He didn’t answer, and it wasn’t until I lay in bed, watching the candlelight flicker on the ceiling, that I remembered what had been directly behind me in the parlor. The painting of my cousin Violet.
His dead wife.
When I arose, I dressed myself in a gown of pale green lawn, a dress I’d always liked because it set off my olive-tinged skin and dark eyes. I was no beauty like Violet—yet properly attired, I was passable. My hair was thick and glossy and as dark as the darkest woods shipped in from India and Africa. My jaw and cheekbones were fine enough, although marred by my nose, which was slightly bumped in the middle, as my brother’s had been. And my eyes were rather too large, I felt, too large and too well-rimmed by my eyelashes. For better or for worse, the darkness of my eyes and the cast of my skin—gifts from my Welsh mother—barred me from being truly considered beautiful in the pale, rosy manner of most English girls.
I went downstairs for a quiet breakfast—toast and eggs by myself in the dining room, the early morning light slanting in through the single small window. Markham Hall was brighter during the day, but it would never be an airy place. Something of a medieval gloom clung to the corners and crannies, even in the face of oncoming sunshine.
I liked it quite a lot, actually.
“Mr. Markham left for business in Scarborough early this morning,” Mrs. Brightmore informed me as curtly as possible. “I have no idea when he’ll be back, so you’d best not plan on his company today.”
“As we discussed last night, I shall find myself more than capable of coping on my own.” Around her, politeness came only with a struggle. I resisted the temptation to demand the source of her ire with me—likely she would deny it and then resent me all the more. Better to let her fester in whatever imagined disadvantage I had put her at, while I continued on unfettered by her rancor.
After breakfast, I decided on a stroll around the grounds. Despite the melancholy air of the shadowed hall, the grounds in full summertime were wondrous, green and fresh and dappled with sunlight. I made my way past the small garden and stables and into the woods themselves, following a winding path that eventually opened into a wide pasture.
The servant from last night knelt near the dry stone wall, several cracked stones around his feet. I’d planned on a quiet morning with only myself and the trees, but I found I wanted to know more about this place that was to be my home, and so far, he’d been the only kind face I’d seen. Mr. Markham had been fascinating—magnetic even—but kind?
No. Nothing about that stern face and lean frame belied kindness.
“Hello,” I said as I approached the servant.
He wiped his forehead. “Hello, miss.”
“I don’t think I caught your name last night. I’m Ivy Leavold, Mr. Markham’s cousin by marriage.”
“I’m Gareth,” he said with a smile. He had an open face, blue-eyed and friendly, and when he extended his hand, I shook it. “I’m Mr. Markham’s valet.”
“Are valets here normally in the habit of repairing walls?”
He laughed. “Well-spotted. I was hired on as a valet three years ago, but as Mr. Markham is rarely at home—and these days prefers to travel without a servant—I’ve been applied to other tasks. But I shoulder my duties as best I can. It is much better than working on a farm or in a mill like my brothers.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.” I sat on an intact portion of the wall, staring at the verdant, rustling forest around me. At home, on a day like this, I would have run barefoot across the field or shouted until my voice grew hoarse. A wild energy then threatened to spill over into me, out of me. I wanted to feel the grass on my feet and the wind on my face and read in the sun with a bottle of Madeira nearby.
Like I would have at home.
Home.
“…careful,” Gareth was telling me.
I brought myself back to the present. “My apologies,” I said. “What were you saying?”
Gareth pulled some hearting stones out of a nearby pail. “I said the locals think Markham Hall is cursed. Or rather, that Mr. Markham himself is cursed. It was so awful what happened to Violet, killed only a month after they married.” He spoke her name with a softness that bordered on reverence.
“Yes,” I murmured, my mind drifting from this valet’s familiarity with my cousin to her untimely death. “And she was such a talented horsewoman.”
“It was Mr. Markham’s horse,” he said, and there was real pain in his voice. “She wasn’t used to riding him.”
Even as a girl, she’d loved riding, insisting on it every day, even in the rain. And most of all she’d loved the unpredictable horses—the stallions and the angry mares. Perhaps her death was not that shocking after all, if she still rode animals like that.
“What happened to Mr. Markham’s first wife?”
Gareth shrugged. “It was before I came here. Mr. Markham was a very young man when he first married, and I believe his bride was young too. She was taken with consumption, or so the stories go. Bedridden not long into their honeymoon, and died before it ended. Her grave is next to the other Mrs. Markham’s, in the village churchyard.”
The turrets of the tower cragged darkly over the trees. I tried to imagine the churchyard beyond the hall, no doubt as ancient and stately as the house itself. “Hard to believe such a beautiful place could see so much sadness.”
“It’s more beautiful on the outside than on the inside.” There was a darkness to his voice, a bitter wariness, but when I glanced over at him, the source was unapparent. And I got the distinct feeling that I wouldn’t learn any more from Mr. Markham’s valet today.
I slid off the wall, brushing crumbled lichen off my dress. “Goodbye, Gareth.”
