Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Although I’d noticed the books were strictly organized, lots of fiction on the bottom floor, and even that was separated by genre, I found no joy there, not even discovering a history section.
I wondered if maybe Ian had tucked Louisa’s work away, the better to keep it from his father (because, Lord knew, Richard was pompous enough without knowing he had royal blood), and was about to alight one of the two sets of spiral staircases to peruse the upper shelves, when the door opened.
I shot straight, looking as guilty as I felt, as Lady Jane swanned in.
“Why, Daphne, good morning,” she greeted.
She looked fresh as a newly opened rose.
It was cool, and intimidating, and for the first time I was around her, I considered it frightening, all of this at once.
And the fact, in a house with over one hundred and fifty rooms, she wandered into the one I was in, was just plain weird.
“Did you sleep well?” she asked, like she knew.
She knew.
Or…
Was I going crazy?
I had slept well, and part of that dream-not-dream that was creepiest was how, until the fullness of it hit me, I woke with an utter contentedness that was unreal. And when I fell back to sleep, that time dreamlessly, not an hour ago I woke up the same.
I studied her and thought, fuck it.
I was tackling this head on.
“Yes. Thank you. But I’m here because Ian told me about Adelaide and Augustus. Do you know of them?”
“Of course.”
“Apparently, there are letters?”
“Oh yes,” she said, unaffected by my question, in fact, seeming to presume it, and glided to a wall that had a recessed area cut into the books that housed a large painting of a woman in a green and ivory dress, a big hat with a dramatic plume angled dashingly atop her wig. A piece that I would not be surprised was a Gainsborough.
And of course, touching the side of the frame, the painting sprung slightly away from the wall for Lady Jane.
I stood watching as she opened it, exposing the large safe behind it.
But of course, they had a safe hidden behind a painting.
Lord God.
This place.
“We have several of these in the house,” she said. “False walls are a thing in Duncroft. Has Ian told you?”
Since, in my current mood, my new knowledge of that felt creepy as fuck, my voice was croaky when I answered, “No.”
“Yes. Along with the safes and other hidey-holes, servants were not seen or heard back in the day. There’s a rabbit’s warren of hidden corridors and stairwells to the belowstairs.”
I’d seen Stevenson and Laura, etc. slip behind hidden panels in the wall, but since I didn’t avail myself of what I considered the staff’s space during my tour, I hadn’t seen the fullness of it, outside the kitchen, so I hadn’t put it together.
“And there was a time when you couldn’t trust banks,” she said, turning the huge dial on the big safe. “But jewels have always been jewels and money has always been money, and everyone needs a safe place for them both. Ah,” she uttered as the lock clicked, and she swung the heavy safe door open. “Here we are.”
She reached in but withdrew a pair of pristine white gloves. She put them on, and came out with another pair, as well as two tall stacks of letters. One tied in a fading blue ribbon. One tied in faded pink.
She came to me and set the letters down on the narrow writing desk I was standing beside.
“Is it Adelaide’s letters you’re interested in, or Augustus’s?” she queried.
Both.
But I said, “Augustus’s. His last.”
“That would be this one,” she told me, pulling an end of the blue ribbon. It came untied and fell away. She removed it entirely and then offered me the second set of gloves. “If you don’t mind,” she murmured.
I said nothing. I simply took them from her and put them on.
She handed me the letter that was on top of the stack.
“Is that all?” she asked.
I took her in.
It was like she’d come in here to do just this for me.
It was a strange feeling, and I didn’t like it in the slightest.
“Since I got here, every night, I’ve had dreams,” I shared.
“Yes. I told you. This house can be overwhelming.”
“I don’t think it’s the house.”
“What would it be?”
“An overactive imagination. Ian telling me stories. Portrait galleries and carnation bouquets. Subliminal messages.”
She tilted her head to the side much like she did to Lou that first night at her dining table.
“Do you think the people who lived in a place didn’t leave anything in it, even after they were gone?” she inquired.
“Do you mean ghosts?”
“Oh no, there are no such things as ghosts. Do you think you’ve seen a ghost?”
Was she trying to make me feel like I was as crazy as all this seemed?