Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling (19 page)

“The death I saw. It was my husband's.” I could scarcely get the words out.

“Is that so? A most peculiar coincidence. But then again, few things are coincidental with Mr. Whatley. He does enjoy his games. Despite what you think, or what he might wish you to think, he is a great man. He gives us peace, if only for a few moments.”

I gestured to the phials, hands shaking. “Where does he find them?”

“He collects them. Observes them as they are happening, or so I'm told. Though I wouldn't put it past him to cause a few deaths in order to expand his collection.”

My stomach lurched, and I had to concentrate very intently in order to stop myself from being sick. The man in black from my past had never been the specter of Death. It was Whatley who had plagued my life since I was a girl. But was he simply an observer of my misfortune, or had he taken my family from me to set in motion the series of events that would slowly steer me toward Everton, to Darkling, and into the diabolical game I now played with him? I had learned something important, for while I still did not fully comprehend the scope of his intentions, I now at least knew how to solve the puzzle of our game. The strongest connection between Darkling and Blackfield was not Susannah or Nanny Prum or even Lily Darrow. It was me.

“He must be stopped,” I said through gritted teeth.

“On the contrary, Mrs. Markham. You have your own death. Leave us with ours.”

Duncan held a darkened sugar cube before Mr. Samson's lips, and the gentleman bit down on it with a satisfied crunch. As his body began to convulse, I backed out of the room and retreated to what comfort could be provided by a strange bed in the strange house of the man in black.

CHAPTER 14

Lock and Key

T
he children and I ate breakfast alone, and when we were finished Duncan escorted us back through the orchard. We arrived at Everton, and I took the children up to the schoolroom to continue their lessons. It would be difficult to say which of us was more subdued. The boys answered questions without complaint and barely looked up when Ellen entered to inform me that Mr. Darrow required my presence in his study.

I meandered through the halls of Everton, and though I failed to find any trace of the boy with the keyhole eyes, I was unable to shake the feeling that I was being watched. The sensation only intensified when I entered Mr. Darrow's study. The master of Everton stood from his desk when I found him.

“Mrs. Markham.”

“Mr. Darrow. I didn't see you at breakfast.” I took my seat across from him, and something cool brushed against my leg. I looked down in time to catch sight of a length of chain disappearing around the side of the desk. I felt the color drain from my face, but Mr. Darrow appeared oblivious and remained where he was, leaning forward on the palms of his hands, apprehensive and clearly anxious. I resisted the urge to cry out or leap after the shackles, focusing myself entirely on his gaze.

“I've had a lot to think about,” he said.

“As have I.”

Mr. Darrow opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out as he looked into my eyes, searching for something to say. Behind him, the boy with the keyhole eyes crept noiselessly up the wall beside Lily's portrait, sniffing at it, his head twisted in an unnatural position so that his abominable face never left our direction, broken teeth poking out from between pale gray lips.

“What happened last night . . . I'm afraid I put you in a very bad position.”

“You mustn't think that,” I replied, nervous that my voice might betray the growing horror I felt at the sight of the creature perching itself in the corner of the ceiling. I tentatively placed my hand over Mr. Darrow's. He pulled away.

“But I do, and there's only one thing to be done about it.” He sat down roughly in his chair and looked away from me. “I must send you away.”

The anxiety I felt over Darkling and the terrible childlike creature faded beneath the weight of his words as they hung in the air between us, stinging. “You can't possibly mean that.”

“I took advantage of your kindness and friendship, I see that now. It's for your own good.”

“I don't wish to leave. Doesn't that amount to anything?” I felt it all slipping away—the storybook ending, my future with the children, Henry's happiness, Lily's redemption, my victory over Whatley—the pieces were sliding out of place.

“It can't. We have to think of the children. Your reputation.”

“My reputation is perfectly intact.”

“And I'd like to keep it that way. The servants will start to talk.”

Then I began to understand. The anger I felt won out, and the mask made of rules and restraint that had been threatening to slip from my grasp finally did.

“I see. Of course, how silly of me, it's not
my
reputation that concerns you.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“Did you ever stop to think that perhaps it was I who took advantage of you?”

“No, never!”

“Well, perhaps you should have. Perhaps you are simply stronger than me, because I'll never be strong enough to deny the way I feel about you.” He stared at me dumbly, mouth agape.

“Will you tell the children or should I?” I carried on. “I can't imagine what it will do to them to have another woman taken from their lives.”

“I should be the one to tell them.”

“Then I'll go and collect my things.”

“Please don't be angry,” he pleaded.

“I'm not angry, you fool. I'm heartbroken.”

He moved his mouth in a mechanical sort of way, but no sound came out. I turned away from him and stormed out of his study, throwing the door shut with a satisfying crack that echoed down the hallway. I leaned against the wall to steady myself, fighting the urge to break down and cry.

Contrary to what I'd told Henry, I was angry. Not just with him, but at myself for becoming vulnerable to an illusion. I had overreached, placing my hopes into a fairy tale that was not real, that hardly ever happened. Men like Henry Darrow did not fall in love with their servants. They raped them and sent them away to raise their bastard children in poverty. I stopped myself. I was becoming dramatic. Mr. Darrow had taken no liberties with me save for our kiss in the kitchen, and again, I felt my loss. Men like Henry Darrow did not come along very often, and that made it all the worse.

I contemplated the different ways I could attempt to keep him until my mind drifted into dark places.
There is always blackmail.
I pushed the voice out of my head, but it returned again as quickly as it came.
Lily could help you. She wants you together.
You have not lost.
At this I shuddered, for I did not wish to win or lose Henry Darrow. I wanted him to love me.

Tears welled in the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision to the point that I almost dismissed the shape of a head materializing through the closed oak door to Mr. Darrow's study. I lunged for it without thinking, grasping the boy with the keyhole eyes by the scruff of his neck and pulling him all the way out into the hall.

I looped his chains around my wrist and lifted him beneath the crook of my arm, trapping him as I ran down the corridor to my room. I passed by a single maid dusting the draperies, but I moved so quickly that she did not give me a second glance as the creature was roughly the same size as James. He squirmed beneath my grip while I struggled with the door, but I won out and slammed it closed, dropping onto my bed with the childlike thing in my lap.

“Now, what to do with you?”
Mysteries of The Ending
was locked away in a trunk at the foot of my bed, and even if I were able to get it open while keeping hold of the boy, I had no idea what his mistress might do if I showed up with him in hand. He writhed against me, and the chain jangled on the floor where the brass skeleton key connected to the last link caught on the fabric of my dress. I reached for it as he slipped away, grabbing hold of the key as the creature bolted toward the door. I yanked on the chain with all my might, and the boy jerked backward to the floor. I stepped over him to straddle his chest as I inserted the key into his right eye socket with the familiar click of metal against bone. He immediately went still and began to speak in a hushed, androgynous whisper.

“They meet in the night.” I almost asked him to elaborate, but he continued without pausing for breath in a second, more familiar voice.

“For what purpose?”

“A sharing of affections. And it would appear that they drink tea.”

“Most curious. Either way it shouldn't be much longer. You should prepare yourself.”

“Am I still permitted to take the seamstress?”

“To what end?”

“I wear many skins for you, and I've always wanted to have someone to repair them.”

“As you will, so long as you do as we discussed.”

“Of course, Mr. Whatley.”

With that, the boy with the keyhole eyes stopped speaking and began to melt into the floor. Refusing to lose him again, I looped the length of chain around my bedpost and watched as it was stretched taut, the other end of the shackles trailing away into the solid wood flooring as the boy struggled to free himself.

Despite all of my other failures, I took some solace in the fact that I had managed to detain him, and could make my way back to the dilapidated castle in order to return him to his master. Still, there was much left undone. Who would help the boys say good-bye to their mother? Who would protect them from the House of Darkling? The answer was simple, really. If I was to be dismissed, then I would tell Mr. Darrow of his wife's bargain. If what Lily said were true, then the doorway between Everton and The Ending would be closed, and while the boys might hate me for it, I would at least get the satisfaction of knowing that they were safe from things I could neither fully explain nor understand.

The conversation I'd just overheard with the help of the boy with the keyhole eyes confirmed that Whatley's intentions were at least malicious toward Susannah. Considering how transparent he had been in his plotting, I found this hardly surprising. In fact, it was mildly comforting to know that I had at least discovered a part of his methodology. With a servant of Whatley's living at Everton, there was little choice but to send Susannah away to escape whatever designs had been fixed on her. If I was indeed the link between Darkling and Blackfield, then I hoped my departure and the removal of the door between the two worlds would be enough to divert Whatley's attention away from the remaining members of the Darrow family.

I felt sorry for Lily. She would never know what had happened, and I appeared unable to save her from whatever Mr. Whatley had in store. But I could not allow her relationship to continue without my supervision. It was too unpredictable.

I dug my valise out of the wardrobe and began to assemble my belongings. I couldn't bring myself to pack them away, so I laid everything into piles on the bed, carefully arranging and rearranging them until well after nightfall, when there was a knock at my door. I draped a blanket over the chain that disappeared into the floor and opened the door.

Ellen looked tired. “It's Mr. Darrow. He didn't come down for dinner, and when Roland went to bring him his plate, he was gone. We've searched the whole house, but he's nowhere to be found, and no one knows where he's run off to. What are we to do?”

I turned back to the spread of clothes I had assembled and braced myself from feeling too acutely the pain of my impending departure.

“Perhaps he's gone to the village?”

“Mr. Darrow never leaves the grounds of Everton if he doesn't have to, and never without telling anyone. It's not like him at all.”

“Are the horses accounted for?”

“Yes. And the carriages and the bicycles. He couldn't have gone far, wherever he went, but with the weather getting on the way it is, he might catch his death.” It was not so cold as to be freezing, but it was cool enough to signal the start of winter. Soon the lakes would turn to ice, and snow would begin to fall, and the house would prepare for the holidays. I had so wanted to spend Christmas at Everton. I snapped myself back to the matter at hand before I trailed off into self-pity.

Ellen and I went down to the kitchen and were joined by Roland, Fredricks, Mrs. Norman, and Mrs. Mulbus, the group of us deciding what to do and whether or not a search party should be sent out. Before we had made much progress in our pursuit of the master of the house, the doorbell rang and we found Mr. Scott on our doorstep with Mr. Darrow clinging to his side.

“Found him in the graveyard. Must have been there for hours.”

Indeed, he looked very pale. I took him from the vicar and put his arm over my shoulder. He could walk, but only just. I helped carry him up to his bedroom, while Ellen kindled a fire in the hearth.

“What have you done to yourself?” I whispered as I tucked him into bed.

“She's gone” was all he said before slipping off to sleep. His forehead began to burn, and I summoned Dr. Barberry, who prescribed lots of fluids and plenty of rest.

Henry remained bedridden for a number of days, and I attended to his every need without regard to propriety. The children flitted in and out at will, monitored by Ellen and content with the fact that their father continued to be alive and well. The servants could talk all that they wanted, but I would tend to Henry until he was recovered and then I would leave.

A week after he became ill, I found his bed empty when I went to bring him his breakfast. I went downstairs, where he was in the dining room with the children. I tried to leave before he saw me, but I was too late. He invited me to eat with them. Color had returned to his cheeks, and even some of the dourness that had lingered in him for so long seemed to have abated.

“I take it you're feeling better, Mr. Darrow?”

“Yes, thanks to your diligence.”

“In the future I hope that you will do everyone a courtesy and refrain from sitting out in the cold until you become ill.”

“I was careless. About many things.” He smiled at me weakly, not out of exhaustion or illness, but as a matter of apology.

“Do you think so?”

“More than that. I was wrong. I hope you'll ignore what I said.”

“I could never do that. But we can speak later. The boys and I have a schedule to maintain.”

“Of course. Some other time.”

“Perhaps.”

And with that, everything was back to the way it had always been. I maintained my position and Henry kept his detachment, staring into the bottom of his teacup as I ushered the children up to the schoolroom. It was difficult to begin our lessons again after a weeklong absence, and progress was slow, but after four hours of reviewing everything from the fall of ancient Rome to the Pythagorean theorem, the boys were well primed and in need of a break. I didn't have to ask them what they wished to do. I could see the longing in their eyes radiating out of them.

It was the longest gap we'd had between our visits to Darkling, and no sooner had Duncan brought us to the steps of the house than Lily Darrow appeared at the door, red-faced and breathless as if she had run the length of the manor to meet us.

“You've come back!” Her eyes were wide and glistening, though whether it was from fear or joy I could not be certain. She hugged the children for a long while in a simple, moving gesture until James pulled away.

“Father was sick so Charlotte took care of him.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for looking after my husband.” She did not look at me as she said the words. “Come. I'm afraid I'm in the middle of my lessons with Olivia, but you may join us.” Lily took us to the ballroom, where Olivia was dancing languidly before Mrs. Aldrich and her son, Dabney. The woman stopped Olivia and placed her manicured hands beneath the girl's arms, moving them into a more rigid position above her head.