Solsbury Hill A Novel (16 page)

Gwen kept light conversation bouncing around the room so Eleanor could collect herself, slow things down. They’d been discussing the fate of British estates, Gwen said. Miles introduced himself to Mead and they shook hands. Then Mead stepped behind Eleanor and suggested he take her coat. His fingers touched her collarbones as he reached around to slip it off her shoulders.

Eleanor looked around for a towel. All the time she’d been there, she’d never washed her hands in the kitchen sink. It seemed such a homely thing to do. In her sweaty jeans with just socks on her feet, she felt like she lived there. With Miles waiting just behind her, she turned.

Now, she greeted him warmly and hugged him close.

This was not the time for her to take a stand. This was not the moment for a confrontation. She wasn’t sure what she would have felt, had she known that this moment was waiting around the bend.

“This is Miles,” she announced awkwardly. “I guess you’ve introduced yourselves, and you already know Gwen . . .”

They stood together, the two men seeing what was there to be seen, what each saw in the other.

“You’ve come up from London.” Mead attempted a casual air.

“I have.” Miles’ eyes fixed on Eleanor. “I was at the Stafford Hotel for a few days trying to get through. El, I left messages for you.”

Eleanor said, “Let’s sit down.” The chairs scraped in and out on the stone floor.

“I knew the name Alice Sutton, but I didn’t know anything else,” Miles said. “Then I remembered you said Trent Hall, so I put it to Google and there it was, a little triangle on a satellite picture and then I got a sense of where you were, and I couldn’t not come, after I saw it.”

“You saw it on Google?” The number of times they’d sat together finding this place or that, but to imagine he could see this house from up in the sky, catch her walking on the moors perhaps. Anyway, it was just a little bit fun watching Miles explain himself. “That’s great,” she said.

“I rented a car and drove. My God, it’s a gorgeous country.”

Eleanor was pleased and stunned and miffed, all at once, but she was also relieved to have him close again. There was nothing but the familiar. That was all she felt. Just the familiar face and the hands she loved on her skin. She had all but forgotten the kindness in his eyes, the steady sameness of his mood and his manner. He put her at ease, felt like family. Not at all the way she’d felt with Mead, a short while before and all day long, a mix of steady warmth and edgy unpredictability.

As they drank tea and cut into Tilda’s scones—light and airy and nothing like the dense scones chock-full of grains, currants, figs, or ginger that were sold with lattes in New York City—Miles engaged Mead effortlessly. Mead was vexed, shifted into bravado when Miles asked about the construction of the wall along the driveway, and then the renovation of the stable he’d noticed under way. His accent became more lofty than she’d heard from him, all the tenderness gone. She’d seen this part of him in slivers, just fleeting moments of testiness and pride: when he walked in on the first night she met him in front of the fire, when she helped to load the books in the shelves, his temper with Granley.

Eleanor was about to suggest they move into one of the sitting rooms and make a fire when Gwen suggested Eleanor go up to freshen herself and change her clothing.

Eleanor said, “I should. You’re sure?” to Gwen, to Miles.

“Yes. Take your time.”

“Okay, then, I will.” As well as she could, she threw Mead a gentle look of apology. As she climbed the stairs, she heard him say he’d build a fire.

Neither Mead nor Gwen had heard anything about Miles, knew anything about the story between them, but Miles’ face—as he watched her mount the front staircase—said everything they might have wondered.

Eleanor ran up the stairs. She could take her time. It had been weeks since she’d seen him, but he’d betrayed her and deserved to sit about a bit waiting until she was ready for him. Though there was no denying the lift of pleasure she felt seeing him. Tall and lean, lithe and patrician, with his thick blond hair as it fell in his eyes and the way he stood casually inside his clothes, without any sense of his own beauty. She’d forgotten how utterly beautiful he was, a crystal beauty.

The hot water in the tub. The jasmine oil. When she closed her eyes the perfume carried her to the tropical island she wished she’d traveled to. She wished a hundred things but three were these: that Miles hadn’t cheated on her, that nothing had changed, that she’d stayed in New York City and had drunk more champagne. She’d almost completely forgotten the sale to Barneys and everything her life had been. Seeing Miles made this seem important again.

Her hair fell down her back and she climbed into the tub before it was half-full. Hot as she could take it. The way she liked it. In the steamed-up mirror over the sink, she thought she saw a face and turned her whole body in a snap, so fast that her back cracked. An adjustment. But there was no one there, and she slid under the water with her eyes closed tight. Felt her hair all around her face like seaweed. Her skin was slick in the oily water and felt soft, smooth, and with her eyes closed she explored the contours of her body. Surprised by the round firmness of her bottom, she recalled Miles’ hands supporting her there as he pressed into her. She held her breath a little longer.

It was early afternoon, and Mead would by now be offering his best example of Scotch whisky to Miles. Gwen would be doing her best to entertain them without overstepping any unseen boundaries.

Eleanor held her breath until she had to come up for air. When she surfaced, there on the side of the tub sat the young woman, in her blue wool dress. Thinner than she’d seen her. Maybe older but certainly drawn and scrawny, looking feverish. Eleanor was naked and in the middle of a gasp for air. She hadn’t sensed her sitting there. When a tiny scream emitted, the woman didn’t startle or try to stop her. There was time to call for help. Eleanor might have called for Mead or for Miles, and they would have come, but as she considered it, the woman started speaking.

“You haven’t found the letters yet, I know.” She looked the
same but she also looked different. The bloom in her cheeks was gone and she wasn’t breathing right as she spoke.

This time, Eleanor was afraid and felt the choked feeling she’d felt the first time she’d seen her at the end of the bed. But she’d been too worried about looking crazy to ask anyone a straight question about the likelihood of a ghost at Trent Hall. Now she wished she had. Now she wished she’d enlisted some help in this strangeness.

“Who are you?” Eleanor demanded in a meeker voice than she intended.

“Emily.” The woman waited before proceeding. “I’m here . . . as it’s to do with you. And any child that will come to you.” The woman spoke with such conviction, Eleanor was speechless. “Forgive me for what I’ve done,” Emily went on, “I’m certain you can’t understand all of it, but if you’ll listen . . . take my hand.”

Eleanor took it and felt the cold in her bones. “You’re freezing.”

“That’s what it’s like.” Even tired and worn, Emily’s face was youthful and some of the anxiety that had been in her face was gone now. “This part is awfully cold, in the days before I go.”

Though most of Eleanor believed this was a ghost, she struggled against it. It was possible this was a woman lost in delirium. She was rambling, but she was clearly ill. Eleanor should listen, try to help her, find a way to bring her downstairs to the others.

“What do you mean, the days before you go?” she asked.

Emily didn’t answer but looked up—through the closed door and down the hall—as if she could see someone.

Out of the tub in the warm room, Eleanor wrapped herself in the biggest towel. There was no one in the hall, when she opened the door. Emily stood and silently followed her. Once inside her room, Eleanor turned on the chandelier and watched mutely as Emily fingered the heavy cloth of the nightgown, then lay down on the bed, as if Eleanor were not there.

“Can I help you?” Eleanor said. “I don’t know what to do. Could you tell me how it is I might help you?” She felt restless and impatient now.

Effortful, Emily’s chest rose and fell. Her cheeks were hollow. Her fingers clutched the comforter, fists full of fabric squeezed so tight the knuckles were white. The hands already bone thin.

“You’re ill,” Eleanor said.

“I am, it’s true.” Her voice was unconcerned. “I’m dying, but I need you to know this.” She lifted her upper body off the bed with alarming strength of will. “I don’t know why Robert came, but he did.” She looked into Eleanor’s face as if for absolution, but Eleanor had no idea of this man Robert. “I was out walking—I was always on the moors, God knew that—but one day there he was, and it seemed a most natural thing.

“I shouldn’t have written ’bout such a fierce love, but it
was how it was. I was torn between Branwell and Robert—it set a curse in the blood. Give me your hand.” Emily brought Eleanor’s jet ring up to her cheek and tears streamed. Bewildered, Eleanor heard Emily whisper, “It was in Whitby he gave this to me.”

Emily wiped away tears, urged Eleanor, “Listen to me, I burned most of what I wrote in those last years, but I hid the letters and they are there for you, in the house where you can find them.”

Eleanor sat on the edge of the bed now, stunned and frozen with what she couldn’t fathom. She took Emily’s hand between her own two hands and Emily closed her eyes and continued, “I pray you, be brave enough.” She had barely breath enough to speak and her forehead was cold with sweat. “I chose to stay and take care of my brother when I should have gone with the man I loved. It’s too late now. But, my darling, you can set your heart upon changing it. I pray you.”

It was impossible, but Emily pulled in her last ghostly breath and she seemed to die on the bed. She disappeared and didn’t leave a vapor, not an imprint, not a stain or a scent.

There was nothing Eleanor could do—she couldn’t think, felt if she tried she wouldn’t be able to move—but she got up and threw open the drapes and all the windows in the room. She brushed off the comforter. It seemed like a crazy thing to do, but she brushed until it was smooth.

Out the window, the day was so clear she was sure she could see farther than she’d seen before, to a perfectly
rounded hill deep in the distance, rounded like a breast or a pregnant woman’s belly, without a tree on it, or a river passing through it, and the grass on it was smooth. A scream welled up from inside her, but she swallowed it whole. Frantic and panicked, she wanted to call down to Mead, to tell him the story from beginning to end, but Miles was waiting.

It was madness, she thought, and she hurried into her navy tights, stepped into her cherry-colored narrow skirt and then the matching fitted jacket. Chanel perfume behind her ears. A torrent of feeling surged and she took a breath so deep it strained the tight wool jacket. She had the keenest sense it was Emily Brontë she’d witnessed dying, but it was absurd. Though Mead, and then Jane, had spoken casually of ghosts. As she straightened her stockings and grabbed a scarf, she thought of them now, the words they’d spoken.

It was almost irrepressible, the urge to turn the house upside down and find whatever letters were hidden in some library, in some part of the rambling house, half emptied. But downstairs Miles was waiting. She was dressed for the city, so she’d take him somewhere, into the closest big city.

When Eleanor came down the stairs, she made as little sound as she could. She carried her boots with her. Black leather boots with a heel she liked the sound of on wood. She loved the smell of the leather as she sat down at the bottom of the stairs and pulled them on. She could hear the hum
of conversation in the other room, where Gwen seemed to be telling a story that Miles punctuated with questions. She half hoped Mead would have found a reason to go to the library, would not be there when she came in to say she was ready to go.

“Look at you,” Mead crooned from the corner where he was sunk into a deep chair, whisky in hand. The chair swallowed half of him, but the part that stuck out was brooding. He’d given Miles a whisky with one cube of ice, not a drink Miles loved but one he could drink when company required it. Miles sat up at the edge of the couch and was entertaining Gwen with harmless stories about Eleanor’s life.