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We rushed through the gardens together, and I thrilled at knowing my way.
Mine, my soul sang.
I dodged Callum’s playful grasp several times as we ran to the house, kissing once more in the halls before heading our separate ways to prepare. I was filled to bursting with a sense of well-being, and I flew to my room, feet barely touching the ground. An overnight bag was enough for the little I was packing, and the old case I’d brought with me to Willowfield would do. I pulled it from the closet with gracious reverence, recalling my first steps through the door.
I hadn’t known what I would face here, the nightmares, illness, and resurgence of my old anxieties and habits. If I thought of this only, I would rightly say that Willowfield was the worst decision of my life. But there had been so much more. Here, my mind was engaged, my resilience tempered, my body sated, and my heart made new. It was as Callum had said, like a magic long dormant coming to life again.
As I clasped the bag closed, the door opened, and there stood Felicity with a tray in her hands, her eyes wide. She glanced to my bag.
“You’re leaving,” she said.
“Well, yes, I…” I didn’t know how much I should say.
“Professor Hughes proposed. Rodney told me.”
She walked to the table to place the tray down as usual, though I held the valise and my hat in my hands, ready to go. She lingered, struggling with something, and a wave of fretfulness sent my belly into a somersault.
“Why do you look so unhappy?” I asked, exasperated by the sudden bleak cloud that loomed over my bright mood.
She turned to me, looking much smaller than I’d ever seen, shrinking in on herself with every passing moment. I knew that look, the hunch of the shoulders, the fidgeting. I knew it very well.
My previous hardness melted, and I set down my case and went to her, taking her hands between mine.
“Felicity, please, you look so frightened.”
“I need to show you something.” Her voice was barely audible, and she searched my face for safety, belief, all the things I’d been looking for myself. “He may kill me for it, but I need to show you.”
The hair on my arms rose, and a hot flash of fury exploded behind my eyes.
“Who?” I demanded, ferocious with a protectiveness I’d never felt for another person. Felicity was so small, gentle, and quiet. The idea of someone threatening her, frightening her, made me murderous.
“Please, just come with me.”
I followed her, wondering if I should alert Callum to the situation first, but she took the turn away from Callum’s rooms and led me through the hallways with sureness until we arrived at the servants’ steps that led to the third floor, where I’d chased the ghost, where it had trapped me in the wardrobe and given me its pain.
At first, I refused to go, but Felicity took hold of my arms, despairing.
“Please, Millie. I’m begging you.” She was so earnest that at last I gave in, and she led me into the awful anteroom. Instead of going to the nursery, she produced a key from her pocket and unlocked the only other door.
Compelled, I followed her inside.
We entered a bedroom, its decor far removed from the rest of the house with its whimsical rustic touches, belonging more to a woodsman’s cottage in a fairytale than an old mansion in New England. There were no chandeliers, no rich paneling or brocade wallpaper, no luxurious silks or gilded filigree. The floor was a plain cedar, a thrall of wool rugs laid out to warm the feet. Each piece of furniture was made of dark, carved wood, unadorned with frills and sanded to a high gleam; they included two dressers, a set of nightstands, and a large, canopied bed, sheer white curtains tied neatly back. A vanity rested near the centermost window, fashioned to look like a natural element, grown on its own out of the floor, its every facet a curve of twisting wood and whittled leaves. The fireplace mantel was unhewn, rough, and in the grate the remnants of recent fires, the woody scent still lingering.
“Professor Hughes spends a lot of time here,” Felicity said with a meek twist of her hands.
“But his room is downstairs.”
“It is now, but it wasn’t before.”
Comprehension dawned. This had been their room together, Callum and his wife. The nursery nearby for their children, a private sitting room for peace from the bustle of the house. The furniture was uncovered because it was being used. By him.
I struggled to excuse it. This had been a happy place for Callum once, and then a place of intense sadness. He visited for solace, to grieve. Wouldn’t any man do such a thing? I walked deeper into the room, running my eyes over the pieces and pages of the life that had thrived here before me. As I passed the nearest dresser, I noticed a drawer had been pulled slightly ajar. I might have missed it if I hadn’t looked down at the exact right moment. A familiar pattern. I pulled the drawer open, and inside lay a silk pajama top, royal hued summer flowers embroidered in the sleeves and on the collar, the same as my robe. I pulled it out, imploring my eyes to see something else. The strangling grasp of anxiety wrapped itself around my heart. I shoved the pajamas back in the drawer and hurried to the closet nearby, pushing the door aside. It was filled with women’s clothes, and I rifled through them looking for something specific. There, wool jackets, hanging alone without their matching skirts, the skirts Callum had given me.
“My clothes, the gifts from the professor, they came from here?”
There were two spots of red on Felicity’s pale cheeks. Shame.
“Yes. The perfumes and lotions too, the brush and the mirror, we brought them from Mrs. Hughes’s things, all except the dinner dress. That was the only thing truly made for you.”
