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“I assume the both of them are together. Perhaps they’re exploring the mansion together,” Ramon said. Arthur felt his anger surging inside him. He wasn’t in the habit of raising his voice at people, so he simply turned on his heels and started to walk down the hallway.
“Nora,” he called out as he went. “Nora.” But his daughter didn’t answer back. Panic took over his anger and the worst possible thoughts began to crowd his head. What if Carmen had stolen Nora away in order to exact some kind of misguided revenge on him?
Arthur shook his head to clear these thoughts but at one moment he had to stop to catch his breath. Black spots appeared at the back of his eyes and he thought he was going to pass out. He clutched his fist, fingernails digging into the skin to ground him back to reality. He concentrated on breathing, gulping greedily on air, but it wasn’t enough. It was then that he heard the music.
It floated towards him softly and haunted, a mother’s voice calling to her child, asking her to come back home. Arthur blinked, and at that moment, he found a clarity that he hadn’t in years. He had been afraid of music for so long, that he had almost forgotten how it felt to be absolutely mesmerized by it. The fog of abject terror in his heart lifted. He followed the music in some sort of trance, the notes wrapping around him, beckoning to come closer and listen. And he was too weak to resist its call.
He walked up the staircase, following the faint and echoing notes of the siren song. He was vaguely aware that someone was calling out his name behind him, but he didn’t stop to listen. He climbed the stairs and in the next moment found himself in the western wing of the house. He hadn’t had been up here in three years.
The music was louder now, almost overwhelming, and it took over all his senses. Sunlight streamed down the open slats and fell over the piano, casting it in an ethereal glow. The woman sat at the piano, singing, her hair coming undone from the bun. Her voice rose in crescendo, followed by another smaller voice. It was Nora. She was singing alongside her now, their voices mingling together to make a sound as sweetly as nightingales at dawn. He watched them play the piano and sing, standing at the door for what felt a few fleeting seconds expanding to hours.
It was only when they stopped that Arthur regained his senses, blinding against the sunlight as the darkened profile of the two figures finally came into his view, unobstructed. The woman wasn’t a white-haired angel as he had thought before. She was just a woman, but just as beautiful as one. He gasped and Carmen looked up at him. When she saw him at the doorway, her eyes widened, and she rose from the bench.
His heart which had been lulled by the quiet sift of the music started pounding at his ears at the anger rising within him. He remembered just how much he disliked this woman. “Get. Out. Of. This. Room.” Each word was punctuated by a step inside the room. Carmen shirked under his gaze. It was the first time that he saw her afraid of him, and deep down, it bothered him.
“I apologize. I didn’t mean to—”
“Get out!” he roared. Without saying anything else, she ran out of the room.
“Papa!” Nora said, sounding affronted. “It was I who brought her here. It wasn’t her fault at all!”
“Nora, go to your room. I don’t wish to speak to you now,” Arthur said.
Nora ran up to her father, tugging on his hand. “Papa, please you must listen to me.”
Arthur shook his hand off her grip. “How could you bring a stranger into your mother’s room like this? I told you nobody was to come in here except the servants, that included you.”
Nora’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t even come into Mother’s chambers?”
Arthur’s anger abated at the appearance of her tears. “I did not mean that. I wish to preserve the sanctity of her chambers,” he said. By doing so, he wished to preserve her essence. “She is gone now. We must respect that.”
“You told me that she’s looking down at me from the stars. Was it a lie? Is she truly gone?”
Arthur knew he had said the wrong thing. “No, sheiswatching over you, Nora.” When the sunlight fell over the piano, he could almost swear that she was here. He could almost ask her forgiveness for failing her. Nora wouldn’t understand that the reason he didn’t want her to be here was because he was afraid to confront what had happened that night. Coming up here was bringing back all of those bad memories with a vengeance. He closed his eyes as he staggered against the brunt of the past.
“We need to go,” he said. He closed the door behind him and led Nora away from her mother’s former chambers.
“Miss Black must be upset because of what you said to her,” Nora said. Arthur didn’t speak until they went downstairs where Ramon was waiting for them.
“Miss Black, where is she?” Arthur asked.
“I’m afraid she has left, Your Grace.”
