was sure it couldn’t be good for him. His reality was already so foreign to her; illness and confinement were not elements of her childhood.

He pulled the blanket near his chin.

Another hour’s rest shouldn’t hurt him. In any case, an argument certainly wouldn’t help. But she’d offer him one more chance to change his mind.

“If you wish more rest, I’ll leave you to it.” She grinned at him, forcing aside lingering thoughts of what the house wished. “I’ll go discover a new place for us to explore.”

When he didn’t toss aside his covers and leap from the bed, she saw he really was feeling low.

Maxwell’s murmur sounded flat. “Don’t find all the house’s secrets while I sleep.”

She bent close and touched his nose with her fingertip. “No more than one or two, I promise.”

She could see he was attempting to smile for her, but the gesture was weak and sad. “You always know more about Shadow-brook than I do.”

“Well, of course. I have to stay at least one step ahead of you. It’s what your grandfather pays me for.” Her teasing tone and wink might have masked the concern she felt, but his lethargy and sadness worried her. He appeared more ill the longer he stayed in his bed.

The boy’s next words were so quiet she almost missed them. “Please don’t leave me.”

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she shook her head. “Of course not. I’m happy to stay. I’ll pull the chair up to the bed and read with you.”

Maxwell shook his head and half covered his face with his hands, as if he needed to hide from her before he could say the rest. “I don’t mean while I sleep. I mean, please don’t go away from here.”

Pearl leaned across the side of the bed and took Maxwell’s hands in her own. “I promise you I will be here at Shadowbrook House for as long as you need me. I will grow old by your side if that is what you wish.”

His eyelids fluttered, and his mouth opened wide in a yawn. “It’s a dangerous world outside these walls. Stay here. Stay safe. Stay with us.”

Before Pearl could ask any of the questions Maxwell’s strange words brought to her mind, his eyes closed again.

She would never abandon the boy. Never. Not while staying near him was in her power.

Maxwell Ravenscroft looked nothing like Pearl’s younger brother—Eddie had spiky, dark locks and the ruddy cheeks of children who played outside regularly—but when he slept, Maxwell reflected the sweet rest of her brother after he’d tired himself from a day of running and play.

The slope of Max’s soft cheek, eyelashes resting against it like tiny flower petals, always brought her brother to her mind.

She knew only too well how quickly a child could go from healthy and tumbling about, making far too much noise and laughing constantly, to silent and still. She had, after all, only been gone from home two nights. That terrible winter, two nights were enough to change everything.

The illness had attacked her family that quickly.

And Pearl had not been home to stop it, nor to comfort them, nor to ward away the sickness or succumb herself. The influenza carried off her family before she returned home.

She would not allow such a thing to happen again to someone else she had grown to love.

Looking out into the hall, she saw Oliver’s bedroom door hung open. She walked past, glancing casually inside. He wasn’t there. Maybe he was in the kitchen.

She’d only made it halfway to the stairs when she noticed Violet fluttering through the room across the hall from Oliver’s. Pearl had never seen that door open. It was one of the many rooms at Shadowbrook that had always been locked up tight.

She put her head inside.

The room’s walls were hung with a warm, golden paper, as if regardless of the stormy winter day, the sun shone within.

A huge four-poster bed dominated the floor, but even with such a massive piece of furniture inside it, the room was larger than Pearl’s or Maxwell’s by half again.

Large enough for three windows, the far wall stretched wide, letting in more gray light than any of the other bedrooms Pearl had explored.

Pearl was surprised to find such a lovely room in such good condition. Why was it always locked?

At the side of the bed, Violet shook out a long linen sheet, snapping the cloth midair and snatching the far end into her hand.

“Would you like help?” Pearl asked, though it was clear Violet had linen-folding skills Pearl couldn’t match.

The girl glanced up and smiled, holding one side of the sheet toward her. “Thank you. I’d appreciate another pair of hands.”

“I’ve never seen this room open before. What’s happening here? Is Mr. Ravenscroft moving rooms?”

Violet’s eyes widened, and she looked at the door. “Oh, no, Miss Ellicott. And if he were, I’d not be allowed to prepare his bed.”

“What do you mean?”

The girl became very interested in smoothing the sheet against the bottom edge of the mattress. “I haven’t yet proven myself. Only Mr. Jenkinson and Mrs. Randle are permitted inside the master’s room.”