She dried the plate, turned out the red light and took the print into the ballroom. “Dang it.” It hadn’t turned out right. She knew she shouldn’t have let Mrs. Miller sensitize the plate.
She walked toward the window that captured the last of the day’s light. The lush green, magnolia-dotted lawn was laid out beyond the antebellum windows in storybook perfection. She had a particularly fond memory of playing in that grassy area with her sister when they were little.
She tilted the glass plate toward the remaining sunlight to get a clearer look. The camera and the chemicals had worked just as Mrs. Miller had suggested. There she was, a direct Alcott descendent wearing a vintage Alcott family dress, sitting on a family-original couch. Oddly she wasn’t alone in that photo.
She was surrounded by four other people, one of whom was Bertha Mae Alcott. She turned now and glared at Peyton, as if she could see her. But the one Peyton didn’t see in the tintype, the one she would have wanted to, was her former fiancé Beau Spencer.
6
The exhibits would mark a celebration of the old and new, and Peyton liked how this particular exhibition signaled how the manor was moving forward.
But the glass photographic plate that Mrs. Miller used had ghosted images of the 1860s bride and groom on the couch next to Peyton. Even Bertha Mae and Benjamin Alcott, Sr., stood behind her. She knew double imaging was entirely possible with digital and paper photographs, but glass plate photography?
A long creak sounded from the other room as if the house shifted around her, settling its attention on her.
“Hello?”
No one answered.
Her heart pumped too fast, left her feeling dizzy. She sat in a nearby chair and found herself with a view of the grand staircase in the distance. A chill brushed along her neck.
The manor’s energy closed in around her, pushing so hard from all sides she thought she felt a touch on her skin. She felt cramped and claustrophobic in the vacuous room. A scene spun to life around her, like a hologram, three dimensional and transparent—couples dancing, music playing, people laughing.
She quickly shut her eyes and a flicker of images spooled. A man drove. His arm behind the woman who sat beside him. His watch had a dark blue face and diamonds that sparkled in the low light. Adrenaline shot through her body and she opened her eyes with a gasp. The room was quiet and empty.
She didn’t know who the man in the car was, she hadn’t seen his face. The woman was Jayne Ella—that unmistakable shade of red hair. Why had she been in the car? And who was that man who wasn’t her husband?
Her phone rang and she walked a quick step back to the ballroom. When she lifted it from her purse she saw the missed call and a text message from Ira:
See you in the morning, love. Can’t wait to begin our new life together.
She looked at the glass plate in her hand, her relatives surrounding her, staring at her hard enough to break the glass. She popped the top on the Xanax bottle and tossed one tablet into her mouth, crunched it slightly, and swallowed the bitter pill without water.
She had never taken one before and wasn’t sure what to expect. Within a few minutes a serene calm swam through her veins and her worries about the manor and Beau fell to the wayside. She wasn’t sure what side effects there might be, if any. For the moment, she didn’t care. She thought she could work now.
She headed toward the dining room with her laptop and phone. On her way she tapped a message to Ira, letting him know how much she was looking forward to seeing him tomorrow morning. She tried to ignore the thread of guilt that curled through her chest. She shouldn’t have been thinking about Beau so much.
She rationalized that it was inevitable. Because she was home again, where they had spent so many years together, and she was at the manor where he was last seen. Also because she was getting married in a few days. Like a wave, the guilt tried to gather strength, but the Xanax quashed it. The pill was a temporary fix, she knew. Since she was stuck in the manor for the time being, she would take it.
She glanced around the room. The scenes that had played for her just moments ago were gone. The room was quiet. She smiled with relief. That had been her anxiety playing tricks on her. Everything was fine now. Xanax was a wonder drug. They should add it to the drinking water.
She spent over an hour in the rooms on the first floor. She sketched drawings of the tour path and made extensive lists of the family artifacts that would be on display. The anxiety about the manor, her past, Beau—it was gone. It felt glorious to be in control again.
She didn’t want to admit it but her mother hadn’t been wrong. Peyton was the right and best person to take care of setting up the tours. The time she had spent around the family artifacts in the museum uniquely qualified her to get this job done and more quickly than anyone else.
She didn’t have to take an inventory of objects or research their history and meanings. She already had that information. It was just a matter of organizing it and getting it on to paper. The tour and promotions plan would be wrapped up in a matter of hours.
Another groan sounded from somewhere, maybe upstairs. The house. It studied her. Crowded her. She took a sip of coffee and the dark liquid seemed to sour in her mouth. She could barely swallow. Apparently the Xanax had its limits.
She made her way to the dining room, carefully avoiding the area with the grand staircase. She chose not to test the remnants of her prescription-fueled bravery. She passed through an alcove with four golden arches, a small bust of Bertha Mae carved into the middle of every one. She stared down at Peyton, her strength almost palpable and certainly visible. Peyton wondered if the scenes she saw earlier were the manor’s memories or Bertha Mae’s. Or if there was a difference.
She would look up where Bertha Mae had died—if it had been in the house, maybe she and the house had become one.
Peyton breathed in her strength, imagining her ancestor counseling her, encouraging her to be strong. She remembered reading Bertha Mae’s diary and how she had overcome unimaginable hardships with such grace and strength.
Peyton made a few notes for how she wanted the Bertha Mae exhibit to appear. They had several of her tiaras and fans, plenty of dresses and photos. And, of course, the diary. Bertha Mae was the original matron of Alcott Manor, and she was the example she wished that Jayne Ella would have followed—brave, humble, a model of beauty and courage.
She took stock of the dining room, its coffered ceilings, oversized fireplace mantel, stained glass windows and gold leaf accents. Her mother had been right. Once the house was open to the public for tours and events, all of Charleston society would want to align with the manor. And her mother. She shook her head. Oh, how the standards had changed from Bertha Mae to her mother. She couldn’t imagine Bertha Mae being so self-serving or concerned about society’s approval.
She framed her fingers around the beautiful designs in the stained glass windows, visualizing how shots of them would be featured on the website and in tourism pamphlets. A female figure passed across her handmade viewfinder.
She stumbled backward, held on to the table for support.
She thought she heard laughter. Someone, or maybe it was the manor itself, was pleased that she was startled.
“Ignore it,” she said to herself. And with Xanax on her side, she thought she could.
Peyton set her laptop on the dining room table such that the ocean was within her view. She studied the raised wall border print of peaches and cherries and delicate floral blossoms. The original wall design that Anna Alcott, Bertha Mae’s favorite daughter-in-law, had crafted to match her wedding china in the 1880s.
She made a note to set up glass cases beneath the border to put the Alcott wedding china on display. She didn’t trust their safety enough to set the table with the irreplaceable pieces, especially with tour guests coming through.
This was also the ideal spot for a few of Anna Alcott’s wedding dress photos. She remembered just how many weddings had been held at the mano
r in its heyday. Several generations of Alcotts had been married in the manor and on the great lawn. She would make certain that the more beautiful wedding photos were featured on the wedding section of the website. And, of course, in the wedding display she had planned for the ballroom.
She had used her flight on the way down to map out her business prospectus and marketing plan for Alcott Manor. Now she had to get it banker-ready.
She knew the budget they had available to them. Financial projections were pretty easy to calculate. The family stood to do well over time with Alcott Manor, but there were no short-term gains. At this point in the process someone needed to build relationships with the tourism outlets to convince them that they weren’t the local haunted house anymore.
The Alcott Manor plan was easy for her, it was mostly number-centric. She kept her ideas simple, the math clear and creative messaging to a minimum. She wanted the bankers focused on the fact that the plan would work with time and that they made more money when they didn’t call the loan. When she put the final decimal point into the budget, darkness had long fallen over the ocean and taken it from her view.
Next she opened the proposal file for Sweet Chocolate and started documenting her strategy in bullet point fashion. From the moment they called her and asked her to submit a proposal, she’d had ideas on how to remedy their image problem. That was how it worked for her when a client was a fit, the ideas came immediately.
She worked tirelessly detailing every idea she had for Sweet Chocolate, listing the exact media vehicles she wanted, their costs. Most importantly they would combine a joint PR campaign and fundraiser with three major fashion designers to benefit breast cancer research. She had already spoken to the designers and they were all onboard. She was going to win this client and nail the partnership.
When it was finished she emailed the Sweet Chocolate plan to Amanda with a request that she approve the final budget as quickly as possible. Then she sent the Alcott Manor plans to her mother. She closed her laptop and left her hands resting on the cover as if she could seal the fate with her pitch with Sweet Chocolate and the loan with the bank.
She checked the time: 3:30 a.m. She stood and stretched, a seam popped. It was then that she realized she was still wearing the light blue 1860s dress she had worn for the photo. She found the tiny hole in the side seam and made a mental note to hand stitch it back together in the morning.
She was exhausted and jittery. Her stomach hurt. Too much coffee and Xanax was probably a bad combination.
She laid down on the blue print settee at the side of the room, exhaling hard. Bertha Mae would have slipped cyanide in her tea if she had seen Peyton lying across such a formal piece of furniture. With so much work to focus on over the last few hours, she hadn’t noticed how constricting the dress was. Thanks to years of Jayne Ella’s insistence that she and her sister Layla have good posture.
Of course now that she was curled into the small couch, she could barely breathe. She unbuttoned the top six buttons and drew in a deep inhale, stared at the gold vines that stretched along the green silk wall coverings. She was so wired and tired she thought she saw the vines sway. Rosebuds appeared to open and bloom every foot or so on a repeat pattern. She relaxed her focus but kept her gaze on the swaying vines, surprised at how powerfully her exhaustion was taking her under. She wouldn’t take the Xanax again. She wouldn’t spend long nights at the manor alone, either. She sat up, decided to leave.
The vines leaned away from their anchor on the wall coverings and let loose into the room. Her stomach pains worsened. “Have to get out,” she said and stood. But the vines spread into the room with each back and forth, blowing in an invisible wind that she couldn’t feel. The pain in her stomach was unbearable and she wrapped her arms around her stomach. She didn’t have time to be down with a virus right now. Maybe it was stress—the wedding, the manor, the memories, work. They were all taking too much, using her up. Maybe, literally, making her sick.
She doubled over to the floor and closed her eyes. After a long while the room was quiet and her stomach felt better. She assured herself that when she opened them again the vines would be gone. She would see nothing but the furnished room, then she would hightail it out of there and home to her mother’s house. Instead she saw a little girl standing in front of her, staring at her.
“Where did you come from?” the little girl asked. She had long dark wavy hair, pulled away from her face and tied into a ponytail with a red ribbon. Her muted gold dress was full below the sash and stopped just shy of tea length, the neckline was straight and extended laterally into off-the-shoulder sleeves. It looked turn of the century and wasn’t the sort of standard dress a ten-year-old girl would wear, and Peyton almost asked why she was dressed in costume. “If you were supposed to come for dinner, you just missed it.” She leaned closer and whispered, “Your buttons are unfastened. That’s not decent.” Her breath reeked of garlic. Her sallow complexion and dark under eye circles detracted from her beauty.
Peyton sat tall and buttoned quickly. Conversation and laughter echoed from nearby and she looked up in time to see suited men and bustle-dressed women walking away from the dining room in a group.
She would never, ever take Xanax again.
“Evelyn, the men are going outside to smoke, let’s play pinochle,” one woman said from the hall.
“Excellent idea, Cora.”
“Rachel?”
“I have to go,” the little girl said to Peyton. “Hasseltine is calling me.”
A tall African-American woman entered the dining room from the side door, giving Peyton only the briefest glance.
“Rachel,” she scolded and grabbed the little girl by the hand. “You’re too sick to be down here.” They left, and Peyton was alone once again in the empty room.
Of all the things Peyton expected to see when she opened her eyes, a gathering of people in Victorian costume wasn’t one of them.
Gas flames hissed in the chandelier that hung over the dining table. A fire crackled and popped in the fireplace. Candlelight flickered from three silver candelabras placed at thirds on the long dining table.
Peyton knew the candles hadn’t been lit a few moments ago, and certainly there weren’t the remnants of dinner, like what had been left on the table in front of her. And she didn’t remember if the light fixture had been restored to gas, but she really didn’t think it had been.
She walked to the table and rapped her knuckles lightly on the wood. The cool, hard surface was solid. Which meant she probably wasn’t dreaming. Dancing vines, women dressed in costume, a little girl—definitely hallucinating. The room even smelled of chicken and potatoes.
A subtle brushing of fabric against fabric startled her and she realized she wasn’t alone in the room. Candlelight, gaslight and firelight left the far-reaching corners of the oversized room unlit altogether, so it was impossible to see the source of the noise.
Embers from a cigar glowed hot in the swath of darkness, then faded again. Whoever stood in the shadows faced away from her and toward the window.
“Who’s there?” her voice was breathless and barely audible.
There was no response for a moment, the only sound the whisper of the gas that fueled the chandelier. Then, someone slowly emerged from the shadows on the other side of the room.
He was tall, well over six feet, with broad shoulders that slimmed into a narrow, vested waist. He sucked on a cigar and looked at his gold-chained watch, as if he had too much time to pass.
He seemed oblivious to her. He clicked his watch cover shut, returned it to the vest pocket and blew sweet tobacco-scented puffs of smoke that floated like layered clouds above his head.
Adrenaline zinged through her chest and she pressed her hand to her heart. She fought the feeling that for as much as she had tried to hold herself together these last few days, that something had finally cracked. She had lost touch with reality, fallen into an Alcott Manor rabbit hole.
He stepped out of the sh
adows and into the lighted area of the room. His blond hair was slicked neatly into a short Victorian style, his skin was tanned and smooth and his light blue eyes fixed steadily on her.
Pinpoint dots blinked at the edges of her vision. Her head spun. “Is it you?” she whispered. She was struck with that feeling that she had missed the punchline on some horrible joke, that this was some sort of cruel trick she couldn’t follow.
She squinted to focus on his face. There were differences between the man who stood in front of her and the man she was engaged to nine years ago. There were new worry lines across his forehead, the light was gone from his eyes, and his trademark smile was missing.
They walked toward each other.
Her heart kicked hard and fast like it might burst right through her skin.
“Peyton?” he asked tentatively.
The sound of his voice reached inside her chest and plucked heartstrings she thought had died with his absence.
“Beau?” she asked.
When he reached her he ran his fingertips along the side of her face, as if to prove to himself that she was real.
She touched the top of his hand, realized she was shaking.
“Peyton—” He took her into his arms and held her close, kissing her cheek. She closed her eyes; the familiarity of his kisses was dizzying. She held on to him, memories pulling at her like the deep ocean current, willful, strong and determined.
“How did you find me?” Tears filled his eyes.
In all of the time they’d shared, she had never seen him cry before. Her mouth opened but she didn’t know how to answer. She studied him in the flickering glow of fire and candlelight, running her fingers over the features of his face, his neck, his chest. “Are you okay? Where have you been?”
He shook his head, as if the answer wouldn’t come, as if he didn’t know. He kissed her long and slow, lifting her in his embrace.
A Stranger in Alcott Manor Page 7