“I fell in love with a married man. When my family found out about our affair, they nearly disowned me.” I lean back against theheadboard, letting the quilt drop to my bosom. “He said he wanted to marry me someday. Even gave me a ring. He lied.”
“You deserve better. I suppose I did, too. We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” He smiles sadly. “Some would call us pathetic. I prefer to see myself as a romantic. I suspect you are as well.”
I should be angry with this man who despoiled my grandmother and made my darling, beloved Papa a cuckold. But as he looks at me, I sense a kinship between us. I didn’t intend to fall for Ted, either, but I was swept along with what felt like true love at the time. Our affair seemed bigger than us—so big it consumed every ounce of my common sense and sent my better angels into flight. But even with my regrets, there’s an inevitability to it all that seems fated. “I suppose we want to believe ourselves helpless in the face of love. That it can transcend everything. But it can’t, can it? Not really.”
“Indeed it can’t. Not even death.” He clears his throat. “Well, then. I’ll leave you to your rest.” He unfolds from my bed, eyes soft as he gazes down at me. “Thank you for a pleasant evening. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone to talk to, Sadie.”
I feel color rise to my cheeks as he looks at me. Even though his arrival at my bedside was unsettling, I don’t want him to leave. There’s something mesmerizing in his manner—a cavalier brashness married with sensitivity. Understanding. “Come again ... if you’d like.”
“I’d prefer it if you came to me,” he says. “I think you might know how.” His lip curls into a mischievous grin that conjures an unexpected flutter—something I haven’t felt in quite some time. “You have her eyes, you know.”
And then he’s gone, his form fading into the shadows.
When morning breaks, I dress for the day, my head pounding with the brandy’s aftermath. I go down to check on Marguerite. She’s sound asleep on her belly, a soft snore parting her lips. While she seemsunharmed by last night’s episode, her porcelain ewer is shattered on the floor—the source of the crash I heard—so I carefully pick up the broken shards and place them in the wastebasket near her vanity.
Downstairs, the house is quiet, the sun a burnished copper glow through the curtains. It’s only six. Melva and Harriet aren’t due to arrive for another hour. I open the hutch’s drawers, searching for more sharp cutlery, and find only a butter knife. Still, I take it into the kitchen and stow it in the high cupboard above the sink with the other knives, then scour the parlor and hall for anything else Marguerite might use as a weapon in the future. I remove the poker from the hearth, a pearl-handled letter opener hidden behind a picture frame, and a set of keys on a worn brass chatelaine that I find in a drawer. I take the keys to the attic and put them on the top shelf of my wardrobe, under one of my hats. I’m curious to see whether they’ll fit any of the locked trunks stowed there.
Weston’s visitation last night still lingers as I go about my morning routine, enlivening me. Our conversation about shifting time and family secrets has me intrigued. I’m consumed by the urge to go to the studio, to inspect Marguerite’s other paintings, to see whether they have a similar effect to Weston’s. The pull follows me until I can deny it no longer. With the house still quiet, I creep down the hall to the narrow, closed door and twist the knob. It’s locked. I try again, my frustration growing as the door holds, keeping me out. “Dammit.”
Marguerite must have locked it, sometime during her restless night, which means she has a key. I could search her room, after Harriet arrives. Or perhaps one of the old keys on the chatelaine I found will fit the lock. As I turn to fetch them from the attic, I nearly run face-first into Beckett. He steadies me, hands on my arms. “Miss Halloran. What were you doing just now?”
“I left something in Marguerite’s studio the other day. It’s locked. Would you happen to have the key?”
“No, I don’t. But even if I did, you shouldn’t be in there alone.”
“Why not?”
“There are weak places in the floor, for one thing. And there are reasons I hinted about before, though I doubt you’d believe the whole of things.”
“I’m in the mood to believe all sorts of things this morning,” I say. “Try me.”
Beckett eyes me warily, taken aback by my frankness. Part of me wonders whether he’s still the shy boy I remember, and his thorniness is merely testimony to his lack of social graces. He’s been cloistered here with my aunt since childhood, after all.
“Well, for one thing,” he says, “I’ve heard Marguerite calling you Sybil. Do you know why she calls you that?”
“I assumed it’s just her memory lapses. That she’s confused. I gather she’s had several maids. Perhaps she’s confusing me with one of them.”
“She is, but ...” He looks away from me. “Sybil wasn’t a maid. She was the cousin I mentioned. Marguerite’s last companion. She didn’t leave like the others. She fell from the bluff behind the house and died. She was sleepwalking. Just like you were yesterday.”
I’m taken aback by this revelation. “Goodness. I’m so sorry.”
“I wouldn’t have told you about Sybil, but I’m concerned by your similarities. Sybil was a lot like you—young, pretty, naive.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m hardly young, sir, and the furthest thing from naive, although I’ll accept your barbed compliment on my looks, thank you.” I cross my arms, glaring at him. “I’ve never sleepwalked, Mr. Hill. It was only a fluke.”
“That may be, but all the same, Sybil was obsessed with Marguerite’s studio, too. Her work. One painting in particular.”
I pause, considering him. “Was it the portrait of Weston Chase? Our ghost?”
He sighs, resigned. “Yes. She’d look for any excuse to visit the studio. I’d often find her, sitting and staring at his portrait, her eyes glazed over. And at night, she’d wander. I took to watching for her on the grounds. I saw some very disturbing things, Miss Halloran. Things Ican’t explain. I did my best to protect her, to keep her safe. But one night, I couldn’t get to her fast enough.”
“How dreadful.” My pulse beats faster, thinking of the sheer drop of limestone behind the house—the deep gully below it paved with unforgiving shale. It would be nearly impossible to survive a fall from that height.
“Sybil was convinced Weston was real. She told me all about him one evening. How they’d fallen in love. I thought it all a young girl’s harmless fantasy, at first.”
I shudder, remembering how real Weston seemed to me as well. While there was a slight transparency to his features last night as he sat by my bed, when we visited the past, in Kansas City, he was just as real as Beckett is now. I’d felt the press of his hand on my back as he guided me through the door into the room where Marguerite and her family dined.
“And you believe he was responsible for her death?”
