Page 7 of The Curse of Penryth Hall
I patted the chair beside me with a shake of my head. “I’m not hungry. Come sit. Talk to me.”
She sighed heavily and set the knife on the table before grabbing the half decanter of wine and her glass. “Please don’t say anything about him. I don’t want your judgment, Ruby. Not tonight.”
The beaded hem of her skirt brushed my own. It wasn’t solong ago that we’d spent every dinner like this at her parents’ town house in London, sharing our secret world between the soup and fish courses. The rest of our companions none the wiser. It all seemed so long ago. “Why would I judge you?”
She gave me a puzzled look and glanced toward the closed door. Her hands knotted in her napkin. “I chose my path. I know. It’s only that sometimes… sometimes I wish…”
My stomach clenched and I shook my head. “We won’t speak of it then. Not tonight.”
She squeezed my hand and for the briefest instant the past was close enough I could grab it if only I reached out. Except when I turned to her, her eyes were those of a stranger. “Well then, what do you want to talk about?”
“Not the past. That’s for certain.”
She laughed lightly, a strange hollowness in her voice. “You always did hate the past. And I’ve always been wed to it. I think that’s the difference in us. Even before…” She lowered her lashes. Before my parents died, she meant. “You were always racing to the future. To the next thing and I… I think I was always falling behind.”
“That’s becauseyouweren’t caught at the Vanderbilts’ Christmas ball with your skirts rucked up and a married man beneath them for all the world to see.” Not that I’d known that final point at the time. He’d been a promising young alderman whom my father had taken as his protégé. No one in our set knew he already had a wife in the country. Not until he’d ruined any prospect I had for a decent society marriage. I’d fancied myself in love with him and see where that useless sentiment had gotten me?
Tamsyn gasped at the casualness of my words. “Ruby!” But she knew the story, as did her family. It was the condition my father set when he sent me off to England, that his old businessassociate knew precisely what he was getting: a naive and utterly ruined sixteen-year-old girl.
I shrugged. “It’s in the past. We cannot change it. I do still find it strange that Mrs. Vanderbilt’s son was on the same ship as my parents, though. What are the odds of that?”
She furrowed her brow. “So he was. I had nearly forgotten. Do you keep up with the Vanderbilts still?”
I shook my head with a small smile. “Of course not. I think they were happy to see the back of me.” I snorted at my unintentional pun. “Besides, it’s the past. Remember?”
She laughed at that, her eyes brightening for just a moment, and I could have clutched on to those precious seconds for an eternity. The old Tamsyn wasn’t dead. At least not fully. She existed still, somewhere, beneath it all.
“Well then, since we’re on the subject, tell me everything that’s happened since you left France. Don’t leave out anything.” The strain was still all over her face along with the faint bruise that neither of us would speak of. But she was trying, and so would I.
“Not even the racy bits?” I teased. Not that there were many of those as I’d become dreadfully boring lately.
“Especially not those.”
I played my part, weaving her a tale more cheerful than the sad song of ancient books, expensive gin, and a troublesome house cat that made up the backbone of my existence. Instead I told a story of sparkling parties, interesting bedfellows, and starry nights. With music and art and beauty all around.
A convincing charade, but a charade, nonetheless.
Perhaps it was the wine on an empty stomach, but somehow my hand found hers again. I squeezed her fingers in my own and continued talking. Words spilling out in a desperate ploy to keep that familiar flicker of light in her eyes. Too afraidthat if I stopped nattering on, even for a second, she would disappear entirely. And I couldn’t bear that thought. Not now that I’d seen what Edward had wrought.
And I drank in her hollow laughter. Because perhaps even this shell of her was enough to ease my guilt at not coming sooner.
CHAPTERFIVEBad Dreams
RETURNINGto Penryth was a mistake. It was one thing to allow Tamsyn to transform into this fantastical monster of my imaginings. It was an entirely separate one to see her fate with my own eyes. To pity her. How was I to go back to Exeter in clear conscience after seeing what had become of the girl who had once been my dearest friend—my closest companion? The one person who had seen me at my very lowest point. And the only person to willingly walk away. My eyes pricked at the memories, tears coming hard and fast of their own volition.
I pulled a bottle of gin from my suitcase and uncorked it before unpacking the barest of essentials for the evening. I took a swig straight from the bottle, letting it slide smoothly down my throat, then laid out tomorrow’s clothes upon the dressing table and began combing out my knotted hair. The changes in Tamsyn since I’d last seen her were so marked and terrible I hardly recognized her.
Hell. Looking into the mirror, I hardly recognized myself. I touched my face for a moment, running my fingers down my cheek. I hadn’t spoken of the scandal that caused my exile from America in years. I’d been such a foolish little girl then. Butno more. Between leaving America, war, and the death of my parents, I’d become a different creature. An almost feral fatalistic thing, living from chance to chance, existing only because death didn’t want anything to do with me. At least not yet.
I took another long drink of the gin and stripped out of my clothes, replacing them with a thin cotton nightdress. The evening air thick and damp. I washed my face in the basin, scrubbing away layer after layer of day. The room was dark as evening set in, with thick paneled walls and heavy velvet drapes that reminded me of those in a mortuary chapel. A great silver candelabrum provided the only light, casting large shadows that leapt and danced upon the walls.
Fiachna had surfaced from wherever he’d been hiding and rubbed himself against my ankles before making himself at home on the blood-red coverlet, curling up into a little ball at the foot of the bed.
“I agree, old man. I agree.” I blew out the candles, sinuous smoke crawling up from the damped wicks, and I slid into the bed with him much as I did every night in Exeter.
Something creaked in the hall. A maid perhaps, though I hadn’t seen anyone but the housekeeper since arriving. Despite the recent infusion of the Turner fortune from Sir Edward’s marriage to Tamsyn, the entire estate remained threadbare, only a few steps away from dereliction. I’d recalled hazily from my last visit several Greek marbles, along with a collection of Gainsborough landscapes that I thought quite fine, but none of that remained. At least not that I saw. All likely sold for taxes, or improvements, making a dour house even more so. One would have thought Tamsyn’s money would have brought some modernization, but it seemed the house simply swallowed the funds, greedy for more. I waited with my face turned toward the door for the inevitable knock—but nothing else followed. The house was evidently falling into slumber.
Old houses had a tendency to make noises. Stretching and creaking in the night. Some more fanciful people believed them to be haunted. But I didn’t believe in ghosts. Nor anything else I couldn’t explain. I was a student of reason. Logic. Things that I could touch, taste, feel. And there was no room for ghosts in that sort of a world.
