I moved toward the doorway before he could change his mind, before whatever had held us in that charged moment reasserted itself.
"Miss Reed," he called out.
I turned back, glancing at him over my shoulder. His back was still partly toward me, his head bowed. He did not immediately speak, his hands clenching at his sides. When he finally looked up at me, all traces of the grief and longing I had seen in his face only moments before were shuttered away behind the composed and careful mask I was beginning to understand was the labor of his entire waking life.
"Hawthorne sleeps in the servants' quarters. They are located below the kitchen." The corner of his mouth curved. "In case you still wished to check on him."
I pressed my lips together, feeling foolish, and said nothing as I turned and stepped into the corridor. The door closed behind me with a solid thud that seemed to echo down the entire hallway.
I slumped against the wall opposite his door, breathing deeply, pressing my palms flat against the cool wallpaper. My skin still burned where he had touched me. My bottom lip tingled where his thumb had rested, and I found myself pressing my own fingers there, trying to recapture the sensation even as my rational mind insisted I should be horrified by my own response.
What was I doing?
This was my employer. A man still grieving his dead wife—a wife whose ghost I had possibly just seen, whose room I had invaded.
I could not afford these feelings. I did not want these feelings.
I pushed away from the wall and made my way back to my room.
What had I actually seen? Had the woman been real? Had any of it been real? Or was I losing my grip on reality entirely, seeing ghosts where none existed?
When I finally reached my room, I collapsed onto the bed still fully dressed, but sleep refused to come for hours. My mind kept replaying the image of her reaching for me.
What had happened to her?
What did he do to her?My companion offered more quietly.
The thought consumed my mind, the rational part of me refusing to answer as I considered the possibilities. I rolled over and stared through the window. Outside, rain continued to fall in rhythmic curtains. And just down the corridor, Dr. Ambrose was presumably lying in his bed—the same bed he had once shared with his wife.
I wondered if he was finding sleep any easier than I was.
Somehow, I doubted it.
I closed my eyes and drifted into a restless sleep as visions of a woman with a blood-soaked mouth full of vines invaded my dreams.
Chapter 9
Iwoke with sunlight streaming through my window and the sinking certainty that I would be dismissed before the day was through.
The memory of the previous night returned in mortifying detail—me, standing uninvited in Dr. Ambrose’s bedchamber, offering increasingly ridiculous explanations for my presence there, and allowing him to corner me against the wall while I entertained thoughts that would scandalize any proper lady.
I had overstepped every possible boundary, had violated his privacy in the most flagrant manner. Any sensible employer would send me packing.
I dressed with care, hoping proper presentation might somehow mitigate the disaster of my behavior. My hands fumbled as I fastened the buttons of my dress, and I had to restart the process of pinning my hair twice before achieving anything resembling respectability.
The green velvet ribbon rested against my throat as always, though my fingers lingered on it longer than usual. I still felt the weight of Dr. Ambrose’s gaze on it, how hisexpression had shifted when he looked at the fabric. It unnerved me, the way he stared at it as if it might reach out and drag him into a pit of despair.
He knows what you try to hide, the voice murmured.Your little secrets wrapped so prettily in a bow.
I pushed the thought away with force, my throat tightening at the prospect. There was no way he could know. No one knew.
I turned my attention to the mirror, pinching color into my pale cheeks, my mind turning to the ghost of Dr. Ambrose’s wife, to the vines sliding from her mouth and coiling around her throat.
I shook my head, sighing. I had likely imagined the entire encounter—a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and the progressive deterioration of whatever illness consumed me. There was no ghost. There was only my own failing mind constructing phantoms.
The voice made a small sound of disagreement, then fell silent.
I made my way downstairs with the measured steps of someone approaching an execution they had inadvertently scheduled for themselves. Each creak of the floorboards sounded like a countdown, each turn of the corridor bringing me closer to the gallows.
