Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Minerva’s fingers stilled on the keys.
The silence filled the space, pulling the very air from the room.
Finally, Dashiell said, “The music caught me and I could not make myself interrupt.” The words were spoken low and rough, as though it cost him something to speak at all.
He recovered himself then, the mask resettling.
“The door was open," he said.
"It was," she said. She did not say she forgave his trespass; she was not certain forgiveness was the right word for what she felt about finding him standing there. "You did not knock."
"No." He did not offer an excuse. “I came today to discuss the matter of Cliff Cottage. I am prepared to make you a substantial offer. More than the property warrants.”
“Mr. Granger said you might.” She had been expecting this conversation, had assembled her response before she even arrived in Cornwall. She was only surprised it had taken him this long. “I cannot sell.”
His expression shifted, his attention sharpening. “Cannot, or will not?”
“Cannot.” She kept her voice even. “The terms of my inheritance are specific. I cannot sell.” She drew a slow breath.
“There is a further condition that predates my cousin’s will.
I must reside here. Not for a period. Permanently.
For the duration of my life. And if I decline that condition, I receive nothing. Catherine was bound by the same terms.”
An expression flitted across his features, his stillness and control slipping for a fraction of a second. On another man, she might have thought it was pain.
“She never told me,” he said. It was not an accusation but rather quiet recognition of what he had not known but thought he should have.
“Why do you want it? This place,” she asked.
“I thought that when the cottage passed to someone who had no attachment to it, no history with it, I would be able to purchase it because that person would have no reason to want it.” He paused. “You would have no reason to want it.”
“But why do you want it?”
“To pull it down,” he said. “Whatever harm this place has done, to the people who have lived here, to Catherine, is inseparable from the house itself. Remove the house and you remove the conditions that made the harm possible. Or so I reasoned.”
Minerva felt a flicker of shock to hear his plan and his reasoning laid out so baldly.
Not for what he revealed, but for the way it dovetailed with the requirements of the inheritance, always chaining a descendant of her line to this place.
Her fingers drifted to the pendant, cool and quiet as she wondered if she was bound to this place because some monstrous entity needed her here, or because she was the boundary that stood between it and everyone else.
“Your plan was always flawed,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he said, and she did not know if it was because his thoughts followed the same pattern as hers or because he saw some other limiting factor. In truth, it mattered not.
“What harm do you speak of? What harm did this house do Catherine?” she asked, thinking of the cellar and the empty third room and the entities on the cliff, wondering what he knew that he was choosing not to share.
He only watched her in silence, offering no reply.
After a time, she turned back to the keys, her hands settling into the opening bars once more, not from specific intent but because in this moment, the enormity of her realization overwhelmed her.
Was she prisoner or jailor…or something else?
She could not think about this now and so she played, letting only the music fill her.
It demanded things of her that three years of neglect made difficult: her left hand carrying the flowing undercurrent while her right hand found the melody above it, neither free of the current beneath nor submerged by it.
She coaxed her fingers through passages they had once played instinctively.
The melody left and came back, left and came back.
To her younger self, the piece had always felt as if it carried a melancholy that contradicted the major key. Now she realized it was grief wearing a facade of composure; she understood that with a clarity that made her throat ache.
She played through to where the melody returned for the last time, quieter now, and then she let it go.
“Schubert,” he said after a moment, the word softly spoken.
Turning on the bench, she found him sitting in the chair nearest the window, his hat on his knee, his expression cool and composed.
“You know it,” she said.
“I knew it badly, once. A boy at school who had precise technique and equally precise lack of feeling.” His expression shifted, almost wistful. “I did not know until now what it was supposed to sound like.”
She made a wry smile. “I think neither did I.”
She rose from the bench, smoothing her skirt, and the distance between them was suddenly very apparent — not great, perhaps six feet, the width of the parlor's worn rug — and also somehow insufficient.
The room was small. He was not. And the way he looked at her, his eyes copper bright, his attention wholly focused, seeing things she did not think she wished to share.
“Were you away at school a long time?” she asked, uncertain where to put her hands, where to look, where to stand.
“Long enough.” A pause. “Longer than most. Whenever possible, I stayed away when others went home.”
She understood from that pause that he was offering her something, a glimpse beneath the veneer he wore. “You did not miss home.”
It was not quite a question, but he answered nonetheless.
“No,” he said, his tone flat. “I did not miss home.” Another pause, and she thought he had said all he would, then he surprised her by saying more.
“I was not a boy who made friends with ease. The masters found me difficult. The other boys found me—” He considered.
“Strange, I think, is the word they would have used.” The corners of his mouth quirked in the barest hint of a smile.
She felt the answering smile curve her own.
He stared at her lips for a long moment, then continued.
“But there was a library. And distance from Cornwall. Both of which I valued considerably.”
“The library as refuge. The distance as relief,” she murmured.
His brows rose. “Quite.”
She suspected it cost him much to admit that.
He was quiet for a moment, his expression contemplative.
“There was a boy,” he said at length. “He found out something about me I would have preferred he not know.” He paused. “About my life, my home. My father. The marks he left. He made use of that knowledge in the way such boys do. Carefully, persistently. Sly and quiet.”
Minerva held her breath, afraid that even the sound of an exhalation would stop him.
“I warned him once,” Dashiell said. “That seemed appropriate. Fair. He did not believe me.” His gaze was locked on her own.
“What happened in the stairwell was efficient. He did not trouble me again.” He paused.
“I felt neither pride nor satisfaction. Certainly not guilt. I made a choice, though there were other options. I chose the one that was quick and clean. It was the first time I recall such a decision, but far from the last.” He looked at her steadily. “That capacity has not left me.”
She exhaled at last.
His father had beaten him, not as a rarity or a form of punishment.
He had beaten him because he could, because he wanted to.
She understood that first with a clarity that made her chest tighten.
And then she absorbed the rest of it. Dashiell had hurt someone.
Deliberately, efficiently, in a stairwell with no witnesses.
He had chosen to do it when other options existed.
And afterward, he felt nothing that resembled remorse.
She ought to be frightened; she knew that.
She was alone with a man who had just told her with complete composure that he was capable of cold violence.
But she was not frightened. What she felt did not have a comfortable place or name.
She looked at him, his controlled stillness, his copper eyes, the scar at his temple.
As a boy, he had been beaten by his father, had learned to be very still. Surviving that would shape a man.
She knew something about survival and the way it molded and shaped.
“Why do you tell me this?” she whispered.
“Because you shared a secret piece of yourself with me,” he said. “It seemed only fair.”
“I did not share it,” she said. “You arrived unannounced and took it without asking.” As he had taken her name.
“And I do not regret it.” His lips curved in a smile dark and predatory.
That smile reached inside her and drew her taut as a piano wire, left her humming and tense. She looked away.
“Tell me something true,” he said softly. An invitation. A command.
“The last time I played was—” She broke off, swallowed, unsure why she obeyed.
Then, without her truly deciding to say more, she found the words tumbling free.
“More than three years ago, before the solicitor came. I played that afternoon in blissful ignorance. I did not know it would be the last time.”
He was quiet, his attention focused wholly upon her, missing nothing.
“I thought the music was gone, along with everything else. I did not expect to find it still here, unchanged, waiting.” She pressed a single key, softly, and let the note fade.
“Not unchanged,” he said. Her gaze flew to his. “The music is still there, but not unchanged. Different. Shaped by the experiences of the years since.” He paused. “What did you lose the day the solicitor came, Minerva?”
It was both invitation and command, softly spoken, threaded with steel. She heard the order beneath the question. Tell me.
Almost did she refuse to answer. But she realized he had gifted her his honesty, and he asked her to gift him the same in return.