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How creepy would that be?
No, it was about experiencing it.
Like Ian said, this was our idyll.
I’d never have this first time here again. And if this whackadoodle, rollercoaster of a visit meant down the line Ian and I somehow worked, that this was the start of something, something lasting, this would be my home.
That was what I meant.
Not that I needed to give the house the chance to decide if it liked me or not.
So again…
The fuck?
“I know,” she said softly. “I know how odd that sounded. You must think I’m mad. But have you never been someplace, like the Tower of London, in the spot where Anne lost her head, and not felt it?”
“Anne’s ghost?” I scoffed.
“The residual essence of her, and many others, who were pawns of powerful men? It’s particularly powerful, I find, in places where the heights of emotion are reached. Great sadness. Great tragedy. Great injustice. Even great happiness. In fact, walk into any church, which will have seen as many weddings and christenings as its seen funerals, and it gives a certain feel.”
I’d been to the Tower of London, and other places, and felt that same thing, so I couldn’t deny it.
“Maybe it’s fanciful,” she continued. “Maybe it’s the selfish need of a mortal for some sense of immortality. But I think every creature on this earth has left something lasting. Not their spirit. Not their ghost. Not their bones. Just…something. And this house has stood long, and before it a castle, so it’s bound to have it too.”
“So you think this house is giving me dreams?” I asked disbelievingly, or I was hopeful in my disbelief.
She watched me closely for a moment before she said, “No. I think Ian loves this house and its history, even more than he knows, or will admit to, and I think he’s telling you stories. Between that, and other occurrences, which I wish you had not had, you’re manifesting these dreams. Doesn’t it tally to you that you had a lovely evening with Ian, and then you dreamt of Adelaide and Augustus?”
Finally, she was making me feel better.
Because that totally made sense.
I’d dreamed of the moors and a picnic and the children, all of which Ian told me about, and the last of which I’d seen a portrait of my owned damned self. It was my subconscious, no matter how real it seemed, how it felt I was hearing her thoughts, like I was in her head, in her, was her.
It was just a very real-seeming dream, a sexy one, after I had a date with a handsome, sexy man, who, it was important to add, often talked about the sex he wanted to have with me.
So it wasn’t real.
(Was it?)
“Yes,” I confirmed resolutely. “That makes sense. But it was very real. And then you showed up in here.”
“I was having my coffee in the Sherry Room. You passed by. You didn’t look in to see me. You also didn’t return so I found you. There’s no mystery to that.”
I let out a breath.
No, there was no mystery to that.
“I don’t say it to scare you,” she went on. “I say it because it’s true. This house is overwhelming. It’s large. It’s filled with beautiful things. It’s filled with history. It’s also filled with flawed people. It has seen birth and death. You are existing in history, doing it leaving your own mark. I write in diaries too, which will be entombed in this room or elsewhere in the house for someone to unearth along the way. And they’ll read my entries of when the lovely Daphne Ryan, daughter of the great retail magnate Robert Ryan, came to visit. At least.”
She leaned slightly toward me and finished.
“It helps, especially when you reach my age, to know your story will live on, Daphne. I want you to learn that, especially now.”
“Why ‘especially now?’”
She leaned back. “Because Louella will be fine. I’m certain of it. But until you know that, until you and she are both living it, you need to understand, she lived, she’ll live on, she’ll be remembered, long after, quite some time from now, when she’s gone.”
