Chapter 4
In the morning, Mouse found that Thistlemarsh’s state was even worse than she imagined.
Determined to make some headway before the servants woke, she tied her hair back, pulled on Bertie’s old trousers, and set to work.
A voice in the back of her mind, perhaps her sense, insisted that the attempt was a fruitless endeavor, but she had to try.
The entry hall was the key place to start, as it was the most visible to visitors, including Beckett when he returned. It would be easier to assess the amount of work needed after she began. She decided she would start cleaning first and see the damage that was revealed.
Mouse fashioned a rag from a worn-out curtain and a bucket from the Matchbox’s vanity water basin.
She hoped that the proper cleaning supplies were still stored in the servant quarters, although her expectations were low and she did not want to lose daylight searching for things that did not exist. If her uncle had allotted money to refresh them, Dawson would certainly have used it to combat the crumbling walls.
Even before Mouse left for France, she overheard the servants muttering that her uncle had slashed the money from the household accounts, leaving them scrambling to save a house with no resources.
After Bertie’s death, it was as if Lord Dewhurst had wanted the house to rot.
Despite her intentions, by the time Dawson brought in a plate of sandwiches for lunch, all she’d managed to do was clear the dirt from a strip of wallpaper.
The figures in the tapestry opposite her seemed to laugh as she worked, the baying dogs and Faeries all ridiculing her from their vantage point in the thread.
“Watch if I don’t set you on fire next,” she growled at the fabric.
Dawson eyed her warily. “There is a visitor for you. I found him skulking around the servants’ entrance, and I’ve taken the liberty of escorting him to Lord Dewhurst’s study.”
“Who is it?” Mouse asked, puzzled why Dawson let the man in, rather than calling the police on the trespasser.
“Mr. Carlyle.”
The air felt heavy, and Mouse’s vision tunneled around the edges. She suddenly felt like her nickname-sake, small and vulnerable. A snake waited for her in her uncle’s study, coiled and preparing to strike.
“Carlyle?” she repeated.
“Yes. It took me a moment to recognize him. He looks different from his school days, although he only visited that once. He is still impertinent as anything, and his manners are nothing compared to Master Bertie’s, but I did not feel that I could turn him away given his current relation to the house. ”
Mouse fought back her panic. She looked down in dismay at the state of her clothes, stained with sweat and dust. Wisps of cigar smoke hung in the room, leading down the hall.
Dawson stood at Mouse’s shoulder, his fists balled tight. She knew what stress looked like on a man. She had seen her fair share of it in the war.
Dawson might disapprove of Mouse, but his dislike of Carlyle was stronger.
His knuckles were white, and Mouse noticed his twice-mended cuffs. When was the last time her uncle had replaced the staff uniforms? she wondered.
“My lady,” Dawson said. “You look unwell.”
“I will be fine in a moment, Dawson. Thank you.”
He straightened and turned to lead her to the door but paused halfway down the hall.
“Would you like me to stand outside the door while you talk to him, my lady?”
Relief flooded Mouse. She nodded sharply. Words caught and dried in her mouth, but she took his clenched hand, squeezing it hard. Dawson coughed uncomfortably, but he did not pull away. It was pleasant to be allies with the old man, for once.
The Honorable Anthony Carlyle had a razor-sharp smile.
It instantly caught Mouse off guard, even when she expected its painful slash.
He wore his mustache combed into a thin line, and his hair slicked back into a wave that ended behind his ears.
His fingers drummed a steady rhythm against her uncle’s desk.
He’d propped his ostentatious cane against the chairback.
Mouse wanted to smirk at the cane, since it was such a predictable show of Carlyle’s mask of pretentious aristocracy.
Who, except the most out of touch, would carry a symbolic cane now when there were so many men who truly needed one to walk?
“I see you have made yourself comfortable here,” Mouse said.
“Shame that your uncle left you all this work. This task is impossible,” Carlyle said.
“I’m afraid that I do not understand you. What is impossible?”
“Come now. There is no need to play games with me. Mr. Beckett is an old friend of my father’s and likes his drink as much as any other man in town. He was only too happy to share when I pointed out that it would all come to me anyway. Why delay the inevitable?”
Mouse strangled the bottom of her shirt tight in her hands, overly aware of the streaks of dust across Bertie’s old trousers.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mouse saw a flash of movement in the window behind the desk. Was it Dawson? She thought he was behind the door.
“I see that we are not going to have a civil discussion about any of this, so I will say my piece and leave you to your thoughts. I am willing to buy Thistlemarsh from you.”
Mouse scoffed, realizing too late that she’d done it aloud. Carlyle’s smile sharpened more.
“I would be more than willing to give you a fair price for the place. I will even buy your furniture, no less. And we can keep it off the books. No one will know that you failed your uncle’s demands, and you get to walk away with money in your pocket. What do you say to that?”
“What interest could you possibly have in Thistlemarsh?” Mouse asked.
Carlyle leaned back in the chair, taking another puff from his cigar. Bertie’s cigars had smelled like tobacco and spices. Whatever was in Carlyle’s smelled like tar and salt.
“It’s a valuable historic landmark, for one.
Despite its upkeep, the Hall is one of the only noble houses in England that ever hosted the Faerie King.
Besides, I took a fancy to it all those years ago when I visited.
I thought it was mad that, although very distantly, my family was related to yours. ”
The door squeaked. Mouse shot it a look of warning. So, Dawson was there. Was the movement outside an animal? Perhaps it was Mr. Hobb.
She forced herself to focus on the situation at hand.
“I can tell you have thought this through,” she said drolly.
He leaned closer across the table and papers. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a no, of course.”
Carlyle shrugged, sticking his cigar between his teeth, inhaling, and pulling it away with the precision of a train operator.
“Then all I will have to do is wait for you to fail. I had hoped to speed things along, but I see that you insist on being difficult. Thank you for your time, Lady Dewhurst.”
The door opened at his approach. Carlyle tipped his hat at Dawson, who remained stony-faced as he passed. “Please, do not trouble yourself. I remember the way out.” He was off down the hall like a shot.
“Stay here,” Dawson snapped at Mouse. His posture evolved into a pillar of fury the moment Carlyle was out of sight. “He remembers the way out indeed.”
Then Dawson was gone, down the same way that Carlyle went moments before. Mouse took a seat, unsure what to do with herself while her mind whirled. She could hear her breath escaping from her lips in rapid bursts, but she could not control it.
Once upon a time, Bertie thought Carlyle was his friend.
He even invited him to Thistlemarsh to meet Lord Dewhurst. When Mouse first saw Carlyle, she recognized the cruelty in him that made him feel superior to everyone around him, even the Dewhursts.
Mouse was used to being looked down on, as was Roger, but Bertie did not register it.
The next time Mouse heard of Carlyle, it was when Bertie and Roger returned home unexpectedly from school.
They had been suspended from Eton for the rest of the year.
Roger had bloodied knuckles and a black eye, but he would not tell Mouse what happened.
Roger never returned to Eton, instead spending the lead-up to the war training as a clerk in London.
It took years, but eventually Bertie took Mouse aside and confessed to the secret Carlyle had used to extort him.
It was a secret that Mouse already suspected, something Bertie could have been arrested for.
Carlyle held it over his head like a sword.
Now, Bertie was gone, and Carlyle was still there, trying to run his memory out of Thistlemarsh.
Mouse started to hyperventilate.
She dug through her thoughts for her training.
Whenever men were brought into the hospital, there was always a flurry of motion.
The violence would paint the entire world in an urgency that would spread through the room.
Mouse and the other nurses had to learn to combat the panic that would set in by focusing on something slow and calm.
Any kind of distraction might help her regulate her breathing. Finally, her vision landed on the bookshelves on either side of the room.
Rows and rows of books lined the walls, most bound in the same dark green leather, a shining silver D embossed on the side.
Although the spines were uniform, some were heavily scarred from use, with thin strips of lighter green running up the leather like veins.
Mouse recognized the signs of her handiwork on some books pressed into the shelves reserved for novels.