The Ghosts of Tullybrae House (2 page)

He hesitated. “If you wish.”

“I insist. I’ll come down in a bit.” Her hazel eyes fixed on his with earnest appreciation. “Thanks so much. I can see the trouble you’ve gone to.”

If Lamb still had colour to blush with, he would have. He gave a curt nod, and excused himself, shuffling back down the corridor to the stairs.

“Why did you say that?” His mother was at his side, nudging him annoyingly.

“Say what, Mother?”

“You said you’re alone here.”

“What did you wish me to say, Mother? I
am
alone, as alone as she needs to know.”

Mrs. Lamb snorted. “Well, isn’t she going to be surprised when she finds out how untrue that is?”

Lamb huffed, irritated. “Oh, shoo, you old ghost!”

Mrs. Lamb’s chuckling laughter echoed down the hall, and then it was gone.

Lamb shook his head. Fifty years dead, and the wretched woman was still hovering at his shoulder like she did when he was a boy.

ALONE IN HER
new lodgings and surrounded by a house full of antiques, Emmie sat gently on the edge of the bed. Even it was old. The serviceable brass frame was reminiscent of the Victorian, or perhaps the Edwardian era. Curious, she inspected the visible parts of the frame for a manufacturer, and when she couldn’t find one, she got down on her hands and knees and tugged apart the bedding. There it was, on the support rail for the mattress: R. W. Winfield & Co.

Indeed an antique. Circa 1900 she recalled, thanks to a third-year paper on the boom of mass manufacturing in industrial England.

She re-tucked the bedding and, still on the floor, sank back on her heels. Chafing her hands on her thighs, she breathed in the intoxicating scent of old wood, old house and old dust. To Emmie, there was nothing like the smell of the past—and it did have a smell, history. It was the mellow, earthy and not unpleasant scent of decay.

Tullybrae House. So far it was everything she’d hoped it would be. A three hundred and fifty-year-old mansion in the northern reaches of the district of Argyll, it had undergone few structural renovations since its construction, and contained a seemingly unending collection of originally purchased antiques. Furniture, paintings, documents, ornaments, books, fabrics. Even clothing was piled in steamer trunks—themselves antiques—and stashed heedlessly in Tullybrae’s rambling attics.

Emmie had seen the photos which Lady Rotherham had emailed her, of course. But photos could never do the real thing justice. Even in sore need of repair as it was, the house was stunning. Breathtaking. Everything a Scottish manor house should be. It was such a shame Lord Cranbury let it go the way he had.

She supposed she should be grateful, though. If the old man hadn’t let it go, then she wouldn’t have this wonderful opportunity. She should be thrilled the old miser had been too much of a penny pincher to maintain the place, and hadn’t held any aspiration towards modernization.

She
was
thrilled. More than thrilled.

Her new room was perfect. There were no windows at eye level, but the one yellowing skylight above the bed was large enough that it let in sufficient light. Beyond the glass, in the rare, cerulean blue sky, drifted traces of the powderpuff clouds she’d admired on the drive up from Glasgow.

There wasn’t much in the way of furniture in this room, but Emmie didn’t need much. The armoire, scarred and nicked from what looked to be more than two centuries of use, was big enough to hold the clothes which she needed to hang. The single chest of drawers, equally scarred and nicked, gave her plenty of room to store the rest. The bedside table could hold her makeup and toiletries, and it had a shelf at the base that she could store her books on.

The walls were unadorned. They had once been white, but the years had turned the paint to buttercream yellow. In the corner where the armoire was, the plaster had crumbled, revealing horizontal slats of wood that made up the frame of the wall. The oak floor was slightly warped, the widths of the individual planks non-uniform.

How many pairs of feet had stumbled across these planks on cold mornings? Instinctively, she traced a forefinger over the rough, dented grain. A wistful half-smile tugged at her lips.

With a quick, satisfied breath and a glance to where the plastered ceiling met the wall, Emmie left the room, walked briskly along the corridor of the servants’ quarters, and pattered lightly down the stairs. She took care to mind their uneven heights. From her time as a history major in university, she knew that the long, heavy skirts of the Victorian maid were not the only reason so many of them fell to their deaths. It was the stairs themselves. High and narrow, there was no thought to uniformity, and some stairs were shallower than others. That, added to a platform that wasn’t even half the length of a typical foot, and long hours of physical labour, it was no wonder stairs had been so fatal back then.

She’d been worried about Lamb when they’d come up here. She liked the stoic old butler on sight. And besides, no matter how enamoured with all things history she might have been, witnessing one of those historic fatalities was one experience Emmie was happy to forego.

Outside in the sunshine, she pulled open the rear hatch of the boxy, ugly blue car she’d picked up three days ago. She’d spent a week in Glasgow after her flight out of Newfoundland (from which she’d had to make a maddeningly delayed connecting flight in Toronto), and had taken the opportunity to peruse used car lots for something that was both sturdy and budget-friendly.

Unfortunately
sturdy
was too pricey. She’d had to settle for a demure, rinky-dink ‘city’ car.

Fiat Panda. And powder blue at that. The GMC Sierra pickup truck her brother drove would steam roll right over it without so much as a hiccup.

Emmie struggled to dislodge her bags, which she’d packed into the back with the precision of an engineer. She’d paid a mint to have all this stuff flown over, but it was an expense she was willing to bear. Scotland would be her home now for the next few years at least, assuming she didn’t do anything to displease Lord and Lady Rotherham… like calling Lady Rotherham’s late lamented father Lord Cranberry to her face. Three enormous suitcases were stashed in the back, and another one was squeezed into the passenger seat. An oversized and overstuffed gym bag was wedged under the dashboard on the passenger side, on top of which sat her purse.

Her most valued books were being shipped directly to Tullybrae from Corner Brook. She was glad she’d made that snap decision. She never would have been able to find room for them in the Panda.

It took Emmie three trips to lug her baggage up to her room on the third floor. Once they were carefully ordered beside the lone wooden chair, she went to work unpacking. Removing items one by one, with the care of someone who had saved her money to buy every precious piece, she began assigning them to their appropriate places. Jackets and blazers that had been neatly folded for the flight were put to one side of the bed; they would likely need dry cleaning to remove the wrinkles. Her silk and satin blouses, too. Knit and cashmere sweaters were stacked snugly in the drawers, and her cotton dress pants and skirts were slipped onto wooden hangers and hung in the armoire.

Each article of her wardrobe had been chosen deliberately, with thought to how it might complement existing pieces. Emmie was, by self-imposed rule, mindful of her appearance and the impression she made on people. Her hair was always groomed and immaculately highlighted, her nails always filed so that they extended only slightly past her fingertips, and flawlessly painted in demure colours. In her sleepwear, her active-wear, and even her frump-around-the-apartment wear, there was an air of careful composition.

It was not that she was vain, though. Far from it. Structure, order. They were the code by which Emmie lived her life. They were ingrained into her psyche.

She knew all too well what happened when one lost sight of structure in one’s life.

The last item at the bottom of the duffle bag was wrapped in white tissue paper and a bath towel for extra security. Taking it in both hands, she tenderly unwrapped the soft, protective layers to reveal the framed photograph within. The frame, a hand-buffed wood with gilded decorative scrolls, had been a high school graduation present from her adoptive mother. It had been meant to hold a photo of her family, and to sit on her desk in her dorm room at college so that she wouldn’t feel homesick.

Photos of her family were packed neatly beside her wallet in her purse: her adoptive parents, Grace and Ron Tunstall, and her adopted brother Chase. But they weren’t the ones she put in the frame. She would never tell Grace whom she did put there, because it would hurt the kind, loving woman’s feelings. The photo she chose for the coveted spot smiled out at her from behind the glass. The bright, hazel eyes of her real mother were full of light, and love, and the optimism of youth.

Emmie positioned the photo on top of the dresser, angled towards the bed where she could see it before she fell asleep each night. As she did every morning and every night, she kissed her forefinger and touched the glass.

“Here we are, Mom,” she said into the stillness of the room. “Are you proud of me? Your little girl did it. Her first, real job as a full-fledged curator.”

At seven that
evening, Lamb tapped an arthritic knuckle on Emmie’s partially opened door. It creaked inwards an inch, revealing a sleeping Emmie. She was on top of her quilt, with the bedside lamp on and her finger wedged into a paperback novel. Not wishing to disturb her, Lamb scuttled back a step. The faint sound woke her; she opened a sleepy eye and squinted towards the door.

“Beg pardon, madam— er, Emmie. I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said in his raspy voice.

Emmie grunted and sat up. She scanned the room for her alarm clock, which she’d set up on the dresser beside the photo of her mother.

“No, please, wake me. I shouldn’t have been sleeping.” She rubbed her eyes with a balled fist. “Oh—is that the time? I didn’t realize how tired I was. I just meant to close my eyes for a bit.”

“It has been quite a day, I imagine. I came to tell you that supper is ready, but I can always keep some warm for you, if you’d prefer to eat later.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s not your job to wait on me.”

He shrugged. “A habit. I’ve waited on Lord Cranbury and his family for most of my adult life. I am no’ accustomed to having no one to look after.”

“You’re too good. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

Emmie stretched her arms over her head and yawned delicately. Then, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she slipped her feet into her riding boots, which stood at military attention on the vintage braided rug below.

“I’ll show you the way to the kitchen.” Lamb turned and tottered away.

She trailed behind, following him down the narrow stairs to the main part of the house. Instead of turning right to the grand staircase, as they had that morning, he went straight and down another corridor that led around the back of the house. Here, yet another camouflaged servants’ door stood open a crack.

“Kitchen’s this way.”

The steps down this rear staircase were no less narrow and treacherous. Lamb had to switch on the light, since there was no window like in the stairwell to the third floor. Emmie clutched the railing with her left hand as she descended behind him, and prepared to make a grab at the collar of his sweater vest with her right, if he were to take a tumble. Once both sets of feet were firmly on the tiled floor at the bottom, she breathed a silent prayer.

The riven-surfaced grey slate was uneven; it felt like the floor of a cave. Her boots made a charming echo with each step, and she imagined what this underground world must have been like in its heyday. If she closed her eyes, she could picture servants in their black dresses and elegant livery rushing to and fro. An army of Victorian ants.

“Mmmm, I can smell dinner.” She sniffed appreciatively. “It smells delicious. I totally forgot about lunch. I’m starved.”

“We’re having venison stew. His lordship always did like his venison. I’m sorry it is no’ fresh, it’s been in vacuum packs in the freezer since the fall.”

“I’ve never had venison before.”

“I hope it suits your palate, then. It is leaner than beef, and has a distinct flavour to it. I cannot place it, exactly, but you’ll know it to taste it.”

“Freedom?” Emmie suggested, somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

Lamb cocked his head to one side; a low, airy chuckle bubbled up from his sunken chest. “Aye, freedom. I suppose that’s what it is.”