Blackmoore(3)

In this moment, I saw the same cold tenacity in my mother’s eyes.

She would take Blackmoore from me and the hope of India, and there was nothing I could do to stop her. There was no prying at her, no freeing myself from her will. Despair beat at me with barnacled fists.

6



“My name,” I said in a low voice, “is not Kitty. It is Kate!” I marched past her, reached under the chair for my cat, and left the room without crying. I tripped over Maria, forgetting that she was sprawled across the stairs, and fell hard on both elbows as I held on to Cora and Mozart.

I did not cry, even though pain shot up both arms and Cora scratched my cheek in an effort to wriggle away. I did not cry as I scrambled to my feet amid the yells of Maria to watch where I was stepping, and I did not cry as I ran up the remainder of the steps, down the hall, to the last bed-room on the right, and locked the door behind me.

I set Cora down and threw my music onto the bed. Pain throbbed in my elbows and shins, but the twisted, impotent pain of my helplessness screamed louder than any physical pain. I clutched my hair with both hands and paced the floor, fighting back the urge to cry. I should have an-ticipated something like this. It was so typical of Mama to swoop in and ruin everything, just when I thought I would finally have my heart’s de-sire. But even more infuriating than Mama’s interference was the fact that I was wholly powerless. At seventeen I was caged in this house of stone and glass and hardened feelings and expectations I would never meet.

A stifled scream rattled in my throat. An overwhelming urge to destroy something possessed me, shocking me and stilling my steps. The last time I had given in to such an urge, I had lived to regret it. My gaze dropped to the loose board under the window. I looked at the wooden chest at the end of my bed. It had been locked for so long. But I had nothing to lose by looking inside it now.

My hands shook as I pried at the loose board under the window until, with a protesting creak, it came free of its constraints. I plunged my hand into the hole, scraping my fingertips on the old, splintered wood, until my fingers closed around the smooth metal of the key. I knelt in front of the wooden chest and stared at the lock I had not turned in ages. Finally I took a deep breath, inserted the key, turned it, and raised the lid.

The scent of cedar wafted up. It smelled like my childhood, like se-crets. I held my breath as I lifted the model from inside the chest. It was 7



J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n always heavier than I remembered it being. I set it down on the floor, then lowered the lid, and set the model gingerly on top of the chest.

Sitting back on my heels, I gazed with a mixture of admiration and regret at the wooden model. It was always thus. I loved it and regretted it at the same time. I loved it for what it was. I regretted what I had done to it. With one finger, I carefully traced the outline of the roof, stopping when I reached the spot where the roof was destroyed, the remains of the careful workmanship a splintered wreck. I lifted my finger, skirt-ing the wreck, and set it down again where the model was whole. “This is Blackmoore,” I whispered to myself. “It has thirty-five rooms, twelve chimneys, three stories, two wings . . .”

8







Chapter 2


Four years BeFore


“It is the hardest thing to bear that you visit Blackmoore every summer

and I have not been once! I thought you were going to ask your mother if I might join you this year.”

My best friend, Sylvia, watched me with a wrinkled brow from her seat

by the window. “I know,” she said, reaching out a comforting hand that I did not want. “I am sorry, Kitty! You know I have asked Mama dozens of times if you might go with us. She has refused. Again.”

“But why? I know there are plenty of guest rooms at Blackmoore. I do not eat much. I would not be in the way. Why has she refused?” My pacing took me to one side of the room and back, but still Sylvia answered me nothing.

“Does she have something against me? Is that why I have not been invited?”

Sylvia shrugged, shaking her head vaguely. “I cannot answer that.”

I threw myself on the settee beside her, covered my face with my hands,

and uttered a muffled scream. My hair settled around my shoulders in a dark cloud.

Footsteps sounded, then Henry’s voice. “What is all the screaming about?”

“Kitty is longing to see Blackmoore. Again.” Sylvia spoke with an air of forced patience, which made me sit up straight and drop my hands.

9



J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n

“You do not understand. Neither of you,” I looked from her to Henry and

back again. Both watched me as if I were slightly mad. “You have always been able to go there, and I never have.” They could not comprehend my feelings about being left behind every single summer for as long as I could remember.

They could not imagine the strangling sense I felt when I imagined them

exploring the coast and the moors and the great old house with its secret passageways while I stared at the same stone walls and the same old hedgerows I had known all my life.

“But it is just a house, Kitty,” Sylvia said, looking at me as if I had lost my mind.

I shook my head. “It is not just a house.” Because it wasn’t. Not to me.

To Sylvia, Blackmoore was simply her grandfather’s estate, a place for her family’s annual summer holiday. But for me, it represented the opening of a lifelong cage. It stood in my imagination as an escape from everything that was the same and unendingly monotonous about my life at home.