Page 49 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
I shook my head. “I just heard his name mentioned in passing. That’s all, and that he’d been engaged to Miss Smythe once.”
“Nellie was a good girl. I sometimes wonder if a broken heart sent her to do what she did. I can’t help but feel a little responsible. Had I not let George sign up, then maybe the demons wouldn’t have come for him.”
I stared at her for a moment. “I’m not following.”
Her voice cracked as she reluctantly set the photograph back on the mantel. “They tell me he took his own life. He couldn’t live with himself. It was eighteen months ago now.” She paused for a heartbeat or two before continuing with the litany I suspected she repeated every day. “Three weeks. Four days.”
I would wager she knew each hour, minute, second since her boy’s death too, but I thought it was best to change the subject. I hadn’t meant to bring up bad memories and that melancholy clouding her face was catching. It was a sentiment I knew all too well.
I yawned again into my fist, hardly able to keep my eyes open.
“Oh, child, you should go lie down. Stay here this evening.You’re as safe with us as you are with our Pellar. And I’ve got Georgie’s room made up.”
The thought of sleeping in a dead man’s bed gave me pause, but after a moment’s contemplation I agreed. Trudging all the way back to Ruan’s cottage in my current condition was an unappealing notion. Not to mention I didn’t particularly want to speak with him, not until I’d gotten my own thoughts in order.
“You don’t think Mr. Kivell will be cross with me?”Crosser than he already is.
She laughed. “He’ll have to answer to me if so.”
“Are you not afraid of your Pellar?” I grinned back at her.
She made an amused sound and led me deeper into the house. “You leave him to me. All will be well, my lover. All will be well.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWOThings Both Lost and Found
Iwoke early the next morning, to the sound of Ruan’s voice emanating from somewhere deeper in the house. As he hadn’t thundered into the room yet and dragged me out of the bed linens, I took it to mean that he was no longer irritated with me. Not that I cared if he were.
I’d only managed to steal a few hours’ sleep, but between the tea and Mrs. Martin’s kindness, I felt more rested and at peace than I had since I set foot in this bloodthirsty little hamlet.
It was a dreamless and deep sleep. The sort of oblivion that normally only gin could provide, but without any of the residual fog that inevitably followed. Which was good, as I had a great deal to discuss with Ruan and no time to nurse my beleaguered head. We’d planned to meet with the elderly Dr. Quick in the village before I returned to Exeter to procure my own physician in hopes he would be able to shed some light on what had truly happened to Sir Edward, and if there were any links to the previous curse killings. It would be a long day. A terribly long one, but I’d had far worse. Yesterday, for example.
My tired day dress was dry and sat pressed at the foot of the bed. Mrs. Martin must have crept in sometime while I slept toreturn it to me. I slipped out of my borrowed nightdress and stepped into my own frock, fastening the smooth mother-of-pearl buttons up my throat. The stubborn bruises there were growing darker by the day. My fingers traced the prints of my would-be killer. My face hadn’t fared any better. Green and purple blossomed above my lip, surrounding a dark scab. The stitched-together gash along my brow was a sight to behold, but it too would heal in time, leaving only a faint silver scar as a souvenir of my time here. I ran my fingers through my knotted hair, putting myself to rights. Visions of a nice long soak in my bathing tub flickered through my mind. By this evening, I’d be back in Exeter, miles away from here. It was a heady thought.
Mrs. Martin was in the kitchen already when I finally surfaced. “Did you sleep well, child?” She brushed a lock of hair from her brow, leaving a stray smear of flour in its wake. “Ruan’s come early to fetch you. He said you were to call on Dr. Quick this morning.”
“I did, thank you for everything. I can’t recall the last time I slept so well.”
“That’d be the air here. I’m convinced on this hill you get the best breeze in all of Cornwall.”
I smiled faintly at her words. Out the window the golden morning light lit the field like a gilt engraving. Tall flowers danced in the meadow grass. Dots of white, yellow, delicate pinks. The occasional poppy just opening in the morning sun punctuated the scene.
“Where is he?” I glanced around the room, noting the very obvious absence of the Pellar.
“He’s in the barn with the cow. He wanted to see to her again. I don’t know what I’d have done if we’d lost her. And to water hemlock of all things. It’s a mercy Benedict found him when he did. We could have lost the whole herd by morning.”
I was struck by the tenuous line between life and death on a farm. Everything was more real. More vital here than back in the ballrooms and theaters of New York. Entertaining the Morgans and Vanderbilts or whoever else one chose to spend their days with as long as they were deemedacceptableto polite society. I’d bucked against that world long before I was cast out of it. There was also a bit of my mother in Alice. In her warmth and strength. The way only farm women are able to be. A combination of quicksilver and tenderness in the very same breath. Because one has to be changeable to survive. My mother had grown up on a farm before she married my father. Sometimes I wondered if her life might have been better had she stayed there. She certainly wouldn’t be dead now if she had married someone with more humble aspirations. But no, my mother had been swayed by a silver-tongued charmer. Not that I faulted her, my father was an easy man to love.
“Ah, I see him now.”
Heart heavy, I followed her gaze to where Ruan was speaking with Benedict beneath an old elm tree. His head bent low. Mrs. Martin must have sensed the encroaching dread in me, as it echoed in her own eyes. “Benedict is always after me to clear out George’s room. Says he’s not coming back and it’s foolish to keep it ready for the lad. But it was a good thing I did, now wasn’t it?” She flashed a half-hearted smile, and I felt a rare pang of unease at having slept so well in her dead son’s bed.
“There’s no reason to rush things. The healing will happen in its own time.”
“You understand, don’t you?” she said softly.
God, did I ever. My eyes pricked as the memories flooded over me, like that washed-out bridge to town. After my parents and sister were killed, I waited—weeks and weeks—despite the newspaper reports of the sinking of theLusitania. Despite the casualty lists. Finagling leave from my duties at the frontto comb through hospitals looking for survivors, grasping on to any hope that they hadn’t drowned, and yet it was futile. I’d seen precisely how it had happened in my dreams. I knew. I just didn’t want to believe it to be true.
She took my hand in her own roughened one and squeezed, a simple gesture reminding me that there was no need for words between us. No need to rehash the pain and in that very moment, I knew that we two were far more alike than I’d previously imagined.
