Jerome gestured forward, letting the lady reporter exit first. She puckered her lips as if about to argue, before stalking out of the room. Jerome followed.
Once they were standing on the front steps of the manor, the housekeeper shut the door behind them with a slam of finality.
“Well. So much for that,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share a cab back to the village?”
“I’d rather walk,” she said, and did just that, following the lane away from the building.
He watched her, astonished at the many unkind adjectives his mind was conjuring to describe her.
His cab arrived, and gratefully he rode it away, ignoring the hassled mutterings of the driver. They passed the woman reporter on the road, still marching, still with that look of witchy fury on her face, which was flushed now and streaked with sweat. A better man might have stopped and offered a ride yet again.
Further on the road, they passed an impressive black Bentley, filled with children. They seemed to be playing some game resembling badminton, in the backseat. And what were they doing, going to the doctor’s manor? Lambshead didn’t have children, did he? Grandchildren? Nieces and nephews? Jerome hadn’t thought so, and he’d certainly never find out now.
He left it all—the doctor, the manor, the housekeeper, the car full of children, and the harridan of a reporter—behind, determined not to think on the day anymore. The pub and a pint awaited.
Mille-fleur
Their screaming certainly did carry in the close confines of the automobile.
The chauffeur scowled at Sylvia in the rearview mirror, and she turned away, her headache doubling.
“Children, please sit. All of you, sit now. Sit down.” She had been instructed by Lady Smythe-Helsing not to raise her voice at the children, as that would damage their fragile psyches. She had also been instructed not to ever lay a hand on any of them in an effort to control them—such efforts led to violence, which could not be tolerated. If she ever did any such thing out of Lady Smythe-Helsing’s view, the children would report it. Never mind them, the chauffeur would report it. And he had the gall to glare at her for their misbehavior.
So here they were, the four little darlings scrambling all over the seats and each other, throwing their dolls and stuffed bears and India-rubber balls, kicking at the windows and ceilings, punching and screaming. Alice, Andrew, Anna, Arthur.
“That famous doctor is opening his house for tours, just for the afternoon, take the children to visit, it will be so educational,” Lady Smythe-Helsing had announced this morning. Commanded. “Simpson will drive you. Hurry along, won’t you?” The children had been lined up, tallest to shortest, oldest to youngest, ages ten to five, looking smart and crisp, the boys in their pressed suit jackets and ties—real, not clip-on—the girls in their pleated skirts and snow-white blouses with lace-trimmed Peter Pan collars. So lovely, weren’t they? Their mother had kissed their rosy cheeks as they beamed up at her. Then Lady Smythe-Helsing had left Sylvia alone with them while she went to lead the latest meeting of the Oakwaddling Village Improvement Society.
The children had looked at Sylvia with such a piercing sense of anticipation.
Now that they had turned the interior of the car into a rugby pitch, the chauffeur looked at Sylvia, clearly thinking, How could you let them carry on so? He’d report to the mistress how the incompetent governess couldn’t control a few innocent children.
“Miss Sylvia, are we there yet?” said the youngest boy, Arthur.
“Not yet, dear.”
“I want to be there now!”
“Unless you’ve found a way to alter space and time, you’ll have to wait.”
He bit his lip and furrowed his brow, as if considering. If anyone could find a way to disrupt the workings of the universe, it would be one of the Smythe-Helsing children.
Meanwhile, Sylvia stared out the window, wishing she could speed up time. They had reached the drive leading to Dr. Lambshead’s manor when they passed a woman in a dress suit walking away. She seemed angry. They’d also passed a car earlier—so the doctor’s tours of his manor were popular. That many more people to notice the unruly children and tsk-tsk the poor governess who couldn’t control them. Sylvia sighed.
Finally, the car stopped before the manor’s carved front doors. Sylvia struggled to pop the door open, succeeded, and the children exploded out of the car. They ran laps around it, pulled each other’s hair and sleeves and skirts and ties. Sylvia couldn’t tell if they were screaming or laughing. Well, if they ran it out now, maybe they’d actually sleep tonight.
She glanced at the chauffeur, intending to discuss procedures for getting them all home. “I’ll wait,” he said, glaring.
Sighing again—she probably sighed more than she spoke—Sylvia moved to the bumper to head off the latest lap around the car. Andrew pulled up short in front of her, and the others crashed into him. Sylvia pointed to the house. “That way.”
Screaming, they rocketed toward the ancient-looking and no-doubt fragile front doors, which obediently opened inward. The housekeeper, a stern-looking woman who seemed even more ancient and weathered than the doors, stood by them. Even the children fell silent at her appearance.
The old woman glared at Sylvia and said, “Here for a tour, miss?”
Sylvia swallowed and nodded. “Yes, if you please. The children really aren’t so bad—”
“This way.” The housekeeper disappeared into a darkened vestibule.
Alice, the oldest, glanced at Sylvia, sizing her up.
“Go on,” Sylvia said, but the children had already raced inside. Sylvia hurried to follow them.
Housekeeper and children waited by another set of doors at the end of the entryway.
“If you would kindly keep the children in the parlor.” The housekeeper glared with her beady, crab-like eyes, and opened the door. Sylvia and the children inched inside.
When Sylvia saw the parlor, she nearly cried. So many things, all of them smashable. Pottery, glassware, trinkets with gears and levers, arcane instruments made of spindly wire, fabric to be soiled, paper to be torn, entire cabinets to be toppled, and a wall full of art to be destroyed. Almost lost among portraits whose gazes followed her hung a floral tapestry in faded colors, which looked like it would disintegrate if one merely breathed on it. It was an odd, blurred thing that almost seemed to change shape if she turned her head just so.
The children trembled—vibrating, anticipating, potential energy waiting to burst forth—hoping for the chance to get their dirty little claws on everything. The housekeeper closed the double doors, her gaze still boring into Sylvia, as if expecting the worst and knowing it would be the governess’s fault if even the smallest sliver broke free from the leg of a chair. The children would destroy it all, and the doctor would report the horror to Lady Smythe-Helsing, and Sylvia would be fired.
And would that really be such a bad thing? Perhaps she could leave right now, climb out a window and run . . .
She put a hand against her forehead, trying to stave off the headache building behind her eyes. “Children, do behave,” she said, by rote, out of habit, tired and unconvincing, even though the children hadn’t moved since the closing of the door. It was only a matter of time before the human whirlwind.
Still, the children didn’t move. Sylvia allowed herself to exhale. She attempted an actual instruction.
“Why don’t you sit here on the sofa while we wait?” she said. Quietly, the children obeyed. They lined up on the sofa and sat, one after the other, no one pinching anyone.
Extraordinary. Truly extraordinary. Something was terribly, terribly wrong here.
Sylvia sat in a wingback chair across from them, watching. They sat, hands folded in laps, and waited, not making a sound, not even flinching. Somewhere, a clock ticked, and it sounded like the tolling of a funeral bell. Sylvia’s heart was racing for no reason at all.
When the double doors opened again, she nearly shrieked, hand to her breast to
still her heart. The children merely looked.
The housekeeper stood there, like a monk, in her brown dress. She frowned. “There’s been a change of plans. I’m afraid the doctor has been unexpectedly detained. You’ll have to come another time.”
That was that. The whole afternoon for nothing, and now Sylvia was going to have to herd the children back outside, and back to the car for the ride home.
But they left the parlor quietly, single-file by height and age. Outside, on the front steps, they halted in a row, like little soldiers, while the car pulled around. They got in, sat quietly, and stayed that way until the car left the grounds of Lambshead’s manor. Then, they burst into screams, the boys hit the girls, the girls pinched the boys, and everybody bounced against the ceiling. She could only watch. They were spring toys that had been let loose.
Terrifying.
The Girl at the Fountain
A week later, Jerome returned to the manor in a hopeful mood, eager, prepared. His newspaper had agreed that a second trip to Lambshead’s manor was worth it, for the chance to recoup some of the expenses with an actual story. This attempt couldn’t possibly go any worse than the last. He knocked on the door, which the scowling housekeeper opened, showing him into the foyer and pointing him to the library.
The lady reporter was in the library, standing before the tapestry of a girl at a fountain, nestled amid the staring portraits.
“Not you again!” he blurted, and she turned on him, gaze fierce. She had the most extraordinary green eyes, he noticed.
“Oh, give me a break!” she said.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for my interview—what are you doing here?”
“Your interview, this is supposed to be my interview. How did you manage this?”
“Don’t lay this on me, this isn’t my fault!” She stepped toward him, pointing, and he took a step forward to keep her from getting the upper hand.
“You’re trying to tell me that you aren’t following me?” he said. “That you didn’t arrange to be here simply to aggravate me?”
“Wait a minute—I was here first this time! Are you following me?”
“What? No!”
She was only slightly shorter than he was, but the heels of her shoes may have made her appear taller, just as they accentuated the curve of her calves and the slope of her hips inside their clinging skirt. Today, she wore navy blue, a well-tailored and flattering suit, a cream-colored blouse contrasting with the flush of the skin at her throat.
“I don’t care who screwed up and who double-booked us,” she said. “I’m getting my interview and you can’t stop me.” Her lips were parted, her eyes shining, and her hair seemed soft as velvet.
“I don’t want to stop you,” he said, and realized that he really didn’t.
“Then you’ll turn around and walk out of here right now?”
“I don’t know that I’m ready to do that.”
She tilted her head, her fury giving way to confusion, which softened her mouth and forehead and made her eyes wide and sweet. “But you won’t stand in my way?”
“Well, I might stand in your way.”
In fact, they had moved close enough together that they were only inches apart, gazing into each other’s eyes, feeling the heat of each other’s bodies.
“And why would you do that?” she said, her voice low.
“I think—to get a better look at you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t see the rest of the room anymore.
“I have to admit, you’re an interesting man— I . . . I don’t even know your name.”
“Jerome. Yours?”
“Elaine.”
They kissed.
The shock that passed from his lips through his nerves to the tips of his toes came not only from the pressure of her mouth, the weight and warmth of her body pressed against him, her hands wrapped around the hem of his jacket to pull him closer—but also from the fact that he was kissing her at all. It should never have happened. It was meant to be.
The kiss lasted for what seemed a very long time, lips working between gasps for breath, hands on each other’s arms. This, he thought, this was what he had come for.
Finally, they broke apart and stared at each other in wonder.
“What was that?” she—Elaine—said. Her cheeks were pink, and her breathing came quickly.
“It was perfect,” he breathed.
“God, it was, wasn’t it?” she whispered.
“Oh yes.” He leaned forward for another kiss, but she interrupted the gesture.
“Let’s go. The two of us, together, let’s leave, go somewhere and never look back.”
“What about your interview?” he said.
“What interview? Who?”
He could hardly remember himself. They were in this archaic parlor filled with artifacts, books, carved fireplace, stern portraits, and that faded tapestry, which hardly seemed a setting for passion—his heart was suddenly filled with fragrant gardens and winding paths where he could hold her hand and walk with her for hours.
He took both her hands and pulled her toward the door. “You’re right, let’s go.”
A wide, glorious smile broke on her face, a flower unfolding, opening to him, filling him with joy, unbridled and bursting. Hand in hand, they left the parlor, breezed past the scowling housekeeper, and burst through the front doors to the outside, where the sun was shining gloriously and the shrubs seemed filled with singing larks. Jerome had an urge to sing along with them. Elaine was grinning just as wide as he was, and he’d never felt so much . . . rightness in being with someone.
They had to step aside for a passing car filled with countless children, whose screams were audible through the glass.
“Can I ask you a question?” Elaine asked.
“Of course.” He would do anything for her.
“Do you want children?”
He thought a moment; he’d never really considered, and found he didn’t much need to now. “No, not really.”
“Good. Excellent.” She smiled at him, and his heart nearly burst.
At the end of the drive, the boundary to the property, Elaine stopped. Her tug on his hand made Jerome stop as well. He blinked at her; her frown gave him the sense of a balloon deflating, of a recording of birdsong winding down to the speed of a dirge.
They dropped each other’s hands. He was rather startled that he’d been holding it at all.
“What are we doing?” she asked. “We can’t just run off like a couple of teenagers. This isn’t like me at all.”
“Nor me,” Jerome said. “But . . . perhaps if you think that I simply couldn’t help myself.” That was true enough—whatever had happened, it was a surge of passion that seemed to have vanished, much to his regret. He wanted it back.
He tried on an awkward smile for her, and if she didn’t return it, she at least didn’t scowl.
“There’s something really weird about that house,” she said, looking back to the manor.
“Agreed,” he said. “I find I don’t want the interview so much after all.”
“Yeah. You said it.”
“Elaine, would you like to have dinner with me?” he asked impulsively, sure she would rail at him for it and not caring.
She studied him a moment, then said, “You know? I think I would.”
The Hunt
The doctor’s manor was an edifice of terror. The foundation stones exuded a fog of trepidation. Knowing that the children would be horrible would be easier than not knowing at all what they would do this time.
For yes, Doctor Lambshead had sent a note to Lady Smythe-Helsing, apologizing profusely for cutting short their previous tour and offering a second opportunity, which the lady accepted. Once again, Sylvia rode in the Bentley with the angry chauffeur and four screaming children. The housekeeper was waiting for them at the front doors. Once again, she directed them to the parlor. The children lined up next to her,
and the doors closed.
Sylvia closed her eyes, held her breath. Waited for screams or sighs or giggles. Or quiet, obedient breathing. As it happened, she didn’t hear anything. So she opened her eyes.
The children were gone.
She had no idea where to look for them, and studied the walls as if the children had melted into the wallpaper, as if she might see their faces staring out of the portraits or stitched into the threads of the tapestry, among the hunters and their spears surrounding the poor unicorn at bay.
A snap of a breeze touched her, and she flinched as something tugged at her hair. Reaching up, she picked at the curl tucked behind her ear and felt some foreign object. She untangled it and looked—a toothpick, perhaps. Or a tiny dart.
She looked to where it had come from and saw Andrew, the older boy, with none other than a blowgun in his hands. And the empty spot on the wall where he’d taken it from. Dear God, the heathen had fired at her.
He ducked behind the sofa and ran.
That was it. She’d had enough. She went after him, with every intention of laying a hand on him—only for as long as it took to throw him out of the house. All of them. Let Lady Smythe-Helsing fire her. Let the doctor report what an awful governess she was.
As she chased Andrew through the doorway from the parlor to the library, she tripped. Looking back, she saw why—Alice and Arthur, crouched on either side of the doorway, had pulled a length of rope across the passage, just as she stepped into it. Good heavens, what had gotten into them? They’d always been holy terrors but never truly malicious. The injuries they inflicted were usually accidental.
The two of them scrambled to their feet and ran back toward the parlor.
Rubbing a bruised elbow, she went to follow them. Four against one was terrible odds. Especially those four. How had she gotten into this? Oh yes, she needed a job. She had too much education for scut work but not enough for anything professional. Be a governess, that was the solution. Some of the very wealthy families still had them. What an opportunity. Better than regular teaching, and maybe she’d catch the eye of some wealthy gentleman who would take her away from all this.
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities Page 7