“I would be more than willing to give you a fair price for the place. I will even buy your furniture, no less. And we can keep it off the books. No one will know that you failed your uncle’s demands, and you get to walk away with money in your pocket. What do you say to that?”
“What interest could you possibly have in Thistlemarsh?” Mouse asked.
Carlyle leaned back in the chair, taking another puff from his cigar. Bertie’s cigars had smelled like tobacco and spices. Whatever was in Carlyle’s smelled like tar and salt.
“It’s a valuable historic landmark, for one. Despite its upkeep, the Hall is one of the only noble houses in England that ever hosted the Faerie King. Besides, I took a fancy to it all those years ago when I visited. I thought it was mad that, although very distantly, my family was related to yours.”
The door squeaked. Mouse shot it a look of warning. So, Dawson was there. Was the movement outside an animal? Perhaps it was Mr.Hobb.
She forced herself to focus on the situation at hand.
“I can tell you have thought this through,” she said drolly.
He leaned closer across the table and papers. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a no, of course.”
Carlyle shrugged, sticking his cigar between his teeth, inhaling, and pulling it away with the precision of a train operator. “Then all I will have to do is wait for you to fail. I had hoped to speed things along, but I see that you insist on being difficult. Thank you for your time, Lady Dewhurst.”
The door opened at his approach. Carlyle tipped his hat at Dawson, who remained stony-faced as he passed. “Please, do not trouble yourself. I remember the way out.” He was off down the hall like a shot.
“Stay here,” Dawson snapped at Mouse. His posture evolved into a pillar of fury the moment Carlyle was out of sight. “He remembers the way out indeed.”
Then Dawson was gone, down the same way that Carlyle went moments before. Mouse took a seat, unsure what to do with herself while her mind whirled. She could hear her breath escaping from her lips in rapid bursts, but she could not control it.
Once upon a time, Bertie thought Carlyle was his friend. He even invited him to Thistlemarsh to meet Lord Dewhurst. When Mouse first saw Carlyle, she recognized the cruelty in him that made him feel superior to everyone around him, even the Dewhursts. Mouse was used to being looked down on, as was Roger, but Bertie did not register it.
The next time Mouse heard of Carlyle, it was when Bertie and Roger returned home unexpectedly from school. They had been suspended from Eton for the rest of the year. Roger had bloodied knuckles and a black eye, but he would not tell Mouse what happened. Roger never returned to Eton, instead spending the lead-up to the war training as a clerk in London. It took years, but eventually Bertie took Mouse aside and confessed to the secret Carlyle had used to extorthim. It was a secret that Mouse already suspected, something Bertie could have been arrested for. Carlyle held it over his head like a sword.
Now, Bertie was gone, and Carlyle was still there, trying to run his memory out of Thistlemarsh.
Mouse started to hyperventilate.
She dug through her thoughts for her training. Whenever men were brought into the hospital, there was always a flurry of motion. The violence would paint the entire world in an urgency that would spread through the room. Mouse and the other nurses had to learn to combat the panic that would set in by focusing on something slow and calm.
Any kind of distraction might help her regulate her breathing. Finally, her vision landed on the bookshelves on either side of the room.
Rows and rows of books lined the walls, most bound in the same dark green leather, a shining silverDembossed on the side. Although the spines were uniform, some were heavily scarred from use, with thin strips of lighter green running up the leather like veins. Mouse recognized the signs of her handiwork on some books pressed into the shelves reserved for novels.
Austen, Brontë, and Hardy held court among the other volumes. A thin copy ofThe Secret Gardenhid at the end of a row. It was a gift from Roger. She edged over to the bookshelf, still unsure of her balance. She tugged out the book. Her fingers ran over the silk ribbon marking the place she had left off reading the last time she held the book in her hands. She drew on the memory of the cool air, the pages as crisp as the leaves falling to the earth.
It was October. She, Bertie, and Roger were in Thistlemarsh Wood, daring one another to climb trees. This was inherently unfair, as the boys were both taller than Mouse by at least a foot. However, Mouse was new to Thistlemarsh and desperate to keep up with them while they were home from school. They raced to the tops of theirseparate trees. It was not until Mouse was halfway up that she took the time to look down. The forest floor swam beneath her. Fear seized her body, and she choked, clinging to the bark while the sleek toes of her shoes bit into the branches below.
“Mouse, what’s wrong?” Roger called out to her from his tree, already near the top. Bertie stopped, too, looking at her with concern.
“I can’t move,” she said, her voice squeaky.
The boys were at the bottom of Mouse’s tree in moments.
“It will be all right,” Roger said. “We’ll just get you down the same way that you went up. There is a branch beneath you; can you move down to it?”
Gingerly, Mouse shuffled her foot to the branch below. There was a brief second of calm before her other foot slipped.
Mouse did not register much but the sting of the bark on her knees and the passing branches pulling at her hair. Then, she was on the ground with the wind knocked out of her looking up at Roger’s and Bertie’s stunned faces. Above them, Mouse could see her hair ribbon tangled in the leaves.
“Mouse!” Bertie cried, dropping to his knees beside her.
She could not speak. It was as though the world narrowed to the ribbon waving in the breeze. It was a gift from her father. He would be so upset if she lost it, and there it was, ready to blow away.