The gown had long, tight sleeves that extended to the edge of my palms, and form-fitting bodice and waist, with a skirt that cascaded to the floor in richly gathered folds. It was extremely modest in front, completely covering my shoulders, yet it dipped down alarmingly in back, exposing an improbable amount of naked flesh. Bella said I had a lovely back, perfect shoulderblades, but I would have been happier had the cut not been so extreme. The soft, crushed velvet was a deep garnet hue, a silvery mist over the nap. Castlemaine herself might have worn the dress with flair, but Miss Katherine Hunt felt ill at ease.
Bella had pulled my hair back sharply from my face, molding it tightly against my head like a golden skullcap, with three long ringlets dangling down. She arranged the ringlets over my left shoulder, stood back, sighed, clasped her hands together, and said I looked like a painting. I leaned forward to study my face, so painstakingly made up—violet-brown shadow applied lightly over lids, a hint of rouge brushed over sculptured cheekbones, bare suggestion of coral smoothed over lips. I looked like a sophisticated woman of thirty, and I felt like an awkward girl of thirteen.
I stood up. Bella handed me my wrap, a stole of gossamer black lace, exquisitely made like black cobwebs with frail jet flowers sewn on. It had been another gift from Donald, and I wrapped it about my shoulders now. He would have been pleased with me tonight, I thought. He would have loved to take me out, show me off, as though he had been solely responsible for all this sophistication and elegance.
“I see a torch moving down the slope,” Bella said. “It must be the servant comin’ to fetch you.”
“It must be,” I replied vaguely. “You and Alan behave yourselves while I’m gone. He is coming?”
“He brought a tub of pecans this afternoon,” she said. “We’re goin’ to sit in the kitchen and shell ’em. Have a good time, Miss Kathy.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
I was waiting in front of the door when Buck Crabbe came up with the flaming torch. He was tall, impassive, dressed in a dark-brown livery that looked incongruous on his hulking body. He held the torch aloft. The flames cast flickering shadows over his broad bony face and caused the tips of his bronze-blond hair to glisten with orange. He turned, silent, and led the way up the slope toward the castle.
The night air was cold, stirring restlessly over the moor. I wished my wrap were more substantial. The gossamer net did little to protect my naked back. I could feel chills on the bare skin. Crabbe walked slowly, solemnly, like a zombie, I thought, but even so it was hard to keep up with him in my high-heeled black shoes. I stumbled once and had to catch hold of his arm to keep from falling. He stood still, waiting for me to right myself, his face expressionless, his mouth drawn tight. I felt like telling him he was a real bundle of personality, but I didn’t quite dare. I felt sure the sarcasm would have gone unappreciated.
The sky was full of ponderous black clouds. Moonlight spilled over the dark rims, to drip a misty silver light over the moors. Everything was black and gray, slopes of gray rolling to a distant black horizon. The silence was heavy, broken only by the rasp of insects and the sound of footsteps crunching over the hard ground. The torch wavered, yellow and orange, throwing off an odor of tar and smoke. The castle was ahead, looking even more sinister shrouded in shadows, the thick gray walls stained with misty silver. Lights burned behind a few of the windows, and the great oak door stood open. We walked beneath the oak trees. Just as we reached the door, Buck stopped, turned to me. His blue-gray eyes studied me for a moment. His wide mouth curled down at the corners.
“Leave the girl alone,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The girl. Nicola. Leave her be.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Don’t meddle, miss,” he said in a flat voice. “That’s what I mean.”
Before I could form a reply, he turned and led the way through the huge door. It was very dark inside, the torchlight flickering over thick damp walls and an extremely low ceiling. I realized we were passing through a sort of tunnel that would eventually open onto the courtyard. My heels made a tapping noise on the cobblestone floor. I had a feeling of claustrophobia and was glad when we finally reached the courtyard. It was enormous, with several tall trees growing around a huge, cracked white pond full of dirty brown water, dead leaves floating on the surface, a broken statue standing dejectedly in the middle, holding a fish aloft. There were several buildings—a stable, a deserted blacksmith’s shop, a granary. A white flagstone path wound among shabby flowerbeds, weed-infested, thorny. Torches were stuck in the ground, burning smokily, illuminating everything with a dim yellow glow.
I had an eerie feeling as we crossed the courtyard. The place was immense, the size overwhelming, and there was an atmosphere of decay—gray walls streaked with soot and glittering with moisture, loose stones fallen on the ground, everything suffering from neglect. The castle had once been the home of dozens and dozens of people, and now only a handful lived here. I tried to picture them milling around in this vast, aged place. I saw long deserted halls, great empty rooms, cobwebs, dust, emptiness. I shuddered in spite of myself.
Buck led me up the curving gray marble steps that led to the portico in front of the main building. Round white pots held rubbery green plants, torches burned in niches, tossing wavering yellow shadows over the steps. We passed under the arch supported by smooth black columns and walked under the colonnade. A great oak door stood open, and we walked down a long hall tiled in black and white marble squares, ancient tapestries flapping on the walls. We turned, moved down a smaller, darker hall, illuminated only by Buck’s torch, turned again, moved up a short flight of stairs, and passed through a great deserted room with tattered red damask on the walls, sheets over the furniture, cobwebs draped over the four chandeliers. I was completely lost now, could never have found my way back to the courtyard. One would need a map to get around in this place, I thought as Buck led the way down a long hall with padlocked doors on either side. We went around a corner and passed down another hall, well lighted now, the torches illuminating enormous dark portraits hanging in ornate gold frames.
Doors stood open at the end of the hall. Buck led me through them and stood back, his mission accomplished. I heard voices, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from at first.
The room was enormous, large enough to swallow up my whole house. The ceiling was two stories high, painted a dark blue and gilded with gold-leaf designs. The gold leaf was tarnished, the paint flaking. The walls were a yellowed ivory, adorned with gold leaf, and the floor was exquisite parquet, gold, brown, red woods all smooth from decades of wax, buckling a little at the seams. There were clusters of furniture, but the room was so large that it seemed empty despite the furniture. Although fires burned in two white-marble fireplaces at either end of the room, the air was still laced with frosty chill.
Buck left, closing the doors behind him, and I stood hesitantly, peering through the gloom, feeling lost and absurd in my velvet gown. I had the feeling that this was a dream fast taking on the qualities of nightmare. I was lost, locked in a museum, abandoned, forgotten, left to wander through these ancient rooms, through cold halls. Panic was just beginning to set in when I heard footsteps and saw Edward coming toward me.
He was resplendent in black pumps, black suit, shirt-front gleaming, white silk tie matching white silk cummerbund. His burnished golden hair was heaped in heavy locks over his forehead, and his cornflower-blue eyes showed his pleasure. He smiled, took my hand, led me across an acre of parquet to the cluster of furniture before one of the fireplaces. Although at least fifty candles burned in silver sconces and candelabra, there wasn’t enough light. The figures grouped around the hearth looked hazy, as though seen through a mist.
“Your dress is smashing,” Edward whispered in my ear. “It gives me evil thoughts.”
“Does it?”
“Better be glad we’re not alone. Safety in numbers, you know.”
“I’m ner
vous,” I told him. “I wish—”
“Here she is,” he said aloud.
I saw Nicola sitting on a sofa of pale-lavender velvet. Her dark hair was worn in two tight braids fastened in a coronet on top of her head. She wore a white dress. Her cheeks looked ashen, her eyes shadowy. Could this pale wraith be the vivacious creature I had seen on the moors, I wondered. The two greyhounds lay in front of the fire, not stirring as I approached. Burton Rodd stood up. He wore an elegant black suit, a masterpiece of tailoring, and a sky-blue satin vest embroidered with black-silk oak leaves. He was spotless, immaculate, his black leather pumps shining, his white silk ascot flawless. The exquisite clothes only emphasized the ravaged face and grizzled hair, made him seem older, wearier. He nodded, and his dark eyes took in every detail of the dress.
He arched one brow slowly. That single gesture spoke volumes.
Dorothea Rodd was sitting in a dark wingbacked chair turned away from the fire, and I didn’t see her at first. She rose to greet me, came toward me with the agile grace of a young girl. She was tall and slender, with the loose, bony frame of her son, wearing a long-sleeved black gown that swept the floor, the full skirt rustling over starched petticoats. Amethysts sparkled at her throat and ears, the stones gleaming with blood-red facets. Her hair was lustrous black, streaked with silver, piled on top of her head in rich waves, and her face at one time must have been magnificent. The bone structure was perfect, delicately formed, and the dark-brown eyes gleamed like jewels. The lovely face was pathetically pitted and marred with pockmarks, but after a moment one didn’t notice that. One saw only the eyes that still had the glittering clarity of youth.
“Come, dear,” she said, “let me see you.”
She took both my hands in hers and stood back to examine me, a lovely smile on her lips. She stood like that for at least a full minute, studying my face, her hands holding mine in a firm grip, and for some reason I was not at all embarrassed. I felt completely at ease with this woman. She was a lady, in every sense of the word, a grand lady, and it was evident in her every gesture.
“It’s true,” she said, her voice serious. “You’re as beautiful as they said you were.” She shook her head slowly, her lips drooping down slightly in a sad smile. “Twenty years ago I would have loathed you on sight. Now I can only marvel—” She released my hands, sighed. “Is it true that you are also intelligent? That seems terribly unjust.”
I didn’t know what to reply. Edward came to my rescue. “I assure you she’s quite intelligent, Dorothea. Formidably so, in fact.”
“Unbelievable,” Dorothea Rodd said wistfully.
She seemed suddenly to remember her role as hostess. “You know Edward, of course, and I believe you’ve met my son.” She paused, a rather malicious twinkle in her eyes. “You haven’t met my ward, though. Nicola? Come meet Miss Hunt, dear.”
Nicola rose, gave me a genteel curtsy and looked into my eyes, pleading with me not to reveal our secret. I spoke to her, commenting on her dress. She lowered her eyes, muttering something I couldn’t hear, and then sank back down on the sofa wearily.
“This is quite an occasion,” Dorothea exclaimed. “As you may know, I never entertain. I haven’t seen anyone for years—besides those people at church when Burton condescends to take me. Social life! How I used to love it! Now, alas …” She sighed again, made a futile gesture. “There is so much to compensate for it. I don’t miss it, really. My books my studies, my music, my plants—we must show you the conservatory! I have some rare specimens! There’s no time for people, no need for them.…” Again she paused, and her trilling voice grew soft, gentle. “But I couldn’t resist meeting you. Edward has talked of nothing else for the past three days. Ordinarily he’s quite indifferent to women—I had to see the exception! Let me take your wrap, dear.”
I handed it to her. My back was to Burton Rodd. I could feel his eyes burning on the naked skin. I stood uncomfortably as Dorothea complimented me on the dress, asked where I had bought it, said she wished she still had the ability to wear such a gown.
We all sat down, except Burton Rodd, who stood with his elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, his face inscrutable. Edward stretched out in a large blue chair, spreading his long legs out in front of him. Dorothea led me to a sofa opposite the one on which Nicola sat. The fire crackled noisily, devouring a cedar log and filling the air with a tangy aroma, but the heat had little effect on the icy chill air.
“And how do you like the castle, my dear?” Dorothea inquired.
“It’s—well—”
“Dreadful!” she cried. “That’s what it is! Falling down over our heads little by little. Have you ever heard of anything so preposterous—living in such a place! But it’s home. I know that sounds ludicrous, but nevertheless it’s true. We’ve closed up most of it, shut it off, boarded it up. Sold most of the furniture—had to, my dear, in order to live. Now that Burton has the pottery factory, we have no financial problems anymore, but people simply can’t live in a place like this in this day and age. I wish sometimes I had a calm little cottage somewhere in the country, but this is my home—a great empty wreck of a place, impossible to heat, a relic. I lived with my husband here, though, bore my son here, spent the best days of my life prowling around these corridors. I can’t leave it. I intend to die here, and after that—” She snapped her fingers. “Kaput! It can sink into the moors, stone by stone!”
Burton Rodd cleared his throat, causing all eyes to turn to him. He grimaced, clearly unhappy with his mother’s words. He stood at the hearth, the dogs at his feet, his jacket falling open to reveal the exquisite blue vest. Dorothea laughed, a beautiful, trilling sound that floated on the air in silvery peals.
“Burton thinks I’m mad, of course,” she continued. “He’d dump the place in a minute, move to London. No sense of background whatsoever, no feeling of heritage! Can’t say that I blame him, really. He stays. He runs the factory. He respects my feelings. But it can’t be very pleasant for a red-blooded young man! He has the soul of an adventurer, a wanderer. What he really needs is a good wife—that’d settle him down.”
“I don’t think Miss Hunt is interested in all this, Mother,” he said in a cool, bored voice.
“Quite a problem,” she continued. “The women he meets in London would never consider coming to a gloomy place like this, which is perfectly understandable, and the few eligible girls around here—La!” She clicked her tongue. “You should see the way he treats them! Like cattle, or geese. For several years enterprising mothers in Castlemoor County have been grooming their daughters for my son, and he calls them empty-headed ninnies, laughs at their coy maneuvers. Why, just last year Sukey Johnson—her father owns one of the largest farms and is district judge to boot—poor Sukey was all up in the air because Burton noticed her at church and talked to her for a few minutes after the services. Poor thing, she was all ready to move in for the kill, when—”
“Enough!” her son said loudly, interrupting her. “Don’t you think we should go in to dinner, Mother?”
“I suppose so, though why all this rush—”
“Oh, dear!” Nicola cried, speaking up for the first time. Everyone was startled by her exclamation. She blushed prettily and lowered her eyes. The tight braids on top of her head were unflattering to a face that needed to be framed with lustrous waves. The stark white dress seemed to drain all the color away from her. She looked like a child of thirteen, an anemic child at that.
“What is it, dear?” Dorothea asked.
“I’ve forgotten my coral bracelet. I—I left it in my room. I planned to wear it tonight. Will I have time to fetch it?”
“Of course.”
Nicola stood up hesitantly. She smiled meekly, but I noticed a sly look in her eyes.
“I wonder if Miss Hunt would like to come with me?” she said. “I would like to show her my doll collection.”
“There isn’t time,” Burton Rodd said impatiently. “The bracelet isn’t important, Nicola. You can fetch it later.”<
br />
“The dolls come from all over the world,” Nicola said, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Some of them are very old, very fine. One belonged to Marie Antoinette, they say, and—”
“I’d love to see them,” I said quickly, helping her.
“Run along, children,” Dorothea said, “but don’t dawdle, or Burton will be fit to be tied. Really, Burton, all this rush to get to the table! I simply don’t see—”
Nicola smiled, took my hand, and led me across the room to a small door that led down a narrow hall. Once out of the room, her whole manner changed. She dropped my hand, dropped the meek, childish manner. Her face was hard, her mouth set. She walked quickly down the hall, turned, passed through a large room filled with dusty musical instruments, moved down another hall. I had to move fast to keep up with her. She seemed completely unaware of my presence, although I had sensed her eagerness for me to join her. In fact, I felt that the whole bit about the bracelet had been merely a ploy to get me alone, away from the others.
We moved down a small flight of stone steps, across a short hall, and up another flight of steps. The walls and floor of this part of the castle were thick brown concrete, damp and ugly. Torches burned in wall brackets spaced at intervals, foul-smelling, flickering, affording very little light to guide our way. I followed Nicola’s flashing white skirts, perplexed. Near the end of the hall she stopped, waiting for me to catch up with her. She stood in front of a great yawning doorway cut into the wall, a flight of rough stone steps leading down into the darkness below.
“The dungeons are down there,” she said, her voice expressionless.
I peered down. Cold, clammy air billowed up from the darkness, and I heard whispering, scurrying sounds as though rats infested the place. Nicola took my hand again, held it tightly, as though afraid. Together we looked down the steps, the top ones plainly visible, the ones that followed spread with shadows, the others completely shrouded in pitch-black darkness. I was trembling, although I could not have said why. Nicola seemed to be listening for something. A torch burned on the wall behind us, filling the air with smoke and the smell of tar, yellow reflections licking the ugly brown walls. There was something fascinating about that flight of stairs leading down to the dungeons, an evil that seemed to beckon even as it repelled. I wanted to move down them, see what was below, and at the same time I wanted to flee, get away from that clammy air and those rustling sounds that came floating up from the black nest of darkness.
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