She tugs the comb free, returns it to its place, and decides to run herself a bath.
The water, when it spills out, is hot and clear, steam rising to her fingers.
She strips and climbs in, savoring the almost painful heat. A trio of elegant bottles lines the wall beside the tub, all of them half full. The stoppers are stiff, and as she fights to open one, it slips and tumbles into the basin. In seconds, there are scented bubbles everywhere, and she laughs, a soft breathy sound, at the absurdity of this, of a day begun peeling potatoes at Merilance and ended here, in a house with no uncle and a boy who does not want her there, in a tub full of lavender soap.
She sinks under the surface, where the world is quiet and dark, taps on the side of the tub, the sound echoing softly all around. Like rain against the roof of a garden shed. She stays until the water goes tepid, until her skin prunes, and even then, she’s only drawn out by the promise of supper and the waiting bed.
She rises, thoughts thick and limbs heavy, wrapping herself in a plush white towel. The steam melts from the mirror, and it’s probably just the heat of the bath, but her cheeks look brighter, her skin less pale, as if she left her old self like a soap line in the tub.
Her clothes sit piled on the floor. A heap of gray cloth. She wants to burn them, but they are all she has, so she opens the wardrobe, intending to throw them in. And stops.
A few empty hangers dot the rack, but the rest are draped with dresses. Her fingers trail over cotton and wool and silk. A few have been eaten at by moths, the knitting loosened by time, but they are still nicer than anything she’s ever touched. It is obvious that the room once belonged to someone else, just as obvious that she is gone, though it’s strange that she left so many things behind. Stranger still that her room has been left intact, untouched—the bottles by the tub, the hair comb by the sink, the clothes in the cupboard—as if any day she might come back.
In a drawer, Olivia finds a cream nightgown. It is too long, too large, but she doesn’t care. The fabric is soft and warm against her skin, and she lets it swallow her up.
She didn’t hear Hannah come in, but a neat little tea tray sits waiting on the ottoman. A bowl of stew. A slice of bread. A pat of butter. And a peach. A little gold key now juts out of the lock in the door. She presses her ear to the wood as she turns it, listens to the satisfying click, the marvelous weight of the metal in her hand. The luxury of a closed door.
The stew is hearty and hot, the bread crusty but soft inside, the fruit perfectly sweet, and when she’s done, she falls into bed, sure that she has never been so clean or so comfortable.
You are wanted. You are needed. You belong with us.
She wraps the words around her, tries to hold them close, but as her body sinks into the sheets, so do her spirits, until all she can hear is Matthew’s voice.
My father did not send that letter, he said, feeding the paper to the flames.
But if Arthur Prior did not write to her, who did?
I am afraid it wasn’t my hand on her cheek
wasn’t my voice in my mouth
wasn’t my eyes watching her sleep
Chapter Six
Olivia cannot sleep.
The house has too much space and too few sounds to fill it. There are no city noises here, no squeaking springs. No matrons shuffling up and down the halls, no clatter of the streets beyond. Instead of the sleeping and wheezing and sighing of two dozen girls, there is only her own breath, her own movement in the too-big bed.
And so she lies awake, her mother’s journal pressed to her chest as she listens, straining to find the melody of Gallant.
Olivia spent years learning the notes that made up Merilance, the shuffle of socked feet, the sleep-thick murmurs in the middle of the night, the whistle and pop of the radiators, the tap of the head matron’s cane on the wooden floor as she crossed the house.
Here, inside her borrowed room, she hears—nothing.
Earlier, she heard Hannah and Edgar moving about, their voices little more than highs and lows through the halls. She heard a door slam—and guessed that it was Matthew. But now it is late, and all the noises have settled, leaving only a muffled silence, the walls too thick, the night kept out by locks and shutters.
Olivia cannot bear the quiet. She strikes a match, eliciting a satisfying crack as light blossoms, pushing back the dark. Something twitches at the corner of her sight, but it is only the small flame dancing on the walls.
She lights a taper and opens her mother’s book to read, even though she knows the words by heart.
I had a bird once. I kept it in a cage. But one day someone let it go. I was so angry, then, but now I wonder if it was me. If I rose in the night, half-asleep, and slipped the lock and set it free.
Free—a small word for such a magnificent thing.
As she reads, she lets her fingers wander over the strange drawings. In the unsteady light, her eyes play tricks on her, twisting the blooms of ink until they seem like they’re moving.
She doesn’t like to linger on the later entries, the darker ones, so she pages past them, catching only fragments.
. . . I slept in your ashes last night . . . It was never this quiet . . . His voice in your mouth . . . I want to go home . . .
Until all at once, it stops. The jagged writing drops away, leaving only empty space, blank pages stretching to the very last page, where the letter waits.
Olivia Olivia Olivia
Her gaze drops to the bottom of the page.
You will be safe as long as you stay away from Gallant
She squints at the word, for years a mystery—still a mystery.
She flings off the covers and gets to her feet.
For so long, Gallant was nothing but that word, the last one her mother ever wrote. Now she knows it is a place, and she is here, and if she is not allowed to stay beyond the night, well then, she wants to see as much of it as possible. To learn the contours of the house where her mother lived, as if knowing one will help explain the other.
The key turns with a click, and she steps silently into the hall. Every other room is dark, save one, a narrow strip of light beneath the door. She shields her candle and sets out, slipping barefoot down the hall.
Olivia has always relished sound, but she knows how to be quiet.
Some nights, back at Merilance, she’d creep out of bed and wander through the darkened house, pretend it was a kind of conquest. She’d twirl down the empty halls, just because she could. Count the steps from one side to the other, fog the windows with her breath and draw shapes in the steam, the only witness the ghoul that sat on the stairs and peered at her between the railings.
There, in the dark, she could pretend the place was hers.
But for all she tried, the grim gray building never played its part. It was too cold, too hollow, too much itself, and every night when she climbed back into bed, she was reminded that Merilance was a house, but it would never be a home.
She tells herself that Gallant won’t be one either, not if Matthew has his way, and yet, as she makes her way down the stairs, the polished banister beneath her palm, it all feels so—familiar. With every silent step, the house leans in and whispers hello, whispers welcome, whispers home.
She retraces her steps, crossing the foyer to the sitting room, the fire nothing but a handful of ticking embers now, the broken vase swept up from the floor. From there, she wanders deeper into the heart of the house. She discovers a dining room, the table long enough to seat a dozen; a lounge with furniture that looks untouched; a kitchen, still warm.