Page 26 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

The curtains were pulled over the windows again, so either Maxwell had climbed out of bed to close them or Mrs. Randle had been in to bring him breakfast.

Pearl peered into Maxwell’s face, which looked healthier than it had yesterday.

She needed to tread gently. If she pushed him too far too fast, he could fall into a far more serious bout of illness.

Dr. Dunning made it clear Pearl needed to give him sufficient rest to strengthen, but not too much.

Finding that balance was one of the most difficult aspects of her work.

“Shall we go for a wander?” she asked brightly.

Slowly, he sat up in his bed and shook his head. “Can we stay in here? I want to know about Oliver’s plan for the house. Teach me about ready-made clothing and factories.”

It was rare for the boy to ask for information concerning something Pearl knew nothing about, but this was one of those instances.

“I’d need to do a fair bit of learning before I could teach you anything about that. Ask Mr. Waverley your pressing questions. I believe he’ll talk with you about it.”

Maxwell shook his head. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“You’re never a bother.” Pearl wished she could scrub such thoughts from the child’s mind. There was no one in the household who found it troubling in the least dedicating themselves to his care and comfort.

Resettling himself against his pillow, he said, “I think I’ll sleep some more.”

Pearl saw the curtain of sadness begin to descend over Maxwell.

“Maybe some music?” she suggested.

“If you like.”

Pearl hurried across the room to the shelf where they kept the instrument they’d found in one of their explorations.

She lifted the old violin from its case, holding it carefully.

Once she’d tightened the bow and run its hairs across the block of rosin, she went back to Maxwell.

She’d often offered to teach him to play, but he wasn’t interested in learning.

He said he loved to listen to her play, that the sounds of the instrument felt familiar and comforting.

Standing at the end of his bed, she began playing one of his favorite chamber pieces and could see immediately how the music calmed him.

After a time, she moved from chamber pieces to country dances.

When she saw Maxwell’s feet rocking from side to side beneath his sheets, she chose another joyful song, and then another. Soon he was grinning and pretending to direct her, his hand waving in perfect time.

Just to make him laugh, she skipped around the room for the last few counts of the song, finally dropping onto her back at the foot of his bed in a display of exhaustion she didn’t feel.

Making music filled her, fueled her. She always heard music in her head.

It kept her company in the cold and silent halls of the house.

She could play for Max all day, especially when she saw how it cheered him as well.

Max applauded. “Well played, Miss Ellicott,” he said in an echo of the plummy expression she sometimes used when she read to him in character voices. “What will we do now?”

She sat up and schooled her face into a stern expression. “Lessons.”

Sometimes such a look and statement would inspire a joke from Maxwell, a pretended disgust for study, but the boy didn’t seem to have the energy to argue with her today, even in jest.

Their mathematics lesson lasted less than half an hour before Pearl noticed Max tiring. First a slump of his shoulders, then a casual rubbing at his eyes that went on too long, and finally a great yawn.

Pearl took the book from Maxwell’s hand and asked the final question. “If you rest for twenty-seven minutes, how many seconds will pass?”

He reached for the paper and pencil, but she shook her head. “Try it inside your head only.”

She didn’t actually expect the boy to figure complicated numbers in his mind, but she thought it might keep his brain busy as he fell asleep. Dwelling on numbers was much better for him than wondering why his illness had struck him yet again.

Pearl took her usual chair by the fireplace, the one angled slightly toward the door.

It was her habit to sit there with Maxwell and read to him, which she’d done since she first came to Shadowbrook.

Of course the boy couldn’t read for himself then, but even after he learned, he still loved for her to read aloud.

She picked up the book they’d been reading, and she realized the last time they’d been inside the pages was before Oliver arrived.

He’d upset their household routines, but more than that, he’d altered Pearl’s thoughts and feelings.

Her heart was never quite settled anymore.

For all the infuriating, frustrating bother Oliver brought, she couldn’t deny her attraction to him.

He was a contradiction, a push and a pull, and Pearl was incapable of deciding whether she was more charmed or repelled.

None of that made any difference in her work. She was here to care for Max, to teach him and to love him.

It was silly to think life at Shadowbrook was any different now.

Her daily routine would be the same as it had always been.

The heir to the property was present, and she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t fascinating, much in the way an unsolvable puzzle was fascinating.

But nothing fundamental in the household had actually changed.

Except for the addition of Madame Genevieve, of course. And the dog.

She realized she hadn’t told Max about the dog. Glancing over at the bed, she saw him breathing steadily, his eyes closed.

There was some sense of relief in not mentioning Madame Genevieve to Maxwell.

The woman was not Pearl’s concern, nor did she need to be Max’s.

Now that Pearl had answered—or refused to answer—the woman’s strange questions, maybe they could exist within the house in their own orbits; no need for them to collide again.