Elswyth laughed again, but the sound was cruel. “I think I would prefer imprisonment. As if she would allow me to do anything of import. Am I to search for Persephone on my strolls through the park? Shall I find her body in a tree?”
When Percival responded, his voice was slow and grave. “The day Persephone went missing, I allowed her to go shopping on her own. I will not make that mistake again.”
“But—”
To her surprise, her uncle raised his voice. His cheeks wobbled as he spoke. “I have been responsible for the death of one of my sister’s children!I will not… I will not be responsible for another.”
Elswyth paused, looking at him. For the first time she saw her uncle’s age, the wrinkles on his forehead and the jowls beneath his beard. He blinked twice, and Elswyth thought she saw tears forming in his eyes. That much emotion—it did not seem like an act. Even with Elswyth’s shortcomings when it came to reading people, she could see that Percival grieved for her sister, that he felt shame at his inability to keep her safe.
Her uncle cleared his throat and then forced a thin smile. “I really must retire, Elswyth. I hope that this will not sour your opinion of me. I do enjoy having you around the house. Shall I see you at breakfast tomorrow?”
Elswyth nodded slowly. Percival stood, shuffling his letters into a pile. Then he took his cane, limped toward the door, and was gone.
Elswyth slammed the bedroom door behind her. Dust shook from the ceiling, and the sound echoed through the house. She didn’t care. She wanted to scream. She’d come all the way to London to find her sister, and now she was trapped. Trapped with Mrs. Rose’s lessons, trapped in her uncle’s house. How could she find Persephone if she could not search for her?
She moved to the far wall and began peeling out of the ridiculous gown. She wanted to tear the thing off of her and rip it to shreds. But it was a piece of Persephone, after all. Everything in the room was. All the letters from her friends and acquaintances, all the hideous gowns. There had to be something relevant, something other than the bouquet.
She was unfastening the gown when she heard a sound behind her—a strange noise, coming from somewhere in the room. It was a chittering, an eerie clicking that echoed off the high ceiling. Like a large insect, fluttering chitinous wings, crawling somewhere out of sight.
She stood perfectly still, eyes scanning the room. It was as she remembered it. Persephone’s letters lay half-read on the writing desk. The old bouquet with the menacing message sat drying in its spot on the vanity. Curtains hung limply by the balcony door. She took a deep breath, chided herself for being so easily startled, and continued unfastening her gown.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, Elswyth saw something move.
She spun around, still half-dressed, her corset exposed. The room was empty. She frowned. While she could not see as well from her scarred left eye, she wasn’t blind in it. Sometimes that eye played tricks on her in the form of dancing shadows, and yet she was sure she’d seen something real this time, a dark shape darting acrossthe floor. When she moved toward the corner of the room where the shape had appeared, however, she saw nothing. Only the vanity and the bed and the half-packed trunk in the corner.
An animal, she thought. Something must have come in through the balcony doors from the garden. A rat or a bird, surely. But it had been much larger, hadn’t it? The size of a cat and certainly as quick as one. It wouldn’t be strange to see rodents in a house as old and drafty as Devereux Place, but a tomcat in her bedroom was a different matter altogether.
Elswyth scanned the ceiling for a moment, so certain that she had seen something. But she was alone in the room. She turned away and tried to shake off the feeling of unease. When she did, the small chittering sound came again. This time from beneath the bed.
She went still. Gooseflesh rose on her arms.
The sound continued. Now it was like the creaking of wood, like branches clicking together in a breeze. And to her right, barely visible, she saw again that small dark shape creeping out from the shadows.
She turned. There was nothing there. Where she thought she’d seen a shadow there was only a patch of bare wall and a few potted plants on the windowsill. She dropped down onto her knees and then to her belly, peering under the bed.
Nothing. Only cobwebs and an old stocking, discarded in the dust.
But across the room, seen from beneath the bed, the curtains on the far wall waved. Not from a breeze but as though something crawled through them, creeping along the wall. She watched thecurtains move for a moment until she was certain that she did not imagine it.
Elswyth rose, careful not to let the floorboards creak. She moved across the room, gown whispering behind her, until she reached the curtains. The noise continued: not catlike at all, but an almost alien sound, like the crooked pulse of a katydid. She could see the bulge beneath the curtain. It was just ahead, creeping along the wall. She reached out slowly, grabbed the hem of the drapes, and ripped them away.
A white mouse cowered against the wall. Elswyth softened. She crouched down and scooped it up. It didn’t resist, only trembled in her cupped hands.
“You are averyloud mouse,” she said. She stroked the creature’s fur, but it flinched when she touched its tail. Yes, the tail was badly cut. In fact, there seemed to be tooth marks of some kind along the mouse’s spine, dripping too-dark blood. A cat bite, she assumed, now infected. She pressed her fingers together, secreting a fine film of goldenseal mixed with the essence of willow. Then she rubbed the substance into the mouse’s wounds.
“All better. Now outside with you, where you belong,” she said. She moved to the balcony and then kneeled down and released the mouse on the stone. It hobbled away. Toward home, she hoped.
She turned her back and walked inside. Something squealed behind her. Elswyth whipped around, surprised, and stared at the balcony.
The mouse was gone, and in its place was a spray of bright red blood. Too much blood for a wounded tail. She stood frozen. Where had it gone? She thought of the bite marks on its back. From a cat, she’d thought—had it come back? Even as she considered it, the idea feltwrong.
She stared for a moment. The room was silent again, and a cold breeze came through the balcony doors. She moved to them, closing them firmly and securing the latch. She jostled it, ensuring the door was locked. Why did her heart beat in her throat?
Of course there was no reason to be frightened. It had been just a mouse, after all—only a mouse, even if the thing creeping behind the curtain had seemed so much larger. She turned from the doors, facing the room again, and quickly making her way to bed. But out of the corner of her eye she spied something out of place: Persephone’s letters, next to the bouquet, had scattered to the floor.
Elswyth paused, then moved toward the writing desk slowly, feeling a prickle on the back of her neck. She knelt, picked up the letters, and stacked them again. They’d been sitting neatly on the desk only moments before.The wind,she thought,through the balcony doors.Then she frowned, wrapping her arms around herself.The wind and a mouse.
Elswyth paused, looking around the room, to the high ceiling. The wind blew outside, making the old house creak like a living thing. At least, she told herself it was the house. She crawled into bed, pulled up the covers, and blew out the lamp—and yet even in the total darkness, Elswyth could not shake the feeling that she was being watched.
