by Darcy Burke
Click.
The mechanism caught and turned as if the key had been forged just for this lock. Giddy with relief, she twisted the handle—and then hesitated.
Her stomach was uneasy in the same way as when Mr. Waldegrave had handed over the two gold sovereigns and her first wary thought had been that the money was cursed. She’d learned long ago to place full confidence in the uneasiness of her stomach. And yet ... why be alarmed? It was just a door. Just a room. And her only opportunity to call for help.
Ever so quietly, she eased the crack wider. Enough light spilled in from the sconce for her to realize this wasn’t an empty prayer room, but rather a furnished bedchamber. Which meant there had to be a bell pull inside. Ensuring she still held the key firmly in her grip, she allowed the door to close tight behind her.
The dim lighting remained.
Blinking in confusion, she stepped further into the room. Windows! This bedchamber had windows. Covered with not one but two heavy curtains, only the tiniest sliver of light shone in a narrow line across the ceiling and between the hem and floor. Just enough for her to be able to discern the outline of a bell pull on the other side of a large four-poster bed.
What if the prickles along her skin were because there was someone in the bed? Someone who would be less than pleased to discover ex-street urchin Violet Whitechapel trespassing in his bedchamber?
And yet ... what were her options? Make herself known, and hope she didn’t get brained with a poker? Cross the room to ring the bell pull anyway, and risk whomever slept in the bed being startled out of their mind? Tiptoe outside, and enjoy another hour roaming the corridors in search of someone with a key?
She vacillated for a long moment, unsure of the wisest course. Then she unlocked her frozen muscles and silently picked her way toward the head of the bed. If Mr. Waldegrave had entered the classroom at noon, as he had promised, then by now it had to be at least two of the clock. The gentry were infamous slugabeds, but surely by this hour, even the laziest had to have arisen to greet the day. The bed was likely to be vacant.
She tilted her ear as close as possible to the thick tester without disturbing the fabric. Nothing. No snoring, no movement, no signs of life. She backed up until she reached the fold where the edge of one falling section of fabric overlapped the other. Should she? Could she ...?
Holding her breath, she slid a shaking finger between the layers of cloth and slowly, gently, pulled them apart.
Empty. The bed was empty. Thank God.
The bed was made, but the covers rumpled, as if someone had recently lain atop the layers of blankets. Unable to help herself, she reached out a hand and smoothed out the largest of the wrinkles. The mattress was so thick. The blankets were so soft. The pillows ... smelled of Mr. Waldegrave?
Violet leaned her face closer and took a deep breath. She hadn’t registered the fact that she’d somehow memorized his scent until she realized the pillow smelled exactly the same. Soap, sandalwood ... something else, something she couldn’t place.
Oh, Lord, what was she doing standing about sniffing the man’s pillow? Mr. Waldegrave must not always sleep in the sanctuary. She was in his bedchamber! She had to leave right now.
Abandoning the idea of tugging the bell pull and summoning witnesses here, of all places, she straightened the tester about the bed and turned back toward the door—and caught sight of an open wardrobe. Satin dresses. Silk gowns. A pale pink riding habit.
If this was Mr. Waldegrave’s bedchamber, she’d eat the matching pink hat.
She returned to the bell pull and, this time, gave it a decisive tug. There. Someone should be along shortly. In the meantime, she was dying to see if there was a view. As far as she could tell, this might be the sole unboarded window in Waldegrave Abbey.
Recognizing her folly, she clucked her tongue in self-annoyance. The telltale swaths of light should’ve told her it wasn’t Mr. Waldegrave’s bedchamber. He was far too controlled. Despite the pair of impossibly thick curtains, she doubted a man as threatened by the sunlight as he was would take any risks.
She pulled back a section of the heavy fabric. She reeled backward with a grimace, momentarily blinded by sunlight. When her eyes adjusted, her jaw dropped at the view. She had to be gazing directly upon the sanctuary that housed Lillian and Mr. Waldegrave.
The “sanctuary?” Hardly.
The huge, expertly crafted building stood in a pool of direct sunlight. Even the layers upon layers of crisscrossed boards couldn’t hide the beauty in every line of its architecture. Back when the sun’s rays had danced across the exposed panels of stained glass, this bedchamber must have had the best view in the entire abbey.
She closed the curtain, careful to overlap the fabric just as she’d found it. How long would it take a servant to respond to her call? Her fingers drummed against the bedpost. A room such as this would surely be close enough for maids to answer promptly. Someone would arrive any second.
Drawn by morbid curiosity, she found herself crossing to the open wardrobe. The clothes were not his, but the scent upon the pillows indicated her employer enjoyed a fair amount of time within these walls. What kind of woman was it, with whom he apparently spent his nights? Better yet, who was it? His wife? Where was she now?
Violet paused. If there were a missus, she would not only have been presented to her long before now, but the wife would most likely have been the decision maker with regard to hiring a governess in the first place. Therefore, there must not be a Mrs. Waldegrave. The gentry were not plagued with the careless abandonment suffered by the lower classes, which further meant that Mr. Waldegrave must be a widower.
It wasn’t until this conclusion settled the nerves dancing along her intestines that Violet realized a small part of her had actually been concerned about ... about what, exactly? Competition? She stifled a snort. He was so far above her status as to make even the daydream absurd. Yet she could not like the idea of him keeping a mistress. The roiling sensation returned to her stomach.
She ran a finger along the endless row of rich gowns, not bothering to deny the jealousy eating her from the inside out. Here she was, dipped in ink and forced to air dry, in the only dress of her possession. And here was Miss Lady of the Night, whose wardrobe was full to bursting with bejeweled finery. Or had been, anyway. Violet’s brow creased as she examined the gowns more closely. This wardrobe was even older than Mr. Waldegrave’s. These clothes had not been stylish in over a decade. She frowned, uneasily recalling the pair of gravestones behind the abbey. Was the owner of this wardrobe buried down below? Or was she locked away in a gilded tower somewhere, just like Lillian?
Violet shook the morbid fancy from her head. Mr. Waldegrave was not so dreadful as that. She would simply ask him for an explanation the next time she saw him.
In the meanwhile ... Unable to resist such beauty, she lifted one of the gowns from the wardrobe and held it before her. Such artistry! Even its jewels had jewels. The cut was years out of fashion, but any woman who wore something this glorious to a ball would have her dance card filled within seconds.
She held it to her shoulders and glanced about for a looking glass. She’d never in her entire sorry life wear anything half so fine, of course, but there could be no harm in indulging a quick fancy. A mere glance at her reflection would be enough fodder for an imagination as active as hers to fill up the next two decades of tattered hand-me-down dresses, with the memory of the time she’d pressed a real, honest-to-God ball gown to her bosom.
Just as she neared the glass, the door swung open and Mr. Waldegrave strode in.
A horrified gasp strangled in her throat. Her fingers dug into the delicate fabric she clutched to her chest. She stared at him in guilt and mortification. She could think of nothing at all to say that might excuse this transgression, not that her tongue seemed to be working anyway.
Mr. Waldegrave, however, did not suffer a similar loss of words.
“How dare you.” His face paled in anguish. “How dare you
step into this room, touch anything you have seen, defile it with your very presence! Get out, get out, get out!”
“I—I—I ... ” was all she could manage, her nerves jangled to a mortal degree. She tried to return the gown to the wardrobe, truly she did, but her limbs had frozen as if struck with rigor mortis and not a single joint obeyed her command.
His eyes were wild, as if he no longer saw Violet but rather his own private nightmare. “I have asked you to leave. This room belonged to my wife, and is all I have left to remind me of being young and happy. My wife—”
“Y-your wife?” Violet managed, then flinched as his gaze came sharply in focus.
“Relinquish her gown at once.” He stared almost beseechingly at the bejeweled fabric, as if it had the power to restore his memories to reality. “Hand it over right now, Miss Smythe, or so help me ...”
Her fingers were frozen into trembling claws, her entire body shaking with terror. He was so much bigger than her. He blocked the only exit, and he was so angry. A single blow to the head from him would knock her unconscious for a week, like the time when—
His hand flashed toward her.
Violet screamed. She stopped screaming only when she realized that he hadn’t so much as touched her. He’d simply snatched the ball gown from her hands. Well, most of it. Due to the death grip she’d held on the fragile silk, the gown hadn’t come free in one piece. Indigo threads clung to her stained bodice, and the once-fine gown now cradled in his hands was torn at the seams, the scalloped shoulders in jagged ribbons.
“Destroyed,” he said brokenly, his voice once again distant as if his words were not meant for her. “It cannot be fixed. Nothing can ever be fixed.” His eyes closed, as if in pain beyond all reckoning. “Gone. I can’t even hold on to a memory.”
Although her respiration seemed loud enough to fill the room, she still couldn’t make herself move so much as a finger.
With a tortured sound, his haunted eyes flew open. He ripped the already-ruined dress down the middle, then again, and again.
“Take it. Have all of it. Here.” He threw the torn scraps into her face. “It’s yours.”
With that, he turned on his heel and quit the chamber without another word.
She fell to her knees among the fluttering strips of jewel-encrusted silk, her shaking muscles unfreezing just enough to let her crumple to the floor.
***
Alistair barreled down the empty corridor, heedless of his path. He was angry. Furious. But mostly at himself, which made him feel like a prize ass. A sensation that only served to make him even angrier.
He’d ruined Marjorie’s dress. The very gown she’d worn the night she’d told him he was going to be a father. The night he was convinced he was the luckiest man alive. The night he was his very, very happiest.
He was a fool to think keeping a shrine to the memory would enable him to keep hold of that happiness. He could never be happy. Those days were gone. That pristine bedchamber had been his one connection to the past, a three-dimensional manifestation of the portrait they’d somehow never had time to sit for.
And now it would always remind him of Miss Smythe ... and his own pain. How long had it been since that room had brought him true joy? How long had it been since anything had?
He slammed his fist into the closest wall. Fire shot up his arm. He shook out his throbbing hand as if he could fling off the pain. He told himself his eyes stung because of his bloody knuckles, because of his bruised pride, because of anything, anything, except the loss of his one window into happier times.
And why did it have to be Miss Smythe, who despite her lack of valises or references and the shocking way she’d been hand-delivered to his doorstep like a copy of the London Times, had exhibited nothing short of exemplary behavior up till now. She should not have been there, but neither had she deserved to bear the brunt of his torment. She had wrested at least a sliver of conditional trust from Lillian—Lord knew, Alistair himself had failed to achieve so much—and for heaven’s sake, hadn’t his reason for seeking the governess out in the first place, been to apologize for boorish behavior?
Then he’d passed Mrs. Tumsen, clipping at a dead run down the corridor despite her crooked back, frightened as if spooked by the devil himself. She’d been summoned, she said. To the missus’s old room. Everyone had heard the call.
He’d raced ahead of her with his mind still reeling from his daughter’s accusations, only to discover Miss Smythe in his wife’s bedchamber. Holding that cursed, cursed dress ...
He slammed his fist to the wall once more. This time it didn’t hurt. This time he couldn’t feel anything. Nothing at all. It didn’t even feel like his fist anymore, nor did it feel like those were his bloody knuckles, marking up the wall with each strike. His vision swam as if he were trapped in someone else’s body. Oh, how he wished he were in someone else’s body.
But instead he was here, in this godless abbey, slamming his fist into a stone wall—
“Master! Master, come with me. Please.”
Roper. Roper was talking to him. Yes, they should go. Alistair glanced up at the bloodstained wall, then down at his mangled knuckles. Dejectedly, he allowed Roper to lead him away. He was back in his own body, his own miserable life. His hand hurt. He had a dead wife. A daughter who hated him. A governess who probably wished to see him imprisoned or in Bedlam or both.
And what was he supposed to do? All he wanted, all he wanted, was to be a good father to Lillian. Just that. Nothing more.
Why couldn’t he find a cure? He had money. Piles of gold. Whatever he lacked in scientific genius, he could hire. Mostly. He’d invited the sharpest minds in all of England to join him for a retreat, and some of them had even agreed to attend.
He desperately hoped they were men of their word. If ever there was a team who could fix Lillian, it was this group. And then she’d be cured. He’d give his daughter everything. The constellations, the sun, the stained glass he’d waited years to unveil. She’d see he was a good father, after all. He’d say, I love you, princess. I give you the world. And she’d finally say, I love you, too, Papa. They’d travel the world, just him and her, and perhaps her governess—
Oh, Lord, his forthcoming apology to Miss Smythe had just gotten a thousand times more humiliating. What could he say to her? What if she quit her post altogether? Now, when Lillian was showing the first signs of interest in education?
Or had been, before he’d intervened. But what had he been supposed to think? His hand still bore teeth marks from the night before. When he’d glimpsed the ink-stained dress and Lillian’s guilty expression, he’d had every reason to assume the worst.
No, that wasn’t the worst. The worst was knowing the truth about the day he’d rescued his screaming five-year-old daughter from the burning rays of sun. Lillian was correct—all he’d remembered was his terror and her pain. In the ensuing panic, he’d forgotten that he’d found her in the back lawn. That his little girl was standing mere feet from where her mother was buried, unable to read but more than capable of recognizing her own name ...
This time, when his daughter had said I hate you just like every other night, he’d actually deserved it. His body shook. Perhaps he’d always deserved it. He ruined everything. With his hands, with his words, with his goddamn seed ... everything he touched turned to ash.
“Master? Here’s your bedchamber. Sit in your chair and let me help you.”
He sat. He let Roper dress his wounded hand, divest him of his boots, prepare him a cup of tea.
Some men drank whiskey. Alistair did not. Good fathers did not drink their problems away, like Alistair’s had done. Good fathers focused on their children. Loved them, cherished them, despite any perceived faults. Fixed their problems. Alistair had thus far failed to fix anything at all. He was a terrible father. An even worse employer.
“She was holding the dress,” he whispered. Hopefully its curse had been broken when it ripped in two.
Roper’s scarred count
enance twisted in confusion. “My lord?”
Alistair cleared his throat. “Miss Smythe. She deserves an apology for suffering my unseemly behavior. But how did she get into Marjorie’s bedchamber?”
“I can’t imagine, master. That chamber has a different key than the rest of the abbey. The only ones with access are you and—” Roper’s eyes bulged as though he were choking on his tongue. He pressed a frantic hand to his chest pockets, to his pants pockets, to his throat. “It’s gone. I had the key, and it’s gone. How did—” This time, Roper’s eyes squeezed shut and a mirthless laugh escaped his scarred lips. “Miss Smythe is indeed resourceful.” His eyes opened. He shook his head, his lips wry. “I suppose I deserved it.”
“Deserved what?” Alistair looked up from his raw knuckles. “What the devil are you about?”
Roper, for perhaps the first time in the many years of their acquaintance, looked nothing short of abashed. “When Miss Smythe knocked to be released from the catacombs, she asked me to accompany her to her quarters. I said I could not, because I was meant to wait for you.”
“I would scarcely have sacked you for showing a lady to her room.”
“I am accustomed to following your orders to the letter, and I ... You are right. It was not well done of me.” Roper paused as if recalling the moment. “Miss Smythe asked to borrow the key to her chamber. She must have ... selected ... the wrong one. Do not blame her. And please let her know I accept full responsibility.”
“Tell her yourself.” Alistair was not at all convinced he’d comprehended Roper’s convoluted story, but he was in no mood to ply his manservant with questions. “I have my own apologies to make.”
Roper bowed his head. “As you please.”
“Go find her. Make her feel at home. I don’t want her wondering if she’s sacked, or if I’m mad as a hatter, or both. While you’re at it, call her a bath and a hot meal. Damn it all, I should never have left her alone.” He leaned back and sighed. “In the morning, go to town and see if the daywear I ordered her has arrived. If not, see if you can purchase anything that might suit. Mrs. Tumsen can take in hems if need be, but Miss Smythe sorely requires a new costume.”