by Amy M. Reade
We all settled back into our chairs and waited for Maisie to finish cleaning Brenda’s mess. When she had left to return to the kitchen, we all sat in silence for a few moments. Then Annabel spoke. “Brenda has been a bit off lately. She hasn’t seemed herself.”
Only I was able to corroborate that statement, since the rest of the diners hadn’t been in the castle for a long time, and it was true. Privately, I was a bit worried about Brenda. She had been clumsy and irritable lately. She had always seemed like a nice girl, but I had to admit to myself that she had a secretive side I didn’t know much about.
Conversation turned away from the household employees and to the weather, local happenings, and old acquaintances. Annabel was happy to be able to share news of the boys’ old friends and their families. In many cases, the friends had moved to other parts of the United Kingdom or even farther afield, but the families remained in the village, as so often happened in old Welsh communities.
When Sian returned to the table, she looked flushed. “Is everything all right, Sian?” Annabel asked, concern in her eyes.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Sian answered with a thin smile. As she sat down she glanced at Andreas, who held her eyes for a moment. I don’t know who else noticed—probably no one. But the look they shared piqued my curiosity. What was going on? It had to have something to do with Brenda, I was sure of it. Perhaps Sian was jealous of the feelings the girl obviously held for her husband.
Annabel tried to keep the conversation light for the remainder of the meal. Brenda did not come into the dining room again, though Maisie came in several times to clear dishes away and to serve dessert.
After dinner we all moved to the vast salon across the hall from the dining room. It was warm in there, though, thanks to a fire roaring in the huge fireplace, and we sat facing each other uneasily.
The silence had grown a bit too long when Annabel spoke up. “Sian, are you sure you’re all right? I’m dreadfully sorry Brenda was so clumsy. I’ll have to speak to her tonight or first thing tomorrow.”
“I’m really fine,” Sian assured her mother-in-law. “The girl is obviously love-struck.”
“Sian, please,” Andreas said, a warning note in his tone.
“By whom?” Cadi asked.
Sian raised her eyebrows pointedly. “By Andreas, of course. Brenda can barely hide her feelings for him. She acts this way every time we visit.”
“Sian sees things that aren’t there,” Andreas said lightly.
“How long has it been since you were last here at the castle?” Hugh asked her.
Sian looked at Annabel. “What would you say? About four months?”
Annabel nodded. “That sounds about right.”
“I remember because the last time we visited I was just getting over my morning sickness,” Sian told Hugh.
Cadi looked away, her eyes having glazed over while Sian was talking. It seemed she wasn’t interested in the details of Sian’s pregnancy.
“Do you have any fruit tea, Annabel?” Cadi asked. “I really prefer it to this chamomile.”
“Yes, I think so,” Annabel said. “I’ll ring Maisie for it.” She shifted so the toe of her shoe hovered over a button on the floor. The button was connected to an old bell system that had been in use in the castle for hundreds of years. It was the antique version of an intercom system.
I stopped her before she could depress the button with her foot. “I’ll get the tea,” I offered. “Maisie’s back is bothering her, and I hate to see her going up and down the stairs so often. I’ll be back in just a minute.”
I left the room without waiting to see if anyone would insist that Maisie bring the tea. Cadi, especially, liked the idea of having a servant to bring whatever she wanted, so I suspected she might try to stop me so Maisie could perform her duties. But maybe Cadi thought I was enough of a servant to suffice in this situation.
Below-stairs I heard the wracking sobs before I saw their source. A pitiful sight met my eyes when I reached the doorway of the kitchen. Neither mother nor daughter had heard my approach, and the sight of Brenda on her knees on the cold stone floor stopped me where I stood.
Chapter 3
She was in full wail when I saw her. Her body was shaking with the force of her cries. It was a wonder she couldn’t be heard from the sitting room upstairs. Maisie knelt on the floor next to Brenda, her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
I should have turned around and left quietly, but Cadi would no doubt wonder where the tea was and it clearly wasn’t the best time to ask Maisie to bring anything up to the sitting room. I cleared my throat and stepped into the room.
“Maisie? Brenda?” I asked softly. “Is everything all right? Are you hurt, Brenda?” I knew she wasn’t, that this had something to do with her earlier mishap in the dining room, but it felt like the right thing to say.
She looked up at me, startled. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and her flushed face was streaked with tears. Maisie looked at me, too, and closed her eyes almost as if she were embarrassed.
I knelt down with them. “Can I do anything for either of you?” I asked. I was concerned that something was seriously wrong with Brenda and I wanted to help. “Can I get you a glass of water, Brenda?”
She shook her head and choked back another sob, then put her hands over her face. I looked at Maisie and she gazed at me with a helpless look, her eyes pleading and her mouth pinched and drawn. Tears shone in the corners of her eyes and I could almost feel the pain she was feeling, though I didn’t know the cause of it.
“We’re having a rough time of it, Eilidh,” she said softly. That much I knew.
“I don’t want to intrude or interfere,” I said. “I actually just came down for tea for Cadi, but I don’t have to go upstairs if you need me down here for anything.”
Brenda continued to cry while Maisie shook her head. “Thank you, Eilidh, but this is something Brenda and I have to deal with ourselves.”
I pushed myself to my feet and walked softly to the cupboard where the fruity herbal teas were stored. I took what I needed from the cupboard and went to the kitchen door. Before I left the room, I turned to Maisie and Brenda. “Please don’t hesitate to ask me for anything you need,” I urged them. “I’ll be happy to help.”
Brenda’s crying had slowed since I entered the room, but she didn’t look up from the floor. She just gave a slight nod. Maisie looked up at me again and mouthed the words “thank you.” I returned to the sitting room with a feeling of overwhelming sadness for Brenda. Whether her outburst had something to do with Andreas or with her embarrassment over spilling an entire gravy boat earlier or something else entirely, my heart broke for her.
Back in the salon we talked for a bit about Sian’s pregnancy, but Annabel was the only other person in the room who could relate to Sian’s experiences. Cadi rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically more than once, and each time Annabel shot her a look of dark disapproval. Cadi didn’t seem to care. Andreas looked thoroughly bored, Hugh examined his fingernails with great intensity, and Rhisiart thumbed through a novel that had been sitting on the coffee table. Even Annabel’s questions to Sian seemed forced, as if she were reading from a script. I got the feeling she would rather have been spending time alone with her sons and I couldn’t blame her—they were really the ones she wanted most to see. Not that I didn’t enjoy talking about nesting, cravings, and baby names, but I barely knew Sian and found that her pregnancy details were really more information than I needed or wanted.
After a half hour Sian announced that she was ready for bed. Cadi quickly agreed, saying that the “extraordinarily long day” had left her “practically lifeless.” I was glad to see her leave and I know Annabel was, too.
When Sian and Cadi had left, Annabel moved to sit closer to Andreas. She patted his knee, finally wearing a smile. She obviously preferred the company of her boys to that of the
ir wives. Andreas was her favorite—she had said as much several times since I’d started working for her—and I knew why. He was the only one who bothered to visit her.
I sometimes wondered what was behind his visits—was it really love for his mother? Was it a sense of familial duty? Was it to curry favoritism? I didn’t know, and I suppose it didn’t matter. As long as Annabel was happy, that was the important thing, wasn’t it?
After chatting about the weather and other mundane topics for several long minutes during which her sons’ expressions turned from dutiful attention to glazed boredom, Annabel stood up and walked over to the hearth. I knew what was coming.
She stood up a little straighter and cleared her throat.
“I’m sure you’ve all figured out why you’re here, but we haven’t actually said it out loud. I’ve been waiting for a long time to talk to you boys, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it until now. I guess it’s really the new grandbaby coming that spurred me to want to do it.” Andreas was watching his mother intently. Annabel was twisting a handkerchief she held and laughed nervously. She looked at me and I nodded to encourage her to keep talking. This was obviously very hard for her.
“Well, here goes.” She took a deep breath and continued. “I know that things weren’t easy while you boys were growing up, and I want to say that I’m sorry.” She paused for a moment.
Andreas spoke. “Mum, you don’t…”
Annabel shook her head and held up her hand. “Let me finish or else I won’t be able to. I’m sorry for the things I didn’t do, the things I didn’t say, to save you from your own father. I’m sorry that I didn’t protect you when you needed protecting and that I didn’t stand up for you. I was young and not very bright, and I thought the brutality would stop by itself. But it didn’t, and you boys paid as high a price as I did.”
She stopped speaking, and the room fell silent.
“Thank you, Mum,” Rhisiart mumbled, looking down at his hands. His brothers nodded their agreement.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. Now that Annabel had gotten through this conversation, the hardest part of the boys’ visit, she didn’t need my support any longer. This was a subject they needed to discuss as a family, and I was an outsider. After a long moment I stood up. “If you’ll all excuse me, I think I’ll go to bed.” Amid a murmured chorus of “goodnight,” I closed the door to the salon quietly and walked quickly toward my room on the opposite wing of the castle. I paused when I reached the steps leading down to the kitchen, wondering if I should go down to see if everything was all right, but I decided I was an outsider in the drama playing out between Maisie and Brenda, too, and that what I needed most was a good night’s sleep.
My room was cold when I went inside. I built a fire in the fireplace and sat in front of it for a while, reading a book I had taken from the library on the second floor of the castle. It was one of Rhisiart’s books. The name “Rhisiart Tucker” was prominent above the title on the cover. It featured a man running down a darkened rainy street with the lights of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the background. Though thrillers weren’t my favorite books to read, I found that Rhisiart’s writing drew me into the story unfolding in the Fourth Arrondissement and I was enjoying the fast-paced tale.
When I started yawning I closed the book and crawled under the covers of the big bed. Though the fire had made me toasty and comfortable while I sat reading, my sheets were still shockingly cold when I touched them. The first few minutes in bed I shivered and hugged my knees to my chest until I finally felt warmth seeping through my bones and could stretch out. Annabel would be happy, I knew, to have the short speech to her sons out of the way. I didn’t know how the three men felt about it, but at least it hadn’t been greeted with anger and blame, which I knew she had feared. Knowing she would go to bed relieved tonight was a relief to me, too.
The only little prick of worry I had as I drifted off to sleep was Brenda—both the incident in the dining room and the resulting episode I had witnessed in the kitchen. My heart went out to the young girl, and I knew her mother was worried about her, too.
When a loud bang startled me out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night, I sat up straight in bed and cocked my head, listening for other noises. I didn’t hear anything. I probably dreamed it, I thought.
I snuggled down under the covers again and was soon dozing, but through the fog in my sleep-addled brain I was sure I heard faint crying. I sat up again. The room was deliciously warm from the fire that still burned low in the grate, but I still hated to get out from under the comfort of the blankets. Reluctantly I tucked my feet into the slippers I kept at the side of the bed and went to the door. After opening it cautiously, I peered into the long hallway. The gas-lit sconces provided quivering candlelight at regular intervals, making the spaces between them eerily dark.
Even in the dim light, though, there was no mistaking the shadow that flitted across the hall down toward the main door to the castle. I hesitated, not knowing who the shadow belonged to or whether I should try to figure it out. The crying continued, now a little louder because my door was open. My mind told me to shut the door, get back into bed, and ignore the nighttime goings-on. My heart told me to find out who was crying and whose shadow I had seen from the safety of my bedroom doorway.
I followed my heart, as usual.
It was very cold in the hallway, so I ducked back into my room for my thick robe. Then, pulling the sash tight around my waist, I slipped into the hallway and closed the bedroom door behind me.
I instinctively stayed close to the wall as I followed the flickering sconces to the castle’s great hall. In daylight, this entrance to the home was a magnificent gallery of antique furniture, a polished stone floor, stained glass windows, an enormous, colorfully-painted wooden coat of arms, and even an ancient suit of armor, posed with a lance. In the dim light of night, however, the main hall was a frightening place. The furniture gave way to dark, shapeless forms, the suit of armor took on a more sinister stance, and the stained glass, which depicted pastoral scenes in daylight, seemed to glow with an evil darkness.
When I reached the huge front door, the iron bolt that kept the door locked from the inside had been slid to one side. Someone had left the castle. That must have been the bang I heard. The person I had seen stealing along the corridor was nowhere to be found. Maybe the bang was a person coming in, not going out. Perhaps the person I had seen had just come in from outdoors. I hadn’t heard anyone as I made my way to the great hall, and I didn’t see or hear anyone now that I was standing by the front door.
I was perplexed. I hadn’t dreamed it. There had been a person in the hallway and I had come quickly to the main entrance to the castle. How could I have missed him—or her? But I had gone back into my room to pull on my robe. Had the person disappeared in such a short time? Had he or she gone upstairs? Downstairs? Had the person perhaps ducked into one of the rooms on the main floor and was waiting, listening, until I left to return to my bedroom? The thought sent chills up to the nape of my neck.
Was I just being silly? Maybe Hugh had gone out for Cadi’s toiletries, though it was quite late for that. Maybe someone had gone down to the kitchen to get a snack. That was a far more likely explanation. There were a million reasons someone in the castle might be about during the night, so stop making up sinister reasons, I told myself with a grimace.
But that didn’t explain the crying I had heard so plainly. Was the person in the hallway the one who had been crying? And what had he—or more likely, she—been crying about? I didn’t know Andreas or Hugh or Rhisiart very well, but none of them seemed to be the emotional type.
I was spooking myself and it was getting very cold standing still in the great hall, so I turned on the lights and peeked into the sitting room and the dining room. I didn’t see anyone in either room so I hurried back to the safety and warmth of my own room and my own bed.
It was still dark out when I awoke, but my room faced the east and I could see a tinge of pink in the sky in the distance. I showered and dressed quickly so I could greet everyone as they filed into the dining room for breakfast. Annabel was an early riser, so I liked to be available when she woke up just in case she needed me for something. I sat down at the dining room table by myself. The newspaper was already there, so I read that until I heard the stirrings of guests. Maisie and Brenda came in and out of the dining room several times to leave chafing dishes, a teapot, and a small samovar of coffee. I helped myself to a cup of tea, then another, while I waited for Annabel to join me. As I expected, she came into the dining room before any of her sons or their wives.
“How’d everything go after I went to bed last night?” I asked as she sat down next to me.
She thought for a moment before answering. “I think it went quite well. I asked them to forgive me for not helping them when I was the only one who could, and they told me they forgive me for my mistakes. I hope that Sian and Cadi can forgive me if their husbands can.”
“You couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome,” I said, taking a sip of tea.
Annabel sighed. “If I had never gotten myself into that mess, nothing bad would have happened to the boys.”
“But as you said, you were young. You got yourself into a situation that you weren’t prepared to handle. You did the best you could.”
“But did I, really? Or was I just as afraid as they were?” She shook her head. “I don’t like to think too deeply about it or I might not like the truth I discover.”
“Annabel, what’s done is done. You can’t change it now, so it’s best to move forward. And that’s exactly what you’re doing now. You may not have been able to help the boys in the past, but you’re doing the right thing now. And they seem to have forgiven you for it. They love you. You know that.”
