(Continued from the first excerpt. Didn’t read it yet? You can by clicking HERE.)
Mr. MacDougall leaned back into the embrace of his leather chair with nothing but contempt in his coal black eyes. Then he rose from his desk and settled that hateful glare on Mrs. Crossey. “Madam, that would hardly be wise.”
She squared herself to him. “Now is the time, I assure you.”
What gall! To speak to the House Steward in such a way was unthinkable. Within the castle—among the servants, at least—the only authority greater than Mr. MacDougall was the Lord Chamberlain himself.
My fear for myself became fear for her. How could she be so brazen?
Yet there was no outrage in his cavernous eyes. Only a flicker of something I did not recognize. As I watched, he seemed to shrink where he stood, like a wild dog suddenly, inexplicably tamed. He pivoted and considered his reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece behind his desk, licked one finger, and ran it across his brows, straightening the wiry silver-blond hairs. When he turned back, he was again his usual prickly self. He laid a hand on a protruding dragon head carved into one of the mantel corners and stroked it between the ears like a pet.
His grimace returned and landed on me, making clear that Mrs. Crossey was not in his crosshairs. I was.
I swallowed. My fidgeting fingers curled into fists at my sides.
Mrs. Crossey gestured to the pair of wooden chairs in front of the desk. “Take a seat, dear.”
Motherly concern laced her voice, but there was pity on her face. I pulled back. The signs were clear. “It won’t be necessary. I’ll clear my room and be ready to leave before luncheon.”
She frowned. “Pardon?”
“If I’m to be turned out, let’s be done with it already.”
She shook her head. “No, child. You aren’t being turned out.” She mustered a weak smile, but something still weighed on her.
“Then why am I here?”
She turned to Mr. MacDougall. He only shrugged. In denial or resignation, I hardly knew.
The woman leveled a nasty look at him before turning back to me. “Please do sit, Jane. This may take some time.”
Curious, I took a chair.
She squeezed herself into the one beside it, then leaned forward, her usually serene, green-flecked eyes flaring with unfamiliar intensity. “Now, let’s discuss your visions.”
It was as if her words sucked all the air from the room. I shifted and swallowed. “My what?”
“Your visions.” Again, she looked to Mr. MacDougall.
Again, he looked away.
She sighed then leaned closer and without taking her eyes off me, she said plainly, “My dear, we need your help.”
“My help?” The words slipped out with an unfortunate squeak. But truly, what help could I be to them?
Mr. MacDougall leaned over his mahogany monolith of a desk. “The loss of staff in the castle has led to unfortunate disruptions in our ability to serve the queen. Without our usual number, we are… shall we say, shifting certain responsibilities, that, uh, traditionally…” He tugged at his collar and cleared his throat.
“Geoffrey, you’re only confusing her.”
I frowned at Mrs. Crossey’s blunt assertion, but she was not wrong.
Mr. MacDougall only stared at the wall bearing the framed certificates of his training and expertise, his letters of commendation, even a small sketched portrait of Queen Victoria the sovereign was said to have gifted to him herself. He seemed to be searching there for something that eluded him.
Mrs. Crossey stared at me. “Jane, we know you have visions.”
Her words stopped my world.
She was lying. She had to be. I was always careful. Always.
Still, my gaze dropped to my lap. My fingers scurried into the gray folds of my skirt.
“How long have you had them?” Her eyes fixed on me, catching every twitch and fidget.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I studied my knees and wished hard that I was anywhere but here.
She reached out to place her palm on my skirt. I pulled both limbs to the side so she couldn’t reach them and eyed the door. Every inch of me yearned to run as far away as possible.
“It’s all right, dear. There’s no need for this agitation.”
Her usually comforting manner only heightened my distress. Beneath the soft leather of my gloves, my palms grew cold and damp. My breath scraped through my throat. There was no way they could know.
She cocked her head to the side. “My dear, we have known about your gift for quite some time.”
I bristled again. She spoke as though she were speaking to a child, not someone a full seventeen years old. I shook my head.
Mrs. Crossey stared at me.
“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but—”
Mr. MacDougall straightened in his chair. “Stop playing games, girl.”
Mrs. Crossey rocked back in her chair and threw up her hands. “This isn’t working, Geoffrey.”
Admit nothing. Say nothing. I repeated the words to myself again and again.
“We must tell her,” Mrs. Crossey declared.
Mr. MacDougall’s bushy brows pulled low over his hooked nose. “I hardly think that’s wise. May I proceed?”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Proceed.”
“Thank you,” he said with blatantly false sincerity. To me, he said, “Because of the reductions, we have been put at a disadvantage in our ability to protect the queen and the royal family.”
“Protect?” I don’t know where I found the courage to speak, but the word hardly seemed appropriate.
“This isn’t the way, Geoffrey.” Mrs. Crossey shook her head. “We know these things about you, Jane, because you are one of us.”
“Of course I am.” I winced at the desperation in my voice. The thundering in my chest was getting the best of me. I took a deep breath and began again. “Haven’t I been since the day I was delivered to the servants’ door?”
“I wasn’t referring to the castle staff,” she said. “Not exactly.”
Mr. MacDougall groaned and dropped his head into his hands.
Mrs. Crossey’s eyes remained on me, and I shifted under the weight of her stare.
“I’m speaking,” she said, “of those of us within the castle who recognize the nature of your gift.”
“My what?” I had never considered my visions to be a gift. A curse was more like it.
“Don’t play coy, dear. It doesn’t suit you.” The muscles in her arms and shoulders softened. “I have known for quite some time. You see, I’m acquainted with your former headmistress. Rather more than acquainted, actually. Miss Trindle is my sister.”
That callous shrew was Mrs. Crossey’s sibling? I dropped against the chair’s spindle back.
I couldn’t imagine two women more different in every possible way. How could they share a mother?
But then, what did I know of mothers? I didn’t know what to say. I simply held my ground. “I don’t know what you think you know or what you’ve been told, but you’re wrong.”
“You see, Mrs. Crossey?” Mr. MacDougall’s voice rattled the walls. He rose to his feet, and his gaze bored into her. “You heard the girl. This is nonsense. Please stop before more damage is done.”
Mrs. Crossey shot up from her chair and paced the room. “I don’t believe we are wrong, Jane. You should know your gift, your visions, mark you for a particular purpose. A noble purpose.”
Was she trying to trick me with flattery now? It wouldn’t work. I knew the truth. My visions were no gift or sign of anything. My only gift—if it could be called such a thing—was knowing how to keep my head down. How to exist without calling attention to myself. How to be, in a word, invisible.
It was a skill I’d honed at Chadwick Hollow when the couples would come through eager for a child. I never flaunted myself before those potential mothers and fathers who browsed our ranks with a shopper’s eye, as though we were apples or potatoes in the grocer’s cart. I left that to the other girls, all of them happy, it seemed, to fit into any crack or crevice offered to them. I, on the other hand, preferred to blend into the background until the couples left. Usually with a new daughter.
I’d tell Headmistress Trindle I didn’t care it wasn’t me. That I preferred to be alone. I didn’t want a family, and it didn’t matter that I couldn’t remember anything about my own.
And mostly that was true.
What I didn’t tell her, what I never told anyone, was that sometimes I have longed for those tender family moments. Like sitting with doting parents around the dinner table or in front of a fire or bundled up in bed, drifting off to sleep to the tune of a softly sung lullaby.
My wish for those moments have been a weakness, and they became my curse. Somehow that unquenchable longing for what I didn’t have punched a hole in me that fills itself with another’s thoughts and feelings whenever I touch someone, whether I want it to or not. I do try to keep to myself and not take what doesn’t belong to me, but sometimes the weakness wins. Sometimes I can’t stop myself from stealing bits of other people’s pasts to replay in my mind like a scene from a street play.
No, my visions are no gift. They never have been.
“Whatever you think you know,” I said flatly, “you’re wrong.”
She rose and moved behind my chair. Gently, she laid her hands upon my shoulders. I imagined their warmth radiating through the rough linen of my blouse even if I couldn’t feel it directly.
Was she testing me? But the visions only came when skin touched skin, or when I held a belonging in my bare hand.
“I wish we could give you more time,” she said, “so this would be easier for you. But I’m afraid time is in short supply.”
I listened without reacting, silently begging to be allowed to return to the kitchen and pretend none of this had happened.
“I see,” she whispered. Her fingers slipped from my shoulders. For a moment, she looked lost. She paced and pinched her lip.
When she turned to me again, fresh determination colored her expression. “Here is the whole of it, Jane. We need your help because the queen is in danger.”
“Mrs. Crossey!” Mr. MacDougall’s face bloomed red with rage. A vein protruded in the middle of his forehead. “Is this wise?”
She ignored him.
But her statement hardly seemed credible. “If you know such a thing, why are you telling me? You should alert the guard.”
“We cannot,” was Mrs. Crossey’s ready answer. “There would be questions.”
“And what’s wrong with questions?” She was quite comfortable asking them. Why not answer a few?
She clasped her hands and wrung them. “We cannot explain how we came by our information.” Her fleshy fingers tangled and strangled each other.
I looked at Mr. MacDougall. He rolled his eyes, whether at me or her or the whole mess of this exchange I did not know.
“The answers would be troublesome,” she added. “Suffice it to say, we don’t wish to share our secrets for the same reason you don’t wish to share yours.”
I stiffened and chose to ignore her blatant trap. “If you cannot share it, then how are you even sure you can trust it?”
Mr. MacDougall and Mrs. Crossey shared a look. He seemed to be screaming with his eyes, “Please stop!”
And for once, I agreed with him. This back and forth was tiresome. I would not give in and, it seemed, Mrs. Crossey would not give up. All I wanted was to leave this room. This stifling, airless, windowless cave of a room.
Mrs. Crossey ignored his warning. She pulled a kerchief from the wrist of her sleeve and held it out to me. It was a small scrap of white linen edged in simple lace that she always carried with her. “Take it.”
Before I could move, Mr. MacDougall rose and lunged across the width of his desk, trying to grab the square himself. “You cannot do that!” he cried.
Mrs. Crossey pulled the kerchief back before he could snatch it and stared him down. “I can, and I will. It’s the only way.”
Despair clouded his expression. Or was it fear? He pulled back.
Again she extended the kerchief to me.
I knew I shouldn’t take it, but the temptation to know its secrets overpowered every other instinct. I took it without hesitation.
In an instant, with a glove hastily tossed aside, my bare fingertips brushed over the gentle fabric. Such a soft weave, worn smooth from years of use. I imagined I could feel every thread, every fiber, every loving touch.
In Mrs. Crossey’s eyes, I could see she knew what she was doing.
And she knew I could no longer deny the truth.
I closed my eyes and waited for the vision.
***
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