I slammed the door shut before we had a cold buffet in the front corridor. The shouts grew louder, denied their target. If I had better aim I'd have opened the door and tossed it all right back at them. But with my luck I'd hit the sleeping baby or an innocent old grandmother out for her morning constitution. And then we'd be dragged through the streets for certain.
Dread uncurled in the pit of my stomach.
"Is that cabbage?" Colin asked, coming out of the dining room. Listening to the raised voices, he reached for the doorknob, frowning.
I caught his hand. "Don't."
"Whyever not?"
I raised an eyebrow. "You'll get a rotted meat tart in the eye for your trouble,that's why.
Could one write a strongly worded letter to the deceased requiring their full cooperation?
Alyxandra HarveyWe welcome our beloved dead." Determined, I lifted my eyelids and searched the room. The feather in Mrs. Thompson's white curls bounced in a draft. Mr. Hunt's whiskers quivered. Lord Marshall sat entirely too near to Mother; his knee must surely be pressed against hers. The candle flickered. Someone cleared their throat. The poodle whined, bored.
No spirits.
They'd been hounding me all week; the least they could do was show themselves when they were needed. It was just rude otherwise. "Spirits," I snapped. "I said you are welcome here." Colin coughed once. "As long as you mean us no ill," I amended, remembering the surge of the angry spirit at the Whitestone Manor pond.
I tried not to look as if I was hiding a handsome young lad under the mattress.
Alyxandra HarveyAre you serious about leaving?"
I touched my aching face. "Yes.But I don't know how."
"I'd go with you," Colin said quietly.
"Really?"
"You know I would."
"If you could do anything, what would you do? Would you go back to Ireland?"
"Maybe," he said. "I've no family left there but I miss the green hills. I'd love to show them to you, show you Tara and the Cliffs of Moher.We could live in a thatched cottage and keep sheep."
I grinned at him. "If you clean up after them."
"What would be your perfect day then?" he asked, grinning back at me. "If you don't like my sheep?"
"Your cottage sounds nice," I allowed. "I'd like to sleep in late and read as many books as I'd like and drink tea with lemon and eat pineapple slices for breakfast."
"No velvet dresses and diamonds?"
I rolled my eyes, then stopped when the bruises throbbed. "Ouch.And no, of course not.I don't care about that. Only books." I looked at him shyly. "And you."
"That's all right then," he said softly.
We were so close to home now, I would have tripped an old woman with a cane if she'd stood in the way of the first available chair.
Alyxandra HarveyIf I'd been ten years old again I'd have stuck my tongue out at Caroline. At sixteen, I ought to be above such behavior.
I wasn't.
I was going to have to use my teeth to pull the curtains aside. I was leaning over, barng my teeth, when the thick curtain was yanked aside.
"What on earth are you doing?" Peter drawled. "You look positively feral.
And in her underthings, no less!" Murder was less scandalous than my corset and pantalettes. She sniffed. "Like mother, like daughter.
Alyxandra HarveyDearest Reece,
I know you think it improper, or at the very least imprudent, for us to write to one another, but I don't care.There are too many rules as it is and they would choke me if I let them. Between corsets and lessons and curtsies and etiquette, I am hardly myself, and that is how they want it. They would prefer we all dress and talk and think (or not think) alike, like paper dolls.
I do not wish to be a paper doll.
Surely you can see that I am stronger than that.I don't give a fig for the scandalbroth or the gossipmongers. Let us remove to Paris, where no one knows us to care and where they dine on scandal with eclairs every morning.
You will say again that it is impossible but I refuse to believe it. I know with every touch of your hand on mine, with every stolen kiss, that nothing is impossible.
Perhaps love isn't meant to be simple. Perhaps this is merely a test, such as Psyche went through to prove herself to Cupid. Would you have me count lentils, beloved?
And as you claim I have the most to lose, I pray you will let me decide for myself what it is I want and need.
Which is you.
Not silks or lobster soup in crystal bowls or diamonds around my neck.
Just you.
You say again and again that you love me.
Prove it.
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