She drew in a breath. Where would she even begin with explaining it all? She certainly could not tell him about the Fairy King. Preston had been clear enough on how he felt about Southern superstition. Confessing to any of it would reveal her as precisely the sort of unstable, untrustworthy girl Effy was so desperate not to be.
“It was just an awkward conversation, like you said,” she replied at last. “I overreacted.”
“I’m sure he’ll get over it,” Preston said. But his expression was uneasy.
Now that Preston was satisfied that Effy would not perish of her injuries, and now that Effy’s headache had begun to recede and her eyes had cleared, they unfurled the blueprints on the desk. By then it had grown dark, and only a pale trickle of starlight bled through the window. The moon was pearl white and not quite full, cobwebbed with lacy clouds.
Preston lit two kerosene lamps and brought them over so they could read by their orange glow.
The blueprints were very old. Effy could tell because they were actually blue. A decade or so ago, traditional blueprints had become obsolete, replaced by less expensive printing methods that rendered blue ink on a white background. The blueprints for Hiraeth Manor were the bright sapphire color of her mother’s favorite brand of gin. The edges were ragged and much of the ink was smudged and faded.
The first page showed a cross section of the house—far, far better than anything Effy could have dreamed of drawing—and the second showed a floor plan.
Preston squinted. “I can’t make sense of any of this.”
“I can.” Effy was pleased that for once she knew something he didn’t.
She drew her thumb down the page, tracing the outline of the first floor. There was the dining room, the kitchen, the foyer, and the horrifying bathroom she had not even been permitted to lay eyes on. Nothing out of the ordinary there. But when she looked for the door to the basement, she found nothing.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
“What?”
“It doesn’t look like the basement is in the blueprints at all,” she said. “But, well, a basement isn’t exactly something you can tack on at the last minute. It has to be part of the architectural plans from the very start. The only thing I can think is maybe this house was built on a previously existing foundation, one that already had a basement.”
Preston’s jaw twitched. “You mean there used to be another structure here, before Hiraeth? It’s hard to imagine how that’s possible. Even this house seems to defy the laws of nature.”
“It wouldn’t be so strange. The Bay of Nine Bells was ravaged by the Drowning, but that doesn’t mean nothing survived.” Effy looked down at the blueprints again, feeling certain of her theory. “It’s easier to repair an existing foundation than to build something entirely new.”
“You’re the expert, I suppose,” Preston said, though he sounded unconvinced.
It was curious, but it didn’t solve any of their problems, since Preston had point-blank refused to go anywhere near the basement, and his face had turned pale at even the mention of it. Effy scanned the drawing of the second floor. There was the study, and the door out to the crumbling balcony, and then the series of rooms Ianto had forbidden her from seeing: his and his mother’s bedchambers. The larger one had to be the master, and then on the left, Ianto’s.
As was always the case when she came up, Myrddin’s widow caught in Effy’s mind like the prick of a needle.
“You’ve never met the mistress of the house, right?” she asked.
“No,” Preston said. “I’ve never even spoken to her on the phone. She’s old, and I imagine she values her privacy.”
But a chill prickled the back of her neck. “If she values her privacy so much, she wouldn’t have invited the university to poke around here.”
He folded his arms across his chest and replied defensively, “I’m only looking through her husband’s things, not hers. Whoever Mrs. Myrddin is, she’s not relevant to my scholarly inquiries.”
“But haven’t you wondered—outside of your scholarly inquiries—why she’s so reclusive?” All of it felt wrong, had felt wrong ever since she came to Hiraeth, and certainly ever since she saw the Fairy King. “When I’ve asked Ianto about her, he hasn’t said much.”
“We’re not writing a thesis on Myrddin’s widow, Effy. We should just be relieved she’s staying out of our way.”
Effy could think of at least five rebuttals, but in the end she just pressed her lips shut.