She mustered a smile, despite the lingering throb of her head. “Of course I wish to see it.”
“I have pretty things. Pretty things. Ye want to see all of them, right?”
“Yes.”
With a comforted smile, Minney led Eliza down the narrow attic hall and showed her into a small servant chamber.
The walls were white with no windows, and the wooden-framed bed sported a colorful quilt. Above the bed, several faded ribbons were tied in bows and nailed to the wall, as if in attempt to brighten the room. On the other wall hung …
The tapestry.
Eliza stiffened.
“The ribbons were my mamm’s. She wore them in her hair. Papa said she did. I wish I had pretty hair like’ee.”
Nothing made sense, but she moved forward anyway. The tapestry was small. The ends were frayed. But the picture…how well she knew the picture. The faded, floral border. The birds and the clouds. The trees on each side, both bending toward the center, as if to shade …
The beast.
He looked the same as he did every night. Part human, standing on two feet, some skin and some fur—yet with teeth and eyes and claws of a lion.
“Ye like it, my picture, Miss Gillingham?”
She took one step back. “Where did you get it?”
“Mine, mine. Mrs. Eustace said it’s mine because his lordship, he didn’t want it no more.”
“Where did it come from?”
“The nursery. That’s why he don’t like it no more. He don’t like the nursery. I know he don’t. Ye like the picture, though?”
How could this be? The nightmares had started in her mother’s chamber. With the red draperies. The window. But why should she keep seeing the beast—who’d been hanging in her nursery at the time?
The throbbing intensified. “Minney, I—I want to go back to bed.”
“I can keep the picture, right? Ye don’t want it, do’ee?”
“No…I don’t want it.” She never wanted to see it again in her life. All she needed was to get out of this room. Away from this place. Away from everything. “Y–your room is lovely, Minney. Thank you for showing me.” She whirled to leave.
“Miss Gillingham?”
At the door, she turned and waited.
The girl’s eyes grew misty. “Ye watch’eeself. Ye watch well. People die. Some people die in this house. And other places. Miss Gillingham?”
She clasped her hands to stop the tremble that rushed through her. “Yes?”
“I don’t think’ee can trust the ones’ee think’ee can.”
Mr. Josiah Hodgetts.
The name stayed with Felton, as he tied his horse before the wattle-and-daub shack and hurried up the weeded path. He rapped on the gray-splintered door.
And waited.
Just like he’d waited three days since the man was killed, so there would be ample chance for the burial, so the widow and her children could mourn without any more questions. Doubtless the constable had already peppered them with enough.
But the constable wasn’t looking for the same answers Felton was.
