Ravenwood(36)

“I daresay I won’t have to eat until dinner,” Elinore added and then wanted to pull the words back out of the air. She’d been so hungry last night and again this morning. Who was to say she wouldn’t be hungry at lunchtime?

Mrs. Thistlewaite exchanged a glance with Caleb, both of their faces looking grim for a moment.

“I’ll prepare something for you anyway and send someone along when it’s ready.” Mrs. Thistlewaite turned to Caleb. “I’ll send the servants over with your tea and then with some morning scones around ten.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Thistlewaite.”

She nodded tightly and then retreated back to the kitchen. Elinore swallowed awkwardly, watching her go.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked, her voice quiet and slightly timid.

“Not at all. I’m sure she’s just worried for her husband,” he replied. “I was planning on working in the library today, would you like to join me?”

Happy for the company, she smiled. “Yes, thank you. I might read or do a little writing.”

He inclined his head down the hallway and they set off to the library. The manor felt peaceful and quiet in the early morning. There were a few servants about, but they moved with soft footsteps and only the barest of sound. Caleb nodded and spoke to them as they passed, addressing them by name. Elinore tried to remember each name as it was spoken and a small detail about the person to keep it in her mind. The staff appeared happy to see Caleb, smiling at him as they passed.

“You seem to know your staff well.”

“Most of them have been with Ravenwood for longer than I can remember. Hayter only brought a few of his staff along with him when he and Victoria moved in after my parents died.”

A thought crossed Elinore’s mind. “Why did the estate not fall to you?”

Caleb went silent for a moment and Elinore feared she had overstepped. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to ask. Forgive my rudeness.”

“No, that’s all right,” Caleb replied, pausing again before he spoke. “In our family, my father’s family, our inheritance doesn’t always pass from father to son, or parent to child.”

She waited for him to say more, hoping for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. “Oh, I see,” Elinore replied, though truly, she did not.

The silence of their short, but slow walk was broken when a loud ringing sound assaulted Elinore’s ears. She flinched at the sound, clapping her hands over her ears.

“Miss Reed, Elinore,” he corrected himself. “Are you all right?”

“What was that?” she asked. She didn’t hear the high-pitched ringing anymore and carefully pulled her hands away from her ears.

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked, his eyebrows coming together in a frown.

“I heard a ringing. Like a bell. You didn’t hear that?”

Caleb seemed to choose his words carefully. “Our uncle quite often rings a bell to request the attention of one of the servants.”

“Is it set up all throughout the house?” she asked. She didn’t hear it any longer, although if she listened carefully, she thought she could hear the steps of people moving too and fro upstairs.

“It’s in his bedroom. On the second floor.”

It was Elinore’s turn to frown. “That far?” She didn’t know how she could have possibly heard it from so far away.

Caleb’s lips approximated a smile, although it did not reach his eyes. “They say sometimes that old houses have odd ways of carrying sound. You must have gone by one of those strange places where the sound carried well.”

She’d never heard of such a thing, but she had no other explanation. She couldn’t possibly have heard the slight ringing of a bell from a floor away. Not unless she had uncommonly great hearing, which had never been the case before. Finally entering the library, Elinore was relieved to see the somewhat inappropriate book she’d been reading yesterday still tucked deep into the cushions of the chair. Whether it was because she feared discovery, wanted easy access to it to keep reading, or a combination of both, she wasn’t sure.

“I’ll be at the desk, unless you require use of it?” Caleb asked.

“No, thank you. I should like to read, I think.”

He nodded curtly and made his way to the desk, adjusting the chair and pulling out some ledgers and small books as he did. Elinore settled down in the comfortable reading chair, finding a small fire already banked in the hearth. It wasn’t burning bright and hot, but it was more than enough to start chasing away the leftover chill of the night from the room. Wearing her indoor slippers, she was able to tuck her feet beneath her, pulling out the mythological tome she’d been reading and keeping the spine and book front facedown so that Caleb wouldn’t see what she was reading. She was an adult. If she wanted to read a book, it was of no concern to anyone else but herself. Besides, it was just a book. There couldn’t possibly be harm in reading a book, could there?

She went back to the myth she’d read yesterday about Pasiphae and her unnatural lust for the bull and then the subsequent birth of a being half-man and half-creature. A Minotaur. Even though she’d just read it and recalled it perfectly well, she still found herself enraptured by the entire tale. It was with some reluctance that she moved on to the next chapter in the book, that of Cupid and Psyche.