The blackness lingering behind the half-open door swallowed him as he disappeared into the house. Maeve forced herself to follow, tracking mud on the rug spread over the hall as she shrugged off her waterlogged cloak and single remaining boot, leaving them crumpled by the door. She was too off-balanced by his animosity to do anything else with them. Her fingers trembled with a mixture of cold and pounding, tremulous energy.
He reappeared like a spectral figure in the corner, carrying an oil lamp and a blanket.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders. ‘It was a long journey. I’m a bit… damp.’ She tried for a laugh. Anything to dispel the horrible tension. ‘As you can see.’
The housekeeper ignored her, his gaze fixed just over her left shoulder. Hostility radiated from him. ‘Your room’s this way.’
She prickled. Not that she’d expected a warm welcome, but the barely leashed fury in his eyes was unwarranted and entirely unwelcome. Gritting her teeth, Maeve followed him towards astaircase tucked in the corner. Like its exterior, the inside of the house was cold, draughty, and reeking of neglect. Her breath fogged in the frigid air. Why didn’t the housekeeper do something about the state of the home? Wasn’t that what he was here for?
And where was Jude?
She hadn’t expected him to greet her at the door with biscuits and tea, but surely he was curious about who the Abbey had sent to his home. Though hopefully nottoocurious, given her task.
‘Will I be meeting the saint soon?’ Maeve asked as the housekeeper led her up another flight of stairs. His steps faltered for a heartbeat before he continued.Silently.
She scowled.
Another staircase, several dark-panelled halls and shut doors later, and the housekeeper stopped, shoving open the door to a small, sparse room. A window between a wardrobe and the wall let in a weak flash of moonlight as the clouds shifted across the sky. He placed the oil lamp on the bedside table, illuminating the space as Maeve stepped inside.
It wasn’t dissimilar to her room back at the Abbey. The rough-hewn floorboards and bare plaster walls were a little foreboding, but nothing she couldn’t work with. A faded blue quilt covered the bed, reminding her of the sea. The endless ebb and flow of the waves she could hear from her room were gone, replaced by a whistle of the wind and a creak of floorboards.
Maeve peeled the blanket off her damp skin before it could soak through, grimacing at the heavy weight of the dress plastered to her skin. Her hair hung in a matted rope down her back. She didn’t think she’d ever been so cold and miserable. She pulled at the dress’s collar as she considered asking the housekeeper if he could help her draw a bath.
Exhaustion hazed her senses. Sleep first, bath later.
Somewhere behind her, she heard a wooden scrape – the housekeeper opening a drawer, or maybe shutting the door. She decided she didn’t care. The dress needed to come off.Now.
She wrenched at the buttons, loosening just enough to scrape the dress over her head, dropping it in a puddle at her feet. Her stockings came next. The damp slide of the wool against her saddle-sore legs was unbearable. Her chemise wasn’t much drier, but at least she was free from the dress.
‘Do youmind?’
Maeve whirled.
The housekeeper stood wild-eyed before he schooled his face. ‘At least wait until I leave before disrobing. Self-awareness is clearly a difficult concept for you, but I implore you to try.’
She crossed her arms over her chest, half in embarrassment, half in defiance. Darkness from the hall swept over his frame, coaxing the blackness of his clothing into something deeper as he levelled her gaze. The light from the oil lamp swelled, expanding around him. Her tongue felt unwieldy in her mouth.
‘I don’t—’ she tried. ‘The dress…’
The light spread wider, like sun through widening curtains. Gold flickered at her peripherals.
‘Go to bed,’ the housekeeper said. His voice was muffled and far away.
The edge of the bed hit her thighs. It welcomed her down, feather pillows pooling around her face as exhaustion consumed her senses. Far above, higher than she thought possible, the wooden slats of the ceiling expanded and condensed. They curved, forming a circle. Hands. A sun. As Maeve closed her eyes and let sleep claim her, the image settled over her like a heavy blanket. Stifling and comforting all at once.
The morning dawned even greyer than the day before. Maeve stared up at the ceiling with her palms flat on the mattress, her heartbeat in her fingertips. The linen was soft with age and warm from her body. She wasn’t sure where her bag had gone. Perhaps the housekeeper had left it sitting outside in the mud. Her paintswould be ruined, a fact that was more concerning than everything else put together.
She sat up.
The quilt wasn’t fully blue as she’d thought last night. Squares of cobalt and cerulean bordered emerald and olive, each patterned with a subtle white fleck. Idly, Maeve considered the blackbird she had seen last night. Oil-slick feathers had featured in her dreams. She’d dip her brush in black iron oxide to mark its shadows if she painted it. She’d use the same for the housekeeper.
Overnight, her chemise had dried in sticky patches against her sternum and between her shoulders. Mildew filled her nose when she brought the neck of it to her face. She’d need to find her bag and bathe, which meant leaving the fragile safety of her room.
Her memory of the previous night was hazy with exhaustion and embarrassment over how brazenly she’d shed her clothes, but she somewhat recognized the dim hallway and the staircase at the end as she stepped from the room. Silence lingered like a vapour. Unlit sconces were placed at even intervals down the walls, one between each closed door.
More bedrooms? A washroom? Closets? The house was far larger than it had looked from the outside; too much space for just a saint and his housekeeper.
She stopped at the last one and tried the handle. It held fast. When she crouched to peer through the keyhole, only a long stretch of empty floorboards greeted her. Moving on, she took the stairs down a level, stopping when they tapered off to a wide expanse of checker-boarded tile. Paintings of the surrounding moors and other pastoral scenes hung on the walls. They were rudimentary in style, but something calming lingered in the desolate depictions.
