Chapter 6
I jerked awake with a start. My pulse pounded in my temples.
Disorientation wove a spell around my thoughts.
It took me several panicked moments to remember where I was—my assigned quarters in Riverbend Manor.
Okay. I was talking to the housekeeper and Mr. Hoffmann—wait.
He’d just been standing there in the doorway.
Yet now the door was closed, and everything looked…
Odd.
Where was my teacup? Had they taken it? The light in the room was almost gone, and dusk was on its way outside the window. How was that possible?
I squinted at the nurse’s fob watch pinned to my bodice. The dial distorted in my vision. I had to squint hard to read it… Was it really six thirty?
I’d not only slept through lunch but also the entire afternoon?
I pushed out of the chair to stand, only to cry out in agony when I felt a sharp pain.
I fell back into the seat while clasping my neck.
The side of my throat was throbbing right above my right collarbone.
It ached so badly, the pain radiated into nerves in my face, causing my jaw to click when I opened my mouth.
“What in the…?” I whispered, turning to view my neck in the hazy-looking glass above the dressing table. When I pulled back the high collar of my bodice, I found no mark on my neck. No bruise. Why did it hurt so much?
I stumbled to my feet, pushing the chair away. What was happening? My head felt like it had been stuffed like all those stags and wolves down the hall. I squeezed my eyes shut when a wave of nausea hit me.
The tea! I’d fallen asleep while drinking that orange tea.
Not asleep. Sleep didn’t make you feel like the edges of the room were moving.
Had I been drugged? Why?
Who are these people?
Horror slivered under my skin and caused my fingers to tremble.
I swung around the room wildly, searching for something that would help me make sense of my situation, but it was nearly too dark to see anything.
So I staggered to the bed, head thick and aching.
And in the dull light coming through my window, I peered across the atrium to Master Voss’s grand balcony windows.
The curtains remained open, and because it was now darker outside than it had been earlier, I could make out golden lights blazing from several candles and gas lamps inside his room.
And in the candlelight, Master Voss lay on his back upon his big bed, tucked into his sheets. Presumably asleep, though I couldn’t tell from here.
Had he directed the staff to drug my tea? Or had all his servants gone mad? Maybe he was too weak to understand what was happening. What if they were doing awful things to him, too?
The five-point nursing pledge danced inside my head: Dedicate myself to the welfare of souls committed to my care. If Master Voss was in danger, it was my duty to protect him.
Duty was important…
Sluggish thoughts chugged through my head as I gently touched my neck and again felt no surface wound. What if the wound was too small to see? I had a syringe packed in my things. Had they gone through them? Fresh panic washed over me.
My luggage sat where I’d left it. Using the fading light coming in through the window, I checked my portmanteau, which didn’t appear to have been rifled through, and then the medical bag.
That one was harder to check because I wasn’t sure exactly what had been put into it, having had only the briefest discussion with Sister Helen to go over its contents and when to use the bottles of poorly labeled drugs on my new patient.
However, the leather syringe case was still inside, and when I opened to inspect the glass stopper and the screw-on needles, they didn’t have any moisture on them. Huh. Then why does my neck ache like this?
I didn’t know. However, nothing within my things seemed to be amiss.
What was I going to do? I couldn’t just hide in my room. I guess… I’d need to confront the servants. I really, really didn’t want to. But what else could I do?
Overwhelmed, I desperately looked around the room as tears welled. I was stuck at the ends of the earth in a strange house filled with people with false faces who had lied to and drugged me. What exactly had I gotten myself into? What was going on here?
“Whoaaa! This is Voss’s house?”
I yelped in surprise, nearly falling off the bed at the sound of a voice in my room. My eyes swung around the dark room—
And found a familiar figure standing.
“Holy stinkin’ shite!” I cried out, then became paranoid and hushed my voice. “Bethany Cross, you are a sight for sore eyes. How did you follow me here?”
She didn’t acknowledge that question, and instead just turned in place, looking around the room.
“This is ours? We’re staying in this room?
It looks like they prepared it for a queen!
Fresh flowers?” She bent to smell them and sighed with pleasure before stepping to the foot of my bed to peer out the window.
“Is that the view? I’ve never seen anything so beautiful! ”
I honestly didn’t know how she was here. I mean, why was silly, dumb Bethany the most powerful ghost I’d ever known? I had no idea, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I was just…
Grateful for her company. Which was almost as disconcerting as the possibility of being drugged.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, squinting at my face. “Your eyes look funny.”
A promising thought occurred to me. “Did you happen to see the servants in my room? Did you see what they did to me when they were here?”
“What servants?”
Dammit. My hope deflated.
“Listen to me,” I told her. “There are three servants, and they drugged my tea. I don’t know why.
But we are in danger and need to find out what’s going on in this house.
” Bethany’s face contorted. If she didn’t understand, I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to explain it to her.
“We just need to find out why this was done to me, okay? Just follow me.”
“Okay,” she said, sounding wary.
My chatelaine was tucked inside the black medical bag, so I retrieved it and attached its clip to my waist, finding comfort in its dangling tools.
Then I took out my nursing lantern. My trembling fingers struggled with the matches stored in a tiny compartment in its base, but I was finally able to light the candle within, and instantly felt better when its soft light radiated around the small room.
“Lantern light always helps,” Bethany said cheerfully.
Feeling like one of the wild dogs that roamed the alleys around the hospital, desperate to cling to what was mine, I stashed my luggage and medical bag beneath the bed as far as I could.
Then, cautiously, I clutched my lantern’s handle and approached the closed door to my room, signaling for Bethany to follow and be quiet.
“Hello?” I called out, and let the word linger in the shadows until my heart felt as if it might burst from fear.
No response came.
The only sounds were the wind howling outside my window and the pounding of my temples. I checked under the door. No light. No one. Nothing.
Slowly, holding my breath, I turned the handle and opened the door to the dark corridor.
I dared to stick my head outside and peered both ways. No one in sight. No movement. But to make my way back downstairs the way we’d come up, I’d have to go past the menagerie of stuffed beasts.
“Why is the gas turned down so low in all the wall sconces?” Bethany whispered from behind me. “Surely Mr. Voss can afford to keep the gas flowing?”
She wasn’t wrong. It was awfully dark in the house, and it wasn’t even seven yet. It was also way too quiet.
Steeling myself, I gripped my lantern and set out into the hallway, leaning on the wall for support when I felt a wave of dizziness.
What in the world did they use to drug me?
If they’d put it in the orange tea, that meant it hadn’t been stolen from my medical bag—I’d had the bag in my possession when Filomena had brought the cup to my room.
Whatever they’d used, it was strong enough to cause my vision to blur around the edges and stretch eerily.
After making it down the guest wing of the house, I rounded the corner to head down the Menagerie Hall.
Bethany gasped. “What is all this…?”
I couldn’t blame her for being shocked. The stuffed bears looked like monsters, distorted and demented. Fear skittered up my spine.
“They aren’t really alive,” I whispered, more as a reminder to myself than anything else. Then I puffed out quick breaths to calm myself. They’re full of sawdust. Just sawdust and fur. Keep walking…
Up ahead, the golden doors that marked Master Voss’s quarters came into view. “That’s his room, there,” I whispered to Bethany.
“Have you ever seen golden doors inside a house? How fancy!” she whispered back.
Fancy and shut tight. I padded up to them, but paused to allow a wave of nausea to crest over me. Then I put my ear to one of the doors and listened.
Nothing but the sound of a clock ticking. He was probably still lying in that big bed. Which meant that he wasn’t in any immediate trouble… right? Anxiety rose. Maybe it would be safer to tell him I’d been drugged, rather than confront the servants?
Should I knock? Or just let myself in? I raised my hand, and Bethany shook her head wildly.
“No, Molly! He’s a wealthy gentleman. You can’t enter his private quarters without accompaniment! Do you want to cause a scandal, or maybe even get fired?”
A terrified part of me that had been taught to follow rules agreed.
Who did I think I was, anyway, to waltz into a millionaire’s room?
Nurse or not, I was still a penniless mucker who’d only been gifted the privilege to step foot in this grand palace.
Bethany was right. Grounds for dismissal was what it was, no matter if I felt I’d been abused by the man’s servants.