by Eve Silver
She took three steps forward along the gloomy hallway, then paused to look back at Beth over her shoulder. Shadows licked at her hem.
“Oh, dear, just one more small thing... Do you know who found them, there in the woods, all bloody and savaged so their own mothers might not recognize them? Why, it was Mr. Fairfax, dear Miss Canham.” She gave an ugly laugh, high and trilling.
Rearing back, Beth sucked in a sharp breath. Miss Doyle retraced her steps, drawing nigh, crowding Beth back against the door.
“Do you think we have not noticed the way you cast your moon eyes at him, watching him every time he is about?” she asked, her eyes narrowed with malice. “Oh, do watch him, Miss Canham. Do feel your heart flutter for him, just as Miss Stillwell did, and Miss Bodie-Stuart. And perhaps he will stumble upon your body, as well, just as he happened upon theirs”—she paused, then finished in a harsh, malicious rush—”and just as he happened upon the ravaged and broken body of his poor, dead wife.”
In the dark hallway, with the flame of the candle casting light up from below, Miss Doyle’s features took on a monstrous cast. Her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were dark, her chin and the underside of her nose light. She looked not quite human.
“Some say he killed her, right in front of Isobel. ‘Tis no wonder the child never speaks. She is deranged from the horror of it.”
A dead wife. Two dead teachers. All discovered by Griffin Fairfax.
Beth felt the blood drain from her face in a rush. She leaned against the door for support, shocked and distressed not only by Miss Doyle’s revelations, but by the woman’s twisted delight in sharing them.
‘Twas a terrible thing, to have such a malicious heart.
“Well, I believe I am done here.” Miss Doyle laughed, a burbling, childish giggle.
“Yes, I believe you are,” Beth replied shortly, uncaring that her tone was rude, her words clipped and tight. “Good evening, Miss Doyle.”
“And to you, Miss Canham,” came the reply. “Sleep well.”
Beth stood in the hallway outside her chamber door and watched the other woman walk away. After a moment, Miss Doyle disappeared down the stairs at the far end of the hall, taking the meager light of her candle with her, leaving Beth alone in the dim, moon-dappled hallway.
Better alone than in Miss Doyle’s bilious company.
Opening her door, she went inside, then paused to turn the lock behind her. She checked the key a second time and drew it from the keyhole. Then she lit a fire in the hearth, glad for both the warmth and the light.
Aware of the lingering disquietude in her heart, she drew the curtains, and made quick work of preparing herself for bed. She hesitated, then hurried across the room and dragged open the heavy draperies once more.
She could not bear to sleep with the curtains pulled shut. Not tonight. In truth, not any night.
Moonlight touched the room with a purple-gray cast, and Beth sighed with relief. Even that small amount of light was welcome, as was the sight of the open space beyond the window.
She stood for a long moment staring out at the night. Three dead women... murdered women...
She had only Miss Doyle’s word as to the veracity of Mr. Fairfax’s presence at each horrific scene, and to the violent nature of the women’s demise. Not an especially unimpeachable source.
Pressing her lips together, she thought back on her day and the emotions that had carried her up then down like breakers crashing on the shore.
Cold fury rolled through her.
Enough. Truly enough.
With a sharp yank, she dragged the curtains shut. She would face the small, closed room tonight, and the darkness. She would. And not only face them; she would master them.
Stomping across the room, she tossed back the sheets and blankets, then paused. Sighed. And lit a rush light.
So much for her best intentions.
A moment later, she lay in her bed, her blankets drawn to her chin. Silence, thick and heavy, shrouded the room, and she strained to hear any sound, anything that would serve as a reminder that she was not completely alone here in the gloom. She glanced at the rush light, a weak and pallid soldier staving off the darkness. It would have to serve.
Closing her eyes she massaged her temples and tried to gather her riotous thoughts. She managed to lock away the images conjured by Miss Doyle’s stories, but she had less luck in regard to her encounter with Mr. Fairfax. She could think of little save his dark beauty and his enigmatic words and the way she had all but melted that afternoon when he laid the flat of his palm against the small of her back and dragged her tight against him until she felt every ridge and prominence of his hard body.
His kiss had been forbidden ecstasy, a pleasure she had never imagined, his mouth open and hot, his tongue stroking her until she moaned and writhed.
Her limbs grew restless and she shifted beneath the cool sheets, overheated and twitchy. She could feel the rushing of her blood, hear the pounding of it, and each thought she had of Griffin only made it surge stronger, wilder.
She rolled to her side, biting her lip as she revisited every moment of their time in Miss Percy’s office, right to the moment he had left her.
I have become exactly the monster I feared I could be.
The recollection of his words and tone haunted her, distressed her. Made her think of the vicious poison Miss Doyle had spewed moments past.
When it came to Griffin Fairfax, she was nothing if not conflicted.
Sounds carried from somewhere far off in the vast, sleeping building. The bang of a door. Footsteps on the wooden stairs. And then there were no sounds at all.
Rolling onto her back once more, Beth lay in her bed and waited for sleep. It must have come, for at some point in the night she jerked and started and sat bolt upright. Wide awake.
The rush light had burned down. The room was very dark, and for an instant she felt only stark, icy terror, a cold rush of fear. Clammy palms, rapid breaths, pounding heart. Then she recalled that she had purposefully drawn the drape.
She heard the rapid, harsh gasps of her own breathing cutting the silence.
Resolutely, she lay back once more, determined to overcome, determined to see out this night without a light.
o0o
Griffin walked the outside of the wall that surrounded the back garden of Burndale Academy. His breath showed white as he exhaled. Chilly tonight. Much colder than the daylight hours. No matter. He had lost count of the times over the years that he had been far colder, shivering and blue with it, feeling nothing save a numb deadening of his limbs. This night’s autumn chill was little enough.
He brought his collar higher about his neck and walked on.
A moment later, he paused, turned, studied the three ugly, dead trees that always made him call up an image of Macbeth’s three witches. Again, he turned, this time toward the school, toward a particular window, silently counting across until he reached the one he wanted.
The curtains were drawn.
Beth. He thought of her lying in her bed, her glorious ringlets free and wild, her eyes heavy lidded and slumberous.
A deep breath expanded his chest, filling him with the sharp bite of frigid night air and the scent of the woods. He leaned his shoulder against the thick, gnarled trunk by his side and settled in to wait.
To watch.
In time, he stirred from his place and moved, silent as fog, blending with night and shadow. This was territory known and familiar, the darkness a place he far preferred to the light.
He skirted the garden wall, reached the little used door to the yard and turned the knob slowly, then pressed with the flat of his hand.
Locked. He slid his hand into his pocket, pulled free the thin metal picks that had once been his stock in trade, and eased them noiselessly into the lock.
A twist, a turn, all quiet and quick, then a push and the door swung open with only a faint creak of its hinges to reveal a corridor, very black, very silent.
Dropping
the picks back into his pocket, he paused to listen for any telltale sound, then leaned down to draw his knife from his boot. Moonlight danced along the blade, only to be eaten by shadow as he stepped into the school and shut the door tight behind him.
Chapter Seventeen
Perhaps she dozed... a minute? An hour?
Disoriented, Beth lay quiet in her bed.
A sound came to her then, and she raised her head, listening, tense. It came again, the creak of the floorboard outside her chamber door.
Jerking upright, she fisted her hands in the blankets, staring at the closed door. She had locked it, checked it twice. She plunged her hand beneath her pillow, felt the distinctive shape of the key. Closing her fingers around it, she drew the key forth, clenched tight in her fist, and pressed it to her breast.
In that moment she could not say what was the stronger emotion, the fear evoked by the knowledge that she was locked in this small, dark chamber with the walls so tight on every side, or the relief that she was safe behind a locked door.
The irony was not lost on her.
A muted, shuffling step sounded from the hallway, and the crack at the bottom of the door showed a shadow that momentarily blocked the narrow strip of moonlight eking through.
Beth forced back her fears and distress, and called upon her rationality and reason. Who could be in the hallway outside her door, and why?
Miss Doyle, returned to play a prank? She could not imagine it.
Frowning, she recalled her own nocturnal wanderings as a child, her night terrors and her need to leap from her bed and pace through the house. Of course. Likely, one of the girls had stumbled from her bed in the aftermath of a dream.
The thought of a child, alone and afraid, made her brave.
She rose and crossed to the door, slid the key in the lock, turned it with care. Easing open the door, she curled her fingers around the edge of it, waiting, listening, hearing nothing at all.
She peered into the hallway. The moonlight shone through the large windows at the far end. Fingers of pale purple light stretched straight across the floor, illuminating the empty corridor.
There was no one there.
Stepping back, Beth was about to close her door once more when something caught her eye. She frowned and paused. Lying on the floor in the middle of the hall, centered in a band of moonlight, was a cloth. White. Neatly folded, as though carefully placed there rather than dropped by accident.
Chilling tendrils curled about her bones and crawled up her spine. She scanned the corridor, her gaze lingering on each shadowed niche. Her pulse galloped, her mouth grew dry, but even after she counted off a full minute, nothing stirred.
With a shake of her head, she hurried forward, bent and scooped up the cloth, then backed toward the open door of her chamber. Reaching back, she felt for the handle, cool, smooth, and closed her fingers about it.
She glanced up one last time and froze, stunned.
A man stood in the shadowed niche of a doorway halfway along the corridor. Her fingers crushed the square of linen in her hand, and her heart bucked hard in her chest.
No, not just any man. Griffin Fairfax.
He was dressed in dark clothing that blended with the night, and he watched her, dark eyes glittering.
She could not comprehend it. What was he doing here? What—
A cloud shifted across the face of the moon, and the gloom deepened. There came a scratching sound to her right, and she glanced that way to see a small shadow moving across the larger. A mouse running along the wainscoting.
She made a sharp, huffing exhalation and jerked her head back toward Griffin Fairfax. Except... he was not there. There was no one there.
On legs weak and trembling, she backed into her room and shut the door. Locked it. Tried the handle just to be certain.
Slumping against the wood, her thoughts stumbling one against the next, she tried to make sense of it all.
Had he been there, in truth, watching her door? Or had she conjured him from the darkest corner of her dreams?
She could not imagine a man moving so quickly, so silently, that he would be gone in the space of a heartbeat. Closing her eyes, she rested her head back against the door, heard the rushing of her blood pulsing hard and fast in her ears, and knew she was afraid. Very afraid.
Was that why she had conjured him? Imagined Griffin standing outside her door, a sentinel to hold her safe?
She thought it might be so, for just the thought of him brought her comfort, and that realization both amazed and confused her.
He was a dangerous man. She had no doubt of it. In fact, she felt the certainty of that deep in her marrow. Yet, she could not believe he was dangerous to her.
Whirling, she unlocked the door, jerked it open. But there was only an empty hallway to greet her, and a cavernous and vast silence. The school was quiet now, quiet as a church. There was no sound inside her room, no sound without, just the beating of her heart pumping a sluggish river of blood.
With a shudder, she drew the door closed once more and locked it.
Slowly, she unfolded the cloth in her hand, frowning. A handkerchief, white, but not pristine, for a dark stain marred the corner.
She thought she knew exactly what she looked at, but could not be certain for the room was painted in shades of gray and slate and pewter, with only a frugal measure of moonlight filtering from beneath the door and through the thin crack left between the curtain panels.
Crossing to the window, she dragged open the heavy draperies. Moonlight spilled through the windowpanes, bright enough that she could see now with certainty exactly what she held.
Not just any handkerchief, she realized, but one of the ones she was embroidering for her mother. But it was wrong. There, in the corner where she had worked her mother’s initials, her stitches were obscured by a dark blot.
A moment past, when she had first unfolded the cloth, she had thought the blot was ink, but now a faint scent of copper and rot touched her nostrils, and she knew.
Not ink.
Blood.
The corner of the cloth was stained with blood, and in the opposite corner was her own name—Beth—done with lovely flowing letters and neat, perfect stitches. Not her stitches. She had never sewn such embroidery in her entire life. Someone else had put her name on the cloth.
With trembling hands, she set the handkerchief aside and lit a candle, blinking as the light flared.
Someone had been in her room, touched her things. Stolen the handkerchief to play this hideous trick.
Why? Why? Why?
She pressed her open palm to her breastbone, panting, dizzy.
Someone had been in the hallway earlier, outside her door, and they had left this for her to find.
Griffin? Was he that someone? Had she seen him there in truth, or conjured him, a dark protector, from the deepest well of her fear?
Beth wrapped her arms about herself and battled to stay the tide of burgeoning dread. She had spent her life wrestling with her secret terrors, bottling her memories and her panic so they would not surge free and overwhelm her.
But she carried them with her always, had carried them here, to Burndale Academy, all the horrid things that dwelled in her memories.
They were here.
They were real. The monsters from the dusty corners of her mind.
Swallowing, she looked out at the garden, let her gaze fall on the place she had seen someone lurking before. And there he was, a wraith, wrapped in coal black shadows.
She gasped, and her thoughts went wintry white and blank.
Walk, dear heart. Walk faster.
Only, there was nowhere for her to walk, nowhere for her to run.
o0o
Beth took care with her appearance the following morning. She knew her black dress made her seem pale and wan, and so she chose the more becoming brown and pinned her grandmother’s pearl brooch to the collar for ornamentation. As she dressed and fixed her hair, her gaze strayed again and again
to the bloodstained handkerchief that sat on her table, the sight of it scrabbling across her raw nerves like a rat’s clawed feet.
Lying sleepless in the hours before dawn, she had determined that she must speak with Miss Percy, must tell her all. But the sun had yet to rise, and so there was time still before that unpleasant conversation must take place.
Beth thought that a walk on the front drive for a few moments would allay her anxiety and calm her distress, and perhaps bring a healthy flush to her cheeks. She would need to hurry, though, if she meant to have the time to herself before returning to supervise the girls’ procession down to breakfast.
She made her way down the flights of stairs, out the front door and along the cobbled drive. With each step and each breath and the sight of the vast, open sky above her, she felt her anxieties become, if not weaker, at least more controllable. Dew glinted on the grass, catching the new-risen sun, and the smell of trees and freshening morning flavored the air.
Walking briskly down the road, she reached the fork in the path. There, she paused, turned, and sighed. She wanted to walk on, to walk to the village of Burndale, or perhaps to Northallerton.
Or perhaps all the way home to London.
Worry gnawed at her, but she thrust it aside, determined to maintain a calm and detached demeanor. She took a step and another, walking back the way she had come, and all the while she recited again and again in her mind the words she would choose to share with Miss Percy. She would not share the image of Griffin standing in the night-sketched shadows, but she would tell the headmistress about the sensation that she was being watched, and about the handkerchief with its sinister stain.
She could no longer deny the threat, or the need to divulge her suspicions to the headmistress. She had proof now, in the form of the handkerchief, and if someone was slinking about the school in the dead of night, then they all might be in danger.
Beth knew from experience that such revelations carried a note of risk. She might be believed, or she might not. In fact, she might be viewed askance and accused of all manner of things.
Only once had she dared tell a stranger her secrets, dared to share the fears and anxious thoughts that chased her, snarling and growling like hounds after a fox. She had confided in the little girl who lived next door, who in turn had dreamed terrible things for many nights and had finally confided in her mother.
