Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the time they reached Cliff Cottage, dusk had drawn a veil across the sea, the light paling until the horizon blurred and the water became one vast, undulating slate sheet beneath a sky of bruised lavender.
The cottage stood quiet against the dimming sky, its small windows reflecting the last of the light.
Minerva paused at the gate, fingers resting on the latch, a worrying exhaustion weighing on her. It was not the sort that would be cured with sleep. It was deeper than that, heavier, making every step a difficulty. She had felt this before…
“Min,” Kitty said quietly, close at her side. “You have not said a word since—”
Minerva waited in silence.
Kitty sighed. “Since you became distressed on the footpath.”
“There is nothing to say.” Minerva kept her tone even and her eyes on the house. It was a lie. There was so much to say, but she had not the words to explain what she had seen, what she had felt. After a moment, she said, “I am sorry. For interrupting your walk with Thom.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Kitty said, her tone kind, entirely without edge. “Don’t ever be foolish about that.” She gave a small huff. “Was it truly an attack of nerves? It seemed…different.”
“I—” Minerva shook her head and forced a smile. “I have had enough of the wind. Come, let us go inside.”
The cottage was warm and dry, the shift from buffeting wind to stillness almost disorienting. They shed their bonnets and gloves in the entry hall, then carried their laden baskets through to the kitchen.
Nessa stood at the worktable, sleeves rolled, knife in hand, paring potatoes into a waiting bowl. The hearth fire burned low but steady, a pot already set to heat. She looked up as they entered, her hands going still.
“You’re back,” she said.
“Back and chilled to the bone,” Kitty said, setting her basket on the table and moving to stand by the fire. The faint, briny scent of fish rose in the warm air.
Nessa moved toward the table without prompting, lifting the parcel and unwrapping it with quick, practiced hands. She set the fish down on a board on the worktable.
“I’m glad—” Nessa’s gaze flicked to the ceiling, too quickly. “I’m glad you did not stay away longer.” Her voice thinned on the last word.
Holding her hands to the fire, Kitty looked back over her shoulder. “Because you don’t like to be here alone after dark?”
Nessa caught the edge of her apron between her fingers, twisting it tight. “No,” she whispered. “It’s not that.”
Minerva’s gaze flicked to the cellar door. The pendant was neither warm nor hot against her skin. She returned her attention to Nessa and asked, “What is it then?”
Again, Nessa looked upward. “I heard something. In the unused bedroom. I heard footsteps.”
Minerva wrapped her arms around herself, recalling how she herself had stood outside the door of the empty room, listening to the creak of wood, as though someone stepped on the floorboards.
“Houses settle,” she said softly, as much to herself as to Nessa.
Nessa shook her head. “I heard footsteps. As if someone were walking the length of the room. Back and forth, back and forth.”
The silence stretched. A log popped in the fire.
“That room is empty,” Kitty said, but she did not sound quite convinced.
“It is,” Minerva said, her tone resolute.
She did not want to think about the woman in the rain outside the dress shop in London, the day she had first held the pendant in her hand.
Or the scrape of an unseen talon along the side of the coach on the road to Fowey.
Or the weight of the air in the cellar, the candle snuffing, and something breathing in the dark.
Or the dream where she had stood barefoot on the cliff edge, her will not her own, Dashiell’s voice the only thing reaching her.
Or the creak of the floorboard in the empty room above.
Most of all, she did not want to think about today on the cliff path, her feet carrying her forward while every part of her mind screamed retreat.
Each taken alone might be dismissed.
But none stood alone.
“Let us see to supper,” she said, refusing to voice the possibility that the empty room was not empty after all. She summoned her paltry reserves of strength to combat the terrible fatigue that tugged at her and the ever-present fears that roiled just beneath the surface of her thoughts.
She would not allow panic to take root in this house like mould in damp plaster. She would not have Nessa tremble at every creak, or Kitty bristle at every shadow. And she would not allow herself to be ruled by fear.
“Yes, Miss,” Nessa said softly.
They set about the small rituals of evening with deliberate care.
Kitty stirred the pot at the hearth while Nessa cleaned the fish, scraping scales with quick, efficient strokes before gutting it with practiced precision.
Minerva sliced bread and set it aside, then fetched the small crock of butter, familiar tasks that steadied her hands if not her thoughts.
Then, above them, a sound.
Minerva did not pretend to believe it was the groan of timber or the restless complaint of shifting beams, not now, not after what she had just seen on the cliff path.
The sound came again, unmistakable.
A footstep.
Slow. Deliberate. Followed by a pause.
Kitty exhaled a long, slow breath, her hand stilling on the spoon. Nessa froze, fish guts dripping through her fingers to fall onto the board with a soft splat.
No one spoke.
A thousand thoughts spun through Minerva’s mind, tangled and sharp.
She could leave. She could pack her trunks and hire a coach and be in London before the week was out, and no one could compel her to return.
The terms of the inheritance did not chain her body to this cliff, this house.
It only chained her income to it. She could walk away.
And then what?
Twenty-three shillings. A cold room. The ever-present necessities of survival: coal, bread, lamp oil, soap. Each one a small defeat. She had lived that life for three years and she knew its texture, its smell, its taste.
And Kitty. Kitty whose quarterly allowance existed only because Minerva had signed those documents and agreed to stay in this house.
Kitty who had said, wherever you go, I go without hesitation, who had followed her here and would follow her back to London, back to nothing without complaint or reproach. Which made it worse, not better.
And Nessa. Nessa whose alternative was the questionable mercy of a man who was worse when he was drinking and drinking was most of what he did.
She could leave. But she was not going to.
Fear came in many flavors. Not only the fear of things terrifying and unseen, of darkness pressing at the edges of a room, of her body moving against her will and intent.
But the fear of poverty and hunger and cold.
The fear of watching those she loved be diminished for want of what she could have given them. The fear of letting them down.
Finally, Minerva said, "We finish preparing supper.”
Kitty stared at her. Nessa's mouth fell open.
"We finish preparing supper," Minerva repeated. "We eat. We wash the dishes. We go to bed as we have been doing every night. Because at the end of each night, we have woken to the morning. Every day, we have woken to the morning."
“And none the worse for it,” Kitty said, kicking her chin up a notch, though her voice trembled.
Nessa looked back and forth between them and finally gave a small, decisive nod.
They ate by the light of the kitchen fire, the three of them together.
Above them, the floorboard creaked. Kitty flinched, her gaze sliding to the ceiling.
Nessa squeaked and dropped her spoon with a clatter.
Minerva moved her bowl a precise quarter turn to the left, counting the seconds it took her to inhale, exhale. Then she ate her supper.
She refilled their cups when they were empty and passed the bread and she did not look at the ceiling.
By the time the dishes were washed and the fire banked, Kitty’s shoulders had come down from around her ears and Nessa had stopped jumping when the wind shook the glass. Neither of them had decided to be less frightened. They had simply, gradually, followed Minerva’s lead.
When the last dish was dried and set back on the shelf, Nessa untied her apron and folded it with careful precision. She looked at the door to her room, then up at the ceiling, then at Minerva.
"I don’t know if I can—" She stopped. Swallowed. "Folk say this house isn't right. And now I’ve lived here…"
"Now you’ve lived here, you know that no harm has come to you,” Kitty said, settling herself on the bench with her elbows on the table. She glanced at Minerva. "Tell her, Min."
“Tell her?” Minerva asked, uncertain to what Kitty referred.
"That fear is a liar," Kitty said simply. “That’s what you told me once. I never forgot it.”
“It is,” Minerva said softly. “A liar and a thief. It whispers that the worst is coming and steals the joy from every moment. You must learn to refuse to believe everything it tells you."
Nessa stared at her, eyes wide.
Outside, the wind moved against the glass, restless and searching. Above them, the house was quiet.
"Does it get easier?" Nessa asked.
"It gets more…" Minerva hesitated, searching for the right word. Finally, she settled on, “Practiced. The fear does not diminish. You simply become faster at recognising it for what it is. At refusing to let it steer you."
Nessa chewed her lip. "But something is there."