After one set of steep stairs, he pointed them down a dark, narrow corridor. “There are three bedchambers here,” he said. “I’ll be sure to send the... the housekeeper to air out your rooms. After she returns from church. She may need some time to recover from her penance.”
“Her penance,” Ruby repeated. “From the feast day. At church.”
“Cornish traditions, you know,” he said vaguely, and shot them another smile. And then, before any of them could protest, he turned and fled back the way he’d come.
They stood in front of the doors in silence for several moments. Ruby looked from Tamsin to Alice to Captain Archer’s retreating back. The corridor was dim, and unlike the rest of the house, it appeared not to have been used for some time. Possibly a century.
“Ruby,” Tamsin said, “what the hell is going on?”
“Shh,” Alice hissed. “He’ll hear you!”
Captain Archer had peeled off as if his boots were afire, so Ruby suspected he probably wouldn’t. Still, she plucked up her courage and pushed open the nearest door before she could talk herself out of facing whatever lurked therein. “Come on. Inside, both of you. And the dog.”
The heavy door scraped against the floor as they entered, and Ruby was forced to revise her estimation of this wing’s most recent use to three centuries ago at least. Every part of the room looked as though it had been plucked straight from Henry VIII’s Hampton Court Palace. Half a dozen paintings leaned against a monstrous bed that she didn’t think she could enter without a stool. In contrast with the corridor’s gloom, light poured into the chamber—because the draperies and bed hangings had been mostly devoured by moths.
“Good news,” Tamsin said. “At least these windows have glass.”
Ruby collapsed onto the bed. A plume of dust shot into the air.
“This isinsane.” Tamsin prowled around the perimeter of the room, nudging chewed-on velvet fabrics out of the way with the toe of her boot. “This can’t be right. Are you certain this is Pomeroy House?”
“Relatively.” They’d stopped at Bridestowe to visit Tamsin’s Aunt Frankie, who’d sent them along to Pomeroy House in her private coach. “The coachman said it was. It’s on a cliff at the edge of the sea. And it looks like the pictures, more or less.”
“From the outside, maybe!” Tamsin made a wild sweep of her arm that nearly knocked over one of the leaning paintings. “Thisdoes not look like a princess’s holiday home.”
“The staff did say—”
“The staff,” Tamsin repeated. “What staff? Did those fellows strike you as working servitors? Because I cannot say I was struck by their professionalism or”—she gestured again—“the results of their labors!”
Alice’s soft voice broke in. “They didn’t know we were coming, Tam. You can’t blame them for not having the rooms prepared. It’s our fault, really.”
Tamsin stopped pacing to stare at Alice. “Are you just saying that because they were so beautiful to look at?”
“No,” Alice protested.
Ruby brushed at the dust on the counterpane, which served to transfer it to her skirts. “She’s saying that because they gave her a dog.”
“No,” Alice said again, though she hugged the puppy closer to her chest. “It’s only that they were very kind.”
“Oh my God.” Tamsin shoved her fingers into her hair. “Itisbecause they gave you a dog.”
“I suppose it was all of it together.” Alice set her puppy on the ground and examined one of the paintings that Tamsin had nearly toppled. “They were awfully welcoming to a trio of unexpected”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—“faux ladies-in-waiting. And theywerevery attractive. Do you think there could be something especially salutary about the Cornish air?”
Tamsin groaned, leaned back against the wall, and slowly sank down to the ground.
Ruby wrapped her arms around her legs and put her chin on her knees. She looked out across the room and then to the nearest window, which might have afforded a view of the sea if she could see through the grimy glass.
There was something hard and cold in her chest, like a stone lodged in her breastbone.
How many times had she done this? Envisioned some fantastic scheme only to be confronted by a reality not half so shining and luminous?
Perhaps there was no way to reinvent herself. Perhaps—even here, in Cornwall, as far away as she could get from her past—she was still the same old Ruby Ballimore.
It felt hard to breathe. Difficult to swallow against the pressure in her throat.
“I think we should go back,” Tam said. “Back to Bridestowe. For God’s sake, what if this isn’t the staff, and they’ve thrown the real servants into the sea?”
“I can’t imagine that’s the case,” Alice said. “They seem very pleasant.”
