Chapter Thirty
As was customary following a showcase, Starling’s Rest had a day of nothing at all within its walls.
Breads and small bites were delivered from the bakery at dawn and laid out next to the leftover canapes on the dining room table, for anyone who wished to come and graze upon them throughout the hours of the day, whether they be performers, guests, or staff.
Beyond that, lights were only lit by the person who needed them, and all matters of service were to be delayed until everyone had enjoyed a proper sleep in and languished in the aftermath of such an ordeal.
Even Libba, who had derisively declared a few days prior, “For God’s sake, it is one performance!” had not emerged from her cocoon, save to retrieve two full carafes of water, a hot compress, and an ungodly amount of fruit.
As for Hattie and Elias, they had agreed to take turns going down into the house proper to retrieve repast and anything else they might need and had spent much of the day alternating between sleep, idle chatter, and fiddling with the tandem puzzle box they had been gifted at their wedding.
“Perhaps if you just hold that latch there with the hook of your finger, I can wiggle the other bit out,” Elias would say.
And Hattie would wish for death.
It was, in her estimation, an impossible task, and one he seemed hellbent on mastering regardless.
And it wasn’t until her husband had gone down for post-luncheon tea that she realized he had taken the cursed thing with him. It was suspicious, as he knew very well that it was designed in such a way that he could not solve it alone.
And so she was hardly surprised to come upon him with Errol and Malcolm, each holding a corner and arguing about what to try next.
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms and narrowing her eyes at the three guilty sets of eyes that had flown up to greet her in the dining room archway, “it appears you’ve found more brides.”
Rhys sidled in behind her, wearing what appeared to be a pair of Libba’s costume trousers from an old production of One Thousand and One Nights and the tatty remains of Hattie’s tiger-striped dressing gown, his eyes now gray from lid to cheekbone from smudged kohl.
“Afternoon,” he said obliviously. “Any bakewell left?”
And then he’d walked around the table, peered at the box, and plucked a little triangular wedge of wood out of the center, which had collapsed it into a new shape for solving.
This had thrilled the other three men—and deepened Hattie’s irritation considerably.
She had snatched up her tea and marched out, only to return for a refill to find both Lem and Monica now involved in the endeavor of the stupid, cursed puzzle boxes.
“You are holding it too tightly,” Lem told Errol with a frown. “Muscle does not solve everything.”
“It doesn’t?” Monica asked, eyeing Lem’s bulging biceps with skepticism. “Can we use tools? I’ve a knitting needle.”
“No!” shouted both Elias and Malcolm in tandem.
And Hattie sighed. Loudly.
“Hands are tools,” Lem observed, “but what if the removed pieces are also?”
“What?!” said Errol, looking down at the discarded pile of wooden splints and shapes. “Oh, my God!”
“Hattie, cariad,” Rhys’s voice called from down the hall. “Come away from there before you crack a tooth.”
And she did, though watching Rhys lounge in her mangled dressing gown was probably not much better, at least until he had begun to suggest avenues of revenge while attempting to toss little candied raisins into her mouth from across the room.
She caught four. She did not catch twelve.
When Ruby appeared a few moments later, the other woman caught all that were thrown in her direction. Ten, if anyone was counting, which Harriet was not.
“Did I tell you about the keepsake cards?” Hattie asked, once the raisins had been exhausted and clouds had given them a nice, blue tint to the parlor. “The new one?”
“‘New one’?” Ruby asked, stifling a yawn. “Rhys, give me some of that Turkish delight.”
“What Turkish delight?” he mumbled through a full mouth as he made it disappear in perhaps the most inelegant illusion of his life.
“Charming,” said Ruby, frowning. “You’ve got a sugar mustache.”
“Oh, you did finally grow one, after all,” Hattie teased, getting a glower from Rhys.
Behind them, from the direction of the kitchen, there was a loud cheer of triumph, complete with whooping and exclamations of genius.
Hattie rolled her eyes.
“Where’s my pig?” Ruby asked, turning to Hattie. “When you go get this mysterious missive, bring my pig.”
“She’s sleeping,” Hattie said, though there was no way to know if that was true.
In truth, she just did not want to share.
Peach had spent an hour this morning attempting to work out the mathematic, geometrical matter of how to get onto the human bed.
She had failed, of course, with those stubby, little legs, but Hattie reckoned it was because the little pig had wished to snuggle her mistress specifically.
Certainly not the traitor with a wooden puzzle who had left their bed under false pretenses.
It was only the sound of the triumphant army coming toward the parlor that got Hattie up off the chaise and marching toward the bedroom, in search of both creature and cryptic missive.
By the time she had returned, it seemed most of their celebration had ended, and the burst of revelry had dissipated back into exhausted repose.
“What’s this?” Libba asked when she appeared. “Are those my trousers?”
“No,” lied Rhys, crossing his legs under him with a shimmer of metallic embroidery flashing like the garment itself was trying to tell the truth. “Not anymore.”
Hattie set Peach down and watched as she made an immediate, enthusiastic run for Libba, who was the only person in the room still holding food.
“This is my croissant,” Libba informed the pig, whilst breaking off a corner to surrender.
Elias was looking at the tissue-covered card in Hattie’s hand with an expression of sudden concern. “Ah,” he said to her. “We’re doing that now, are we?”
“Everyone is here,” she pointed out, and then she counted them to be certain. “Yes, eight. All of us.”
“Nine, if you include our new sibling there,” Rhys quipped, nodding at the pig and then holding his hands up in apology at the impatient look Hattie cut in his direction.
Elias sighed, crossing the room to stand next to Hattie, and took the card from her hands. “I brought some of Willa’s keepsake cards from her various correspondences to the showcase yesterday, as you may recall,” he said. “There were seven of them when I arrived. When we left, there were eight.”
Hattie blinked. When he’d said the word seven, she’d seen the flash of yellow, heard the viola strings. When he’d said eight, she’d leaned closer to him, as though his storm clouds and smoke might shelter her.
“This one had been added,” he said, holding it up, still swaddled in its wrapping. “Someone left it on the table during the festivities.”
“Well, what is it?” Rhys asked immediately. “What does it say?”
“It says ‘Felicitations,’” Hattie answered, frowning. “That is all.”
Errol held his hand out, a polite and patient request to see the thing. Once he had it, he carefully pulled the tissue paper away and turned it over in his hands. “It also says Brighton,” he pointed out. “It has a sketch on it.”
“I told you,” Malcolm said, a snapping, impatient quality to his voice. “I told you I saw her.”
“Oh, do shut up,” Rhys replied, frowning. “You didn’t.”
Mal rounded on him with a glower. “I’m not the liar here.”
“Oh, please,” said Rhys with a yawn. “You gamble. You do business. Your entire being is lies.”
“All right,” said Monica in a calming voice, stepping between the two. “Let’s not bicker. Whom did you see, Mal?”
He didn’t answer, only blinking at her like he’d been caught doing something naughty.
Hattie was watching him, her heart thick in her chest. She wanted him to say it. And she didn’t.
“I saw her too,” Elias said, from next to her, drawing everyone’s attention around. “On the shore.”
Hattie stared at him, her hand reaching out of its own accord to find his. “You did?”
He nodded, turning to meet her eye. “During the eulogy.”
“Eulogy,” Libba muttered. “Kangaroos.”
“Libba,” Ruby snapped. “Not now.”
“You think she is not only alive, but in Brighton?” Errol said, still staring down at the card in his hands. “You think she came to her own funeral and didn’t make herself known?”
“I don’t know,” Elias confessed with a shrug. “I don’t know what to think. It’s like you said. She was always unknowable.”
For a time, they all simply existed in the silence.
Errol passed the card around, hand to hand, and let each of the wards examine it.
“It doesn’t look like her handwriting,” Rhys said.
“It isn’t handwriting,” Monica pointed out. “It is calligraphy. More like a drawing than script. It wouldn’t match her natural penmanship.”
“No one of note was ever known for their penmanship,” Hattie said quietly, her healed hand seeming to ache from a burn that had long, long healed.
“Where did she go?” Libba asked, shaking her head. “When she initially left the house seven years ago. Where was she going? Did she tell any of you?”
One by one, they shook their heads.
Only Errol looked uncertain, frowning down at his hands as he sought out the memory. “She had her things packed,” he said. “She told us she would be away for a while. She reduced the staff like she would for a longer trip. But that was all.”
“How much did she pack?” Ruby asked. “How much did she take?”
Errol shook his head and shrugged. “Trunks, like always. She left from the wharf. I should have asked more questions.”
“It never should have been only you who was here to do so,” Malcolm said, frowning. “That wasn’t fair.”
Elias was looking at Hattie; she could feel him doing it, could feel somehow, without a single word spoken, the weight of what he was thinking.
She turned and met his eye, considering it, considering that she might say what she had told him once in confidence.
And somehow, she knew that he would not mind if she did or did not.
She took a gulp of breath, shaking her head. “I never thought she was dead,” she said suddenly. “I never felt she was gone.”
The others heard it. They looked at her.
“No,” said Ruby, frowning. “Nor I. I tried to grieve, but … It felt dishonest.”
“We cannot assume that she is alive just because of a phantom bit of art,” Rhys said, his voice breaking. He shook his head, digging his fingers into his hair, and gave a humorless laugh. “It is not that I can’t believe in miracles, but by God, I know how easy they are to fake.”
“We don’t know anything,” Errol agreed, placing a hand on Rhys’s shoulder. “We can only suspect and wonder.”
Libba sniffled, rubbing impatiently at her eye with the heel of her hand and turning her head. “Fine,” she said. “We will wonder. For a year, as she commanded.”
“A year, yes,” Monica repeated, looking thoughtful. “Perhaps something will happen when the year has ended, if we meet our end of the bargain.”
“Perhaps nothing will happen at all,” Rhys said sternly. “We must be prepared for that too, chwaer. Just as prepared.”
“Agreed,” said Monica, softening as she studied his face. “Agreed.”
In the end, they wrapped the card back in its tissue but did not send it to the master suite for safekeeping.
Instead, it remained in the parlor, propped on the hearth, facing the sun.
Just in case.