“Oh, one would think,” Jane said. “He looks to be the hunting type, and his study resembles a gaming lodge. There must be dozens of mounted stag heads in there, and I know he at least has one elk mount, from when he went on a hunting trip out in Montana some handful of years ago.” She used her hands to mimic the sprawling antlers of the elk, arched highly and pointed dangerously. For a moment she wondered if the beast at her doorwas scratching with antlers rather than claws, and she couldn’t decide if such an image was more or less nightmarish.
“Would you hunt with him? Or your sisters? You’d sisters, correct? Or am I remembering things incorrectly?”
“Iwould—or rather I was his accessory while hunting. The idea of killing something was a notion I couldn’t agree with, but I liked being out in the woods, and he would let me dig around leaves with him to look for animal bones or lost antlers,” she let herself smile at the memory, at the recollection of her girlish hands burrowing beneath leaves slick with damp to scavenge the bones of a mouse from an owl pellet. “Meredith and Emmy were too busy being mother’s prodigies to join hunts. But they’re artistic, they’re cultured—they’reproper.”
Terence tilted his head the other way. “I find you to be quite proper as well, Jane. In your own way.”
In your own way.
Jane intended to smile but her lip curled into a scoff and her eyes rolled.
“Not always. Being the little heathen with dirt staining my skirts was my duty. It compensated, I think. My sisters, still, possess talents I do not. I could never sit still enough or conjure the attention to learn instruments or singing or painting or dancing as they did. All…this—” she gestured to all of herself, her cropped hair, the earrings she still wore. His gaze burned into her, trulyseeingher, and she began to worry that with her lack of makeup he was observing a bit of mud she failed to wash away or a blemish blossoming in the crevice of her chin. So, she covered her chin, pretending to rest it in her palm, “—is compensation.”
Terence was quiet for a moment as he sucked in a part of his cheek between his teeth. Perhaps he was trying to understand what she said, and a part of her envied that a man couldn’tunderstand that particular ache of failing to fit into the role of the smart, cultured, high-society lady assigned to her, so much so that she felt it necessary to instead make herself into a doll who seemingly lacked a proper brain, just so that she could capture a fraction of the adoration her sisters received.
His lips twitched, toying with the syllables of ‘compensation.’ Jane was tempted to continue explaining how she hid her loneliness behind lace and laughter and dresses and boisterous words, but she pursed her lips to keep such temptation trapped. Perhaps hecouldunderstand such loneliness.
Terence was… different, compared to most men. He carried with him a lonely air.
“Do your sisters share a fondness for paleontology?” He asked once he decided to quit fondling silent words between his lips.
Jane couldn’t resist a cackle at his question. “Oh, Christ, no! Meredith is too focused on being a musical prodigy and singing her heart out, and, when she isn’t with her girls, Emmy spends too much time beneath the spotlight, on the tips of her ballet slippers, to care,” she could sense something in her tone growing venomous the longer she spoke, but she didn’t mind. Rarely could she voice her envy to someone who, at least as far as she knew, wasn’t infatuated with her sisters. “They don’t care about bones in the dirt.I, however, love them. I see a lot of myself in them.”
At least none of us are self-proclaimed Spiritualists holding ourselves up in our rooms to be in the company of spooks and spirits.
Terence sank deeper into his seat with a sigh before folding his broad hands together and pressing his knuckles against his lips. He watched her with a ruminating stare. “And how is that?”
“It’s the swift assuredness that we apply a label to things, toourselves,” she looked at the fossils on the desk and the small pieces of parchment she’d written their identities upon. “The constant bickering over who or what something is meant to be versus what they truly are until you no longer know who you are.”
In a way, in my circumstance, it is a debate of my own design and a silent torture I have unknowingly crafted for myself, but I mustn’t let you know that.
Terence hummed again. He narrowed his eyes, speculative but not incredulous. Once more, the corners of his eyes pinched, and that sorrow she’d felt at the greenhouse, which seemed to be half a lifetime ago, returned.
“At the same time I feel a great envy,” Jane added and toyed with her locket. “Emmy, Meredith, Mother, Father… they all have their labels, but they’re good labels one can admire. They can be remembered for staying true to a woman’s image of being genteel and artistic and dignified, or a man of science and wealth. But I fall in the middle and…”—And I try to not let it fester, though I can’t help but feel a discomfort in the awareness of what I lack that makes them desirable, that I must dress loudly and speak my mind freely if I am to have any attention, good or bad—“… every day I’m reminded that I’m not my sisters, and I know not whether to feel joy or sorrow for that.”
Jane was certain her innards were spilling out onto the floor now as she held Terence’s stare. In a sense, she was sure he would have his guts exposed, too. She’d never shared such feelings with anyone before. Insecurities have been her burden to bear, though only when she was sure no one was looking. But if Terence shared his own family secrets, why not share one of her own?
Quid pro quo,she thought, and as the silence lingered she held her chin up higher.
Terence’s voice rumbled through the quiet as he shiftedagain in his armchair.
“I rather enjoy your company as is. You are a rare breed, Jane,” he said, so soft and so gentle that she forgot to breathe. He added in a whisper that brushed against her ears like a kiss, “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
CHAPTER
Eight
For the first time since she was a small child, Jane decided that she wouldn’t get a lick of rest until she checked for monsters under her bed.
Whatever oppressive air that had nestled itself between the house’s every brick, every floorboard, every window pane, turned the blue of the guest room even bluer, the dust-tinged air even dustier, and the rain against the windows even rainier. And Jane wasn’t fond of any of it.
Another grumble of thunder reverberated beneath Jane’s knees as she placed the oil lamp beside her on the floor; the pin-knife was gripped in a fist. Though she knew there wouldn’t be any sort of beast beneath the bed, a boogeyman crafted out of shadows and fear, she just needed to be sure…
The ruination of her door, the tracks in the mud, the prickling anxiety, punctuated by an even more uneasy silence, and everybody’s ignorance of whatever was wrong with the house pressed upon Jane’s shoulders in a discomforting weight.
Something was wrong, she was sure of it. If not wrong, then at leastoff.
The stories of Terence’s grandfather—Jane had taken to calling him “Old Man Hayes,” for he felt too much like a morbid rumination to be given a name, or even some familial term of endearment—only made her feel even more ill at ease. Checking under the bed was the least she could do to ensure that no intruder or wild animal managed to sneak his way in during the day.
