Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Poppy had already passed through so many rooms that their names had begun to swim in her mind. She did admire the Dukedom of Sterling, but the place was too vast, especially for the children whose most recent memories were of a small orphanage.
“And through here,” Mrs. Patterson said, indicating another closed door as they passed, “is the west sitting room. It is used mostly in winter, when the afternoon light is strongest on this side of the house.”
Aurora walked ahead of her, small and silent, keeping close enough to Mrs. Patterson so that the housekeeper could lay a hand upon her shoulder if required.
The child had been quieter than Poppy had expected.
On previous mornings, Aurora’s attention had darted like a bird from ribbon to window latch to whatever secret she had decided Poppy needed to know at once.
Today she moved with an effortful composure as Mrs. Patterson led them down another passage.
Poppy turned her head dutifully, though the door remained shut. “I am certain that every room here is fine.”
Mrs. Patterson glanced back at her.
“But I must confess,” Poppy added, lowering her voice with a faint smile, “I shall not remember every room in this place. If I am left alone, I may wander until I am discovered years from now behind a screen.”
Mrs. Patterson laughed.
“The house seems larger at first than it is,” the housekeeper said confidently.
“That is what people say when a thing is exactly as large as it seems.” Mrs. Patterson laughed again, but this time the sound broke off.
From somewhere ahead came a crack like the splitting of bone.
Poppy stopped. The noise rang through the passage, blunt and violent, followed by a grinding scrape that made the skin between her shoulders tighten.
Another blow came, heavier than the first. Stone breaking.
Aurora stopped, too. Mrs. Patterson did not turn at once.
Her shoulders settled, almost imperceptibly, as if she had been expecting the sound and had hoped not to meet it in company.
Poppy looked toward the closed door at the end of the passage. The sound had come from beyond it, or from a room near it, carried through the bones of the house.
“What in heaven is that sound?” she asked.
Mrs. Patterson turned back with a composed face. “The duke is renovating.”
Another crack interrupted what she might have said next. This one was followed by the dull fall of something heavy. Poppy felt the tremor beneath her feet.
“Is it the study?” Poppy asked, praying it was not.
Mrs. Patterson simply nodded, but said nothing further.
Poppy moved closer to Mrs. Patterson and lowered her voice. “Aurora usually escapes into that study, does she not?”
Mrs. Patterson’s gaze flickered to the child.
The housekeeper pressed her lips together. For a moment, the lines around her mouth looked carved rather than lived in. “That is where the closet is.”
Poppy’s own hands tightened in front of her. How could the duke be so cruel? It was the only place Aurora felt safe. “What if she wanders in there and gets hurt?”
Mrs. Patterson drew a slow breath through her nose. “His Grace has locked the doors to keep her safe.”
The phrase should have reassured Poppy. Yet it did not settle in her.
Did he truly get rid of the entire closet just to stop Aurora from hiding? Her heart ached.
Poppy looked at the child.
Aurora had not spoken, but she was listening.
The sounds from the study seemed to pass through her rather than merely reach her.
Her small face had gone quiet in that way children’s faces did when they were trying not to ask what they already knew would not be answered.
Poppy had seen children frightened by thunder, by dogs, and by strangers too loud in their affection.
This was not that. Aurora was not frightened of the noise alone.
She was sad because of it until she looked up into Poppy’s eyes.
“Poppy!” she called out and ran toward her; her little steps were quick against the floor. “That noise is scary; can we go to the garden now?”
Poppy bent slightly as the child reached her; she was glad she did not notice her potential new favorite spot was getting demolished.
“Mrs. Patterson, perhaps we should head there now?” she hoped that the housekeeper read her mind.
“Of course, my lady,” she said, and Poppy let out a breath of relief.
Aurora slipped her hand into Poppy’s. The little fingers were warm and soft, but her grip was decisive. She began tugging her forward, following Mrs. Patterson to the garden. Behind them, another dull report sounded from the study. Aurora did not look back, but Poppy did.
“This way,” Mrs. Patterson said as she turned a corner.
The way to the garden led them through another passage and down a shallow flight of steps where the air changed. Poppy had not realized how tightly she had been breathing until the garden door opened and the day entered around them. Light spread across the threshold, temporarily blinding her.
Aurora released Poppy’s hand and ran out first. Poppy followed with Mrs. Patterson, stopping just beyond the door and admiring the garden.
Paths divided the grounds into measured spaces.
Flowerbeds lay in careful arrangement. Hedges stood clipped into disciplined walls with their dark green surfaces holding the sun.
Beyond them rose the maze, taller than Poppy expected, its entrance a shadowed gap cut into living growth.
Aurora saw it at once.
“There!” she said.
Mrs. Patterson took a breath. “Miss Aurora, you must wait.”
But Aurora had already begun forward.
Poppy started after her. “Aurora, not too far.”
“I am only looking,” Aurora called.
“That is what explorers say shortly before they are never seen again.”
Aurora laughed, delighted by the threat. “Then you must find me, Poppy.”
The housekeeper gave her a look, and for the first time that morning Poppy saw weariness beneath the woman’s control.
Poppy softened her voice. “I will fetch her.”
“She may be at the entrance only.”
But Aurora was no longer at the entrance. One moment she had stood before the opening, a little figure framed by hedge and sun. The next, she had disappeared. Poppy quickened her pace.
“Aurora!” she called, still lightly, unwilling to frighten the child or herself. “Come back, please. We shall explore together.”
There was no answer.
The entrance to the maze smelled of leaves warmed by the sun and the damp interior shade beneath them.
Poppy stepped inside. The world narrowed at once.
The hedge walls rose higher than her head, dense and close, their trimmed faces broken here and there by pale cuts where new growth had been sheared away.
Gravel lay underfoot, pale and dry. The path turned left almost immediately, then right.
“Aurora?”
A giggle came from somewhere ahead.
Poppy let out a breath of relief. “I hear you.”
“No, you do not,” Aurora called.
“I assure you, I do.” Poppy laughed, but it did not ease the panic she felt.
Her voice bounced strangely among the hedges, near and far at once. Poppy followed the sound to the right and found only another green wall and a narrow passage leading away.
Mrs. Patterson entered behind her. “Miss Aurora, come out now.”
“I…I…d…do not know where I a…a…am.”
Poppy looked back helplessly at Mrs. Patterson. “Perhaps if we do not sound severe.”
“She must learn, Your Grace.”
“Yes,” Poppy agreed with the elderly woman, but her heart did not. “But perhaps not while surrounded by shrubbery.”
Mrs. Patterson did not smile as they moved forward together. Poppy kept one hand near the hedge, not touching it, merely measuring the turns. The sky above seemed clean and remote. Somewhere outside the maze a bird called, but inside, even Aurora’s footsteps began to fade.
“Aurora,” Poppy called again. “The game is over now.”
Hector had learned the way of the maze as a boy before the accident.
The pattern had entered him and remained when finer details had begun to withdraw from him; faces lost their details and pages became pale fields without meaning.
The maze had never betrayed him; its center remained a constant in his life, and he liked that.
He let the maze gather around him again. This was his closet, where no one could bother him.
Hector dipped the paintbrush into the bucket of paint and slathered it onto the plank of wood that his footman had set up before him.
He had not painted since the accident, and there was a feeling of freedom as the bright color covered the dullness of the wood.
He wished he could have painted patterns on it.
What would Aurora have liked? Perhaps flowers?
Hector enjoyed the peace around him until a sound echoed around him. It was a short gasp followed by footsteps.
Someone is in the maze.
His fingers tightened around the paintbrush, then eased. The sound came again, broken by the hedges, made uncertain by distance. A little intake of breath, quickly swallowed, followed by the light, uneven scuff of shoes on gravel.
Hector rose.
The brush slipped from his hand and onto the green grass, splattering color all around him. He stood still, allowing the echoes to separate, and his head turned toward another gasp.
Before he could call out, a woman’s voice came from beyond the hedge, farther away but right with alarm.
“Aurora?”
My duchess.
He knew her voice by now. Her Grace’s voice held warmth even when worry thinned it.
“Aurora, where are you?” Hector said calmly.
The small steps faltered, and he began walking toward them.
“Aurora,” he said again. “It is Uncle Hector.”
There was a small sound that might have been relief if it had not been frightened to show itself.
“Un…Uncle?”
“Yes.”
“I—I d…do not know where—” Her voice hitched. “I do not know w…where I am.”
“I know.” He kept his tone even, as if they discussed nothing more troubling than the weather. “That is the maze’s favorite trick.”
“It d-doesn’t like me.”
Hector followed the sound of her voice along a hedge.