Page 30 of Bane Bloom

Blast. “No, I never said so, and in fact I don’t. But I get the feeling you know more than you’re saying.”

Thorny silence held for a few moments. Finally his head turned, giving me a view of his profile. “I can’t tell you what happened to him, Miss Gray. All I can tell you is that from the time Carroll arrived, he began to go wrong in his mind. It’s to do with Pine Cottage, and the glasshouse. Outsiders don’t belong here.”

This stopped my breath. He had said both so much and so little that it was hard to know what to ask next, considering his limited tolerance for my questions.

“Is that the reason you live out here?” I ventured.

His back expanded as his breath deepened. “One of them.”

I was about to ask what exactly he thought Pine Cottage had done to Mr. Carroll’s mind when at last he turned from the fire. “Warm yourself here, Miss Gray. I’ll go and stoke the fire in the sitting room, and by the time I’ve finished, the storm will have passed and you can go and get changed.”

I deflated with a quiet sigh. “All right.”

As he passed me on his way to the door, I said on impulse, “There’s no reason for you to keep calling me ‘Miss Gray.’ In fact, it makes me feel uncomfortable when I’m calling you ‘Thomas.’ I’m not above you. Even if I was, I don’t care much for such ideas.”

His gaze fixed on me. “What would you have me call you?”

I shrugged, though suddenly self-conscious. “Cricket, like everyone else.”

“Cricket.” The dubious way he said it caused me to shift in my chair. “Is that really your name?”

“It’s a pet name my father gave me as a girl.”

His brows knit. “And are you a girl?”

I stared at him, wanting to be annoyed, but instead I felt foolish. Though I couldn’t be sure whether he was judging me or just unaware he was being rude, my voice was short as I said, “I am as you see.” Which was a mistake, because then his eyes moved over me, and I felt the hot red color in my cheeks.

When his gaze joined with mine again, he said, “I see a woman who is in many ways stuck as a girl.”

This came almost as a physical blow. Who was this near stranger to talk to me in this way? Questioning not only my wardrobe choices but, if I wasn’t mistaken, my very identity.

Did you not just invite him to be more familiar? Did he not just fish you out of the lake?

And by reading some of his mother’s diary, had I not been probing into his past in a much less direct way?

I took a long breath as I tried to consider his statement objectively. I wasn’t sure that he was wrong. But I, too, could be incisive, and after his blunt statement, I no longer felt the need to keep within the bounds of polite conversation.

“And what of you, Thomas?” I challenged, though in a gentle enough tone. “Are you not stuck, too? What really keeps you here? Your family is gone. You say you have no claim to Pine Cottage. How confined your life must be!” I raised my hand and gestured at the room. “Don’t you want more than this?”

He blinked a couple of times while I held my breath. Then he turned and reached for the door handle.

“Thomas,” I said in a stronger voice.

He stopped but didn’t turn.

“Catherine. Before I was ‘Cricket,’ I was Catherine.”

He hesitated a moment, then opened the door and went out.

As the door closed, I sank against the chairback, heart pounding. Our interactions, though less tense than when we first met, were becoming wrenching. I no longer suspected the man might be a brute, but his conversation could certainly be brutal. Yet I’d now also seen that he could be gentle and kind. I wasn’t sure I believed that Pine Cottage had driven a man mad, but I might have almost believed it of Thomas himself.

I thought over the last warning he’d given me about this place. A pattern was emerging in the things he divulged—vague statements that seemed calculated to frighten me: “Many of the plants in the glasshouse are dangerous,” and “Outsiders don’t belong here.”

“This is no mystery,” I muttered to myself. “He simply wishes me to go.”

I wanted to believe it was that simple. But the confusion I’d experienced last night in the glasshouse made that difficult. I’d blamed the headiness of the night jasmine, but what if it was more than that? I thought about the Bane Bloom, and the diary warnings, and Mr. Bane’s mental affliction. He, too, had been an outsider here at one time, moving to Buttermere from London and renovating an old house.

Don’t let it root in your thoughts.