“I did. Please come in.”
She stepped in, shut the door softly, and waited with her hands folded against her apron. She wore her reserve like armor, her quiet a presence as commanding as any spoken word.
“I understand you’ve asked Miss Barrett to accompany you to the village,” he said. His voice came too flat, too formal, and he despised the stiffness in it. But better to protect himself with cold formality than to hazard warmth and have it turned against him.
“I have. She’s not taken so much as a half day since she’s been here, and I reckoned a turn in the village might do her good.”
The woman’s practicality had always been her armor, as his silence was his. He let the quiet stretch until it bit, then forced the words out. “I have a request to make.”
Mrs. Abernathy’s eyes widened, but she stayed silent, waiting for him to speak.
“I want her to hear the truth,” he said. The syllables felt like a stone dragged up his throat. “Not from me. From others. From those who remember what this house was, what this family was, and what was lost here. The fire. The deaths that came before it. The whispers people still trade across the green.” He kept his gaze fixed on the lamplight haloing the blotter. To name the fire aloud was to peel back his own armor, to lay bare the raw wound of memory. “The sexton. Widow Pritchard. The ferryman…” he said, thinking aloud. And then, “No. The Burns sisters would be best.”
“Pansy likes to tell a good tale,” Mrs. Abernathy said. “And she doesn’t always stick to truth.”
“Viola will rein her in,” he said.
“I could speak with Miss Barrett…” Miss Abernathy offered.
She could. But she was loyal to him and she might gentle the telling because of it.
No. Isabella must hear versions of events in other voices, voices not his own or those obligated to him. Soon, he must ask her to make a choice. She had a right to hear the variations of truth that would come from the mouths of others.
“The sisters,” he said, decided now. “She has met them before. And she will be welcomed. I want open doors and willing mouths. But it must not smell of design.” His hands curled on the desk. “If she hears it from me, she will take it for manipulation. If she hears it from you, she might wonder why you suddenly gossip when it is not in your character. The Burns sisters will do.”
Mrs. Abernathy’s gaze stayed steady. “Of course, sir.”
The lamp guttered, flame bowing, then righting itself. He imagined the questions tumbling through Mrs. Abernathy’s thoughts. In the end, she asked none of them because it was not her place and because she surely knew that he had already sacrificed much, asking for her help at all.
He met her eyes and held them. “I trust you with this.” The word twisted in him, bitter as gall. He did not trust. Not since betrayal and fire and ash had taken everything. And he would not tell her why this mattered; the ghosts were his burden alone.
Her face softened by a hair’s breadth. “I’ll see it done, sir. The Burns sisters are always at their window, eager for visitors. She’ll not miss them.”
He should have dismissed her then. Instead, he found himself saying, low and unfamiliar, “You think me a good man.”
“You’ve been good to me.” Mrs. Abernathy tilted her head, studied him a moment. “And I think you’ve borne more than most could and not soured past repair.”
“Thank you,” he said, and the words cost him.
She dipped a curtsey that was acknowledgment more than deference, then withdrew, leaving him to the cold and the silence.
The air was sharp and fresh as Isabella stepped out into the courtyard on Wednesday morning, her breath puffing white. The scent of damp earth and hay filled her lungs as the horses snorted and stamped, their flanks steaming in the chill.
She slipped her hand into her cloak pocket and rubbed the length of pink ribbon coiled there between her thumb and forefinger, the burned and blackened edge stiff. The ribbon was proof she had not imagined the events in the library. Proof she was not mad. She had carried it with her since but had not been visited again by the wraith.
Mrs. Abernathy stood with Tom Grange near the carriage, the low murmur of their voices threading with the creak of leather harnesses and the click of metal buckles.
But it wasn’t the housekeeper or the coachman who held Isabella’s attention.
Rhys stood at the lead mare’s shoulder, one gloved hand skimming the sleek rise of her neck, the other tucked in his coat pocket. He was dressed in a sharply tailored black coat and waistcoat, the crisp folds of his cravat stark against his throat. A lock of dark hair had shaken loose and fell across his brow. He looked every inch the gentleman he was meant to be, yet something untamed ran beneath the surface, restrained energy in the set of his shoulders, the balance of his stance, one boot angled as if he might pivot in an instant.
He turned his head, his slate-gray eyes meeting Isabella’s across the courtyard, the intensity of his gaze making her feel as though a wire stretched between them, pulled taut. For a moment, neither of them moved.
“Miss Barrett,” he said at last, his voice low and smooth, unspooling into the cold morning air. “Out for an excursion, are we?”
“Yes,” she said, hating that her voice went soft. “Mrs. Abernathy invited me to the village.”
His gaze dipped to the housekeeper and back, a not-quite smile shaping his lips, sharp and cold. He stepped nearer, gravel crunching beneath his boots. The mare’s ears flicked then flattened.
