“Georgianna, that is enough!” Mrs. Foster hissed again, gripping Jane’s shoulders to steer her down the hall toward a washroom; the hallway was as soulless and sad as the rest of the house with its periwinkle wallpaper and absence of decor.
The cook only grumbled in response before trudging to one of the several doors lining the hallway.
What would happen if I felt like leaving my room at night?Jane wanted to ask out of defiance and to dampen the worried flame smoldering in her throat.Certainly, the world wouldn’t end, would it?
In the washroom was a claw-footed tub along a wall with large, arching windows facing the darkness of the marshes. Lightning illuminated pale tiles that smelled of the same over-powering vinegar cleaning solution as in the entrance hall. What looked to be rusted stains oozed down the linoleum in tails of dark brown, as if the walls had once bled.
“Wash up, quickly, and we will find night clothes for you, Miss Sterling,” Mrs. Foster said and started running water.
“But what of Ruben?” Jane asked, already undressing down to her chemise. Urgency—along with anxiety inspired by Ms. Hudson’s warnings and everyone’s seemingly newfound panic—fueled her limbs, making every movement a fevered jerk. “Shouldn’t he have a chance to clean and warm himself in the bath as well?”
The smell of jasmine and clove permeated the air as Mrs. Foster added soap to the bath—too much of it, Jane decided, asthe scents had come to be overpowering.
“There is no time—” (No time?Jane swallowed in a silent plea for answers.)“He will be alright, Miss Sterling, now wash up—quickly!” Mrs. Foster was swift in her departure once she, wordlessly, gathered Jane’s soiled clothing and left her to bathe.
Wind rattled the windows as Jane sank into the water, savoring the heat that burned her skin. She thought about her mother, then, as she began to scrub away mud with her nails, and worried. No one would have been able to inform Mrs. Sterling as to why Jane hadn’t returned to the hotel. She hadn’t caught sight of or heard any signs of a telegraph or phone wired in the house. Surely Mrs. Sterling wouldn’t mind her being gone for one night, and with respectable company, too. The Sterlings weren’t as inclined to seeing men and women together—alone—and assuming some sort of scandal.
Scandal.
Jane’s fingers paused clawing away filth. She wondered if whatever caused the sudden panic that’d gripped the house was something scandalous. As much as she enjoyed the gossip of a good scandal, she refrained from ruminating on the idea for too long as she wasn’t quite ready to sour her image of Terence just yet and she wished to enjoy this bath, no matter how fleeting or strange its circumstances were.
By morning, the storm would be over and Jane would be brought back to Cambridge in one piece. She tried to ignore the creeping sadness chilling the bathwater as she started to realize that this would be the first time she was to spend a night somewhere without any family. No mother or father, no Meredith or Emmy, not even Mr. Thompson. For the first time in her twenty-four years, she was utterly alone. And, to her surprise, she hated it. As much as her sisters were competition and her motheran incessant whisper, they were comforting constants, they were her companions and family nonetheless.
It felt like only seconds passed before Mrs. Foster returned with a white nightgown draped in the crook of her arm.
“Out, Miss Sterling, out,” she shooed Jane along. Some strands of hair had come undone from her bonnet, giving her an even more frazzled appearance, as she assisted Jane out of the tub and into the awaiting nightgown.
“I’m not taking this from anyone, am I?” Jane asked as the dress hung loosely from her frame, so long that it trailed on the floor behind her. She held a heavy fistful of fabric to ensure she wouldn’t trip on the excess skirt. A mane of dusty lace made her throat and jawline itch.
“Oh, no, no. This house has seen a plethora of staff, and some things are bound to be left behind,” Mrs. Foster said a little too simply.
She led Jane to a circular, desolate room. The wallpaper was the same lonely periwinkle-blue as the rest of the house, as were the sheets on the narrow bed. Jane’s bag sat beside the nightstand, upon which was a single gas lamp. There was no other furniture or decoration. The air smelled of dust and melancholy. It was a sight more fitting to a sanitorium cell than an Englishman’s estate. Not at all like her room back in Milwaukee, with its coral-colored wallpaper, plush pink bedspreads, and a view of Lake Michigan she could observe from a balcony she had decorated with roses and lilies in the summer months.
Jane resisted the urge to grimace. Her first night alone, andthiswas where she was expected to sleep?
“Right,” Mrs. Foster said, and she fumbled with the keys on her chatelaine. “I pray that you rest safely, Miss Sterling.”
Before Jane could even turn to thank Mrs. Foster forher kindness or to bid her a good-night, the door slammed shut, plunging the room into darkness, and the key turned in the lock with a resounding clank.
CHAPTER
Five
Asound like thunder rattled through the room and startled Jane out of an otherwise dreamless sleep.
Panic spiked through her heart when she failed to recognize her surroundings, but as she focused on the deep blue of the wallpaper, the creaking sighs of the Drowning House’s bones, and the thrum of rain against its windows, she crumpled back into the stale smell of even staler sheets with a groan.
Right. The Drowning House, the storm, the flooded marshes. It all washed back over her in an ebbing wave of cold mud.
She groaned and scrubbed the heel of her palm into her eye sockets. It had taken her what felt like half an age to at last fall asleep. The caterwauling storm paired with the dusty old bed and its squealing springs, the unease worming its way throughher, and her stomach groaning from lack of dinner, Jane failed to find enough comfort to properly sleep. She tried to imagine Mr. Thompson’s warmth or the sound of her mother’s snores, but the absence of both made her feel all the colder beneath paper-thin sheets.
She sighed and lay flat on her back. Her eyes traced the cracks branching across the plaster ceiling to attempt to restart the cycle of sleeplessness.
Was Terence also struggling to sleep? Was he tossing and turning in his bed, eyes weary from the frustration of being unable to rest them? She grinned at the sudden thought of going on a journey in search of his bedroom to ask if she could crawl into bed with him where she would then latch onto him and his heat and comfort. He probably wouldn’t hesitate in offering her bed to him. Not in a sexual manner, but rather because such was the law of a gentleman: you sacrifice a bit of yourself for the good of a lady. Jane liked to think he was the breed of gentleman who would skin himself alive and wrap his flesh around her shoulders if it meant keeping her warm for just a moment.
Grim as the image was, Jane hummed with a little grin as she burrowed deep into the mattress to pretend that instead of creaky springs she laid atop a sculpted chest and was held by strong arms rather than dusty blankets.
Her heartbeat and breathing had started to fall into a tired rhythm, and her eyelids began to weigh themselves closed, when that thundering sound once more shook the room down to its very floorboards. This time, it was accompanied by the scraping of something against wood, long and slow—against her door, as whatever lurked on the other side took its time in trying to claw its way inside. A dog begging for scraps. Who in the house had a dog? Jane couldn’t recall seeing one…
