Foxglove (Belladonna, #2)(65)
How wonderful it would have been for Signa to have a single memory of her parents existing in this space. As it was, she had only remnants of what they’d left behind.
She turned toward more portraits that hung ready for her inspection, a few of them dispersed throughout the parlor. They all appeared to be done by the same hand, though it was a portrait of two women that drew Signa’s eye. She recognized her mother immediately, with her dark hair that had been painted in fast, messy strokes, and severe eyes that were the same shape as Signa’s. Beside her stood a young woman with thick ringlets the color of gingerbread. She was softer than Rima, a ghost of a smile playing upon rosy lips that were puckered like a heart. She had her arm draped around Rima’s waist, pulling her in close for the portrait.
There was so much about her family that she still wanted to know, and yet walking these halls felt like she herself was a ghost infiltrating the memories of a stranger. It was impossible to take a single step without questioning whether her mother had decorated the room she stood in or if her father had ended his nights in here as Elijah so often did in his parlor. Letting her thoughts wander, Signa absently pressed a finger to the portrait, trailing it over the glazed paint. She stopped cold, however, when the lips of the woman standing beside Rima drooped into a frown.
Signa swallowed her gasp as she yanked her hand back, not wanting to alarm Elaine. It had only taken a second for the tip of her finger to go numb from the chill that shot through her spine like the crack of electricity.
There was a spirit watching them. And now it knew Signa could see it.
Wonderful.
“You’ll have a room to yourself in the servants’ quarters,” Signa told Elaine, tucking her numbed finger into the folds of her coat and offering her most practiced smile. “Feel free to pick out whichever you’d like and get yourself settled.”
Elaine had never moved so swiftly as when she bent to grab hold of her luggage. She nodded and hurried to find said quarters, casting furtive glances over her shoulder as if she expected someone to try to snatch her from behind.
Signa waited until Elaine was down the hall before she set her palm atop Gundry’s head with a sigh. “Let’s find ourselves a room of our own, shall we?” And perhaps a spirit, too, while they were at it.
She gathered her belongings and turned her attention to the stairs. They were far more standard than the ones at Thorn Grove, the banister a hefty mahogany wood. A small chunk seemed to have broken off, the wood around it stained dark. The farther into the home she ventured, the slower her steps became as anxiety crept into her bones.
She was trying to have a good outlook, truly. She was trying to stay positive. But now that she was alone for the first time all day, the nerves were settling in.
What if she opened her nursery by accident? Or worse, her parents’ suite? Signa’s mind warred with itself—half of it wanting nothing more than to find that suite and gather all the information she could about her parents’ lives, while the other half warned that their belongings should remain untouched. What if there were things in there that her parents wouldn’t have wanted her to find? What if there was something that made her view them differently than the pristine parents she’d finely crafted in her mind? Not to mention that there was a spirit somewhere nearby. She could feel eyes against her skin, raising goose bumps along the back of her neck. What if it was malicious, as Lillian had once been?
Gundry ran ahead of her, and while Signa had imagined that he might look at least a little menacing while hunting spirits, his lolling tongue hung sideways out of his mouth as he circled back every few minutes as if to say that their path was clear. Signa caught glimpses of a sudden light beneath the door of a room she passed, and flickers of the telltale pale blue of a spirit blinking in and out of the far corner of her vision. Whoever it was, Gundry seemed unconcerned. And if he wasn’t worried, Signa told herself not to be, either. She was a reaper, after all.
It took several minutes of pacing the halls before Signa gathered her courage to try one of the doors. Fortunately, the first suite she came across had clearly been meant for a guest. It was so wonderfully plain that the moment Signa was inside, the unshakable itch in her bones and the roiling in her stomach settled. The tension in her shoulders eased as she dropped her luggage to the floor.
She decided that the first thing she should do was clean. Elaine didn’t deserve to do such an arduous task alone, and the chore would help get her mind off things. And so Signa stripped the bed of its sheets—they might have been white once, though she couldn’t tell through all the dust layered onto them. And that was as far as she got before all the dust made her think back to living with her aunt Magda, and how miserable she’d been before Thorn Grove. From there, it didn’t take long until the dam of swelling emotion she’d been repressing since leaving finally burst open, reminding her once again just how alone she was.
Her stomach tight and her chest trembling, Signa kicked the bedding so that the dirty side lay flat on the floor and sank onto it. After sneezing several times from the dust, Gundry padded to her side to lie beside her, resting his chin on her leg with a gentle lick. Signa curled her fingers in his fur, tears coming hot and fast.
“It’s just you and me, boy.” She sank low enough to rest her head against Gundry’s back and burrowed her face into his neck. He was one of the few slivers of normalcy left in her life, and he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—the thought was so ridiculous that she almost laughed, clutching him tighter until there came a crash of thunder outside the window.