“Is it loud in here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it too crowded?”
“Yes. And,” I added, “all these pins are making my scalp itch.”
“Yes,” he said, “I can see where they would. I’m afraid I can’t do anything about the pins—I’m sure your mother would notice—but I think I have the solution to everything else. Come on.”
“Where are—,” I started as he rose.
“Come on,” he said over his shoulder, adding in a whisper, despite the noise all around us, “no one will notice we’re gone.”
Outside the ballroom, the noise receding behind us, he grabbed my hand and pulled me down the stairs.
. . . . .
“The trapdoor in my father’s study?” I was incredulous. “Have we not done this already?”
Through the ceiling, I could hear the muffled footsteps of the party overhead, the sounds of dancers, the music vibrating the walls.
“Come on,” he said, grabbing a candle to light the way. “I’ve never entered it from this side. I always wondered what it would be like, if it would feel different than entering it from my kitchen, if I’d gain a greater sense of what it was originally used for.”
“I thought you already had a theory on that.”
He shrugged. “I might change my mind.” Another shrug. “Or confirm it.”
Cautiously, I climbed down after him.
“As you can see,” I said when we were about halfway through the tunnel, somewhat ruffled at having allowed myself to be drawn into this, “it is not any different at all. It is the same as it was before, the same as it has no doubt always been: lots of stone, the sense of earth around it, the only light that which we bring with us.”
Kit extracted a gold watch from his pocket, held it up to the flickering flame.
“Look,” he said. “It is just turned midnight.”
Then, before I could think what he was about, he lowered his face toward mine until he blocked out the sun of the candle, and laid a feather kiss on my lips.
We both pulled back almost instantly, as though we’d burned each other.
“Happy New Year, Lucy,” he whispered.
I couldn’t help it. Involuntarily, my fingers moved to my lips as though I might feel a searing brand there.
My lips felt the same—plump, soft—yet changed forever.
“They will miss us if we don’t return soon,” I said.
“I hardly think so,” he said. “There is so much revelry going on in your household right now, I doubt they should miss us before morning.”
It was a tempting thought: the idea of remaining in that tunnel with Kit. Perhaps, if we stayed, he might kiss me again. And when we at last emerged from here, it would be a sunny new day and new year, even though I knew we would of course not be stepping from here into the outdoors; we would be stepping into my father’s study or Kit’s family’s kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” he said, when I failed to respond, the first minutes of the new year ticking out silently ahead of us. “I won’t try to keep you here. Of course you must go back.”
Then he took my hand, warming mine in his.
“I’d ask you to race me back,” he teased, “but I know how competitive you are, and you look so pretty tonight in that gown, I would not like to see you strive to beat me, in which case you might trip, thereby ripping your dress.”
“Do you have any other solution?” I countered.
“We could run together,” he said, holding my hand yet tighter, pulling me along at his side as we raced back together through the passageway.
. . . . .
We were still giggling as we approached the underside of the trapdoor leading into my father’s study above.
“Shh,” I shushed Kit, barely able to contain my own mirth.
I held the candle as, exercising excruciating slowness, Kit pushed upward against the trapdoor.
On the one hand, I could understand his hesitance, but on the other I could not help but wonder: What did the speed he used matter? If my father had decided to take a respite from the party and go in there, or some other guest had gone there for whatever reason, speed would make no difference in terms of saving us. After all, it was not as though, were he to push the trapdoor up at a creeping pace and were he to spy feet in the room above as he peeked over the edge, he could then close the door back over us without us being seen. Speed, stealth—if someone were in the room neither would save us. A bell had been rung. As my father liked to say of bells, it could not now be unrung.
Gripping the candle tighter in my hand, I brushed past Kit, pushing up against the door so hard that it flew up with the sheer force of it, snapping back against the wooden floor above.
“Are you insane?” Kit looked as though he was unsure about whether he wanted to laugh hysterically or possibly see if he could find someone to accompany me to an asylum.
But I did not answer him as I went ahead, pulling myself up into the room, quickly glancing around me.
“We are safe,” I announced, looking down upon him.
Then, realizing our exertions had taken a toll on him, given the relatively short time ago that he had been deathly ill, I reached out my hand to help him up.
Not wanting to tarry any longer, lest we get caught, after returning the trapdoor to its proper position, we extinguished the candle and hastily made for the door.
This time, it was I who exercised silly overcaution, poking my head around the corner.
No one was in sight.
“Hurry,” I urged Kit, indicating he should follow me.
Still breathless from our recent run, we had closed the door gently behind us, had made it nearly out of the corridor when Mother rounded the corner, nearly crashing into us.
“You startled me out of my life,” she said, raising a hand to her chest.
“We’re sorry,” I apologized. “Why aren’t you at the party?”
My assumption in asking this question was that if you don’t want to be asked a thing yourself, it struck me as best to ask the other person the very same thing first, thereby putting them on the defensive side of the chessboard.
It seemed like an eminently sound strategy to me.
“I could not find your father anywhere,” she said, “so I came looking for him. I thought he might be hiding out in his study. I could not find your aunt either.”
“He is not there, neither of them are,” I said quickly.
Too quickly, apparently, for she raised her eyebrows, for the first time taking in Kit, who had come to stand beside me.
“And what are the two of you doing here?” she asked, eyebrows still raised as though the wonder of it all might cause them to remain thus poised permanently. “Were you seeking your father as well?”
“No.” I could feel the blush in my cheeks.
“It became so noisy,” Kit said, saving me, “and you know I am still not completely well. Lucy was kind enough, when I complained of a headache, to suggest I escape for a moment’s quiet and further kind enough to accompany me down here so that I would not have to suffer alone.”
It did not impress me as being a solid story. Why, Mother could just as easily ask, if he was feeling unwell, did he not ask his parents to accompany him home? Or even go himself if he did not want to disturb their good time? Why, in a house so large, did he need to go into our most rarely used hallway rather than one of the more public parlors?
One thing that did impress me: the unblinking, unflinching way he gazed into Mother’s eyes: not as though he were defying her—no, not that—but rather as though he was defending my honor, as though he was insisting through posture and look that I would never be party to anything that could be anything less than good.
“Thank you for explaining that to me,” Mother said to him evenly. “Now if you wouldn’t mind, and if you are feeling well enough to rejoin the party, I wish that you would do so, that I might have a word alone with my daughter.”
He may
have been proud and valiant, but he could not deny Mother that.
“Of course,” he said. He even gave her a courtly half bow. But as he passed away from us, I could not help but strain up a bit on my toes to see over Mother’s shoulder, going up just high enough so that I caught a glimpse of him looking back over his shoulder as though to ensure I was all right.
Was that a wink he gave me?
I felt another blush rise.
But when I at last turned back to Mother, her expression was one of amusement, not anger.
I could not help myself. “What is so funny?” I practically snapped, embarrassed.
“I don’t know if it is so much that anything is funny,” she said. “But you must admit, it is …something—the way when you first met Kit you disliked him so and yet now that is clearly no longer the case.”
“He almost died,” I pointed out. “Not that I have any other experience of it, but I would guess that when people almost die, their worth automatically goes up, at least to some small degree.”
“Of course,” she said. “I don’t know why that theory never occurred to me before, the idea that death should increase value even of those who have previously annoyed us, but of course I see now that you are right. And it must be even more so when the person in question is someone we do care about.”
The amusement in her eyes no longer looked as though it was at my expense. Rather, it was expressive of a happy warmth like I hadn’t seen in those twin pools of blue in I could not say how long.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” I insisted.
She reached out a hand, touched my lips where Kit had kissed me, where I had touched myself in the startled wake of that kiss.
Again the blush came. That wretched, damning blush.
There was no way she could have missed that coloring of my cheeks, although there was also no way she could be sure of its significance. But still, mercifully, she failed to comment on it. Instead, with the same hand, she brushed a stray hair back from my forehead, smoothing it away with a mother’s benediction.
“Your hair may be a dark cloud,” she said, “but no matter what the weather, on your wedding day the sun and stars will shine.”
I was shocked. “I am fourteen!” I said, at last thoroughly annoyed by everyone and everything. “Why are you talking to me now about my wedding day?”
“Because you won’t always be fourteen. Because one day things will change.”
• Twenty-two •
I should have known something was wrong right away.
The house was too quiet as I stepped over the threshold.
In the corner of the entryway, the grandfather clock ticked loudly. Later on, remembering, I would think that steady tick-tock had a mocking quality to it.
It was nearly a year to the day since Aunt Helen had first come to us.
When I had arisen that morning, early, it had been different from the morning that followed the party for Aunt Helen back in the summer. Rather than a quiet house to myself, Mother, my father, and Aunt Helen were already up and at breakfast, discussing the festivities of the night before. They were pleased that a good time had been had by all. But they were also tired, Mother in particular.
“I’m not feeling myself this morning,” she’d said, taking up a cup of tea as she rose. “I think I’ll go back to bed for a bit.” Before leaving the room she’d stopped long enough to lay a kiss at the top of my head. “You looked beautiful last night, Lucy.” Then she leaned down, whispered in my ear, “I love you.”
It wasn’t so much that it was odd for her to voice her affection, but it was odd for her to do it where others might overhear her.
For answer, I smiled my affection back at her in return.
As Aunt Helen and my father had discussed their immediate plans, I was only half listening. Already, my mind had flown ahead to the park.
Last night, as the Tylers were leaving, Kit had taken advantage of the relative privacy of the adults talking all around us to suggest a New Year’s Day rendezvous. Why not meet, he’d said, take a walk in the park, so that we could greet the opening of the new year together?
At the time, when I’d said yes, I’d assumed everyone else would be sleeping when I set out, but such was not the case.
“Be sure to wrap yourself up warm,” my father had said when I informed him of my intentions to go for a walk, although I neglected to add whom with.
“Oh, yes,” Aunt Helen had added. “We would not want anything to happen to you.”
Outside, meeting Kit between our houses, he’d seemed jovial, as though nothing strange had happened between us the night before. I certainly was not going to bring it up. And so we had gone to the park, as we might have done on any other day. Of course, normally we would have been accompanied by others for propriety’s sake.
It was almost too cold to be out.
After midnight at some point, a snow had started to fall, was still falling. But it was a slow, soft snow, the kind that covered the grass but melted on the streets. Still, the paths we walked had some ice on them, and Kit put his hand beneath my elbow, steadying me. This was something new.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to make a joke of it.
“I just want to keep you from falling,” he said, trying to inject a note of jocularity into his own tone.
But it did not feel that way to me.
Everything was the same. Everything was different, changed.
The park was nearly deserted. It was too dangerously cold for nannies to bring babies out. Couples, whom we would normally see promenading, were kept away. The benches were too icy to sit on. And so we strolled the perimeters once, twice, making stabs at jokes or casual conversation, eventually falling into silence.
Everything was the same. Everything was changed, different.
“I suppose,” Kit said at last, one deathly quiet hour having succeeded another, “I should get you back home. I do not think your father will thank me if you freeze to death while in my care.”
And now I was back home.
Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
I liked to joke that I was the only one in the house who ever answered the door anymore, but this wasn’t, strictly speaking, the truth. In fact, whenever I returned home from being out, someone almost always came at the sound of the door opening, at the sound of my booted foot on the marble floor. One servant or another was bound to appear shortly, helping me off with my cloak, hanging that cloak up for me if I had already taken it off myself.
But none came that day.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I removed my own cloak, tossed it on the hall bench, removed my gloves, tossed them on top.
I remembered that Mother had said she was going back to bed, but she should have been up by now. And if she wasn’t, then I would wake her up.
“Mother! Aunt Helen!” I called cheerfully, wanting some company, wanting something to take my mind off this new strangeness between Kit and me. “Mother! Aunt Helen!” I called again.
But no one answered.
To this day, I don’t know why I didn’t check the parlors first. Was it some sort of prescience on my part? It is impossible to say.
Whatever the case, whatever my thinking might have been, I did not go to those likely rooms. Instead, I made my way to my father’s study, that room I went to least, knocked. Receiving no answer, I turned the knob, pushed the door open, and entered …
… an empty room.
It was only then that I remembered dimly registering over that morning’s breakfast, that for some strange reason seemed an era ago now, my father saying that he would be going out as well; that he saw no reason why he alone should spend the dawn of the new year a slave to a desk. And so he would go out, after he’d breakfasted and dressed, would meet up with some of his friends at their favorite drinking club.
I gently pulled the door closed behind me.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Now that I was in the corridor again,
I had a sudden urge to run for the front door, to escape … I knew not what.
That is silly, I told myself. Perhaps Mother is still sleeping. Perhaps my father is still out.
What had Aunt Helen said she would do with the day?
I could not remember.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I lifted my skirts, hurried up the stairs—one flight, two—thinking to burst into Mother’s bedroom. “Wake up, sleepyhead!” I would say. “If you sleep any longer, you will sleep the whole year away!”
But when I threw open the door, shouted my greeting, she wasn’t there.
Nor was Aunt Helen in her own bedroom.
Back down two flights, moving at a slower pace now, thinking, thinking …
Near the bottom, near the step I usually sat to listen in on, I picked up speed again. I am not sure now if I was more worried or angry, angry like a child who has been tricked by far bigger and faster children into playing hide-and-go-seek.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
The front parlor? No.
Tick—
I found them in the back parlor.
At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at: all that red, so much red, splattered behind them like a wall of flames.
For the longest moment, I could not take in the size of what I was seeing, had to force myself to narrow my focus on what was right in front of me.
It was Mother and Aunt Helen, lashed side by side to straight-backed chairs, separated by no more than a foot of space.
At first, I thought they must both be dead. All that red, all that red—how could anyone survive it?
The one on the left’s head was flung back at an impossible angle, as though it were only hanging on to the body by a thread, a bath of blood drenching the front of her dress.
The one on the right was covered in blood too, but I saw now that this one was merely splattered with it, as though she had been painted in it, not drenched. The one on the right’s eyes were open—I saw that now—but they were staring straight ahead as though blind, taking in nothing.
The one on the left was dead—there was no way she could not be—but this one was yet alive.
The Twin's Daughter Page 14
