Parting the Veil by Paulette Kennedy

CHAPTER 16

It was a week after Sarah’s party when Eliza first heard the tapping. Thanks to Lydia’s tonic, her menses had arrived on schedule, and though she was loath to admit it, she was glad for the respite from Malcolm’s attention. He was proving to be insatiable. Their amorous activities left her breathless with pleasure, but she was hardly sleeping. She was relishing the chance to read alone and drift off to sleep, taking up as much of the bed as she liked.

Tap, tap, tap.

She looked up from the book propped against her knees, a rather dry history of the Napoleonic wars, and took her spectacles from her nose, listening. For a moment, she thought it was merely a tree limb knocking against the side of the house. But when it came again, too steady, too measured to be anything wrought from nature alone, Eliza threw back the covers and went to the window, lifting the sash and peering out. There was no wind. Only the sound of tree frogs and the distant baying of a dog met her ears. “How strange.”

There were three more knocks, then a breath of silence. Eliza looked up at the ceiling. The attic was above her, with nothing in it but dusty trunks and discarded furniture. It couldn’t have come from there. Eliza crossed the floor and flung open the door, peering down the hallway. Only the dim, gaslit sconces hissed along the wall, throwing shadows on the carpet.

“What on earth?” she asked the room, turning to climb back in bed. She picked up her book once more and, after fluffing the pillows behind her head, went back to her reading. An hour passed, and then another. Just as Eliza was falling asleep, her book dipping perilously close to her chin, the rapping started up again. Eliza’s heart pummeled out of her chest, and she jumped free of the eiderdown. She knelt on the floor, confronting her childhood fear of monsters beneath bedsteads, and lifted the dust ruffle. She closed her eyes, counted to three, and opened them wide as she ducked her head to look.

There was nothing there.

Just as she was about to climb back under the covers, it sounded again. This time louder, more insistent. Eliza stumbled backward, nearly knocking her washbasin off its stand.

“That’s it. I’m sleeping in Malcolm’s room, no matter what he says.”

She tore across the gallery connecting her wing to Malcolm’s and rapped on the door, her breath hitching. “Malcolm! Something’s happening in my room.”

She heard him swear. There was clicking and turning on the other side of the door as he undid his latches. He opened to her, his face drawn and tired, his pinstriped pajamas wrinkled and buttoned to the collar. “What are you on about, darling? You’ve woken me from a perfectly good sleep.”

“There’s a knocking in my chambers. It moves, just as if there’s someone walking around in the attic or the hall. It taps thrice, stops, then changes places and starts up again. Always in a pattern of three.”

Malcolm passed a hand over his hair in irritation. “It’s only the pipes. They clang awfully at times. The plumbing runs over your ceiling and behind the walls.”

Eliza shook her head. “No, this wasn’t the pipes. My walls were fairly jumping with it, Malcolm!”

He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead and yawned. “I think you might have a fever, dearest.”

“I was wondering if I might sleep in your room tonight. I’m frightened.”

“Darling . . . you know my rules about the house. Proper gentlefolk do not share bedrooms.”

“Yet you’ve no problem sharing my room.”

“But that’s the way of it, don’t you see?”

“Well, I’m afraid.”

“Eliza, you’re not a child. Go to bed—take some laudanum if you must. When you’re finished with your”—he waved his hands about—“lady time, I’ll be back in your chambers once more, protecting you from the scary pipe beast knocking about your room.”

“You’re being priggish, husband.”

“You’ll not be the first to say as much. Now, go to bed.”

Malcolm shut the door in her face, and Eliza groaned in frustration, banging her fist against the door and then kicking it. “Jackass!” she screeched and stalked back across the gallery. “It’s all well and good to share a bed when you’re betwixt my legs. Well, two can play at this merry game.”

Eliza slammed the door to her room and angrily batted the covers back on her bed. There was a muted thud from across the room. The door to the armoire creaked open. Eliza gave a shriek and climbed atop the mattress. She crouched on all fours, expecting a mouse to come scurrying across the floorboards. Instead, lying beneath the edge of the wardrobe was a book, no bigger than a deck of cards, figured on its cover with the letters A and M.

Eliza woke the next day to more rapping—this time the unmistakably human sort. “Mum, it’s Mrs. Duncan. I’ve brought your tea and a note from your sister.”

The little diary lay next to her on the bed. Eliza slid it beneath her pillow. “Come in, please,” she said, pushing the heel of her hand against her eyes. Her head was still fuzzy from the dose of laudanum she’d needed to calm her nerves the night before.

The housekeeper scurried through, her face flushed beneath her lace bonnet. She set the tea tray upon the mattress and pulled a card from her apron pocket, handing it to Eliza.

Sister,

I suppose you’re enjoying all the delights of married life, but I have news. Come this afternoon.

Yours,

Lyddie

“I’d reckon your sister is lonesome, m’lady,” Mrs. Duncan said, her Scottish burr warm as she poured Eliza’s tea with a steady hand. “I’ve a sister meself, back in Aberdeenshire. Been a fair bit since I’ve seen her, my Maggie.”

“Well then, we must do something to remedy that,” Eliza said, offering a smile. “Say, I have a question for you. Last night, I heard a curious tapping inside my room. His lordship said it was the pipes. Have you ever heard such a thing, Mrs. Duncan?”

The housekeeper paused, lifting the spout of the teapot. It dribbled on the napkin below, spotting brown. “I wouldn’t ken any such thing, mum.”

“Are you sure?” Eliza prodded. “It’s all right, you know, talking to me. Despite what his lordship says. I spent the better part of my childhood belowstairs, and I much prefer the company of maids and cooks to lords and ladies.”

Mrs. Duncan gave a dry laugh. “Och, I’ll not tell his lordship a word. He’s gone to Winchester for the day, at any rate.”

“He’s always gone to Winchester. Please, sit.” Eliza patted the top of the counterpane. “And have a cookie while you’re at it so I won’t feel badly eating in front of you. You do make the very best shortbread.”

“Thank you, m’lady.” Mrs. Duncan made a little hop and perched on the edge of the bed, her toes barely touching the floor.

Eliza helped herself to the refreshments, her belly growling with hunger. “How long have you been on staff here? And what on earth is your first name? Malcolm hasn’t told me.”

“Shirley, mum. The last housekeeper, Mrs. Galbraith, hired me on as a chambermaid at sixteen and I’m now six-and-forty.”

“You knew my mother-in-law, then. Tell me about her.”

“Oh, dear Lady Havenwood—Ada, that is. She was from Scotland, too. We got on like a house afire.” A sheepish look passed across Shirley’s face at the gaffe. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be silly, I’m not easily offended. That explains why Malcolm sometimes whispers his endearments in Gaelic. I wondered where he learned it.”

“Aye. He loved his mum. My but she was bonny. So fair it’d make your eyes hurt to look upon her too long. The house was happier with her in it. But the old Lord Havenwood didnae treat her right. He took his moods.” Shirley looked down, picking at the lace tatting on her pinafore. “He struck me on occasion. ‘You make the beds all wrong, stupid girl,’ he’d say.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“’Tis the way of it with some masters. Your own husband is kinder. He’d do no such thing.”

“He’s a bit stiff and proper, my husband.” Eliza took a sip of her tea. “Until the lights go down, that is.”

“Aye, mum, but he cares for ye. I can see it. He’s not been happy in so long. He was an awkward lad. Quiet and studious—always in a book. He didnae deserve the way his father treated him.” Shirley shook her head. “Neither one of the lads did.”

“This tapping I heard last night . . . did Lady Havenwood ever mention it? This was her room, wasn’t it?”

“It were, mum, yes.” Shirley shifted her bulk. “At least, until the years before the fire. She moved into the south wing then. As I recollect, she did mention the pipes creaking a time or two.” Shirley stood, shaking the crumbs of shortbread out of her apron and into her reddened hands. “Well, I’d best be minding the dishes before his lordship comes home. If there’s anything at all you’d like, m’lady, just ring.”

“Thank you, Shirley.”

“Only, please doona call me by my Christian name around your husband, mum. He’s keen on keeping things proper.”

Eliza winked. “It’ll be our secret, I promise.”

After the housekeeper left, Eliza pulled the diary from beneath her pillow. She’d thumbed through enough of the pages to know it was Ada’s diary. She’d been too afraid and exhausted to read it the night before, but now, in the light of day, her curiosity overrode her fear. “What secrets are you hiding, little book?” she asked, running her fingertips over the embossed cover.

One thing she knew for certain: pipes didn’t make walls shake. Pipes didn’t tap in patterns of three. Something was being kept from her, and she was going to find out what.