Come to Castlemoor (16 page)

“Your dress is smashing,” Edward whispered in my ear. “It gives me evil thoughts.”

“Does it?”

“Better be glad we're not alone. Safety in numbers, you know.”

“I'm nervous,” I told him. “I wish—”

“Here she is,” he said aloud.

I saw Nicola sitting on a sofa of pale-lavender velvet. Her dark hair was worn in two tight braids fastened in a coronet on top of her head. She wore a white dress. Her cheeks looked ashen, her eyes shadowy. Could this pale wraith be the vivacious creature I had seen on the moors, I wondered. The two greyhounds lay in front of the fire, not stirring as I approached. Burton Rodd stood up. He wore an elegant black suit, a masterpiece of tailoring, and a sky-blue satin vest embroidered with black-silk oak leaves. He was spotless, immaculate, his black leather pumps shining, his white silk ascot flawless. The exquisite clothes only emphasized the ravaged face and grizzled hair, made him seem older, wearier. He nodded, and his dark eyes took in every detail of the dress.

He arched one brow slowly. That single gesture spoke volumes.

Dorothea Rodd was sitting in a dark wingbacked chair turned away from the fire, and I didn't see her at first. She rose to greet me, came toward me with the agile grace of a young girl. She was tall and slender, with the loose, bony frame of her son, wearing a long-sleeved black gown that swept the floor, the full skirt rustling over starched petticoats. Amethysts sparkled at her throat and ears, the stones gleaming with blood-red facets. Her hair was lustrous black, streaked with silver, piled on top of her head in rich waves, and her face at one time must have been magnificent. The bone structure was perfect, delicately formed, and the dark-brown eyes gleamed like jewels. The lovely face was pathetically pitted and marred with pockmarks, but after a moment one didn't notice that. One saw only the eyes that still had the glittering clarity of youth.

“Come, dear,” she said, “let me see you.”

She took both my hands in hers and stood back to examine me, a lovely smile on her lips. She stood like that for at least a full minute, studying my face, her hands holding mine in a firm grip, and for some reason I was not at all embarrassed. I felt completely at ease with this woman. She was a lady, in every sense of the word, a grand lady, and it was evident in her every gesture.

“It's true,” she said, her voice serious. “You're as beautiful as they said you were.” She shook her head slowly, her lips drooping down slightly in a sad smile. “Twenty years ago I would have loathed you on sight. Now I can only marvel—” She released my hands, sighed. “Is it true that you are also intelligent? That seems terribly unjust.”

I didn't know what to reply. Edward came to my rescue. “I assure you she's quite intelligent, Dorothea. Formidably so, in fact.”

“Unbelievable,” Dorothea Rodd said wistfully.

She seemed suddenly to remember her role as hostess. “You know Edward, of course, and I believe you've met my son.” She paused, a rather malicious twinkle in her eyes. “You haven't met my ward, though. Nicola? Come meet Miss Hunt, dear.”

Nicola rose, gave me a genteel curtsy and looked into my eyes, pleading with me not to reveal our secret. I spoke to her, commenting on her dress. She lowered her eyes, muttering something I couldn't hear, and then sank back down on the sofa wearily.

“This is quite an occasion,” Dorothea exclaimed. “As you may know, I
never
entertain. I haven't seen anyone for years—besides those people at church when Burton condescends to take me. Social life! How I used to love it! Now, alas …” She sighed again, made a futile gesture. “There is so much to compensate for it. I don't miss it, really. My books my studies, my music, my plants—we must show you the conservatory! I have some rare specimens! There's no time for people, no need for them.…” Again she paused, and her trilling voice grew soft, gentle. “But I couldn't resist meeting you. Edward has talked of nothing else for the past three days. Ordinarily he's quite indifferent to women—I had to see the exception! Let me take your wrap, dear.”

I handed it to her. My back was to Burton Rodd. I could feel his eyes burning on the naked skin. I stood uncomfortably as Dorothea complimented me on the dress, asked where I had bought it, said she wished she still had the ability to wear such a gown.

We all sat down, except Burton Rodd, who stood with his elbow leaning on the mantelpiece, his face inscrutable. Edward stretched out in a large blue chair, spreading his long legs out in front of him. Dorothea led me to a sofa opposite the one on which Nicola sat. The fire crackled noisily, devouring a cedar log and filling the air with a tangy aroma, but the heat had little effect on the icy chill air.

“And how do you like the castle, my dear?” Dorothea inquired.

“It's—well—”

“Dreadful!” she cried. “That's what it is! Falling down over our heads little by little. Have you ever heard of anything so preposterous—living in such a place! But it's home. I know that sounds ludicrous, but nevertheless it's true. We've closed up most of it, shut it off, boarded it up. Sold most of the furniture—had to, my dear, in order to live. Now that Burton has the pottery factory, we have no financial problems anymore, but people simply can't
live
in a place like this in this day and age. I wish sometimes I had a calm little cottage somewhere in the country, but this is my home—a great empty wreck of a place, impossible to heat, a relic. I lived with my husband here, though, bore my son here, spent the best days of my life prowling around these corridors. I can't leave it. I intend to die here, and after that—” She snapped her fingers. “Kaput! It can sink into the moors, stone by stone!”

Burton Rodd cleared his throat, causing all eyes to turn to him. He grimaced, clearly unhappy with his mother's words. He stood at the hearth, the dogs at his feet, his jacket falling open to reveal the exquisite blue vest. Dorothea laughed, a beautiful, trilling sound that floated on the air in silvery peals.

“Burton thinks I'm mad, of course,” she continued. “He'd dump the place in a minute, move to London. No sense of background whatsoever, no feeling of heritage! Can't say that I blame him, really. He stays. He runs the factory. He respects my feelings. But it can't be very pleasant for a red-blooded young man! He has the soul of an adventurer, a wanderer. What he really needs is a good wife—that'd settle him down.”

“I don't think Miss Hunt is interested in all this, Mother,” he said in a cool, bored voice.

“Quite a problem,” she continued. “The women he meets in London would never consider coming to a gloomy place like this, which is perfectly understandable, and the few eligible girls around here—La!” She clicked her tongue. “You should see the way he treats them! Like cattle, or geese. For several years enterprising mothers in Castlemoor County have been grooming their daughters for my son, and he calls them empty-headed ninnies, laughs at their coy maneuvers. Why, just last year Sukey Johnson—her father owns one of the largest farms and is district judge to boot—poor Sukey was all up in the air because Burton noticed her at church and talked to her for a few minutes after the services. Poor thing, she was all ready to move in for the kill, when—”

“Enough!” her son said loudly, interrupting her. “Don't you think we should go in to dinner, Mother?”

“I suppose so, though why all this rush—”

“Oh, dear!” Nicola cried, speaking up for the first time. Everyone was startled by her exclamation. She blushed prettily and lowered her eyes. The tight braids on top of her head were unflattering to a face that needed to be framed with lustrous waves. The stark white dress seemed to drain all the color away from her. She looked like a child of thirteen, an anemic child at that.

“What is it, dear?” Dorothea asked.

“I've forgotten my coral bracelet. I—I left it in my room. I planned to wear it tonight. Will I have time to fetch it?”

“Of course.”

Nicola stood up hesitantly. She smiled meekly, but I noticed a sly look in her eyes.

“I wonder if Miss Hunt would like to come with me?” she said. “I would like to show her my doll collection.”

“There isn't time,” Burton Rodd said impatiently. “The bracelet isn't important, Nicola. You can fetch it later.”

“The dolls come from all over the world,” Nicola said, as though she hadn't heard him. “Some of them are very old, very fine. One belonged to Marie Antoinette, they say, and—”

“I'd love to see them,” I said quickly, helping her.

“Run along, children,” Dorothea said, “but don't dawdle, or Burton will be fit to be tied. Really, Burton, all this rush to get to the table! I simply don't see—”

Nicola smiled, took my hand, and led me across the room to a small door that led down a narrow hall. Once out of the room, her whole manner changed. She dropped my hand, dropped the meek, childish manner. Her face was hard, her mouth set. She walked quickly down the hall, turned, passed through a large room filled with dusty musical instruments, moved down another hall. I had to move fast to keep up with her. She seemed completely unaware of my presence, although I had sensed her eagerness for me to join her. In fact, I felt that the whole bit about the bracelet had been merely a ploy to get me alone, away from the others.

We moved down a small flight of stone steps, across a short hall, and up another flight of steps. The walls and floor of this part of the castle were thick brown concrete, damp and ugly. Torches burned in wall brackets spaced at intervals, foul-smelling, flickering, affording very little light to guide our way. I followed Nicola's flashing white skirts, perplexed. Near the end of the hall she stopped, waiting for me to catch up with her. She stood in front of a great yawning doorway cut into the wall, a flight of rough stone steps leading down into the darkness below.

“The dungeons are down there,” she said, her voice expressionless.

I peered down. Cold, clammy air billowed up from the darkness, and I heard whispering, scurrying sounds as though rats infested the place. Nicola took my hand again, held it tightly, as though afraid. Together we looked down the steps, the top ones plainly visible, the ones that followed spread with shadows, the others completely shrouded in pitch-black darkness. I was trembling, although I could not have said why. Nicola seemed to be listening for something. A torch burned on the wall behind us, filling the air with smoke and the smell of tar, yellow reflections licking the ugly brown walls. There was something fascinating about that flight of stairs leading down to the dungeons, an evil that seemed to beckon even as it repelled. I wanted to move down them, see what was below, and at the same time I wanted to flee, get away from that clammy air and those rustling sounds that came floating up from the black nest of darkness.

“How—how frightening,” I said.

She nodded grimly. “Two hundred years ago, men were taken down there to be tortured, to be left to die, and now—” She glanced around, her face drawn, looking to see if someone were eavesdropping on us. She gave my hand a tug. “Come, we'll go to my room,” she whispered.

The door to her room was about ten yards down the hall. She opened it and pulled me inside, closing the door behind her. She took a deep breath and released it slowly, as though we had been pursued down the hall, escaping some evil just in the nick of time. I frowned, disconcerted. Nicola stepped over to her dresser and picked up the coral bracelet that lay there in plain sight. She couldn't possibly have forgotten it. She fastened it around her wrist, stooped to peer at her face in the mirror, smoothed the skin over her cheekbones, pushed a stray hair away from her temple. I examined the room.

It was small, cozy, with a very high ceiling of painted blue plaster. The lower half of the walls was covered with white-painted wainscoting, the upper half with a faded paper with blue and violet swirl designs. The bed and dresser were white, violet counterpane on bed, blue cushion on the dresser stool. A towering white cabinet with glassed-in shelves contained the doll collection, lovely dolls of all shapes and sizes, all covered with a thin coat of dust. She pointed to the collection, clearly bored with it, and sank down on the bed.

“What lovely dolls,” I remarked.

“They're all right,” she replied. “Dorothea went to a lot of expense, a lot of trouble, to acquire them for me when I was a child. I
had
to like them, to please her. I never played with them—too pretty, too expensive—but I always showed them off to anyone who came, to please her.”

She toyed with the bracelet, not looking at me. I had the impression she wasn't even speaking to me, but, rather, addressing her reflection in the mirror across the room.

“She wanted this room to be bright and cheerful,” Nicola continued in the flat, expressionless tone. “So she got the fancy wallpaper and painted everything white. A perfect young room for a perfect young girl. Dorothea is sweet. I adore her. Her intentions are the best, always were. I'm just not capable of appreciating them. I often wish I could be the daughter she wanted so badly. It's a shame she didn't adopt some chubby little English girl—” Her voice trailed off, and I saw the sadness in her eyes, the tragic droop at the corner of her mouth.

I changed the subject quickly. “You stay here all alone? So far from everyone else?”

“Edward's quarters are just around the corner, in the tower, and Buck has his room down the hall, just a few steps away. Practical. He can keep an eye on me at all times.”

I remembered what Edward had told me about the girl, how she had gone to a “school” that was really a private hospital, how she had come back to Castlemoor, to fall in love with Jamie and imagine a conspiracy when the boy was dismissed, how she needed to be away from here. She was mentally ill, he said, yet I couldn't completely accept that. I knew very little about such things, but the young girl who sat before me now seemed to be in complete control of herself. Disturbed, bewildered—yes, no doubt of that, but insane? I wondered.