The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Romance (15 page)

It was dusk when they arrived at the two standing stones that flanked the path to Saint Lupine’s. Like white pillars they appeared to Veronica, pillars of salt. She couldn’t help but pause before them.

She had to blink twice to be sure, but in the darkness between the stones, the white face of Father Roche suddenly appeared, the rest of him blending with the shadows like a dark spirit of the wood. The twins waved to him excitedly. As if his hand were lifted by a puppeteer's string, he waved back. Jacques whistled a refrain from
The False Knight on the Road,
and the good Father faded away.

“Where did he go?” Veronica asked. She felt a strong urge to head up the path and find him.

“He just stepped back,” said Jacqueline. “He wants us to visit him.”

Heart hammering, Veronica considered whether to do that. Luckily, her mind cleared before she made the wrong decision. “No. Let’s go. I’m sorry to say this to you, but I don’t think Father Roche is a proper priest. He fled from that tune you were playing, Jacques, for who is the
False Knight on the Road,
but the Devil?”

“The Devil?” Jacques said, holding the tin whistle to his breast. He looked so downcast that Veronica felt she’d just dashed his dreams to shards.

“I'm sorry. I don’t mean Father Roche
is
the Devil, Jacques. I'm just afraid he knows an awfully lot about him.”

Jacques looked at Jacqueline, his gaze charged with
sarcasm.

“Well, he’s meant to, isn’t he?"

They both fell silent and stayed that way until they got home to Belden House. By that time it was getting dark.

Twenty-Five

T
he moment they got to the front door, Jack began shouting for Mrs. Twig. The housekeeper came out looking slightly irritated until she saw Veronica sagging with the weight of two bulging baskets. Then she laughed.

“Oh, my! What have you been doing?” she asked, relieving Veronica of her burdens.

Veronica let them go gladly. “I didn’t think I could carry them much further without spilling things all over the road,” she said.

“My goo
dness, what have we got here?” Mrs. Twig asked, prodding at the wrapped parcels for indications of their contents.

“Surprises,” said Jacqueline. “For you!”

"For me?" Mrs. Twig laid her hand on her heart.

“Presents,” said Jacques.

“We got a lovely book,” Veronica said. “For Mr. de Grimston.”

“I’ll make sure he gets it. Come along, Jack.” Mrs. Twig bustled off to the drawing room with the twins in tow.

Alone in the foyer, Veronica looked around for Rafe. She had a feeling he was outside, riding again. She went to the window that looked out toward the orchard, but saw only the peaks of a juniper hedge dim in the twilight. An apple tree, still heavy with unpicked fruit, leaned in the yard.

Out there, past the orchard, the moor would be shrouded in deep twilight. She still had no memory of how she'd gotten lost out there, or why. She wondered if she had a death wish. Dying certainly ended one's troubles.

Sitting below the window, on the side table where they always left the post, lay a single lilac-hued envelope. It was addressed to
Monsieur Rafe de Grimston
in the flowing script of a lady’s hand. The postage stamps were colorful, French, stamped with black wavy lines evoking the wild waves of the Channel the letter had crossed to get to Belden House. A whiff of perfume rose from the envelope, the scent provocatively feminine. Veronica felt the urge to pick the letter up, to turn it over and see the lady’s name, but drew her hand back. She didn’t dare touch it. Rather, she gazed down at that fragrant missive like a sparrow studying a swan, her own drab existence magnified by the poetic mystery of this obviously superior bird.

Was there
a lady in Rafe’s life? Was
she
the reason he spent so much time in France? Was
she the reason for his sudden coldness?

The challenge of r
ivalry making her bold, Veronica picked the letter up, sniffed it, turned it over to see no name, but a waxen seal stamped with a
fleur de lis
. Veronica envisioned an elegant Frenchwoman of culture and beauty dabbing attar of roses and ambergris along her swan-like neck, writing with a graceful hand on lilac colored paper, lines of passion and romance, a lady of breeding, very rich, and thus able to offer a man like Rafe de Grimston so much more than a meager schoolmistress ever could.

What a fool she'd been.

Loosening her cloak, Veronica picked up her bundles of fabric and crossed the vestibule just as Rafe was coming out of his study. He was wearing a blousy white shirt, his hair was messy, his eyes dark as if he hadn't slept for days. For a moment, they held each other’s gaze. Caught off guard, Veronica felt the doors of her heart spring open, releasing all the feelings pent up inside. A pang of jealousy slammed the doors shut. Hot tears starting in her eyes, she looked down and away. How would she endure this?

In Rafe’s hand was a book with green covers. He held it up as an explanation, and smiled in such a way that his entire being sparkled. “Thank you, Miss Everly,” he said.

Startled at the sincerity in his voice, her head shot up; she met his eyes. “Oh... I was hoping you’d like it. The children said you would.”

“It’s the most thoughtful gift I’ve received in a long while. I owned a painting by Rossetti once, but I had to sell it.”

“Oh, how tragic...”

“Yes. The
model was a lady very much like you. She had ginger hair, but the spirituality of her countenance was much like yours, Miss Everly, though perhaps more fiery. Your
magic is of nature, of the forest, the land, the flowers on the heath...”

“Me? Magical? I wonder how you can put those two concepts together.” Veronica laughed partly from astonishment and partly from a flood of relief that she and Rafe
were finally having an unguarded conversation.

He opened the book, scanned the page and began reading.

"I met a lady in the meads


Full beautiful, a faery's child;


Her hair was long, her foot was light,


And her eyes were wild.


I set her on my pacing steed,


And nothing else saw all day long;


For sideways would she lean, and sing


A faery's song."

“That’s Keats,” Veronica said. A blush rose to her face. It was as if Rafe were trying to remind her of the day he found her on the moor.

“
La Belle Dame sans Merci
. The beautiful lady without mercy,” he said.

“A beautiful poem without mercy,” she mumbled, looking at her scuffed toes of shoes. Surely the poem couldn't remind him of her, the drab sparrow. She glanced up, arrested by the beauty of Rafe's face. All she could think of was the lilac colored envelope, drenched in French perfume, awaiting him in the foyer. Indeed, it was
Rafe
who lacked mercy----
he
who had not the faintest clue that this love... yes, this terrible
love
... assailed her, followed by a blinding flash of absolute hopelessness now settling around her like a cloak of complete invisibility.

Rafe's voice cut through her misery with gentle humor. “And what have you got there? A bundle of washing?”

“No. Fabric for three new dresses. As you can see: violet, garnet and blue. No yellow.”

Rafe’s eyes narrowed. “That’s excellent. Those colors would suit you extremely well.”

Mrs. Twig came toward them at a quick pace, holding out the perfumed letter from the foyer.

“Oh! Mr. Rafe, I’m glad I caught you. This came for you in the post.”

“When?”

“Just this afternoon. It's from France.”

Rafe took the letter, gazed at it and smiled. Veronica could smell it from where she stood.

“If you’ll excuse me, Miss Everly.” He held the letter up and ducked back into his study.

Feeling bereft, Veronica glanced at Mrs. Twig, looking for a sign that she knew something about the letter. But the housekeeper wore her usual mask-like expression.

“Thank you for filling the larder, Miss Everly. And for the cakes and tarts. We shall all enjoy them at tea.”

“I’m glad you like them, Mrs. Twig," Veronica said distantly. "If you’ll excuse me.”

Veronica dashed up the stairs to her room and shut the door.  Reeling around, she fell into the easy chair, took off her shoes, and threw them across the room, into the other half, where they thudded on the Turkish rug. The vibration set the rocking horse creaking.

*
             

Twenty-Six

S
wallowing a sob, Veronica's curiosity disrupted her descent into self-pity. What was over there, anyway? Maybe she could distract herself by digging around in the
family secrets.

Rather than get up, she just stared into the room.

All that clutter! Someone should just go in there and throw all of it out. Family treasures, indeed. More like a load of junk for the rag picker and the bone gatherer. The only family treasure she'd ever had was a gown that got her into
so much trouble.
What good was it, saving things? The past was over. It meant nothing.

She imagined Rafe in his little den under the stairs, reading that letter from his French paramour, pouring over every word as he succumbed to spell of her perfume. His blue eyes closing as his mind roamed across
the English Channel toward
her.

Why should she care? She was just a governess in
a plain, drab, now sweaty, green dress. A frowser, a limpet, a gullible
flat
.

Her heart was breaking and it was ridiculous and she was so angry with herself she wanted to throw herself off the balcony.

She picked up a candle branch and went under the archway. The only window was closed under heavy red curtains. She pulled them apart, releasing a cloud of dust, and found a drawn shade underneath. No wonder it was so dark. She pulled the shade; it snapped up, revealing that it was dark outside as well. She found a candelabrum, lit it up, and soon had enough light to see by.

Flickering firelight turned the room from intriguingly haunted to downright ghastly. The wallpaper was covered with white camellias with black leaves. The furniture, all dark wood upholstered in red velvet, was full of uncomfortable twists and turns like medieval torture devices. There was a cushioned settee and a few French chairs, including an elaborate hooded
porter’s
chair, set around a table holding a square board and a downturned glass. On the board, the large white letters of the alphabet curved in a bold arch above the words
oui
and
non
, while on the left side, a horned devil with a long, snaky tail cavorted, tipping his hat like a cartoon master of ceremonies.

Veronica’s skin crisped at the sight of it. In her years at Saint Mary’s, she’d heard about the dreaded Ouija board, but had never seen one. Three china dolls, sitting on two of the chairs, suggested the presence of children at these diabolical séances. She prayed they were not the twins. The tears dried on her lashes, and all thoughts of Rafe and his French hussy were replaced by a creeping anxiety.

How could they call these devilish contraptions their
treasures?
What else was in here?

Her eyes fell on a large cabinet at the back wall. Through the etched glass panes of the double doors, she saw rows of books, and on the second shelf, a deep wooden box.

Unable to resist, Veronica approached the cabinet and opened the glass doors. For one afflicted with curiosity, a box like the one before her now was as compelling as a closed door. Her heart beating a tattoo against her chest, she pulled out the box, and took it to the table. It was so heavy she dropped it on top of the Ouija board with a thud, knocking the downturned glass to the floor where it broke with a loud
chink.
With a burst of bravado, she kicked the shards away with her foot.

In the box was a file of glass plates. She pulled one out. They were photographic negatives. Etched on the glass in golden sepia tones, was an image of Sovay de Grimston. Her eyes were hypnotic, her hair loose in long waves of shadowed light. At the level of her throat was a cloud, a mystic vapor that seemed to spread out beyond the edges of the frame. The negative vapor looked so dark that the real one must have been like a blast of snow. What on earth could this signify?

Another plate held an image of three children, two of them so black and, even in the negatives, shining, that they could only be the twins. The third child, clearly a girl, was as dark and bright as Jack. Veronica's mind raced back to the third desk in the classroom.
Had
there been an older sister? Was this she?

Judging by the sizes and shapes of the dark twins in the negatives, they looked around four years old. The third girl lo
oked older, about seven or eight years of age. She stared through the sepia cloud of the negatives with the intensity of a huntress. There were single, more recent, images of the children in the mix. In each one they exuded the same mist as in Sovay’s picture, from the area just below the throat.

On another plate, the sister looked about ten years old. An enormous cloud of mist oozed from her throat, and superimposed over her face, was the mask of a wolf.

As Veronica put the plate back into the box, she shivered. It was very cold all of a sudden. She looked back to make sure the door to her room was closed, that no one could come in and find her prying into their secrets.

The door was closed. She hurried over to lock it.

It was chilling to see the aspect of a beast superimposed over the face of a child. Veronica's imagination rushed to connect the image on the plate with the wolf she'd heard and seen in the yard. Had the de Grimstons brought these animals back into England?

W
ith mixed emotions, Veronica went back to the box.

Next she found a negative of three china dolls in a pool of mist surrounded with white lilies. Mixed in were pictures of various girls and boys enveloped in mist. There were several negatives of Sovay sitting in the porter’s chair with her eyes closed. In one, the cloud at her throat took the shape of a hand, and in another, a ghostly face appeared. In a final plate, way at the back, the mist was so dense that her entire head seemed to have been replaced by the head of a wolf.

Veronica flipped rapidly through the plates. The face of one man appeared to be completely covered with fur: his beard met his hairline, his eyebrows met above two small eyes winking out like buttons above a long, canine snout.

This had to be a hoax! Some kind of trick photography. In London, spiritualists were constantly being arrested for cons such as this, preying on the bereaved
and the credulous. Apparently, there was a lot of money in it.

Veronica glanced around the room, looking for she knew not what, imagining all these aristocrats sitting around a Ouija board, like the necromancers of old, conjuring spirits of wild beasts. Or, more likely, posing, like actors on a stage, for silly, doctored photographs. But to what end? Obviously, people with lots of money had nothing more productive to do. If they had to work for
their bread and board, they wouldn't have time to dabble in such things. Or endanger innocent children. Or have mistresses all over the place...

She flipped through the plates, looking for a picture of Rafe. It was incredible how detailed the mist figures were----almost alive. For the sake of the children, Veronica hoped the pictures had been nothing more than a game. But it was dangerous to play at such things. Sovay must have been mad to allow it. No wonder she came to a bad end.

At the very back of the box was a large folio. Inside were daguerreotypes of a castle in the midst of a forest. Other pictures seemed to show the interior of the place. There were lots of staircases, many luxuriously furnished rooms, and some murals. One of the murals gave Veronica a start. In grisly detail, a young woman in medieval dress was clamped in the jaws of a wolf. Rather than appearing to scream in terror, she smiled, her heavy-lidded eyes suggesting pleasure as she stroked the wolf's exceptionally long snout.

Veronica’s stomach went sour. She dropped her hands from the box and wiped them on her skirt. It was Saint Lupine. In her room. Imagine! She’d been living in Belden House for almost two months with no idea that these occult objects were so close by: Ouija boards, and other instruments for calling demons and devils, crazy pictures of who knew what? How could Mrs. Twig let anyone stay here? No wonder Veronica was seeing things.

She lowered the lid of the box. Some of the glass plates were askew. Lifting them out to straighten them, she had another shock. It was a wonder how she'd missed it. In the dark reversal of the glass appeared a younger version of Mrs. Twig exuding a vast inky cloud from her open mouth in the shape of a scroll. The letters were so white they were clearly readable, in Latin.

Veronica's jaw clenched. She quickly made a Sign of the Cross, and murmured an
Our Fathe
r. The staid, responsible Mrs. Twig was the last person on earth she would have suspected being involved in such things. How could she be? And with the children!

Veronica got the box closed and lugged it back to the shelf. She made double sure the cabinet doors were securely shut upon it.

At least there were no pictures of Rafe amongst the lot. She hoped it was because he hadn't participated, wouldn’t waste his time with such follies. Perhaps this was why he'd warned her so violently away from Belden House that first day on the moor. His beautiful wife had proved herself an unsavory character, seething with evil influences, tainting the house, corrupting her own children.

No wonder the twins were so morbidly inclined.

Veronica wondered if she could have a different room. But then, she loved it here, especially the balcony and the view over the birch grove and the lawn. And how could she explain why she wanted to change? She'd have to admit to snooping. But these things were in her room, weren't they? Sort of?  No one had said she couldn't take a look.

“I’ll have Janet clean in here,” she murmured. “Have her store all those things far away from me. Upstairs. In one of those rooms without windows.”

Veronica took one more look around at the rocking horse, a music box with dancers on the lid, the dolls sitting at the séance table, and closed the curtains over the window again.

Let these things stay in the dark, where they belong.

Still, she wondered how she'd sleep after this, fearing that the wolf she'd thought was locked outside, had been inside with her all along.