The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

She sighed. “Ready to win my mother’s favour,” she said, tugging at her skirts and making a face. “As if I ever could successfully hope to do so.” She shook her head.

  Rosemary stopped jiggling her foot and glared at Olivia. “It wouldn’t be so hard if you would just be more reasonable!” she snapped.

  Olivia raised her eyebrows mildly. “Oh. And I suppose you know all about it?”

  Rosie folded her lips. “She tells me things. We’re close.”

  Olivia tapped her knee and looked considering. Then she smiled faintly. “Miss Buckley,” she pronounced. “I know enough about you that I could be positively cruel to you right now, especially in light of everything that’s happened in the past twelve hours. And yet, I shall refrain, despite your implications, because regardless of the sort of thing my mother likes to tell people about me—I am not a monster.”

  Fire blazed in Rosie’s eyes, and then she sat back, folded her arms, and turned her attention to Chris. “Miss Faraday says that it’s definitely Mister Norwood or Mister Spencer who killed Mabelle and locked us in the vault.”

  “I said probably,” Olivia corrected.

  “Did anyone see to the doctor?” Chris asked, remembering how to move and making his way to a free settee. “He was there when the shooting happened. And, ah… about Miss Mabelle…” He glanced at Rosie, who visibly choked down a sob, and then at Olivia.

  Olivia adjusted her skirts. “I sent Walter down to… address that situation,” she said.

  “Your butler?”

  “He’s trustworthy beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt, and loyal enough to take a gunshot for anyone with a lick of Miller blood in them. He’ll see to Livingstone and… ah.” A shadow crossed Olivia’s face. Her lips twisted and she looked down at her lap. “Roger and then his daughter. I can hardly believe….”

  “Elouise says you don’t care about loved ones dying,” Rosie murmured.

  Olivia’s jaw bulged. “Elouise doesn’t know a thing,” she snapped.

  “Don’t I?”

  All four of them turned in unison. Missus Elouise Faraday stood in the doorway, dressed in a dark navy day dress that clung to her like a glove. Her skirts swirled dramatically as she stepped into the room. With Olivia dressed so conservatively, and both of them wearing their hair in the same fashion, they could have been the same person—one at thirty and the other at sixty.

  Olivia raised her chin and squared her shoulders. “Good morning, Mother,” she pronounced carefully. “We have something of a crisis.”

  “How did I know you would bring one with you?”

  “With respect, Missus Elouise,” Miss Banks said, inclining her head graciously. “This is one that I brought with me. Among Livingstone and Rosemary and I, we’ve created quite a situation for you, I’m afraid. Whatever you might think of your daughter, she’s only here to try and fix it.”

  Missus Elouise cracked a bitter smile. She moved gracefully to the nearest unoccupied chair and took a seat. “It’s good of you to defend her, Miss Banks, but I believe I know my daughter enough to correctly assume that she’s rather escalated all of this. Now hasn’t she?” She didn’t look at Emilia as she spoke. Her eyes were only for Olivia.

  And, surprising Chris, his employer swallowed hard and then bowed her head. “Honestly,” she said, with a sigh. “From what I can ascertain, yes. I’ve made rather a muck of things.”

  “It’s not you,” Emilia interrupted. “I’m quite sure this is entirely on my esteemed beloved’s shoulders. I suppose it’s for the best that she’s in Summergrove and not here. She’s directly responsible for almost all of this, and I don’t want to waste my energy being furious at her.”

  Beloved, the word whispered in Chris’s ears. He thought of Fernand. Snakes squirmed in his belly.

  “Yes, well,” Olivia said, shrugging one shoulder. “I believed her, even though I should have very well known to take you at your word.” She shrugged, looking around the room. “Some part of me,” she said quietly, “rather actually wanted to have the excuse, I suppose. To see home.” Her eyes focused back on her mother. “To see you.”

  Elouise only met her daughter’s eyes for a moment before shaking her head and glancing away. “Nothing you say is ever true, though, is it, Livvie? You’re pulling my strings, prepping me for the role you’ve cast me to play in the solution to your mystery.”

  The flicker of hurt that crossed Olivia’s face only lasted a second. Chris never would have seen it if he weren’t already looking at her.

  She shook her head as if trying to shake away something unpleasant. When she spoke again, her voice was controlled and authoritative. “People are dead,” she said. “Roger. Mabelle.”

  Elouise looked startled. She turned to Rosemary. “Is it true? Mabelle? Oh, Rosie! Are you all right?”

  Rosemary looked as if she wanted to stand and fling herself into her protector’s arms. Instead, she buried her fingers in her skirts and lifted her chin. “I’ll be fine,” she said ferociously. “As soon as the person who did this is paying for it!”

  Olivia laughed. It was an ugly, sour sound. “Oh, look at you! Elouise Faraday, showing motherly concern! What strange shadow world have I dipped into?” She shook her head. “You’re supposed to protect the people here, and yet, in addition to the deaths, Livingstone’s injured. Billy Jones tried to kill him using only fists last night so you can chalk that up to your good judgement, Mother!”

  “Don’t act like you—”

  “And,” Olivia continued, speaking over her mother, “worst of all, some of Em’s work is missing. That may sound heartless to you, but I assure you, I’m entirely unmonstrous when I say it. This particular invention could lead to a great deal more chaos and death, and it should be our primary focus.”

  “It’s the truth,” Rosemary said quietly, her animal ferocity melting at the words. “I want Mabelle’s killer to rot in all three hells, but…” She shook her head. “I… I know you know I’ve been missing dancing lessons, Elouise. I haven’t been out with boys, or even with Mabelle and the others from the orchards. The truth is, I’ve been working with Miss Banks. The new fixture in the dining room, the lights at the Festival… we’ve created something amazing. But, oh, if the wrong people have it, understand it, then….”

  “There are too many people on this property with agendas,” Olivia said. “Which is rather funny, considering how you keep everything so isolationist that Tarland itself would applaud your efforts! For instance! Did you know Spencer—who, I remind you, you’re trying to sell the Miller legacy to—is a friend of the bloody Combs family?”

  “I keep myself well informed, Olivia, thank you,” Missus Elouise snapped.

  Olivia’s face went red with anger and her fists clenched in her lap. She opened her mouth.

  “There are others,” Rosemary cut in quickly, her eyes darting from Olivia to Elouise. “And I think there might be more than we even know. Emilia has known that people have been looking at her for weeks, now… trying to find where we’ve been doing our work.”

  Elouise Faraday looked at each of them in turn, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. “Who?” she asked.

  “We don’t know,” Olivia said. “Some are more suspicious than others. Like the aforementioned blighter you’re trying to sell the holdings off to in, what I assume, is just a misguided game of chicken you’re trying to play with me. But the truth is that we don’t know who! It could be just about anyone! And right now, as we speak, we have almost all the population of Summergrove and certainly all of the staff from Miller here, locked up in this house! If we can just prevent anyone from leaving while we search thoroughly for the things taken from Emilia’s laboratory….”

  “You propose I let my guests have their things rifled through?”

  “I propose we find the items before they manage to hop a train to Darrington! Because if they manage to slip through our net, they could hand Emilia’s research off to someone who could very well end civilization in Tarland!”

/>   Elouise sneered. “Aren’t you heroic?”

  “Elouise,” Rosemary said, her voice soft.

  The tension seemed to drain. Olivia’s mother turned her attention to Rosie, who leaned forward in her chair, hands folded in her lap. “I barely even know Miss Faraday, and honestly, I’m not sure anything you say about her is wrong. But… she helped bring me here, and my brother trusts her, and she’s apparently very good at what she does.”

  Olivia’s mother smoothed her skirts. She avoided any eye contact. And for just a moment, she seemed very much a sad, frightened, and bruised old woman. “She is,” she said and sighed. “She is very, very good at what she does, indeed.” She looked up and met Olivia’s eyes across the way.

  Olivia shrunk under her gaze and then straightened. “Ollie’s pansies look beautiful this year, Mother,” she said, clear and open and sad. “I can’t believe how many colours he managed to create in just fifteen years.”

  Missus Faraday deflated, settling back into her chair. “He was so brilliant.”

  “I didn’t kill him, you know.”

  “But you didn’t make his death any easier for those of us who loved him.”

  “I loved him.”

  Elouise brushed the hair from her face in a gesture so like Olivia that Chris had to swallow down a sudden lump in his throat. “In your own way, I suppose you did. But it’s not good enough. It’ll never be good enough.” She just sounded… tired. “What is it, exactly, that you need, Livvie? Please, just be done with this and then leave. I can’t—I just can’t.”

  Olivia’s lips twisted. For a moment, Chris thought she would say something. Fling an accusation. Throw back a blow that would rock her mother off her heels. But instead… instead, she sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “We need a reason to keep everyone present, but it has to be a fiction. No lie is going to fool the person we’re after, but telling everyone that a man was beaten and a girl was killed through the night will only breed hysteria that will make our quarry harder to find.”

  Elouise shut her eyes tightly. “Poor, poor Mabelle,” she said. “She was a good worker, a bright girl. I was raised with Roger’s grandmother. Losing her is… beyond tragic. She was a part of the family, here.”

  A fleeting expression of sadness crossed Olivia’s face at the word family, but it disappeared as soon as it surfaced. “Please focus on the now. It’ll need to be a robbery. Your jewels have been stolen, Mother. They went missing throughout the night. Some miscreant came into your rooms and made off with them, and we need to find them.”

  Elouise Faraday bit down on a pained expression.

  “I wish we had enough guaranteed people to post a guard on every door, but unfortunately, everyone I completely trust is in this room. And Walter, who already has a task, and is ancient.”

  “And Maris,” Miss Banks pointed out.

  Olivia bobbed her head in a nod. “And Maris, who is down in Summergrove with Billy Jones.”

  Elouise shook her head. “Gods. Billy. Why would he do such a thing? After all this time, after the doctor was released, after I’ve brought him into my home and supported his endeavours….”

  “Hatred is a powerful thing, Mother,” Olivia said.

  “What about Rachel?” Rosemary asked hands on her knees and glancing about. “Why isn’t she here?”

  Olivia folded her lips.

  Chris sat up straighter. “I agree,” he said. “Jones said that he hadn’t seen her around the guest house, Olivia. And she’s a bloody heartreader. She’d be invaluable in finding someone with a guilty conscience.”

  “I don’t trust anyone right now unless I know for certain,” Olivia said, her voice tight. “Miss Albany has the strongest ties to either movement of anyone on this property. Ruling her out would be pure idiocy.”

  “Because of her brother?” Rosemary’s brows pulled down, and her lips settled into a pout he recognized.

  “Certainly,” Olivia replied, calm as anything.

  “They never even talk! She hates him! You have no idea of the way he treats her!”

  Chris leaned forward. “What has he—”

  “It’s a connection,” Olivia said firmly. “It would be a mistake to ignore a connection. No. If I don’t know for certain, they’re a suspect. That’s the situation that we find ourselves in. There’s just the five of us, and Maris.”

  Rosemary sat back, folding her arms around her middle and glowering.

  “How are only five of us supposed to keep a thief—a killer—from escaping and finding their way back to Darrington?” Miss Banks asked.

  Olivia sighed. She pinched her nose. “Inefficiently,” she said. “One of us on the road into town. One of us in back. That should cover most potential escape routes. I’ll mirror Maris down at the police office and have her post people at the mail coach landing and the train station. With them searching bags and us watching exits… it’ll be very difficult for our perpetrator to leave.” She went to run her hand through her hair, only to find it piled atop her head, and she made a face.

  “It looks very becoming, Livvie,” her mother said sharply. “Don’t take it down.”

  “It doesn’t move,” Olivia complained. “Hair should move.” She blew out a stream of air and then shrugged. “I suppose it will have to do. Rosemary, do you want to take one post? I suspect you could absolutely stop anyone who went your way.”

  The smile that played on Rosemary’s lips was very nearly bloodthirsty. “I could do that.”

  Chris opened his mouth, anxiety seizing at his heart.

  “Be careful,” Elouise admonished.

  Rosie reached over and patted her hand.

  Chris sat back, feeling strangely bereft.

  “Em, you’ll have to cover the back. It would probably be best if we armed you.”

  Emilia folded her lips in a thin line and sat up straighter. “I don’t like guns,” she said firmly.

  Olivia sighed. “Please remember that the person you’re on the look-out for murdered someone last night. With a gun, as it happens. I suspect you’ll like them rather less after being shot with one.”

  “I said no, Olivia.”

  Olivia growled and dragged a hand over her face. “I am not going to leave you out there undefended when we know this person is a killer!”

  Miss Banks’s gaze flickered over to Chris. He froze in his chair, pinned by the sudden attention. “Post Christopher, instead,” she said.

  “I–I don’t know how to shoot,” he squeaked. He’d never actually held a pistol in his entire life, despite how many times he’d been on the barrel end of one. The very thought made him so nervous he had to keep his knees from knocking. Could he pull a trigger? Even if he had to? He didn’t think he could.

  “And I need him!” Olivia protested. “He’s my assistant! How am I supposed to search these rooms without him?”

  Missus Faraday cleared her throat.

  All attention refocused on her.

  “There seems to be someone you haven’t considered,” she pointed out carefully.

  Olivia snorted. “Mother. Please. Gods, you’re a thousand years old.”

  “I’m fifty-nine, thank you very much. Don’t bury me, yet. I know how to fire a pistol, I’m steady on my feet, and unlike either Miss Banks or Mister Buckley, I don’t wear spectacles and can actually see the thing I’m watching for!”

  Rosemary giggled.

  Olivia threw up her hands. “Fine. Fine! But if you get yourself shot, Mother, I am selling all Miller holdings off for farmland with pleasure.” She got to her feet, and Chris echoed the movement despite how much his head ached, how tired he was, and how much he wanted to just lay down. “Gods.” Olivia sighed. “But you are a stubborn old bat.”

  “That, at least, is one thing you get from me,” Elouise said tartly, rising as well.

  Emilia stood and smoothed down her skirts. “I suppose I’ll contact Maris in Summergrove and inform her of the situation. And try not to tear a strip off her hide in the meanti
me.”

  Rosie stood up, and, to Chris’s surprise, darted across the way and threw her arms around his neck. “Please be careful,” she said quietly in his ear. “This is all… it’s all so much bigger than us. I can’t bear to lose anyone else. I can’t bear it, Chris.”

  He wrapped his arms as tightly around her as he could without hurting her, pulling her close and closing his eyes tight. “I wanted you safe,” he said. “Gods, I can’t believe you’re so deep in all of this, Rosie. All I wanted was for none of this to touch you, and here you are in the eye of the storm.”

  “No,” Rosemary said. “What you wanted was for no one to use me, Chris. And no one is using me. No one is manipulating me. This is me, making a choice.”

  He squeezed his eyes tight and let her go.

  ou can’t be in here,” Dayton Spencer protested shrilly, sitting up in bed and dragging the covers up to his neck.

  Olivia nodded to Chris, and he shut the door behind them. She turned back, smiling. “Actually,” she said. “I very much can. Have you not heard? Some villainous cretin found himself in my mother’s room last night and made off with her jewels.”

  “You couldn’t possibly think that I am responsible for—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mister Spencer. Absolutely no exceptions.” Olivia’s red-striped skirts trailed behind her as she moved to the closest wardrobe and pulled it open.

  Already, they had searched all the rooms on the first floor. Guests congregated in the foyer and parlours and dining room, some shocked that such a thing could happen, some tired and put out at being turned out of their beds so early after a night of revelry and rain and cider. The worst ones, like Spencer, were just furious to be under suspicion.

  Olivia shot Chris a raised eyebrow. “Hm? Get to work, Christopher. The cedar chest has room to store all manner of stolen diamonds.”

  Chris bowed his head and hurried over to the chest, which proved to be absolutely packed with quilts and mothballs. He sighed and began to pull them out, one after the other. They smelled of dust and age but were soft and well made. There was no sign of the spiritcell prototype or Miss Banks’ notes.