Page 4 of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

“Mr. Oliver Waverley,” Pearl whispered to herself, smiling at the thought of him.

She’d heard of Mr. Waverley, but he’d never visited the house in the six years she’d been at Shadowbrook.

Six years was a long time to stay away from home, even if it was home in name only.

Had he chosen not to come, or had Mr. Ravenscroft made him feel unwelcome?

Pearl couldn’t imagine avoiding any house that held an uncle or a cousin.

She’d give anything for a family connection.

Having never met him before today, she’d assumed several things about his character, most of them befitting a villain from one of Maxwell’s adventure stories, complete with an oiled black mustache, a swirling black cape, and a matching black heart.

The truth was much brighter.

Oliver Waverley smiled a lot for a villain.

And his easy laugh held no malice. He looked quite nice in his neatly cut suit and waistcoat instead of an imagined billowing cloak.

What was she supposed to do with this new information?

She’d never considered Oliver Waverley might be charming.

Nor had she thought about the possibility he’d be terribly handsome.

As she stood in the dark cupboard, she wondered if he was, in fact, particularly good-looking, or if her reaction was simply to seeing someone new in this house, someone near her age.

But then she remembered that smile. His deep brown eyes, wide shoulders, and narrow waist. His hands, large and gentle. His hair that appeared freshly cut, as if he’d taken care to look his best for this unusual visit to Shadowbrook.

Pearl resolved to seek out further information about Shadow-brook’s heir and felt her smile growing larger at the thought of how such information might be gathered.

She’d been quick to assume the gossip Mr. Waverley had heard about Maxwell was cruel, and far too quick in assuming he believed it. But maybe Mr. Waverley’s question about Max was more kindly explained. Perhaps he was simply looking for information about his cousin.

He’d asked her to make an introduction, which had to be a good thing. If he didn’t care about the boy, he’d hardly seek him out. Oliver Waverley seemed to take at least a passing interest in Maxwell, and nothing mattered to Pearl more than Max’s well-being.

Probably not a villain after all.

Pearl replayed the memory of their unexpected meeting.

Oliver Waverley had known about this room.

He’d pressed the hidden latch. He’d found her here.

She tried not to dwell on the fact that she’d thrown herself at him and embraced him as he opened the door.

How could she justify such an action? She had been expecting Max, but what accounted for her continuing to hold on to Mr. Waverley’s arms for several shocked moments after it became clear he was not the small boy in her charge?

Such thoughts might make a governess question her state of mind.

Perhaps, she thought with a smile, it was best to pretend it hadn’t happened.

Pearl shook herself from the admittedly pleasant wanderings in her mind. She had work to do.

With her back to the secret door leading out to the hallway, Pearl stretched her arms toward the ceiling.

She couldn’t reach all the way to the top of the wall, but, standing on her tiptoes, she managed to touch the squares of the decorative molding.

She pressed on one and felt it click, twisted the next block to the right a quarter turn, then flipped open the third square of wood.

A door in the molding above her released with a quiet squeak of its hinges.

She’d been here before, naturally. One didn’t simply unlatch trapdoors in secret cupboards by accident.

But she’d never opened this one while trying to remain so quiet.

Nor had she ever before attempted doing so without a lamp.

The ambient light from the hallway cast little glow in the dark cupboard.

Luckily, she’d cleared out the debris of the years on a previous exploration, so when the flap in the ceiling opened this time, she wasn’t covered with dust and leaves and crunchy, desiccated shells of many-legged creatures.

Now she made a leap and reached for the exposed area.

This, too, she’d done before, but it took a few tries to jump high enough to reach the stick of wood she’d placed at the ledge.

She gave it a tug and a rope ladder unrolled down the wall.

Seeing Pearl’s utter inelegance and silliness in this moment would have delighted Maxwell.

However, knowing there was a man in the house, a stranger, Pearl didn’t think her remaining pride would allow her to leap up and down when there was the slightest chance Oliver Waverley might see.

She’d save any further acrobatics for when she and Maxwell were alone.

After all, she and Maxwell were alone nearly all the time.

She gave the rope ladder a final tug, making sure it would bear Maxwell’s weight.

She felt a tickle across her shoulder and reached up to brush her hand across her dress.

A large spider crept onto her finger, and she shook her hand to toss it to the ground.

After all, it was only a spider. But the feeling of crawling along the neckline of her dress persisted, and she brushed her shoulder again. Two more spiders crept across her hand.

One spider was nothing to panic about, but more than one was distressing, to say the least.

She shivered and began brushing at her dress in earnest, pushing against the fabric to rid herself of the deeply uncomfortable sensation of spindly legs on her skin.

The sensation was accompanied by a murmur of fear—not words, exactly, but something more like audible shudders.

Whispers she often heard in the darker corners of the house.

Pearl forced herself to take a deep breath and think clearly. She was alone in the cupboard. No one stood here whispering. The spiders were statistically unlikely to hurt her. They were only spiders, not bats, or rats, or worse.

Stop , she told herself. Thinking of rats was not helpful.

She forced herself to consider her reaction.

Why was her breath coming fast, her skin crawling, and her face heating?

Was it the darkness? The whispers? Being confined here for the sake of the game?

The sheer number of spiders that might be hiding in any of the secret rooms in this house?

And was her discomfort enough to ruin Maxwell’s game?

The last question was easiest to answer. She would suffer far worse than the shudder of tiny legs on her skin to give Maxwell a few moments of delight at discovering this secret room.

But she couldn’t get the memory of spider legs out of her mind. Pearl knew what to do—think of something pleasant. Like Oliver Waverley’s sudden appearance in Shadowbrook House.