The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

  “Goodness,” she said, sounding nothing more than mildly bemused. “Gentlemen, please. I understand there’s some family conflict, but there are ladies present.” And then, before Chris could reconcile the reasoned young woman with his high strung, hellion sister, she continued: “Mister Spencer, I really don’t see a need for the outburst. You should count your blessings rather than curse a near stranger. It would seem your uncle’s untimely death allowed you to keep a deathbed promise to your father which you were about to utterly botch. Hurrah for you, I say, that fate intervened before you squandered his legacy!”

  For a moment, Chris couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He was torn between turning to Rosemary and demanding an explanation for her betrayal, or just collapsing into tears. Did no one mourn for Fernand? How could Rosie, who’d practically been raised by him, speak so flippantly?

  But then he saw the look on Spencer’s face.

  “I… I say!” Spencer exclaimed.

  Chris realized Rosemary had just utterly eviscerated him.

  “Goodness, Rosie,” Elouise chastised, very mildly. Was there a strange little gleam in her eyes? “People may speak that way in Vernella, but by our standards, you were just quite rude to Mister Spencer.”

  “Oh dear.” Rosie simpered. Chris doubted that anyone but him would have recognized the tiny little twitch in the corner of her mouth, the one that he knew from frogs in his boots, a game of rummy about to turn mercilessly against him, or his brilliant little sister singing down fiarans in their parlour. “Was I?”

  “I—” Spencer began, and then… utterly deflated in his chair. He wadded up his napkin and tossed it into his plate, dinner still half finished. The cloth immediately began to soak up the gravy. He shook his head. “Missus Faraday, I am quite beside myself. I doubt I can continue negotiations tonight.” His jaw tightened. “Can I at the very least expect that my invitation to the Harvest Festival hasn’t been rescinded?”

  Elouise jutted her chin forward. She took her time cutting off a small piece of roast beef and then gesticulated with it. “Mister Spencer, I think we both know how entirely uncalled for such behaviour is. Of course, you’re still invited, and my ward meant no offence.”

  Spencer’s jaw bulged, but he nodded tersely and stood. “Well enough,” he said stiffly and bowed with all the grace of a stick snapping in half. “I shall see you tomorrow evening, then, Missus Faraday. I would hope to see some more decorum from your household at such time.”

  A servant appeared at his side and lead him from the room.

  A moment of quiet passed.

  “Well,” Olivia began.

  “Not a word,” Elouise snapped.

  Olivia scoffed and slumped back in her seat with all the elegance of a sandbag hitting the floor. She looked more like a reticent adolescent than the arch, elegant lady he knew. “Oh,” she said airily, waving a hand about. “What words could I even have to say, Mother? How could I possibly think to weigh in on you intending to sell our family legacy to that?”

  “Spencer is an arse,” Elouise said flatly.

  Rosie giggled.

  Chris was glad. She wasn’t a mature, settled adult, after all. He hadn’t, somehow, missed the moment when she left her childhood behind forever when he wasn’t looking.

  “But,” Olivia’s mother continued, “he actually wants Miller. He’s described his plans to me. He understands the business very well, and he intends to continue operations as they are.”

  “You have no idea if he means that!” Olivia protested, slamming a fist down on the table. Her gravy, congealing atop her potatoes, wiggled. “He could just as well intend to obliterate the orchards and use the land to grow more of his sodding cows!”

  “I’ll have it in writing that he won’t.”

  “But—” Olivia went to run a hand through her hair like she did when she was frustrated, but she met the mass of piled curls she’d arranged for her mother’s benefit. She growled in frustration, took two handfuls, and tugged, sending pins flying. One landed in Chris’s carrots.

  “Mother Deorwynn, Livvie, are you still eight years old?”

  Olivia jumped back to her feet. “You only wish I was!” she snapped. “And Gods line the sod up and fuck me six ways from Godsday—”

  “Livvie!”

  “—I wish I was, too!” Olivia laughed. It was as humourless as anything Chris had ever heard, and left ashes in his mouth like he’d sipped from the very fountain of misery. “When I was eight years old, you still loved me!”

  “As if I could have ever loved a miserable little monster like you!” Elouise roared, and Olivia——sobbed—and flung herself from the room, shoes slapping on the floor, skirts hitched up, flying out the door and up the stairs.

  All four remaining at the dinner table heard her door slam.

  They sat in silence.

  Rosie swallowed and folded her hands on the table before her. “I… should we—”

  Elouise snapped her gaze to her ward. “Don’t,” she said firmly. “If my daughter wants to behave as if she’s still a child, she’s perfectly allowed. But we’ll treat her like what she is: a woman in her thirties throwing a temper tantrum.”

  Rosie ducked her gaze and said nothing else.

  Chris stared down at his food. Should he go upstairs and see her? He felt like perhaps he should, but… Gods. Olivia could occasionally be girlish, clapping her hands, grinning brightly, and playing little games with people’s expectations. But she’d never been… he shook his head at his potatoes.

  Missus Faraday was entirely right. She’d behaved like a child. The last time Chris had seen someone act in such a way, it has been… well. Rosemary. Who had acquitted herself like an elegant and intelligent and cunning woman this evening. He felt as if he’d entered into a version of the world where everything was entirely upside down, and he honestly hadn’t the first idea of how to react.

  It couldn’t have been more than three minutes before Elouise stood up. She seemed to be listing like all the wind had gone out of her. “I’m retiring to my parlour,” she said, sounding exhausted. “This evening has been taxing beyond belief.”

  Chris hated to admit it, but he was glad. Missus Faraday had jumped to Fernand’s, and his, and Rosemary’s defense, and yet he still found himself hating her because of the way she was changing Olivia. It was unfair and almost as childish as his employer was being. But Olivia… as much as he resisted the notion, Olivia was a rock for him in so many ways. Which made Elouise Faraday the vengeful, relentless undine who was eroding her. He’d appreciate the time with just Rachel and Rosemary and himself, finishing their cold food, catching up on the past few months, enjoying one another’s company….

  “Rosie,” Elouise said, patting her lips with her napkin and then leaving it beside her plate. “Would you like to read with me before bed? You know how I appreciate your company.”

  Oh.

  Rosie gave him a look from under her lashes. She shot him a small, apologetic little smile—almost a grimace—before turning to the older woman. “That sounds wonderful, Elouise.”

  And, Chris realized abruptly, she sounded… relieved.

  “Wonderful. Miss Albany, you’ll come to see her into bed at around ten o’clock?”

  “Of course, Elouise.”

  “And Mister Buckley….”

  Chris looked up at her.

  Her eyes were kind, and her smile was conciliatory. It made him deeply regret all of the things he allowed himself to think about her. “I won’t beg you not to see the worst of me because I tend to show it when it comes to my daughter. But I do hope you’ll continue to have faith in me with regards to your sister.” She patted Rosie’s hand. “I’m very fond of her. She’s a good girl.”

  “I…” Chris swallowed. “Of course.”

  What else could he say?

  Missus Faraday nodded at him and then Rachel in turn, and then they were left alone at the table.

  Rachel waited until they could no longer hear foots
teps retreating down the hallway. “Well,” she said quietly. “That was hardly emblematic of most dinners here.”

  Chris tried to manage a little laugh. He couldn’t. He felt altogether quite… he looked down at his plate. It didn’t seem so appetizing, anymore. He thought that maybe about half of that was because it had cooled and congealed. The rest was just that the dinner conversation had been so unappealing that it made his food sit on his stomach like a rock. “I didn’t think Rosie would go with her.”

  Rachel smiled. It was an encouraging little smile, and he felt a bit buoyed as she tried to explain. “They do this almost every night before bed. Elouise absolutely loves Rosie’s reading aloud. She says that it calms her. Helps her sleep. And Rosie….”

  Chris sighed. Gods, what a day. He leaned back in his chair, suddenly more exhausted than he could remember being in years. The pounding in his temples from exerting control over his heartwriting was just getting worse, he was still sore and dehydrated from crying all bloody night, and… “I think,” he said, “I think that she… doesn’t want me here.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “No, I—no, I don’t think it is, Rachel. I tried to tell myself I imagined it this afternoon when I arrived, but she was so… and then, just now, she wanted to leave. She was glad for the excuse. I think—Gods, I think she wishes I hadn’t come. What the hells? Why?”

  He opened his eyes. The beams of the ceiling above him were rough and full of knotholes, and he abruptly changed his mind about rustic charm. He hated the country.

  “Why did you come?” Rachel asked, jabbing at the very question he was framing in his mind.

  I shouldn’t have.

  Except that Olivia insisted that he was of some value to her. And Emilia Banks may or may not be in some sort of trouble. If she was and this wasn’t all just Maris’s paranoid mind performing acrobatics, he didn’t think he’d ever forgive himself for not being present to help. In some small way, he would have her blood on his hands.

  He sat up straight.

  Enough of this. He was behaving like a child, sighing and moaning like this, and he was acutely aware of how unattractive adults acting like children could be. He was not here to see Rosie, or to flirt with Rachel, and certainly not to lay about feeling bad about himself. He was here for work. For Olivia.

  He straightened his waistcoat and met Miss Albany’s eyes over the congealing remains of supper.

  “Apparently Missus Faraday has some sort of animosity towards police.”

  Rachel inclined her head. “That’s a well-known prejudice of hers, though no one will tell me why. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re very insular here, and… ah, they haven’t entirely accepted me as one of their own, yet. It makes this a perfect spot for Rosie to hide, but I…” She glanced up at him and then away. “It gets lonely, sometimes.”

  His tongue got stuck in his throat. A dozen clever rejoinders went through his mind, but none seemed clever enough, or else, they seemed like he was trying to proposition her. Her smile tied his tongue further, and he wiped sweaty palms on his trousers.

  “I…” he said.

  “Yes?”

  He found his tongue and immediately tripped all over the first sentence that came to mind. “We’re investigating a potentially suspicious c-circumstance, that is—a suicide.”

  Hardly the charming, romantic words he’d imagined.

  Rachel stood from her chair.

  As he watched, confused, she turned away from him, knotting her fingers together and wringing her hands. “Is that—do you mean, perhaps—Mister Greene? That is, Roger Greene? The stablemaster?”

  Chris watched her as she began to pace. He furrowed his brow. “Yes.”

  She shook her head. “I—ah. Mister Greene—that is, Miss Greene, she’s a friend of Rosie’s. She’s been insisting since it happened, that something was… but surely she’s just… grief, you know how it is?”

  “I meant to speak to you about this, actually.” Chris thought of the smudges of dirt on the girl’s cheeks and her dusty breeches. He winced. “Miss Greene is—”

  “Suffering the loss of a father right now! And searching for any reason to think… ah! She’s a good girl, but you know how these things are! Casting about for meaning, trying to find someone to blame…” She whirled about to look at him, skirts twirling around her long legs. She looked him directly in the eyes, her expression pleading. “I’m very fond of her. So is Rosie. It’s—you—you oughtn’t give her false hope, yes?”

  Chris didn’t know if he’d ever felt more guilty than he did at that moment.

  She stared at him, waiting for a response. He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. Opened it again.

  “It’s been my understanding that it’s all very cut and dry,” Rachel said beseechingly. She tugged at one of her thumbs. “I looked into the things she’s saying. I went all the way into Summergrove. The officer I spoke to at the station said that there was nothing to lead him to think there might be foul play at work. I told Miss Greene as much. And now…” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t…” Chris fumbled for words. He desperately wished Olivia was here, and not crying into her pillow like she were the fourteen-year-old girl! “I don’t know all the details, Rachel. All I know is…” He tried to recall what Maris and Olivia had said. “Some flags were thrown up in the report. A-and they wanted an investigator Missus Faraday might actually work with.”

  Rachel gripped the back of her head with both hands. Her knuckles turned white. “It’s very cruel,” she said, quietly, and then repeated, louder, “It’s cruel to let her think that there might be a reason to something so senseless, Chris. You… you ought to talk to Miss Faraday. Ask her what these flags are. Try to… explain this to her. I doubt she’d understand.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “Wouldn’t this have killed you, after you lost Mister Spencer?” she pressed. “Not getting any closure?”

  He almost laughed.

  But he remembered how those months had felt, believing in hope when there had been none. How it had hurt all over again, like stitches torn open, when he’d found out the undeniable truth of Fernand’s death.

  He swallowed.

  “I… can try to talk to Olivia about it,” he said quietly.

  She sighed. Nodded slowly. Slipped back into her chair.

  “All right,” she murmured. “Thank you. That’s all I ask. That poor girl. We can’t… we shouldn’t put her through even more, you see? It would be awful to put her through any more.”

  Chris smiled weakly. He tried to find his way back to the way they’d talked before, back to that place where he didn’t feel as if she’d stepped directly onto his heart. “Of course, I can hardly speak to her until she stops acting quite so….”

  “I think,” Rachel mused, picked her words as if she was stepping carefully through the orchard, trying to avoid all the pulp from fallen apples. “I think that Olivia and Rosemary aren’t so different.”

  “Oh, Gods.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands. Would they ever stop feeling so damned gritty? “Please don’t draw that comparison right now, not after Olivia acted so utterly… barmy, and….”

  “No, that’s why,” Rachel said. She sighed, and when Chris opened his eyes, she was shaking her head and looking at him sadly. “I’m not defending your employer. That was all… quite indefensible. This is about Rosie. I’m reading her.”

  Oh. How was it that he kept forgetting she could do that at important moments?

  “It’s not my place to just… spell out her heart for you, but she is happy to see you. She’s thrilled to see you. She just… doesn’t want to do what Olivia just did.”

  “Act like a little brat?”

  “Yes.”

  Chris furrowed his brow.

  Rachel twisted her fingers in a confused, directionless sort of gesture like she was trying to conjure order up out of chaos and didn’t know how. “It’s said,�
�� she murmured, “that children are always children around their parents. No matter how old you are, as soon as you’re with that person, you just… become who you were.”

  “I’m not Rosemary’s father.”

  “She was six years old, Christopher. In almost every way that matters… you and Mister Spencer acted as her parents.”

  Chris thought about it. And then, bitterness sprouting like an ugly flower in his chest, he barked a laugh. “My parents are dead. And so is Fernand. I’ll never have that feeling you’re talking about.”

  Rachel met his eyes. They were very, very sad. “Neither will I,” she said quietly.

  Ah.

  “I didn’t know,” he said.

  She shrugged one shoulder and quirked her lips. It was a casual, easy sort of gesture, and very unladylike. Chris found that he loved it. “I don’t speak much about my past. You know that.”

  “What happened to them?” he asked, gently.

  “I lost them.”

  Her lips folded.

  She straightened in her chair, cleared her throat quietly, and pushed her plate to one side. She gave Chris a tight smile. “This was rather more dramatics than I’d expected from dinner.” She got to her feet, and he loved the way the gown she wore fell around her hips, giving her shape where her plain grey store-bought monstrosities gave her nothing at all. “I think I need to retire early, myself.”

  Don’t go, he wanted to say.

  He swallowed hard.

  “Rachel, I didn’t mean to—” he said.

  She held up a hand. “It’s fine,” she said. Her voice was quiet but firm. That was the core of her. Whenever he saw it, it was always like that. Iron swaddled in the softest velvet. “Like I said. I don’t speak about my past.”

  The lights flickered.

  Chris’s stomach dropped to his feet, and he snapped his gaze up. Oh, Gods, not again. Not here, too. Couldn’t he go anywhere to get away from wild elementals and fire and death? He prepared for a blast of heat… but it didn’t come.