“You were very good with her,” Dr. Morant says when we are back in the coach.
“I had a younger sister.”
A long pause. Then, “I know, and that was insensitive of me.”
“It was not. I am glad I could help.”
The silence falls, awkward again, reminding me of our breakfasts, which reminds me of what I overheard this morning. Since things likely cannot get more awkward, I take advantage.
“I understand you were not expecting a longterm guest,” I say. “I do hate the imposition, and I want to offer to stay at a village inn, but I have no money to pay for my room. I am also afraid that my pursuer might attack someone in town if I am there. It puts me in a very uncomfortable position, and I would appreciate any advice you might give. Do you think it would be safe for me to stay in town if I repay my visit through chores of some sort? While I am hardly an attorney of law, I can advise on contracts and such as well as interpret the law as needed.”
Silence, and I fist my hands so tightly that my nails cut into my ungloved palms. I am correct. He wants me gone, and he is trying to think of a solution.
“You wish to leave Raven’s Moor,” he says finally, his gaze straight ahead.
“I wish not to be a burden—”
“I like simplicity. Straight-forward talk. I understand that is not how things are done in the city, but I have not been a man of the city in years, and even when I lived there, I was not one. Fine manners are lost on me. Speak plainly, please. You wish to leave Raven’s Moor, and you are coming up with excuses for it.”
My jaw tenses, and when I unclench it, my voice is cool. “You wish me to speak plainly? I overheard you and your aunt this morning. You were arguing about me. You want me to go.”
His hands slacken on the reins, and he looks over. “What exactly did you hear?”
“Very little. I was moving past the door and did not wish to eavesdrop, but you were not speaking in hushed tones. The gist is that you wish me gone, as soon as I can go.”
“That was not—” He exhales through his teeth and steers the horse into the forest. “I asked you to provide companionship for my aunt, and you have outdone yourself, to the point where she has broached the subject of asking you to stay on, as her companion. That is what we were arguing about.”
“Oh.”
“I said I like to speak plainly, and I am doing that now, Edie. I trust it will not go back to her.”
“It will not.”
He signals for the horse to slow on its walk through Ravenswood. “My aunt is very pleased with your companionship. With your interest in her garden and her herbal work. It is understandable that she might wish you to stay on, but my objection is that we would be taking advantage of your situation. As long as you feel pursued by this man, you are not free to make any choice about staying. Also, you might feel obligated, in return for our hospitality and care.”
He turns and meets my eyes. “There is no obligation, but both my aunt and I could say that to infinitum, and it will not stop you—a young woman raised in polite society—from feeling obligated. My point was that I did not wish her to even subtly suggest a longer stay when you cannot give a free answer. My aunt can be impulsive.”
“She enjoys my company and is looking to extend it when she has not yet even truly had time to get to know me.”
“Yes.”
I think back to what I overheard, and this fits well enough that if I do not look too closely, I can tell myself it is the whole answer. Yet there is that sliver not quite covered by his explanation.
I do not consider pushing, though. It feels as if it would be asking for an answer when I have not formulated the question. I must stick to the question I do know, the one that needs a solid reply—am I welcome in his home?
“I do understand that you were not expecting a month-long guest,” I say. “It must feel an intrusion.”
“It is not,” he says firmly.
“Is there anything I can do to make it easier? For example, I know you must be accustomed to a having a quiet breakfast alone.”
He glances over. “Is that what you were trying to give me today?”
“I thought you would prefer your morning meal alone.”
He turns back to the horse. “As I have said, I am well aware of how this could be uncomfortable for you. Staying in a strange house with a strange man. An unmarried man.” He pauses. “Though, I suppose my aunt would say my marital status hardly matters. A wedding ring would not necessarily keep a man from bothering you. I am, however, aware of both the situation and your situation. You are dealing with the unconscionable behavior of a monstrous man, one who has taken advantage of your precarious place in the world, as a young woman with no family and, presumably, some money. You spurned him, and so he has done the unthinkable, making a grotesque mockery of the courtship pursuit. Now you find yourself at the mercy of another man. A bachelor who may be in need of a wife.”
“And you fear that if you speak to me at breakfast, I might misread your intentions? You keep saying things are very different here, sir, but if that is how a man courts a woman—making conversation over eggs and toast—then it is a very odd place indeed.”
He gives me a mock-stern look. “Pray tell, my dear, how many times have you dined alone with a man in London?”
My nod concedes his point. “Never. I have, however, had breakfast at the house of family friends when it was only myself and a man in the dining room. The circumstances—and the presence of staff—make it acceptable. The same applies here.” I peer at him. “Unless you really are in the market for marriage.”
His laugh is so sudden that it makes me smile. “Certainly not, and I appreciate that you said that in jest.”
“Does it help that I never considered the possibility you might be sizing me up for a bridal trousseau?”
“It does.”
“Then might we have some actual conversation without fear that I might interpret ‘pass the salt’ as a sign you are going to lock me in the basement with your last three wives?”
That makes him laugh even harder, and when he looks at me, his dark eyes dance and it takes me a moment to look away.
“There are only two wives down there,” he says. “The third is in the attic.”
“So I will have a choice? Attic or basement?”
“You will. I promise it. Personally, I would suggest the attic. There is a much better view.” He looks over. “We have reached an understanding then? You are welcome at Raven’s Moor, Edie. Please do not ever think you are not.”
“Thank you.”
“Now let us get home. I believe it is past time to check on your raven.”
* * *
“Wake up.”
I moan and toss in my sleep, dimly aware of my legs tangling in the sheets.
“I said, wake up!”
My eyes fly open, heart thudding as I stare into darkness.
“What do you think you are doing, Edie?”
I struggle to inhale, exhale, anything, but all I can see is darkness, all I can hear is the pound of my heartbeat.
“Have you forgotten me so quickly?” he croons. “I thought I was more memorable than that.”
Fingers trembling, I light the bedside lamp, and the darkness lifts to reveal . . .
An empty room.
I press my palms to my face and focus on breathing. A nightmare. I was having—
“Edie!”
His snarl rips through the room, and I skitter backward, spine pressing into the headboard. I look left and right, but there is no sign of him.
As if he is a ghost again.
One I can no longer see.
“Did you have a fine laugh when he sent me away?” my pursuer says. “Snicker to yourself at my helplessness? I do not know what happened, but I am here now, and he is not.”
The voice slides around me, and I follow it, struggling to see him.
“I ought to pity him,” he says. “Yet another fool who has fallen into your trap.”
“Trap?” The word bubbles up, my fear making the edges ragged even as scorn drips from the center. “How did I trap you? I never expressed a single iota of interest—”
“That is the trap. A pretty girl who will not deign to entertain a man’s suit. Who spurns him as if he is not good enough. A man cannot help being intrigued. Feeling challenged.”
“It was not a challenge!” My voice rises, those ragged edges mending with the surge of fury. “I was polite. I said I was not interested. A score of other young women were, and yet you had to have me.”
“I deserved you!” he roars, making me shrink back in spite of myself. “I was supposed to have you. That was your father’s wish, and yet you made him drive me off. Ungrateful wretch of a daughter.”
To say my father wanted me to wed him is the purest proof of his delusion. Of his twisting of memory. But who would I be arguing with? No one who would hear it.
“Get up,” he says when I refuse to rise to his bait.
I glare into the room, and I do not move.
“Get up!” he shouts, and a slap hits my cheek so hard my head snaps backward. Before I can recover, hands wrap around my throat, thumbs pressing under my chin, forcing my face up. “Did I say you could stop running?”
I shake my head.
“Then get out of this bed and run.”
“Ankle,” I choke out the word as his hands grip my throat. “Twisted.”
“Did I do that to you? No, I did not. You did it. I do not care if you sprint or hobble. You will move as fast as you can until I say you can stop. And I have not said it.”
As he speaks, I sneak one hand up. Then I grab for his, but my fingers pass through air and his keep squeezing.
For one heartbeat, wild panic floods me, and I open my mouth to scream that I will do it. I will do whatever he asks. Just please do not kill me.
Do not kill me?
Why? What good does it do me to fight? No more good than it did me to argue against his delusions.
I knew he was not truly gone. I have spent five days refusing to think of him or of what his silence meant. I had peace, and I would not spoil it by fretting that it might end.
I enjoyed the companionship of my hosts. I learned from Mrs. Morant. I helped save a raven. I comforted a girl in pain. I read books and played card games and drank brandy, and for five days, I was as close to normal as I could be. As close to happy. But I did not, for one moment, believe it would last.
When Dr. Morant told me that his aunt wanted me to stay, I did not even spare a heartbeat dreaming of such a thing. That was a fantasy on the same unreachable scale as my father’s fantasy of me taking over his law practice. One cannot grieve for a dream one never dared entertain.
I had not escaped this man. God or fate or some kinder power had granted me a temporary reprieve, that is all. And now he threatens to kill me, and I want to fight? For what?
His fingers tighten, and I start to choke, and I close my eyes. I imagine my mother and father on the other side. I imagine Grace, running forward to meet me, Mother scolding her for running in hiked-up skirts, but in that way that was never truly scolding. Just putting voice to an obligatory objection, even as she smiles at my sister’s willfulness.
I picture my grandmother. I picture the friend who drowned nearly twenty years ago on a hot summer’s day. I picture the handsome pianist who kissed me behind the house and went off to war and lies buried an ocean away.
I picture them all, and I prove myself as willful as Grace, refusing to believe in any other afterlife for myself. I will not imagine hellfire and damnation. I will see those I lost and—
The man throws me from the bed so violently that I do not even realize what is happening until I strike the floor. Then footsteps thud toward me, slow and deliberate.
“Run.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head. He grabs me by the front of my nightgown, lifts me into the air and then drops me.
“Run, or I kill them. The old lady and the fool. I will wrap my hands around her withered neck—”
I scramble to my feet, and he gives a low laugh.
“Good girl. Now run.”
I hobble toward the door and throw it open. The hall is still and silent, and I pause at that. The man had not been quiet, with his roars and snarls. He had thrown me off the bed. I had shouted at him. Yet neither Dr. Morant nor his aunt have stirred.
Which is good, I tell myself. Better that they sleep through this. If they wake—particularly Dr. Morant, who has already demonstrated a foolish urge to protect me . . .
No. Stay asleep. Please.
I hobble down the stairs, gripping the railing and pushing back against the pain in my ankle. When the smell of smoke drifts past, I freeze, eyes widening.
The house smells smoky because Dr. Morant lit a larger fire than usual, the evening being chilly. His aunt may even have one going in her bedchamber. Smelling smoke in a house on an autumn night is hardly cause for alarm. And yet . . .
I shake off my misgivings. It is barely a whiff. All is fine. Or it will be fine once I am gone. I limp toward the front door. Just as I am thinking that I should have grabbed my cane, I see the elephant foot by the coat rack . . . and the walking sticks and umbrellas in it.
I yank out a walking stick and throw open the front door. There is no lock, and it swings wide easily, the night air rushing in.
I pause there, in the doorway, smelling the sweet scent of the moors, my mind drifting back to my pleasant days rambling there with Mrs. Morant. I glance over my shoulder.
“Run!” he snarls, right at my ear.
I force myself to turn away from the quiet house. I must go. I know that. Go, and do not grieve what is lost. Think only of the Morants’ kindness and care, and how much I needed it.
My throat aches from where he choked me, but I force myself to breathe. I lurch out the door, and I do not look back. He still shoves me between the shoulder blades, and I stagger off the front step and barely keep my balance.
“Run,” he says.
I hear the smirk in his voice, and I want to howl, to scream, to wheel and beat my fists against his chest. Yet any reaction will only make it worse. He takes glee in my rage and my fear. My only defense is to give him nothing.
I start down the lane, using the walking stick and moving as fast as I can. Do not think of the Morants. Or, if I must, remember that I do this for them. It is the only thanks I can give, and they will never even know it. They will presume I ran off in the night.
Will Dr. Morant blame himself? Will he think he did not reassure me well enough this afternoon, and I only pretended to believe myself a welcome guest, still planning to run come nightfall?
I cannot worry about that. Misguided guilt is better than terrible death. Do not think on it. Move and—
Something crackles behind me. I spin just to see that the front door to Raven’s Moor stands open. I tense, expecting to see Dr. Morant or his aunt step forth, and my mouth opens to shout for them to go back inside. But no one is there. The door is open because that is how I left it. Yet something moves in the hallway beyond. A dark sinewy fog twisting against an unearthly glow.
My chest seizes as I stare, unable to comprehend what I am seeing. Is that my tormenter, taken yet another shape? Or some other wild specter invading the Morant home?
The fog billows out and that unearthly red glow licks at the walls, and still I stare. Deep inside, something screams that I know what this is, but my mind is fixated on phantoms and it is not until the stink reaches me that I understand.
Fire.
The house is on fire.