The Dark Unwinding (17 page)

Lane stirred in the grasses, and I looked quickly somewhere else, anywhere else, fully myself again. Katharine Tulman was not one of those girls. She was the clock, a clock that had lost its key, unwinding in the dark. And she had better make the most of the time she had left. When I looked up, I saw that Davy was up on top of the castle hill now, pulling something large, round, and flat from behind the ruined stone wall. I couldn’t see Bertram.

“Not already,” I heard Lane say. He was up on his elbows now, eyes on the hill. I turned just in time to see Davy sit on whatever it was that he had retrieved, give a scoot, and come flying down the long grass of the steep slope, the bottom of the hill gentling just enough to slow his speed and keep him from being flung headlong into a rock. My uncle clapped.

“Tell me,” I said, raising a brow at Lane, “that is not how you and Davy ‘make your own fun.’” But the slow grin on his face told me that it was.

By fifteen minutes before teatime, the sun was lowering and we were walking the hills again, much slower this time, counting backward until we reached the house, where my uncle could forgo the ordeal of walking through the village and take the tunnel to the workshop. I had more bumps and bruises than I could count, though my uncle informed me that I had slid twenty-eight times down the hill, and tumbled over on twenty-two of them. Evidently, steering a disc of polished brass while moving at high speeds down a grassy hill took skills I did not possess. I’d never had so much fun.

“Three, Uncle,” I said, swinging both Davy’s hand and his.
Uncle Tully must be very tired
, I thought,
to allow me to hold his hand
. “Should you like honey in your tea this afternoon?” My uncle chatted on about motion and wheels and something about spinning — nothing to do with honey — while Lane, the nearly empty basket balanced on one shoulder, held an armful of flowers I’d picked for my room, my mud-crusted boots swinging by their strings from the same hand. I had the most curious feeling then, stronger than my little flight of fancy when we’d arrived at the hill, and the very opposite of my first day in Stranwyne. Instead of moving backward through time, I felt as if I’d moved forward, and to a place that was mine, where all was as it should be. I breathed in the warm afternoon, kicked the grasses with my bare toes, and enjoyed every second of my lie.

I saw my uncle safely to his sitting room with his tea and toast, and hurried back to the house, thinking only of a bath and bed. I was flitting through the half-lit morning room, humming, when someone rose from a chair in the shadowed corner.

“Mr. Aldridge,” I gasped, startled. He bowed, his brushed coat and trimmed whiskers making my half-pinned hair and Mary’s grass-stained skirt — a condition I’d been entirely comfortable with seconds earlier — feel out of place even among the dirt and the dust sheets.

“Forgive me, Miss Tulman, but I was hoping you might come this way. I wondered if I might crave a moment of your time.”

My brows rose slightly. But I came and sat on the chair he indicated with as much dignity as I could muster, placing my dirty boots on the edge of the nearest dust sheet, tucking my bare feet beneath the skirt, the flowers in my lap. Ben cleared his throat, straightened his jacket, and eventually sat opposite me, but then he only cleared his throat again, and remained silent. My spark of curiosity fanned into flame.

“Miss Tulman,” he said finally, “I hope you know I only wish to be a true friend to you in every way.”

I waited, my back very straight in the chair.

“I’d like to speak to you about certain … connections you seem to be forging with the servants.”

Now my brows were at their full height. I waited again, but Ben seemed to feel that the obligation to speak was with me. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, Mr. Aldridge.”

Ben sighed. “Oh, come now, Miss Tulman. Everyone knows that you’ve been rolling about on those infernal wheel contraptions with Lane Moreau. It is forgivable, even harmless, perhaps. But day-long assignations? That is most … unwise.”

Assignations? All at once my disheveled state took on new meaning, and heat came creeping to my cheeks. I tucked a wayward curl back into place, trying to think how I might explain myself with delicacy. But before I could, Ben took a slip of paper from his pocket and held it out to me. I unfolded it, leaned to the gaslight, and read:

Come to the workshop after breakfast on Monday,
and we shall have a day of play on the moors.

Katharine

Such a twist on my note to Davy was so ludicrous I might have found it funny if Ben’s face had not been so grave. But when I opened my mouth to set his mind at ease, I found I had to shut it again. There was no name on this note other than my own, and Davy’s ability to read was a secret most likely known only to myself. I dithered, thinking, and wondered suddenly if this rumor had anything to do with Mr. Cooper’s visit to Mrs. Jefferies, Lane’s aunt. My flush deepened, and I saw that both my color and hesitation had been well noted by Ben. I lifted my head.

“Mr. Aldridge, I am sorry you’ve gone to such trouble, and regret having caused you any discomfort, but the outing referred to in this note was also attended by my uncle and was meant as a particular treat for him.” And with those words any little bit of amusement or even embarrassment I might have experienced gave way to irritation. How was it Ben Aldridge’s business, in any case? “Where did you come by this note?”

Ben did not answer. He was leaning forward in the chair. “For Mr. Tully, you say? You say you took Mr. Tully out on the moors?”

“Certainly.” It didn’t seem that odd to me, but evidently it did to everyone else. “And Davy, too. As well as Mr. Moreau. We had … a lovely walk.” I was not about to admit I’d been sliding down hills.

Ben got to his feet and walked to the dead hearth, where he stood gazing, apparently, at the soot stains. “Miss Tulman,” he said, “I’ll ask you to forgive me again if you find me forward, but … are your plans unchanged?”

I gathered my flowers and stood, Davy’s note crumpling in my hand. “I don’t know what you can mean, Mr. Aldridge.” I knew exactly what he meant, of course. He meant did I intend to commit my uncle to a lunatic asylum and remove the means of living from more than nine hundred men, women, and children, including Lane and Davy. “My plan is to spend a quiet evening in my room, and to hold a birthday party in thirteen days’ time. I hope you will attend. As far as anything else you might be referring to …” My back stiffened. “… as I have never had any choice in their formation or execution, I do not think it would be accurate to call those plans ‘mine.’ But you can be assured, Mr. Aldridge, that I will always act in a manner that is prudent for my own future. Good night.”

I snatched up my boots and hurried away, out the door and up the stone stairs, not pausing until I was in Marianna’s bedchamber, the door behind me locked.

I left the flowers on the dressing table and sat down on the cushioned bench where I could examine myself in the mirror, tilting my head this way and that. I had one or two new freckles, but other than that and some very unruly hair, I was unremarkable, the same girl I had been in London. But it had not escaped my attention that Ben Aldridge had just accused me of an “assignation,” therefore implying that I was a girl capable of having such. When I got past my vexation, his naïveté pleased me. I tacked this pleasant lie onto my growing list of fantasies. When the morning came, I would have twelve more days.

I
spent my last twelve days not just living my lies, but reveling in them. Ben bore me no ill will for our disagreement, evidently, as he was in the garden the next morning, ready to walk me to the workshop, and at the workshop again in the evening, to walk me back again. I was polite, as always, friendly even, amusing myself by imagining what Aunt Alice or Mrs. Hardcastle might have said had I been one of their lady friends’ nieces or daughters. How they would have bandied Ben’s merits, pursing their lips over their sugar spoons, weighing his eligibility as a suitor.

I sat up late thinking of dishes that would be sufficiently party-like without stretching Mrs. Jefferies’s cooking skills, and Mary made sure my list of needed ingredients made its way to the riverboats. In the workshop, I helped Uncle Tully build a tiny steam train, a miniature of the engine he wished to run back and forth between the villages of Stranwyne. “Little things become big things,” he told me incessantly, and on Thursday we wound the clocks, systematically, rhythmically, and in the attempt to coax my uncle’s smile, I more often discovered that he had coaxed my own.

With Mary’s help, I washed, scrubbed, scoured, and beat every particle of dirt from Marianna’s library. Both Lane and Ben came to help move the heavier furniture, and to evaluate what might be needed to make it an acceptable environment for my uncle. But all that had been seen to years ago by my grandmother, from the color of the walls to the box of toys found lurking in the corner, mostly gears and wheels and other metal playthings. I spent several late afternoons polishing each one, rubbing away the old oil and grease in Marianna’s bathtub while Mary glued wallpaper back onto the library walls.

On the day I finished the last toy — a now-gleaming boat of tin — I ventured up to the garret in search of extra chairs, and instead found my missing bonnet. It was three stories up, outside a window that did not open, tied prettily by its ribbons onto an old flagpole that could only be reached by way of the roof and a narrow ledge. I broke the window as quietly as possible in the hours just before dawn, dislodging the bonnet with a broom handle, carefully giving no consideration to what I must have done to tie it there. Twice in that week, Mary insisted on dunking me in a cold tub, to “sober me up” she said, and I submitted meekly, though I’d only been happy, with no notion that my actions were strange.

And public opinion or no, I went rolling with Lane in the ballroom, telling myself that he knocked on Marianna’s door because he wanted my company, that I longed for him to turn me faster and faster beneath the spectacular lights because I loved to spin, not because of the feel of his hands on mine. And when I caught a glimpse of those dark thoughts on his face, I pretended it was because he would miss me and had nothing to do with the irreparable harm I was going to cause him, cause all of them, when I left. I received two letters addressed in Aunt Alice’s handwriting, and fed them both to the fire, unread.

The day before the party I baked biscuits and scones with Mrs. Jefferies, an activity she had reluctantly acquiesced to, I suspected, solely on a request from Lane. But no sour look of hers could weigh down my buoyant mood. She wore her dressing gown again, her usual apparel for the heat of baking, I’d realized, and just as the last of the scones had come out of the oven, Lane ducked through the open kitchen door, a wooden pail in his hand. I smiled.

“From Sam Jones in the Upper Village,” he said, holding out the pail for me to investigate. “Or his mother, more likely. Said they were ‘for the lady’s birthday.’”

I peeked over the edge of the bucket. It was full of whortleberries. “How lovely! But …” I looked up from the bucket. “Who is with my uncle?”

“He’s gone to his sitting room. I left Ben in the workshop, just in case, but Mr. Tully said good night, so I don’t think he’ll be going anywhere.” Then he spoke very low; I had to lean close to hear. “Are you starting a new fashion, Miss Tulman?”

I looked up into the gray gaze, bemused.

“That flour on your forehead is so becoming, I reckon every girl in the village will be wearing it by next week.”

I laughed, trying to wipe my forehead with a sleeve. How I loved this little game we were playing. I nodded toward his pail. “But what shall I do with them, do you think?”

Lane shrugged. “No idea. What do you say, Aunt Bit?”

Mrs. Jefferies looked up from the bowl she was scrubbing, at the two of us standing with the bucket between us, her frizzing hair sticking out all over her head. She muttered something unintelligible.

“What was that, Aunt Bit?”

“I said, ‘tart’!” she snapped.

Lane’s brows went up, but I merely continued to smile, choosing to assume that her answer was a reference to where the berries should go, and not to my person. Either way, it didn’t really matter. “Tarts it shall be, then. Here,” I pushed the pail toward Lane’s chest. “A gentleman would wash those for me.”

He folded himself down comfortably into a chair. “A gentleman,” he said dramatically, propping his long legs, one over the other, on the table, “would do no such thing. As my old dad once said,
‘Les messieurs avant leurs privilèges.’
”

I glanced at Mrs. Jefferies, who was rolling her eyes, and returned to Lane’s rather smug expression. “All right, then, what does it mean?”

“It means,” he replied, “that gentlemen take what they can get.” And he popped a berry into his mouth, an action I responded to by flinging the flour still on my hands, which was considerable, at his head. He sputtered in a dusty cloud, and we played in a similar way until all the berries I could rescue were inside the tarts rather than him, and both Lane and the kitchen were a ghostly mess.

I went to the washbasin while Lane retreated to the garden to brush off his shirt and hair, and I was humming, still giggling to myself, rinsing off my hands, when Mrs. Jefferies said suddenly, “You remember I said I’d be making it hard for you.”

I turned to look at her, my fingers dripping. She had been quiet as a church mouse while the two of us acted so ridiculously. Not participating, of course, but not hindering either. Now she was cleaning the knife I’d used to cut up the larger berries, polishing it slowly with a cloth, and it occurred to me that she’d made not one objection to my touching her things or coating them with flour. I’d forgotten in my distraction.

“You sat right there at my table,” she continued, without looking up, “bold as brass, and I told you I’d be making what you’d come to do hard, just as hard as I could. Only I didn’t have to, did I, Miss? You’ve done that all by yourself.” She ran her cloth thoughtfully down the length of the knife. One, two, three, four times … “How you’ll be living with it afterward is beyond me. I don’t think you’ll be wanting to, that’s what I’m thinking.”

I dried my hands, telling myself that what she’d said was meaningless, nothing, only vitriol and spite; meaningless, nothing, only vitriol and spite; over and over again, learning my lines like a school lesson. Surely there was not another soul in England that could delude themselves like I could.

“And what’s that, then?” she asked, pointing with her knife. I looked down and saw that my sleeve was pushed up, clearly showing a row of green-purple bruises ringing my wrist like a bracelet. I had woken with them that morning, the knots in the sash of my dressing gown pulled tight.

“Oh,” I said brightly, jerking down my sleeve, “I just caught my wrist in the door, that’s all.”

Back and forth went the cloth. “Caught your wrist?”

“Yes. Silly of me, wasn’t it? Well, thank you so much for all your help, Mrs. Jefferies. I’ll just go upstairs now.”

I left her polishing the knife, a small smile on her face, and tucked her words into the back of my mind, where they need not be examined.

Mary waited for me in Marianna’s room, but when I sat at the dressing table to unpin my hair it was her face, not my own, that held my attention in the mirror. Her forehead was wrinkled, her eyes downcast, her lips a long, thin line.

“I’m all upset, Miss,” she stated unnecessarily.

I turned around to get a better look at her. It could not be the party. Mary had taken her exclusion not only with good grace, but with outright contempt at my thought of inviting her. A young woman of “her position,” Mary maintained, did not attend her own mistress’s birthday celebration. She was correct, of course, but it could be difficult to tell when Stranwyne’s rules matched up with the rest of the world and when they did not. But Mary was standing in silence, and that could only mean something was seriously wrong. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s bothering you, Mary?”

She crossed her arms and her mouth pressed even tighter. “Well, since you asked me plain, I’ll speak even plainer. It’s your dress, Miss. It’s ugly.”

My mouth opened slightly.

“There’s just no way to be dipping that one in sugar. It’s a shame to wear it after all your trouble, and any good lady’s maid would have been making you a new one, and I gave it a go, Miss, I truly did, but … I’m thinking you don’t really want to be seeing it. Them old linens just wasn’t …”

“Mary,” I said patiently, “if a lady wanted a dress, she would go to a dressmaker’s or, at the very least, hire a seamstress. The heavy sewing is not part of a lady’s maid’s duties.” I watched Mary’s solemn face committing this vital information to memory. “So in no way have you been remiss in —”

“Does that mean I ain’t to blame? Because if it does I —”

“Yes, that’s what it means. And second of all, you know perfectly well that I have a gray silk in the trunk that I brought for best.”

“But, Miss!” I thought Mary might actually stomp her foot. “It’s uglier, I swear on the grave of Saint Michael, it is! I’d see you pinning flowers on the one you’re wearing before I’d let you go running about in that. And it doesn’t suit! Even you know it doesn’t suit.”

“Well …” I bit my lip. A thought had come into my head long ago, but I had planned on leaving it there. “There is something … but I’m not sure I dare. It’s not fashionable, or even appropriate….”

Mary’s hands were on her hips in an instant. “Show me.”

I thought for a moment, then slipped my hand behind the dresser mirror and pulled out the key to the wardrobe. I felt very possessive of Marianna’s dresses. They had remained in the wardrobe for so long, and their presence made me feel that she was not so far away. But when I inserted the key and turned, there was nothing to turn. The wardrobe door was unlocked.

I frowned. I’d made sure to lock it after the night I was ill, and found a new hiding place for the key. Mary could have come across the key, I supposed, but I was afraid to ask; I was afraid she would say she hadn’t. I threw open the doors, breathed in the scent of lilies and cinnamon, and then Mary was beside me, her pressed lips now a line of grim determination at the sight of those shelves.

“Can we work on them, Miss? To make them fit? Can you sew?” She had a rose-colored silk down and was jerking at the buttons of my worsted before I could answer.

“I think they mostly fit already. But Mary, they must be thirty years old, even more, maybe. If I went out in such a thing in London …”

Mary jerked the worsted right off my back. “This is Stranwyne Keep, Miss, in case you haven’t noticed where your own feet are standing. What have we to do with London?” She pulled the silk over my head and eyed me critically.

Before half an hour had passed, dresses of every color were spread over the room, an explosion of spring amongst the brooding furniture, and I had been dressed and undressed at least a dozen times. Mary pulled the blue-green gown from its tissue, and it fell in smooth waves from her hand to the floor, shimmering in the candlelight. She had it over my head in a trice, and we both stared into the mirror as I fidgeted.

“I don’t know. It would be so foolish….” The dress was more beautiful than I had remembered; I was more beautiful than I had remembered. But my heart sank at the thought of being in a room full of people and discovering myself to be the only one in costume. Mary clicked her tongue.

“The foolishness is in wearing the other one, Miss. If you try to put the gray thing on, I’ll throw it in the fire. Just see if I won’t. What else is in here?”

“Slippers in the drawer,” I said, secretly pleased by her confidence. “And gloves and …”

Mary was stepping up onto the raised floor of the tall, closet-like side of the wardrobe to peer at the upper shelves, either unaware of the existence of the stepladder or ignoring it, when she shouted, “There ain’t no back, Miss! There ain’t no back at all!”

I turned a little half circle, trying to see over my own shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Mary hopped back down to the floor, pointing into the darkness of the closet side of the wardrobe, motioning for the candle. I brought it and shone the feeble light into the interior. Where the planks that made up the back of the wardrobe should have been, three or four of them were gone, showing instead the panels of a door, the wood the same color as the wardrobe, nearly invisible in the dark. “It’s the other connecting door,” I said, amazed. “The wardrobe has been covering it up.” I climbed inside, holding the candle before me. A brass knob gleamed in the light. I looked back at Mary. “Should we?”

Mary’s response to this was both pitying and disgusted. “No, Miss, we should just be putting on our nightgowns and have a proper sleep without thinking no more about it. Go on, then!” She shooed me forward, and I turned the knob. The door swung into the darkness of the next room noiselessly. Mary climbed inside the wardrobe, grabbed my hand, and we clambered through together. “Coo,” Mary whistled softly, hanging close on my free arm as I held up the candle.

We were in a nursery, just as dank and cobwebbed as my own room had been when I first came to Stranwyne, though somehow even more desolate. Three small beds were in a row down one wall, their mattresses moldering, and a high iron grate stood before a hearth that was long disused. I looked at the beds, wondering which one my father had slept in. Mary cooed again.

“If I was the ghost of a dead child, I’d choose here to be coming back to. Don’t you think so, Miss, ’cause if —”