Chapter 6
Six
The temperature seemed to drop several degrees as Kitty and Mrs. Smith carried a majority of Agnes’s weight up the stairs. Agnes took one step at a time, barely maintaining control over her body.
The shock of the news delivered by Mr. Evans had weakened her bones.
Her chest was heavy. Her limbs were numb.
Several moments passed where she thought she should just run away, seek refuge with Ida in Edith’s old home in Holgate.
But she had no energy for that, just an aching hollowness that left her paralyzed.
Kitty brushed and oiled Agnes’s hair before helping her change into her night rail.
Her maid shut the window, and Agnes was left on her own.
The covers on Agnes’s bed had already been turned down.
All she had to do was complete her ablutions and crawl into bed.
Her skin tightened from the frigid water she splashed on her face.
It must have been left from the morning.
Shivering, Agnes drew the edges of the coverlet around her body. Trying to generate warmth in her cocoon, she kicked her legs back and forth. Agnes hadn’t planned to retire this early, so Kitty hadn’t had time to use the bedwarmer.
She sat back against her pillows with a calming tea, a blend of valerian root and chamomile.
It was not a habit of hers to drink tea in bed, but after Richard’s death, she could no longer spend her evenings sitting in the parlor as they once had done.
There, her solitude turned into a cruel oppression.
It wasn’t long before the herbs made her eyelids grow heavy despite her worries still a raging storm in her mind.
Bram was curled into his usual spot at her feet, unmoving, but ready to attack if she dared to shift just an inch.
Turning only her upper body to not disturb the creature, she placed her teacup on her nightstand and laid her head on the pillows.
She didn’t know how long she had been asleep when she woke to the jingle of Bram’s bell tracking across the room. It was unusual for him to wake before morning.
Despite his feline instincts to be nocturnal, Bram had been Agnes’s shadow from the day she brought him home as a scrawny kitten, tail already damaged from nearly being squashed by their carriage.
Albeit a grumpy, hissy shadow, Bram never left her side, unless in a gluttonous search of food.
So it hadn’t taken long for him to adjust to her schedule, closing his eyes only when Agnes closed hers.
Noticing the hairs standing up straight under Bram’s collar, Agnes shot up from bed. The hairs on the back of her own neck mimicked his.
He bolted out of the bedchamber through the door that adjoined her room to Richard’s, a door that had been used just once before.
A knot formed in her stomach. The door was not only unlocked but cracked open.
She and Richard had both kept their sides locked in an unspoken vow of respect and privacy.
Her bare feet hit the wooden floor, sending ice shards into her toes that made her bones ache. A chill scraped at her legs, which warmed only slightly as her night rail fell to her ankles when she stood. She expected the house to be quiet, but the pounding in her ears made it difficult to discern.
“Bra–m?” she called. Her voice shook, cutting out in the middle of his name.
Like all York homes, the floors creaked, the walls wailed, and the windows thumped, but in the past week, Agnes was certain that she was hearing more sounds than before.
Footsteps echoed in the stairwell that led up to her attic, causing Agnes to pause her work, but no one ever entered.
Taps on her windowpane could be laughed off as tree branches blowing in the wind.
Misplaced objects could be chalked up to the staff reorganizing the home after Richard’s death.
What she could not dismiss was this door being unlocked and open. Ward was always vigilant to secure the house at night and routinely inspected the latches on windows and doors.
She could feel it. There was a presence of someone . . . something on the other side of the door. She had spent her adolescence with Edith, who harnessed the power of the other realm for her magic and had introduced her to ladies who communed with the spirits.
So while Agnes knew that no man or woman was upstairs with her, she was certain she was not alone.
With silent footsteps she had perfected as a girl, she walked through the open door. Bram stood at the side of Richard’s bed, looking up toward the ceiling. The cat’s gaze moved around the room before he slowly turned toward Agnes with two glowing eyes reflecting the moonlight.
He wasn’t looking right at her but at the space next to her. Agnes startled when the cat meowed.
Faint breaths of air whispered in her ear before caressing up to her temple. Despite the coolness of the sensation, the air left her with warmth deep in her heart. No, she was most assuredly not alone, but her fear was now softened.
“Richard?” she called into the silence. Something thudded in the corner. Agnes covered her mouth to quiet her gasp, her fingers sinking into her cheeks, and pressed her tongue against the roof of her dry mouth to choke down her scream.
Moonlight reflected off of something small on the floor near Richard’s desk.
She tiptoed to the object in the corner.
A paperweight, a round globe with a green carnation in the glass, sat before her feet.
Agnes had noticed it sitting on Richard’s desk when she had sat at his bedside one evening, but she knew nothing of its significance.
Peculiar that it had not shattered from the fall.
Upon her discovery, the energy in the air around her changed immediately. She was alone now, aside from her feline companion.
Bram pawed at her leg, nipping her skin to tell her he was ready to return back to his spot atop her ankles in the bed. Agnes returned the paperweight to the desk. Once in her bedroom, she slid a stool in front of the door before crawling under the coverlet.
With centuries of bloody history, York held many spirits, more than any other city in England.
Like her friends, she had seen the ghostly face of the girl next to the Minster waiting for her parents to return.
She knew of the ghost that haunted the Golden Fleece and the Vikings that patrolled in city homes.
But this was different. This was a message just for her. She was certain.