Page 21 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

“I doubt that has anything to do with your skills. I think he simply dislikes company. And as he rarely leaves the room, the straightening and cleaning would require someone to arrive at a moment’s notice. You’re kept too busy throughout the house for such complicated timing.”

She watched Violet’s face relax into her usual pleasant smile.

“Who are you preparing the room for, then?” Pearl directed the question to the linens so as not to appear to be interrogating the girl. “Seems unlikely we’ll have another visitor so quickly after Mr. Waverley’s arrival.”

“It is soon. I didn’t have much warning. She’ll be here any moment.”

She ? Who was she ? Pearl wanted to know everything. Immediately. But she did not wish to appear too eager for gossip.

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you finish in here.” Pearl unwrapped a few down-filled pillows from their dustcovers and plumped them against the massive headboard.

Violet nodded in thanks and kept working.

Pearl’s patience was getting her none of the answers she hoped for. She’d have to ask pointed questions. She played her hands across the leaf-patterned spread folded on a divan and asked, “Who is coming?”

Violet looked up, surprise in her widened eyes. “Why, Madame Genevieve. Surely Mr. Ravenscroft told you.”

Pearl remembered the letter she brought from the post office, but she shook her head. “He didn’t tell me there would be another visitor.”

“But you must know her. She’s in the papers.”

“Oh?” Pearl didn’t trust herself to ask further questions. She was at a complete loss.

Violet looked at Pearl and nodded sagely for an eleven-year-old. “She’s in different papers than you read, I think.”

Violet gestured to the rumpled blanket across the bed, as if pointing out the obvious.

Pearl moved to the other side and pulled the linen across the mattress. “But you know of the woman? What do you think I need to know?”

Violet pulled the linen tight. “I would think Mr. Ravenscroft would tell you about the plans to have her here. Especially since you’re among the chosen.”

Chosen? By whom?

Unbidden, the image of Oliver’s smiling face came to Pearl’s mind. Whatever Violet’s comment meant, it couldn’t be what Pearl was thinking of. She cleared her throat with a delicate cough.

“Chosen for what?”

Violet looked away. “I beg your pardon. I’ve spoken out of turn.”

With a smile, Pearl moved to the chair in the corner and began to fold the holland cover draped over it. “No pardon is necessary. I assure you, if I were to take offense, it wouldn’t be for being chosen.”

Violet stammered. “It’s what the maids say. Mr. Ravenscroft sees you. He talks to you—you and Mr. Jenkinson and Mrs. Randle. He doesn’t talk to the rest of the staff. We’re invisible. But you’re part of the house. Part of the family.”

Pearl’s attempt to snap the covering into a fold in midair was nowhere as neat as Violet’s had been. She folded the sheet awkwardly as she considered the girl’s words.

“I’m not part of the family. I’m not part of any family.”

“You eat with him.” Violet didn’t seem to be arguing, simply explaining.

“Very rarely.”

“You have permission to go visiting. You sleep in an upstairs room with windows and a fireplace.”

The girl’s words struck Pearl. She enjoyed a different set of privileges from most of the staff, though she’d never thought how that might appear to the others.

Pearl placed the poorly folded sheet at the edge of the bed. “Violet, I apologize if I act as though there’s any difference in my station and yours. I am an employee of this house exactly like you are. But you’re definitely more skilled than I am in many areas.”

The girl smiled at the compliment. “You’re doing just fine.”

The sound of jangling bells floated into the room through the open window.

Violet dropped the blanket and hurried to the window. “She’s arrived.”

Pearl followed her to the window. The strangest carriage she’d ever seen pulled to a stop in front of the house.

A covered landau that might have been in fashion fifty years earlier, the carriage was hung with an abundance of small silken flags fluttering from every edge and corner.

Long poles obscured by dozens of metal bells reached up from the rear.

Whorls of bright paint across the sides of the carriage gave an impression of smoke swirling through a room.

Pearl thought the carriage’s appearance might be quaint if the whole thing didn’t seem so very loud.

Then the carriage door opened and an arm emerged.

Pearl and Violet looked at each other. When they looked back out the window, the arm shook as if to remove an insect from a sleeve, but instead of a flying creature, scarves unfurled. Dozens of brightly colored, gauzy scarves.

Violet leaned close to Pearl. “Is she waving at us?”

The extended hand snapped its fingers, and the driver leaped from his seat.

It was a testament to the garishness of the carriage that Pearl had not noticed him.

His top hat, at least twelve inches high, was bedecked with ribbons that matched the bright silken flags decorating the carriage.

One sleeve of his tailcoat was bright orange, the other green.

Thick blue-and-white stripes stretched across his back.

He scuttled to the open door and held out a hand toward the extended arm.

A flick of the wrist brought him to a halt. Over the sound of more jangling bells—the horses, Pearl had suddenly noticed, were as gaudily appointed as the driver and the carriage—she heard the man say, “Right. Of course.” Then he dropped into a low bow.

Upon straightening his posture, he took the offered hand. The scarf-bedecked arm was followed by the rest of the woman, every newly visible inch of her more unbelievable than the last.

Dressed in layers of flowing fabrics, she looked as unlike the fashionable ladies of the new decade as Pearl could imagine.

Where corsets tightened most bodices, this woman wore drapes of filmy cloth.

As she stood and let each layer of fluttering silk settle around her, she patted the sides of her brassy orange hair.

With the movement, dozens of metal bangles clanked together, joining the ringing bells on the horses’ harnesses.

Tilting her head upward to take in the expanse of the jagged roofline, she sighed loudly enough for Pearl and Violet to hear through the open window. In a surprisingly deep and sonorous voice, she said, “Ah, Shadowbrook. At last we meet.”