Gallant(15)

She tries the door, but it is locked.

Olivia pats the pockets of her nightgown, wishing she’d brought her set of picks. But then she feels the gold key that fit her bedroom door. It’s a simple shape, little more than a W. And in a house with so many doors, would you really want more than one key? Olivia slides it into the lock and holds her breath and turns, expecting resistance. Instead, she feels the satisfying thunk of a bolt sliding free.

The handle is cool under her touch, and when she turns the knob, the door sighs open, just a crack, carrying cool night air and—

A man surges out of the dark.

He comes straight through the wooden door and into the foyer. Half his face is missing, and Olivia staggers back, away from the door and the man who is not a man at all but a ghoul. It scowls at her with one eye, a stained hand thrust out, not in welcome, but in warning. It cannot touch her, she tells herself, it isn’t there, but when it stomps forward, fingers curling into fists, she turns and runs blindly through the dark, somehow finds her way back to the staircase and the upstairs hall and her bedroom door, pulling it shut behind her.

And even though it’s only wood, she feels safer with it closed.

Olivia’s heart pounds in her ears as she climbs under the covers, pulling her mother’s journal to her like a shield. She has never been afraid of the dark, but tonight, she relights the lamp. As she sits, her back to the headboard and her eyes on the shadows, she realizes—

She left the key in the door downstairs.





Chapter Seven




Olivia doesn’t remember falling asleep.

She doesn’t remember getting up either, but she must have, because it’s morning, and she’s sitting at the little desk before the window. The shutters have been flung wide, and sunlight streams in, warm and bright where it falls on the desk, on her hands, on the journal there, the gilded G pressed into the cover. Her mother’s book, and yet, this one is different. It’s red where hers was green, and there are no twin lines gouged into the cover, and when she turns through the pages, the writing blurs, dissolving every time she tries to read it.

She squints, trying to make sense of it, sure that the letters are about to come together.

A hand comes to rest on her shoulder, the touch gentle and warm, but when she turns her head to look, it is rotting, bone visible through ruined skin.

Olivia sits up with a gasp.

She is still in bed. The shutters are latched, thin light seeping round the edges. Her heart pounds and her head spins and it takes her a moment to realize what that was: a dream. It is already slipping through her fingers, the details going thin, and she presses her palms against her eyes and tries to remember. Not the ghoulish hand, but the journal.

Olivia flings off the bedsheets and goes to the desk, half expecting to find the red book waiting on top, but it’s not there. Her gaze drops to the drawer in the front of the desk, the little keyhole like a spot of ink. When she pulls, the drawer resists, but it’s a silly excuse for a lock, and it takes only a hairpin and a handful of seconds to get it open.

Inside, she finds a pincushion stuck with needles. A small embroidery hoop, half-formed poppies in the center of pale cloth. A pot of ink, a handful of sketches on loose paper, and a few sheets of stationery, embossed with two elegant letters: GP.

Grace Prior.

Of course. This was her mother’s room.

Olivia runs her hand over the desk, the wood worn smooth with age. A strange urge washes over her, and she goes back to the bed, turning through the rumpled sheets until she finds the journal she’s always had, with its dented green cover. She sets it gently on the desk. There is no groove for it, no outline where the sun has bleached the wood, and yet, it fits. The pretty green book, so out of place at Merilance, belongs here, blends right in, like drawings made by the same hand.

Olivia pulls out the chair and sits in her mother’s shadow, hands resting lightly on the cover. The dream drifts back to her, and she closes her eyes and tries to conjure more before it slips away.

Knuckles rap on the door, and she jumps. She slides the journal into the drawer like a secret and gets to her feet just as Hannah sweeps in like a gust of wind, a tea tray balanced on one hip.

“The house gets cold in the morning,” she says brightly. “Thought you could do with a little warming up.”

Olivia nods in thanks and steps aside as Hannah deposits the tray on the desk and reaches up to free the latch. The shutters fall open, filling the room with fresh air and streaks of sun. And then, Hannah draws the gold key from her pocket and sets it on the desk. Olivia winces at the sight of it, the reproach of the metal dropping onto wood.

“You mustn’t go out in the dark,” says Hannah, and the way she says it, it’s like she’s reciting a rule.

There were a great many rules back at Merilance. Most of them felt hollow, pointless, concocted just to show the matrons’ control. But there is real worry in Hannah’s eyes, so Olivia nods, even though she will not be here another night.

With the shutters thrown back, Olivia realizes her room is at the front of the house, the window looking out onto the drive, the ribbon of road and the distant iron arch proclaiming GALLANT. She looks down, but there is no car waiting to take her back to Merilance, only the fountain and the pale stone woman standing at its center.

Hannah’s gaze drops to the desk drawer, the hairpin still jutting from the lock. Olivia holds her breath, braced for the rebuke, but the woman only chuckles, soft and honest. “Your mother was a curious girl, too.”