Page 4 of A Housekeeper for the Earl of Drinkwater
After a moment, the man’s eyes settled on Edward. Though he appeared to be rather more looking through Edward than at him, he grinned.
“Oh, heavens, milord!” he said, with a wheezy chuckle. “Is it you? Truly?” He paused, slapping his knee, and laughing wildly. “Your father will be awfully glad to know you’re back from the war at last. He’s been fretting over preparing you for the earldom, I understand.”
It took Edward a minute to realize the old man thought he was his elder brother, Austen, and therefore heir to the family title. The confusion answered at least one of his questions; his brother was not home yet from the war. But it also filled Edward with a dozen more.
Skipping over the mistake in identity, Edward then put gentle hands on the man’s shoulders.
“Robert,” he said softly. “What has happened to the estate? What is going on?”
The man stepped back, blinking in confusion. Edward thought Robert might have realized his mistake, but he just laughed again.
“It is good to know you’re back, milord,” he said. “Things have gotten into quite a mess while you’ve been away.”
Edward ground his teeth, trying to keep his composure. With all he’d seen so far, he had little tolerance for a half-mad man who didn't even know to whom he was speaking.
“It looks that way,” Edward said with exaggerated patience. “Can you start from the beginning?”
“Things have changed at Chimneys since you've been gone,” the old stable hand said.
Edward waited; the man was barely coherent. He held his breath, waiting for anything the old fellow had to say. But when five minutes had passed without any further explanation, Edward sighed with frustration.
“What has changed, Robert?” he asked, more forcefully this time. “What has happened?”
But the old stable-hand no longer seemed to see him. He was staring through Edward, as though looking into some distant time and place.
“Things have changed at Chimneys, milord,” he repeated. “They have changed a great deal, indeed.”
Edward growled, not surprised when the loud sound did not faze the clearly half-witted old stable-hand. He ran his hands through his hair, barely restraining himself from pulling out his thick black locks.
“I do not understand what that means, Robert,” he said. “How have things changed? Why has everything gone to pot?”
But it seemed the stable-hand was no longer in the present moment; he was muttering instructions to stable lads whom only he could see, no longer acknowledging Edward’s presence. He was pointing to empty stalls as though counting imaginary horses and babbling incoherently, an eerie smile on his face.
Edward quickly realized he would get nothing further out of the man. He turned away, closing his eyes against a sudden wave of nausea. If the stable-hand believed him to be his brother, and thought he was talking to real people, what could he expect of the rest of the manor?
With great hesitation, Edward made his way to the manor. He did not bother knocking on the heavy wooden door, as he was sure no one would answer. And when no one came to investigate the loud creaking of the opening door, his heart sank. Surely, the mansion could not be as abandoned as it appeared, could it?
Things have changed at Chimneys since you’ve been gone:Robert Ebbs’ words rang in Edward’s head as his footfalls echoed through the empty halls of the manor. Things had changed, indeed. And Edward was suddenly terrified to find out just how much.
“Hello?” he called, wincing at the loud reverberation of his own voice. “Mother? Father? Austen? Nathan?”
Only as he stood surrounded by nothing but the sound of his voice bouncing off the walls of the entryway of his family’s country seat did he notice the feel of the place. If he were blind, it would be easy to imagine that he had entered a mausoleum, rather than his own home.
The air was cold and damp, smelling of mold and decay, and the lack of light reminded him of a funeral long since ended. Dusty draughts of stale air whisked past his head like so many ghosts, as if begging him to release them to their eternal rest. He shivered as his skin broke out with goosebumps, and suddenly, he longed to be anywhere except for this place—what he’d always thought of as home.
The rug in the great hall was filthy; it was impossible to tell what color it was. Edward knew it was a light, patterned beige, but now, one might have thought it to be mud-brown. Or blood red. In the poor light, it could have been either.
Stranger still, it was cockeyed, wadded up at one end, so that anyone wandering through in the darkness would surely trip and fall. There were yellowed crystal vases with long dead flowers on the tables lining the great hall, and the smell of decaying plant matter assaulted his nostrils. He swallowed, flinching with each loudly echoing step he took.
Glass crunching beneath his feet made him stop for a moment. There were small streaks of sunlight coming in from nearby windows, and he quickly realized the glass was in fact crystals from the chandelier. Then, he saw with shock, just ahead of him, on the filthy floor by his feet, lay the chandelier itself.
He squinted to see in the marginal light, noting how rusty the metal parts and chain that had held it up had become. There was not a single candle in it, and the impact with the ground had bent and warped the frame. Upon further inspection, he saw the chain had snapped. But why had no one removed and replaced the broken chandelier?
“Mother?” he called as he approached her parlor. The room was completely dark, the curtains fully drawn. There was a terrible draft, and the room smelled of rot and sour champagne. His heart pounded in his chest, and he moved on to the other rooms.
Next, he paused at the door of his father’s study. There was only enough light for him to see the edge of the large desk, which was coated in a thick layer of dust. With the aid of a weak sunbeam coming through the window, he could also see papers scattered on the floor in front of the desk. He walked forward, and only when he kicked something with his foot, did he realize that the door was held open by one of the chairs.
No,he thought with deepening horror as he knelt to move it and found it in pieces.The chair wasthrownhere.
