Page 48 of Darkest at Dusk
“The settling of the house?” His tone was mild.
She wanted to believe that was all she heard.
The heat receded, replaced by a chill blast that left her shivering. He lifted the lantern toward her, wrapping her in the circle of its light. “Allow me.”
He set the lantern on the sundial and shrugged out of his coat. He settled it around her shoulders, the wool still warm from his body, smelling like citrus and linen and him.
His knuckles grazed the hollow at her throat as he drew the lapels together. Her pulse jumped and danced. For a heartbeat, they stood like that, his hands on the lapels, her skin thrumming under his touch, the space between them sparking like the air before a storm.
The weight of the garment felt like a claim.
From the house came the scrape of metal on stone, the sound she had heard before, eerie and disturbing. He moved closer, his gaze scanning the dark reach of the north beds.
“Come,” he said. “It grows cold.”
He reached for the lantern. Their fingers touched, no accident, and the shock of it skittered along her skin.
They walked in silence, the lantern swinging a bowl of light ahead of them. He opened the terrace door and stood aside to let her pass, his coat still draped over her shoulders. As she crossed the threshold, the whispers grew a fraction louder, though still soft, negligible in the face of what she had known in London.
She slid his coat off and held it out to him, a part of her hoping their fingers would brush once more. But he was careful as he took it. It mattered not. The air between them crackled all the same.
A child’s voice carried through the walls, a sob, a plea, then a woman’s answering cry. The house was never silent, not completely. The dead pressed close, reminding Rhys what bound him here. Their cried were his burden, their rest his only absolution. Whatever else Mr. Christopher thought to interfere with, that truth remained.
She knows
Rhys stared at the letter that lay open on his desk, creased and rumpled from the closing of his fist when he had crushed it. He had thought to fling it into the fire, to watch Christopher’s careful hand dissolve into ash, but instead he had smoothed it flat, rage still thrumming in his blood. The words endured, implacable beneath their scars.
His jaw tightened. He should have expected Christopher to meddle because meddling was all he could manage. He had sent an investigator sniffing after shadows best left buried and thought himself noble for it. Noble for burdening her with St. Jude’s, as though she had not grief enough already. Weakness dressed as virtue.
And now, this letter, Christopher’s attempt at virtue. A confession of his interference, cloaked as courtesy. A warning to Rhys, perhaps. More likely a plea for absolution should she suffer for knowing.
Where had been the solicitor’s gallantry when she shuttered her windows against hunger and cold? Where was his protection when the first disbursement of her quarterly funds was still months away? Advice he had provided, yes. But no food, no coin, no fire. He had left her adrift, and only now, when Rhys had reached for her, did Christopher find courage to interfere.
And yet, despite it all, she had come. Knowing what she knew, she had still stepped aboard that train. The thought curled through him, part satisfaction, part torment. Satisfaction that she had not turned away, not his brave Isabella, fierce in her own quiet way. Torment that she had chosen to lean upon his honor when in this he had none.
He was no safe harbor. He was a murderer dressed in a gentleman’s coat.
Christopher’s meddling altered nothing.
His plan stood. He would not be turned aside.
But the image of Isabella swaying toward him, eyes lifted to his, lodged deep. It steadied him. And broke him. He had no right to such a tether, no right to wish she might see past his shadows. Yet the wish coiled tight within him, undeniable as breath.
Isabella settled into a rhythm at Harrowgate. Each morning began with a quiet breakfast in the kitchen, sharing the long table with Mrs. Abernathy, Peg, Emma, Mary, and sometimes Cook. Though the food was simple—porridge with a spoonful of honey, eggs, kippers, warm bread, tea brewed dark and strong—it gave her a sense of normalcy and calm, kept her from drifting too far into the strange undercurrents of the manor.
She was determined to pretend that nothing unusual had happened in the library, that the door that refused to open had only been stuck, that the dampness of her sleeve had a reasonable explanation. And yet…
The house was not right.
There should have been wraiths. She could not remember a time where there had not been. But other than the girl in the nightgown, she had seen no other spirits. For a house as old and layered with history as Harrowgate, this seemed impossible. Ghosts should haunt its corridors, its crumbling wings, its forgotten staircases. Yet, while the house creaked and groaned and settled, and while she heard the whispers, muted and soft, any sighting of wraiths themselves was absent.
That absence left her wary and anxious, waiting for the moment when her fragile peace would shatter, wondering if they were somehow being held at bay, and if so, by what? In the dark of night, she had had the terrible thought that the house swallowed its dead.
One evening, when the kitchen had gone to embers and whispers, she came upon Mrs. Abernathy sitting with a clean cloth, working with small, relentless circles the bowl of a spoon she seemed determined to coax to a shine.
“The repetition soothes me,” the housekeeper said without looking up. “Will you take some tea?”
“Yes, thank you,” Isabella said, taking a seat across from her.
