At last he reached for her. He cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking her skin as he gazed into her eyes. “I must apologize for how foolish I was, thinking that you staying the night here would pose any problem at all. In fact, having you here made everything that much easier.”
She felt a surge of pride at that. “If the roads are clear, I would very much like to stay the night again. With you. Will you consider it?”
He hesitated. Barely a breath, but she caught it and the slight tensing of his jaw. “I would still ask you to return to the surgery,” he said, though he kept his tone light. “Mr. Lowell will need the night off.”
She had agreed to those terms, and she would live up to them until they both agreed she need not. “He will,” she said. “I understand.”
“I do have something for you, though.” He pulled a thin book from his bag. “My monograph, on Mr. Aethridge. I thought you might like to read it.”
“Of course,” she said. She took it from him and opened it to the frontispiece, where Augustine’s name was printed in large, bold letters. “How horrid is it, though? The illness, I mean, not the writing.”
“Well, I wouldn’t recommend it for bedtime reading,” he said. “Even with all of the medical theory laid on top of it, it is a terrifying tale. He was always in good cheer, but sometimes, when I think of what he went through, his body turning to bone around him until he could no longer move—it’s not the best for the nerves even on a good day.”
“I shall take that into consideration,” she said. “But you may be surprised to learn that I have nerves forged of steel.”
“I’m not surprised at all,” he said, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. That single touch made her feel half drunk. “I’ll see you this evening.”
“I look forward to it,” she said.
He looked at her for another long moment, drinking in the sight of her in his foyer like a patient tasting rich broth for the first time in weeks, and then he turned from her, took up his oiled coat, and left the hall.
* * *
DRAPED IN DAYLIGHT, Lindridge Hall was still undeniably strange. Hallways did not run in sensible lines, and the house sprawled more than it needed to, given the rooms it contained. She found several fake doors that only confused her more. On the third floor, the pressed-tin ceilings were embossed with intricate geometric patterns, eschewing the more common botanical inspirations. More than once, as Jane wandered the halls that morning, clutching the chatelaine she had borrowed from Mrs. Purl, she would catch a glimpse of a room or the angle of a hallway and think that she saw some grander design to it, some shape that was only visible from a certain perspective. And then the illusion would disperse.
The things that made Augustine feel ashamed—the undusted gasoliers, the wainscoting with its chipped paint, the worn, mildewing runners in the hall—all barely registered in the face of such undefinable oddities.
She drew back dusty curtains to let the watery sunlight spill inside the house, and wondered at the small things she found abandoned. An iron candlestick with a half taper of melted wax here, a sheaf of pianoforte music there … all of them fragments of a life that had once been lived here. Beyond those shards of history, the rooms were empty, suppurating with an omnipresent damp. The west wing of the third floor smelled of must and rot, and it only grew stronger as she opened the last door onto the library.
Ceiling-high, empty bookshelves surrounded dusty chairs and tables. A great arching bowl of green glass, condensation running down its metal girding, crowned the room and trapped moisture within. Some of the panes no longer fit well in their frames, and rain entered along the seams, flowing down to where it had begun to rot away at the floorboards. The stench of mildew was relentless.
It had been abandoned, just like all the rest. This entire grand house, abandoned. How did that happen?
And yet how beautiful it must have been when the glass was polished and the sun shone in undisturbed, when the room smelled of wood smoke and paper and ink! She could have spent days lost in stories there. But now, here, she left it with a saddened heart.
At the stairs, she met Mrs. Purl, who was carrying something dark in her arms. It was sooty, the surface cracked like a half-burnt log, but the shape was all wrong. “Strangest thing, ma’am,” Mrs. Purl said when she noticed Jane looking. “I found it in the old master bedroom. But I am sure I cleaned the whole room last week, and there have been no fires there since I came here. It must be new, though the ashes seemed very old.”