Dark Season

Dark Season by Joanna Lowell Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Dark Season by Joanna Lowell Read Free Book Online
Authors: Joanna Lowell
presenting her black bonnet, her tense black shoulders. Her thin, white hands. Again, she had gone still, like a wild creature alert to danger.
    Or like the dead.
    “My behavior … ” He couldn’t finish. There was no way to excuse himself. She gave a slight movement, responding to a sound he couldn’t hear.
    He glanced toward the door and saw Rutherford, even more stooped with apprehension, hovering on the threshold.
    “You shouldn’t … ” he began and stopped again, knowing he should not go on. But he had done too much already. He had gone too far. It was easier to plunge ahead. He would play his part in this fiendish drama until the end. It seemed his voice took over, continued with a will of its own.
    “You shouldn’t play that melody,” he said. He heard the harshness in his voice, though he hadn’t intended to speak so. Could Rutherford hear him? He lowered his voice.
    “Get out of here,” he whispered. “You have no business in this room, whatever Louisa told you. You don’t belong here.”
    The woman seemed to settle even more profoundly into stillness, into silence, as though she could disappear.
    “Get out,” he said, and when she made no move, he leaned toward her. He barely breathed the words.
    “
I’ll haul you
… ” This phrase, this dark echo, pounded in his head. He broke off. He had ashes in his mouth. He could taste them. Almost choking, he wheeled around, pushed past Rutherford, and started unsteadily down the hall.
    He thought for a moment that he heard the music start up again behind him. But it was only the infernal mechanisms inside his head, repeating their plaintive strains.
    The house was silent.
    • • •
    Ella sank back onto the bench as the thundering quiet of the music room crashed around her. Her legs would not hold her. There. That muted sound was the front door slamming. He was gone. Whoever he was, he was gone.
    She had thought, for a split second, when his hands had closed upon her shoulders …
    Alfred
.
He’s come for me.
    She stood. The man’s voice rang again in her ears, terrible with threat. Or was it warning? Either way, he was right. She did not belong here. She had sensed, as soon as she’d pushed open the door, that the music room’s spell of silence was not to be broken. It was as though the room were under an enchantment. She had meant to shut the door and slip on down the hall. Yet, despite her will, despite everything, the harpsichord drew her.
    Now, as she turned to leave, she could not deny herself a parting look at the harpsichord, so much darker and grander than her own.
    Alfred, she remembered, thought music was dull. Any music but the hunting horn put him right to sleep. That’s what he’d always said, yawning, when Papa had her play. He’d have sold her harpsichord by now. Or destroyed it out of spite. Within the little circle of calm she’d created, she felt blank, numb.
    She probed along her collarbones, raised and lowered her shoulders.
    How could she have believed, even for a fraction of a second, that the hands on her shoulders were Alfred’s? The man’s grip was hard as steel.
    She left the music room, relieved that Rutherford was not waiting in the hall. Yet as she turned the corner, she ran smack into Mrs. Hexam, the housekeeper, instead. During the three days Ella had spent in residence at Trombly Place, Mrs. Hexam had never changed her expression. She stared at Ella now with that same look frozen on her sallow, careworn face. That same mixture of fear and suspicion. Ella had endured worse.
    Mrs. Hexam said merely: “I’ve laid tea in the sitting room. Mrs. Trombly is just in.” So instead of retreating to the upstairs bedchamber, Ella walked slowly behind Mrs. Hexam to the sitting room. Her soft, kid boots made no sound on the carpet. The hush that prevailed in the house had descended. Music and commotion—both were unthinkable in that heavy silence. She could almost doubt the encounter in the music room had even

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