Page 61 of Darkest at Dusk
Viola’s gaze slid to the hearth. “It’s an old place,” she said. “Old places hold?—”
“—echoes,” Pansy cut in. “And more than echoes.”
“Fire leaves scars,” Viola murmured.
“—as deep as caverns,” Pansy finished. “Folk remember. And not just the fire.” Pansy leaned forward, her voice a quick whisper meant to carry. “That house has known too much darkness, too many graves dug in too short a time.”
“So much sorrow,” Viola said.
Pansy nodded. “But there’s more.” She lifted a finger and tapped the air to emphasize her point. “The men sent to mend the north wing after the fire say their lines went wrong and their tools walked. The chimneys howled down a cold flue. Hot breath burned the backs of their necks though no fire was near. In the end they packed their carts and wouldn’t go back for love or money.”
“Stories,” Viola said. “Tales told one to the next until they grew themselves a second head.”
“These didn’t need growing,” Pansy said. “They came up quick as nettles and true as the north star.”
“I’ve heard some of that,” Isabella said carefully, recalling Peg’s words.
Pansy drew a breath and Isabella found herself holding her own. “Kin of Mr. Caradoc’s died in that fire. His father.” She leaned closer. “His cousin. Catrin.”
Isabella went very still. A line in a letter: Your cousin Catrin is with us now. She is brave to outward show.
“They say,” Pansy went on, voice dropping, “he barred the door. Locked it from without.”
The words landed like a slap. Rhys’s coat warm on her shoulders. Rhys’s mouth sweet with sugared lemon. Rhys’s hand steady when the air turned wrong. The picture would not fit the frame Pansy built.
“People say all manner of things when they are afraid,” Isabella managed.
Viola’s needles clicked once, hard. “That they say it doesn’t make it true,” she said. “We don’t know who barred that door.”
Isabella’s heart skipped a beat.
“We don’t know that it wasn’t him,” Pansy replied, mulish. “What we do know is what they found when the fire cooled. Lock and latch scorched. The poor girl by the door, nails torn, wood gouged. And her—” She stopped, swallowed. “Burnt black, she was.”
Heat tore through Isabella like a wave, then fled, leaving her cold. The singed pink satin in her pocket seemed to pulse against her thigh like a second heart. The back of her throat burned with bile. Still, she could not make the picture fit. But the North Wing had burned, and a girl had died whether or not she believed the rest.
“And that poor maid died there as well,” Pansy said.
“She took a fever and wandered out,” Viola snapped. Then her gaze shifted to Isabella. “There was no harm done her by anyone.”
Pansy sniffed but did not argue the point. “Still and all,” she said, “folk around here have no liking for Harrowgate.” She spread her hands. “That house is not right.”
Viola’s needles clicked, steady. “Old houses carry their histories.”
“Their ghosts,” Pansy said.
Viola only rolled her eyes.
“Our Hazel used to say some hauntings are greedy,” Pansy said. “Take all the air from a room and call it peace.”
Isabella thought of the hush that fell like a shroud when Rhys Caradoc was near. The closest to peace she had known. Was it a reprieve or a mark of danger?
“And then there’s the doctor,” Pansy went on.
“Oh, hush now,” Viola said. “He had nothing to do with anything. He only came to Marlow years after the fire.”
“You hush,” Pansy said, and turned back to Isabella. “A doctor from London he was, once a man of consequence before scandal clipped him. Took a post here in Marlow.”
Viola nodded. “He kept rooms?—”
