The Dark Unwinding (18 page)

“Hush, Mary,” I said beneath my breath. I had heard rustling when we first entered, but I couldn’t hear it now. Mice, scuttling to their holes, no doubt. I took a few steps farther into the room, Mary attached to me like an extra limb, letting the light shine this way and that on tables, broken toys, a dresser, and a rocking chair. I lowered the candle. What I was seeing gave me pause. Unlike the dust that had lain so thick and regular in Marianna’s room, whole sections of this floor were nearly bare of it. Mary finally let go of me to peek into a dresser drawer, and I examined the rocking horse beside it, running my fingers over the genuine hair of its mane. It was nearly dust-free. And then, in a corner, I saw something I thought I recognized.

“Good Lord, Miss! Be careful of your dress!” Mary whispered. “You don’t want it clean all this time just to dirty it up now, do you?”

I straightened up from my perusal of the floor. What I was seeing was too large for a mouse, and even, I hoped, for a rat. Rabbit droppings. “Has Davy come through our rooms, Mary?”

“No, not that I’m knowing about, Miss. I —”

“And you keep your door to the library locked?”

“Of course, Miss, I told you I —”

“And my door to the corridor stays locked, doesn’t it?”

“I think so. What are you … Lord, are them things from a rabbit?”

“I believe so. But how he could be getting in here is a mystery to me.” We walked the room, but there was no sign of an entrance or exit other than the wardrobe door. I sighed. “Well, there’s certainly no harm in it, but all the same, I don’t want him coming through our rooms without our knowing. He’s very good at hiding.”

“That he is, Miss. He had to be, at the workhouse, if you take my meaning.”

I had been making my way carefully back to the door, holding up my candle and the dress, but I stopped to look at Mary. “No, I don’t take your meaning. Are you saying that Davy was in the same workhouse as you?”

“Oh, yes. Didn’t you know that, Miss? He was just a slip of a thing, always trying to make himself small, so he couldn’t be noticed. And they’d beat him, Miss, when he wouldn’t do as they said, or answer back, or say his name.”

I winced. If Mary had been nine years old at Saint Leonard’s, then Davy couldn’t have been more than four. I started for the door again.

“Mum was trying to help him some, but she couldn’t be doing a thing with him, so she showed him to Mr. Babcock, and Mr. Babcock snatched him right up and brought him here to Mrs. Jefferies, and he took to her like fire — Davy, not Mr. Babcock — and so he’s been since. She was the one deciding to call him Davy, I reckon. And she seems to know what he’s thinking, too. Uncanny, that’s what my mum says.”

We stepped through the wardrobe and back into Marianna’s room, which seemed like a haven of homeliness compared to the deserted nursery. “Well, let’s make certain the doors stay locked, Mary, even if we just nip down the hall for a moment. It’s no fit place for a child to play, in any case.”

Mary waxed long in agreement to this, and when she had finally gotten me ready for bed and tidied up the room to her satisfaction, she ran off to bed herself. I shut and locked the wardrobe in my nightgown, then looked about, trying to think of a place that a little boy would never find a key. After some deliberation I placed the key in the center of an old chemise, rolled it up several times, then stuffed it into the very bottom of my trunk, beneath my corset, reasoning that my underthings should be more than a sufficient deterrent. I tied my wrist to the bedpost and went to sleep, thinking carefully of the blue dress and berry tarts and flour-streaked hair and nothing else. And the trogwynd sang loud that night.

T
he morning of my eighteenth birthday broke with thunder. I untied myself, leapt out of bed, and threw back the drapes. Instead of the bowl of blue I’d seen every day since my carriage ride to Stranwyne, there was a ceiling of cloud gathered over the moors, low and thick. The grasses swayed a different shade of green in the dimming light, and in a wind that blew from the wrong direction. I smiled with satisfaction. The day was special.

It wasn’t until I had pinned my hair and was lacing up my boots that I noticed the door to the wardrobe, sticking out just a bit farther than its fellow. I went to the door slowly, and tugged once on the latch. It swung open, silent on its hinges, showing me the empty space behind. I threw open the lid of my trunk and tossed out the gray silk, some handkerchiefs, and a bit of needlework I’d forgotten before I found the chemise, rolled up like a scroll beneath some stockings. I shook it loose, and the key to the wardrobe fell with a soft thud onto a rose in Marianna’s carpet.

But I had no time to consider Davy’s nighttime habits; there was too much to be done during the day. How did they manage it, I wondered, those women like Mrs. Hardcastle, holding regular gatherings for hundreds at a time? I was expecting a grand total of five, and every moment was taken, seeing to the last of the cooking and the fires, my uncle’s striped cups, cutting flowers, and patching up a stray bit of wallpaper that had not taken to Mary’s glue. But I delighted in the minutiae, gloried in every menial task. I wanted them to go on and on, and then the party could not happen, and the next day would never come.

And yet each task was accomplished in turn, and by half past six in the evening the library fire was cheerful, the biscuits and scones, jellies, sweetmeats, tarts, my dilled cucumbers, and a bowl of punch were arranged on a table along the wall, and every surface held a vase of daisies, hyacinth, and roses. The blue dress and matching slippers had been donned, and Mary was arranging my hair while rain, finally making good on its day-long threat, drove like daggers at the windowpanes. I fidgeted on the cushioned bench, nervous, every inch of me aching with remorse in my choice of clothing. Mary rapped me once on the head with her knuckle.

“Be still, Miss, or I’ll have to be starting all over again!”

I just fidgeted more. The blue dress was so light and free. I had the uncomfortable feeling I was about to go to a party in my nightgown. “Mary, perhaps I should …”

“No!” Mary said, rolling her eyes. She shoved in one last hairpin and handed me a small mirror. “There now. Tell me what you think of that.”

I turned away from the larger mirror over the dresser and looked into the small one, gazing over my shoulder at the back of my head. Mary had brought the front pieces of my hair into a loose knot just above my neck, strips of the matching blue ribbon twined all through, leaving the rest of my curls to fall free. Hanging from the many ribbon ends were bits of sparkle, glints of candlelight that radiated in the red-brown. I reached back to touch one. They were crystal pendants.

“Oh, Mary,” I said. I’d never dreamed of having such a beautiful thing in my hair. “Wherever did you get it?”

“I made it, of course.”

I touched one of the sparkling pendants again, and then dropped the mirror to my lap. “Mary. You didn’t get these off a chandelier?”

Mary’s eyes widened with innocence. “A chandelier! Of course I didn’t, Miss! How could I be doing such a thing?” She busied herself with putting away the hair things, then saw me still watching from the mirror. “Well, they were coming off a lamp, Miss, if you must know. But I say they’re looking right prettier where they are now.”

I sat still in my chair while thunder rumbled softly, then caught up Mary’s hand and squeezed it against my cheek.

“Good Lord, Miss,” she said, pulling away. “I never saw a young lady needing so many lessons in how to behave.” But I could see from the way her freckles stretched that she was pleased. “And anyway, ’tis your birthday.”

She was right. It was my eighteenth birthday, an occasion that for many reasons would never come again. I was going to enjoy it, and never once think about tomorrow. I smiled at her, and went to check the fire before my guests arrived.

But when I came into the library, Lane was there already, standing at the hearth in a clean white shirt, frowning hard into the flames, no soot or paint or sweat stains on him. But I could tell from his stance that something was wrong. He was coiled again, pent up. He looked up at my entrance, as if he had intended to say something, but instead we did not speak. We merely stared, and I knew in that moment that the fullness of time had caught up with me. It was the twenty-ninth day, and our little game of pretense was over. I understood this just as clearly as if the words had been said, and the cold, empty void now spreading through my chest felt very much the way I had always imagined death. He took me in for a long moment, my dress, my bare throat, the pendants in my hair. Then he looked back to the fire, his jaw working in and out.

Finally he said, “I’ll bring Mr. Tully up, but then I’m going to go. Until you’ve gone.”

I nodded, and he met my eyes again.

“You aren’t angry?”

I shook my head. How could I be angry? I wished he had waited until tomorrow to stop our pretending. Just one more day, for my birthday. But I could not blame him. I never had.

“Here,” he said. He raised his arm, and in his hand was a small package wrapped in paper. I came to the chimneypiece and took it, pulling numbly at the knotted string, and when the paper fell away I saw the gleam of silver in the firelight. It was a swan, feathers shining dully from its perch on my palm. The wings were upraised, outstretched in sudden flight, and in my mind I could see the disturbance of water on a pond, a smooth, silent ripple flowing outward to the shore.

“You shouldn’t give me this,” I said, eyes on the swan.

“Why?”

“Because it’s too lovely to waste.”

“Waste?” Now he was frowning again. I could not see it, but I could feel it.

“On … nothing.”

There was silence for a time, until the low voice said, “Do you really call it nothing, Katharine?”

I had heard him say my name once before, in the ballroom, and the sound of it had speared me then, too. And just as last time, my eyes were drawn upward almost against my will. I stared back into the gray gaze, surrounded by it, and as surely as I had understood not five minutes earlier that our game was over, I now knew with just as much certainty that Lane had never been playing a game at all. He had not been pretending, and God help me, neither had I. The room was still with only the sounds of fire and breath, while the entirety of my world shifted beneath my feet. And then he turned and left me, and was gone.

I spent ten minutes alone in the library, ten bitter minutes in which my indulgent games and self-delusions were stripped away, and I saw myself clearly, perhaps for the first time since my trunk had been dumped onto Stranwyne’s weed-ridden drive. I closed my eyes, calm in despair, and held tight to the silver swan, feeling it radiate the heat of my own hands back to me. I was losing everything I held most dear, down to what I hadn’t even known I possessed. I had thought to save myself, but of all the ridiculous lies, that had somehow been the true one. Leaving Stranwyne, destroying Stranwyne, was going to destroy me instead. There would be no saving of anyone at all.

When the first knock came at the library door, I stood, set the swan carefully on the center of the chimneypiece, and straightened my back. I could at least make this night happy for my uncle, no matter what sort of nightmare it had become for myself. But when I opened the door it was not Lane or Uncle Tully, it was Ben Aldridge, pleasant as always, bearing a bouquet and a bottle. I put on my smile. Pretending had become rather easy for me.

“Miss Tulman,” Ben said, “a happy birthday to you. And may I say that you are looking very beautiful this evening.”

Earlier I would have been relieved beyond measure at his compliment, mostly because he did not seem to find my choice of apparel shocking or odd; the comment on beauty I would have skimmed over as meaningless. But somehow Ben finding me beautiful was a concept much easier to believe now. I gave him a small curtsy, as if I were one of my uncle’s toys.

“Thank you, indeed, Mr. Aldridge,” I said. “Won’t you come in?”

He came past me, removing a hat still dotted with rain, and I saw that Davy was standing in the dark of the hallway, his eyes on the floor, head resting on the rabbit that was clutched in his arms. Here was someone else I could make happy, even if it was only in a small way. I held out my hand.

“Come inside, Davy. Come on. Nothing to worry about. I have something for you.”

He came reluctantly, and I led him around one of the settees to show him the rocking horse that Mary and I, at the last minute and with considerable trouble, had dragged through the wardrobe, cleaned, and pulled into the library. I bent down to his ear, my dress so unrestricted that the movement was easy.

“And you can play with it in here anytime you wish,” I told him, “no need to come through my room at night. And it can be our little secret, if you like, like the book, and the hollow.”

I straightened up again, frowning a little. I had thought he would be pleased, had so wanted him to be pleased. But the child’s body was rigid, his hand stiff.

“Don’t be frightened, Davy. Truly. I’m not angry….” Then I looked at the hand in mine more closely. A patch of angry red showed on the area just below his cuff, little blisters in the darkened skin. “You’ve been burned,” I said, bending down again to look at it. “Did you get too close to the stove? Did you show Mrs. Jefferies?”

But the blank look was back on his face, as if he were an empty mold.

“What a great deal of trouble you must have endured to make this corner of the house so comfortable, Miss Tulman,” Ben said loudly. He was examining a watercolor of the moorland in the candlelight, the bottle and flowers still in his hand.

“Forgive me, Mr. Aldridge, I’ve forgotten to take your things.” I left Davy staring at the rocking horse and hurried around the settee to take Ben’s hat. Ben held out the flowers to me, and I recognized the wild beauty of his cottage garden.

“These are for you, of course, though I see I’ve only managed to bring you something you’ve plenty of.” He smiled at the vase beside him, overflowing with Mary’s decorative arrangements. “But this is something I dare say you don’t have.” He held out the bottle. “Claret, from the year 1802.”

“It’s French,” I said, examining the label. “Wherever did it come from?”

Ben’s grin broadened. “I found it, hiding in a sheltered recess of my dear old aunt’s cottage. Put there for medicinal emergencies, I am sure.” He winked. “Shall we open it? I can think of no better occasion….”

A knock on the door stopped my reply. I set the flowers on the table, the blue satin swishing as I crossed the room. At the first crack of the door Uncle Tully shoved his way inside, jerking the latch from my hands, nearly knocking me down in his rush for the safety of the familiar room. Lane filled the rest of the doorway then, and I could not meet his eyes. He had done exactly as he said he would. And now he would leave, and I would never see him again. I wondered if my uncle could hear my broken parts inside, as he had with my father; I wished he could fix them.

“Lane, Lane!” my uncle was calling. He turned around and around in his own footsteps, clockwise, of course, looking at the library. “Come and look! Isn’t it splendid, is it not right? Look at the …” Then, for the first time his bright eyes focused fully on me. He went still, and then he began to walk, his pace uncharacteristically slow across the rose-covered carpet, until he stood right before me, just a little too close. He leaned to the side, took a deep breath, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss my cheek.

“Lane!” he yelled suddenly, very close to my ear. I jumped. “She smells just as she ought! Not like engine oil, but just as she ought!”

Ben chuckled and my uncle beamed, and then Mrs. Jefferies pushed past Lane and came huffing into the room, wet and obviously upset, but I had eyes only for her nephew. The tension was back in his stance, the sense of readiness to spring, his gaze leveled at the bottle of wine still in Ben’s hands.

“God in heaven,” Mrs. Jefferies was saying. “What do you think you’re playing at?”

I tore my attention from Lane to see her small eyes narrowed at me, hands on hips, her lace cap lying limp and damp on her head. She was not just wet, I realized; she was soaking. Then her head turned straight to the settee, as if she’d heard a call, and whatever annoyance might have been on her face dissolved into instant relief. She barreled across the room to crush poor Davy into her dripping body, and my uncle charged with just as much purpose to the trunk in the corner of the room, where he threw back the lid on the box of toys. I stood where I was, bemused, until Lane’s low voice came from just behind my shoulder.

“Let me explain,” he said. “Aunt Bit has been running about the garden in a right state because she couldn’t find Davy. She says Davy has stopped talking to her, and she’s going to peck like an angry hen at anything that comes near her for the rest of the evening because of it. And you look so much like your grandmother standing in this room that I think it’s enough to give anyone who knew her a start. And, I gather, that you have somehow managed to smell like her as well, a scent that is in no way like engine oil.”

“It’s the dress,” I said quickly. “And how do you know what my grandmother looked like?” I was afraid if I let him stop talking he would go.

“Because I carved her face, remember? I know every curve of it. She was a child, but it’s not that different.”

I looked away again, wondering if that meant he knew every curve of my face as well. Uncle Tully had the toy boat out of the box and was doing something to it with a screwdriver, bright eyes eager as he chattered on about various combinations of the number eighteen. Ben squatted beside him, drawn like a moth to his flame, while Mrs. Jefferies was looking into Davy’s unresponsive eyes, saying things to him I could not hear. I turned to the hearth, my breath coming short. There were many things to say, and perhaps only an instant to say them. The silver swan sat on the chimneypiece, wings raised, as if it were attempting to fly away. I raised a finger to the ridge of shining feathers.