“Besides, it’s too old to rob. They wouldn’t find anything useful there.”
Beatrice suppressed a shudder as the idea of what grave robbers would finduseful. She couldn’t really complain about the man’s pitiless manner, given he worked day in, day out at a graveyard and she had chosen this odd place to spend her time.
“I suppose it’s the tree roots causing the problem.”
The caretaker’s eyes glinted and he leaned on his spade. “They say the dead don’t like to be forgotten, miss.”
“Who says that?”
He chuckled. “You’re here, ain’t you?”
She felt suddenly foolish, a grown woman loitering in a cemetery and conversing about the dead with a man who likely thought her quite mad.
“My, uh, my father is buried here.”
“Precisely my point.”
She started to speak up in disagreement, but then shut her mouth. The man had a point. In a way, she was indeed being haunted. The actions her father took against her mother were affecting her own marriage, even long after he had died.
“You be careful out here, miss. This place remembers.”
With a nod, he turned and squelched off toward the main path, whistling tunelessly as he went. Beatrice watched him until he disappeared behind a hedge, then studied the broken tomb anew. She ought to go home but something about the neglected grave called to her. Setting up her umbrella as a sort of shelter, she pulled out her sketch book and delved into her reticule for a pencil, feeling it was a touch of fate that had led her to leaving her charcoal at her father’s grave. Somehow, this sketch needed sharper lines anyway.
She sketched the tomb’s profile, then the crack, exaggerating the violence of the split so that the structure seemed nearly torn in two.
She shaded in the sag of earth at the foot of the grave, darkening the lines until her hand ached. She wondered if this grave was truly forgotten, if all those who had known the person were long dead or if the relatives had simply given up remembering.
When she closed her sketchbook, she realized the drizzle had stopped. The cemetery was quiet and the sky was clearing. She stood, wiped her hands on her petticoat, and restored her hat as best she could. She cast one last glance at the tomb and folded up her umbrella, then made for the exit, taking care not to slip in the mud.
When she arrived at the gates, she acknowledged a pair elegantly dressed in black who gazed at her with wide eyes and she imagined she looked rather ghostly with her pale complexion and drenched clothes and hair.
By the time she reached home, her hair had dried slightly but still hung in sad curls around her neck. As Mrs. Prewett opened the door, she took in Beatrice’s appearance with a fleeting lift of her eyebrows, but confined herself to a brisk, “Can I fetch you tea, my lady?”
Beatrice shook her head and divested herself of her hat and gloves. “I’ll be upstairs,” she said, already climbing the stairs and unbuttoning her jacket. “Some warm water would be much appreciated, though.”
“Beatrice?”
She started, pausing halfway up the stairs and pivoted to spot Edward in the hallway.
“You’re here.”
The words were silly and she regretted them. They were said as though he wasn’t allowed to be in his own home.
He gave a slight smile as if he recognized the foolishness of her comment, then laced his hands behind his back. He wore no jacket or cravat as though he had been home for some time now and if Beatrice thought about it, she caught the lingering smell of his cologne.
“Unusual weather for autumn,” he said.
“When is the weather in London ever normal?” Beatrice replied.
“I hope your outing was fruitful.”
She felt herself bristle—was he mocking her? But there was no malice in his tone, just a distant weariness.
“Fine.”
He didn’t reply and Beatrice turned to continue up the stairs when he called her name again.
“A word, if I may?”
