Whispers at Midnight (27 page)

Cecil’s bushy gray brows lifted.

“I understood your cousin Ryne was staying
here.”

She shuddered at the mention of Ryne’s name
and turned, pretending a sudden interest in a miniature painting on
a table.

“I seldom see Ryne. He might as well not be
at Wicklow for all I know of his coming and going.”

“It’s just as well. He was always a wild
one, that Ryne. Not levelheaded like his brother. Kept his mother
in a dither, but they understood each other, those two, and there
was no quarrel between them.” Cecil paced nervously around the
drawing room as he talked.

Amanda hoped her appearance had not upset
him as much as that. She would have to get hold of herself. It was
done, after all, and there was no altering it. Her love affair, her
hope, her dream, had spent itself like a shooting star in one
brilliant but discordant chase through the heavens. It would shine
no more. She must forget.

***

Emma and Trudy were settled in their rooms.
They arrived a few minutes after Cecil, with only a few trunks and
bundles. The hired driver obligingly carried the luggage up the
stairs. Gussie prepared a lovely supper and when it was eaten, the
ladies, already enjoying one another’s company, retired to the
library for a pleasant evening of reading.

Trudy, it seemed, had a passion for reading,
and the large supply of books brought her out of her shyness. She
buzzed like a little bee about the novels she had read while in
Richmond, and though Amanda was surprised at her education, she was
pleased to have the young woman open up to her.

Once out of her shell, Trudy showed an
effervescent quality, a bubbly, almost nervous way of talking. She
entertained Amanda with her constant chattiness while Emma went up
to get her sewing. Emma returned a short time later with an
embroidered bag containing yarns and fabrics. The older woman
seemed somewhat winded from climbing the stairs. Amanda wondered if
it had been a mistake to put her on the third floor and asked again
if they would not prefer rooms on the same floor as hers.

“No, my dear, I won’t hear of it.” She took
a seat in a large comfortable chair. “It’s the long hours in the
carriage that have tired me out. I am accustomed to climbing
stairs.”

“If you are certain . . .” Amanda said,
noticing again the heightened color in Emma’s ruddy cheeks.

“Of course I am. Now, you girls talk and
leave me to my needlework.” Emma perched a pair of spectacles on
her nose and threaded her needle. The usually talkative Emma proved
to be the quiet one for the evening, busying herself with the
intricate needlework she was doing on a sampler.

Amanda and Trudy left Emma to concentrate on
the tiny lines of stitches. But after a few minutes, the
conversation had bent its way toward talk of fashions and the
coming round of late-summer parties to be held in Williamsburg. An
hour had passed when Amanda got up to stretch her legs and noticed
the progress on the sampler in Emma’s lap.

“That is lovely,” she commented. “I’m afraid
I never learned to do as well with a needle.”

Emma stopped her work and looked up, her
dark eyes twinkling.

“And neither has Trudy, though she tries
hard enough.”

Trudy smiled. “No matter how hard I work at
it, I shall never be as skilled as you, Aunt Emma.”

“Perhaps you will, my dear, when you have
made as many stitches as I. But for tonight I have done all my old
eyes will allow.” She folded the sampler and wrapped her yarns into
small neat balls. “Trudy,” she said, rising and tucking the sewing
bag beneath her arm, “let us say our good-nights. We must begin
early tomorrow morning earning our keep.”

“Oh no,” Amanda said quickly. “You must rest
a day.”

“Nonsense,” Emma said. “A morning with a
cleaning cloth and pail will be just what’s needed to take the
stiffness out of these old bones. And if you don’t mind my saying
so, my dear, you could do with a long night of rest yourself.”

“I could indeed,” Amanda answered.

What a pleasure it was to have Emma and
Trudy with her. They were like sunshine to a spring day. How had
she gotten through the long evenings without them? Tonight they had
kept her mind from dwelling on memories of the evening before when
she had been on the riverbank and in Ryne’s arms.

A small flutter started in her belly and a
flush of heat rippled under her skin. As it was, she had thought of
him no more than a thousand times that day.

***

“Sleep well,” she called, waiting until the
candle Trudy carried was out of sight in the stairwell.

She had to cross the landing of the main
staircase again to get to her room. Below her the Turkish King
stood, a gleam of moonlight reflecting from his glass eyes. It made
him appear too frightening and lifelike and she hurried on by
rather than look at him any longer.

Even Ezra had found the king inhospitable
and sought another spot for the evening. Actually Amanda couldn’t
remember having seen the bird since Emma and Trudy arrived.
Undoubtedly the parrot was wary of strangers and would stay hidden
until he grew accustomed to having them in the house.

The corridor seemed interminably still and
dark. She knew she had forgotten to leave a candle burning in her
room and could expect to find it as foreboding and empty as the
long, shadowy hall.

She stopped for a moment at the doorway to
the rose bedroom, wondering what it was that aroused her
suspicions. The door. She remembered vaguely having left the door
open. But now it was shut. Could Ryne possibly be . . . ? No. She
was being stupid. She knew instinctively that it would be days
before she saw Ryne again. He had made it apparent he wanted to
avoid her.

She found herself forming his name on her
lips. Hurriedly she went inside and shut the door. “No, no,” she
said aloud. “I won’t think of him. I won’t.”

The candle she held cast a small moving
circle of light over the floor and left the remainder of the room
in semidarkness. Amanda couldn’t suppress the sob that came quickly
and unexpectedly. She felt dejected and sad and really terribly
alone, even knowing Emma and Trudy were in the house.

Slowly she went to the bedside table to
light another candle. One little flame spawned another, and the
circle of light grew and brightened the room. Amanda set the
burning candles side by side on the dressing table, but she would
not look in the mirror because she did not want to see the sadness
in her eyes. She had been a fool, such a dreadful fool.

Her hands worked numbly at the row of pearl
buttons that fastened her dress, but they stilled entirely when she
heard the hollow scraping sound from a dark corner of her room. It
was a sound like hands scratching at stone. For several seconds she
felt as if her limbs were frozen. Someone was there, in her room.
The someone who had come in and closed the door. And waited.

If ever she had known fear, she knew it
then. Not only did she hear the scratching and clawing, but she saw
a shadowed movement, like the lifting of a shoulder, from a figure
in the corner beside the desk.

Her hand slipped behind her back to the
dressing table and found the hard-backed hairbrush, the only item
within reach that she could use as a weapon. From the corner the
figure moved again as she watched.

“Who’s there?” she called out shakily, not
knowing where she found the courage to speak. “Who is it?”

She saw the shadow move toward her, slowly
and steadily.

“Who’s there?” came the shrill, mocking
reply.

“Ezra!”

The parrot, his feathers ruffled and puffed
so that he looked immense, flew from his perch on the wall peg in
the corner that also held her black shawl. He flew to an empty
candle holder on the mirror frame. There the light reflected from
his blue-green feathers and cast a shadowed image of his wickedly
curved beak onto the wall.

Amanda breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed
ridiculous now that she had been frightened by the movement of the
bird spreading his wings and fluttering the silk shawl beneath his
feet. But she was still in a quandary over how the bird had come to
be locked in her room.

“How did you get here, Ezra?” she asked,
approaching the parrot. They had become friends of a sort since she
had fed him the bits of apple. Ezra hopped to the dressing table
and strutted for a moment before he stopped to preen his feathers
majestically in affectionate response to Amanda’s voice.

“Lovely,” he said.

She enjoyed having the bird in the house and
hearing him quote those strange fragments of poetry that he must
have learned decades ago on board Jubal Wicklow’s ship. What dark
tales he might tell of the
Golden Dawn
or of the early days
at Wicklow. But Ezra, like Wicklow, kept his secrets locked away
and hidden like the silent empty rooms of the old house. Only
occasionally would he utter a new phrase or mock the words she
recited to him.

“Did you follow someone in?

“Nonsense,” the bird squawked.
“Nonsense.”

Amanda tapped her shoulder and the bird made
a graceful hop to sit there. Nonsense. That was Emma’s word. It
dotted her conversation like pepper. Had Ezra been hiding and
listening to the three of them talk all afternoon? What a sly old
bird he was. He heard and saw all it seemed. Amanda wondered what
strange things she might learn if only Ezra would tell.

“Come on now. I’ll put you out,” Amanda
said, pausing to affectionately stroke the smooth green feathers on
Ezra’s neck. She was thinking that Ezra must be fond of her, just
as he must have been of Elise and Evelyn before her. “You wouldn’t
like being locked in here all night.”

She walked slowly to the door and turned the
porcelain knob carefully, not wanting to make a sudden move that
might cause the parrot to grip her shoulder too tightly with his
sharp and powerful talons. Gently she eased the door open.

“A good night to you, Ezra,” she said,
offering the bird the freedom of the long hall and the opportunity
to return to his favored spot on the shoulder of the Turkish
King.

“Nonsense,” Ezra said loudly.

“Go on now,” she urged the bird along. So
occupied was she with getting Ezra to leave her shoulder that she
didn’t notice for a moment the faintly sweet scent of the air in
the hall. It smelled of spices and flowers, as if someone in that
room at the far end, where the door stood ajar, might be burning a
peculiar Oriental incense.

The pleasant little sitting room had
belonged to Evelyn and was part of the master chamber. For some
inexplicable reason it was the sole room at Wicklow that Amanda had
not thoroughly inspected. She had looked in a time or two, but
always been met by such a sense of foreboding that she had simply
put off going farther than the doorway.

Still, she had a precise image of the room
in her mind. There was a day couch beside the long windows, its
delft velvet old and faded. The mantel had the familiar gargoyles
carved in gray marble, and always they stared back at her when she
stood at the door—as if warning her to stay away. The wallpaper,
which had lasted well, though it was undoubtedly that chosen by
Evelyn, was of a narrow blue stripe bordering rows of dainty
primroses. The rug was still good. It must have been used little.
And at some point in the past someone had removed Evelyn’s portrait
from the library and hung it opposite the mantel.

“Evelyn, Evelyn.” The voice drifted in the
dark still air of the hall. Amanda stiffened as she heard it a
third time. Who was calling Evelyn? The whisperer? The shade of
Jubal Wicklow? But it was not yet midnight. She had never heard the
whispers so clearly.

With a squawk, Ezra left her shoulder and
flew in that direction, disappearing into the room, which seemed to
give off a dim glow of light. Her curiosity aroused even as her
fear mounted, Amanda followed. Perhaps it was true that Jubal’s
spirit still lingered at Wicklow. Perhaps he could not rest until
he knew what had become of Evelyn. Evelyn, who had pale blond hair
and a serene face and silver eyes that even from the portrait
seemed to look through time. Evelyn, whom Jubal Wicklow had loved
so deeply.

“Is someone there?” she asked softly.

The reply was a fierce flapping of Ezra’s
wings and what sounded like a frightened screech. Amanda hurried
through the door. Before she was fully inside, she was conscious
that the light she thought she had seen was gone. In the center of
the room she stopped quickly. She felt as if she had been engulfed
by a sudden flow of cool misty air. A moment later she heard the
door swing shut behind her. That sound was followed by what she
perceived to be light, shuffling footsteps. The footsteps were
followed by the low, abrasive sound of stone scraping stone.

“Ryne?” The name came with misgiving to her
lips. She did not think he had returned to the house, yet it was
possible he had come in quietly by the back stairs. “I don’t like
your playing tricks on me. It’s cruel.”

Amanda stood still and quiet. A reply would
have been less frightening than the empty silence that followed her
words. Her hands flew to her throat as she peered cautiously
around. Was someone else in the room? She sensed it but could not
tell. It was inordinately dark. Not even the moonlight sent in its
pale beams, though Amanda was sure the moon was full. Evidently the
curtains had been drawn so tightly that the faintest stream of
light could not seep inside.

Frightened by the oppressive darkness and
the strangeness of what had happened, Amanda turned straightaway to
feel for the door. Her hands found the knob in a moment, but as she
had feared, the latch was locked and no amount of twisting would
free it. She was trapped— whether alone or with someone who had
lured her inside, she could not be sure.