Dark Season by Joanna Lowell Read Free Book Online

Rutherford. He’d been the Tromblys’ butler for as long as Isidore could remember. The years had not been kind. His face was thin and heavily scoured. Phillipa had been a great favorite with him.
    Isidore wanted to say something. But didn’t know what. He stood looking at the man for a moment too long, awkward on the step.
    You should rest, Rutherford. Sit down with a warming pan. Looks like you could use it.
He couldn’t think how to communicate his affection and concern for the butler without hurting the man’s pride. He’d forgotten all of his social graces. If he’d ever had any. Luckily, the expression in Rutherford’s pale, rheumy eyes made words unnecessary.
    “Thank you,” he said, “but I’ll call tomorrow.”
    He turned from the door, and that’s when the sound reached his ears. Faint. Melancholy. Someone in the house was playing a Bach sonata.
    His blood ran cold. Every hair on his body stiffened, rose. How many times had he played it, that very sonata? He on the violin, Phillipa on the harpsichord.
    He whirled on the step, thrust out his arm. The front door closed on his bicep, and he forced it open. Rutherford stepped back into the hall. His thin lips had whitened.
    “Who is that?” Isidore advanced into the hall. He didn’t wait for an answer. The music had wrapped him with silver chains, and deep in the house, in the music room, a winch was turning, reeling him in. Pulling him forward.
    Someone was playing Phillipa’s harpsichord.
    “My lord.” Rutherford’s voice meant nothing. No sound penetrated except for those haunting, silvery strains. He didn’t realize he was at the music room door until he saw his hand on the doorknob.
    Nothing had changed in the music room. He might have been stepping back in time. The walls alternated pale-green papers and tapestries patterned with birds peeking through green-and-blue foliage. A marble bust of Bach rested on a pillar near a curtained window. A lyre hung above the mantel. The room was immaculate, not a spot of dust on any surface, yet the very air weighed upon him. It was thick with everything he’d lost.
    I am mad,
he thought.
I am finally utterly and completely mad.
    For the music that filled the room came from
her
fingers, the touch so light, so quick and sure. A ghost was playing for an audience of ghosts. And for him.
    Dozens of empty chairs were arrayed about the room. The harpsichord stood in the center. A beautiful instrument, the dark wood of the case contrasting with the paler rosewood of the inner face. A woman swayed on the bench. Slender. Clad in black, from boots to bonnet. It took him a long, excruciating moment to realize that she was flesh and blood. To remember that ghosts don’t dress in mourning, but rather, those who grieve them do.
    He was at that harpsichord in an instant. The woman’s fingers came down with a discordant crash, and she shot to her feet, falling backward over the bench, so that he had to catch her shoulders and steady her.
    He gripped harder than was necessary. Maybe it was to steady himself.
    “Let go of me.” The woman’s voice was rapid and low. Her head was bowed. She held so still that he wondered if her heart was beating.
    He released her and stepped back. He felt like a fool, like a boor. He tried to recover his control. Folded his arms across his chest.
    “Why are you in here?” he asked.
    “I couldn’t help myself.” The woman’s voice softened. Her tone had changed, filled with wonder. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    For a moment, his anguish flooded back.
    What?
He wanted to ask her.
What had she seen?
    His eyes roved the room, as though he might glimpse, in some shadow or another, the sheen of Phillipa’s black hair, the glimmer of her eye, the dark rose of her wide mouth, the pale length of her slender neck. He fixed on the cabinet and imagined the sheets of music inside fanning up and scattering. Phillipa had done such things, in fits of fun or fury. Scattered sheet