“Oh, it’s no trial, sir. I like the baby’s company.”
“Mm.” He stood looking down at the child a moment longer. She could not see his face. “My boy,” he whispered.
Then he retreated back out, to the antechamber.
She followed.
“Miss Davenshaw tells me you are in need of extra coal and candles?” he said, when the curtain was again drawn and they were away from the sleeping baby. “I will see they are sent up. The child must be kept warm, yes. She tells me also that you are not eating.”
Susan blushed. “I’m fine, sir. Only a wee bit tired. Tis to be expected.”
He grimaced.
“I must tell you something, Miss Crowley. It has only just been decided, but I think it best you hear it at once.”
Berghast’s gray eyes bored into her own and she looked away.
“The child cannot stay here, at Cairndale. He will need to be sent away. I would like you to go with him, if you are willing.”
She looked up. “Sent away? He is still very young, Dr. Berghast—”
“It cannot be helped. I have already written several letters of inquiry and am only waiting to hear back. I have two possible destinations. They are … remote.”
“But … why, sir?”
She watched Dr. Berghast cross to the window and separate the muslin curtains with one hand and stare out at the gathering darkness. She had not lit any candles and she moved now to do so.
It was then he spoke.
He said, very softly, “Because the child is not safe here, Miss Crowley. He is not safe anywhere. We must hide him, before they come for him.”
She looked at him sharply. “Who is coming for him, sir?”
But that question, he did not answer.
* * *
At that same moment, in the lower foyer of Cairndale, Abigail Davenshaw was sitting upright and stiff in an armchair with her hands clasped in her lap, listening to the clock chime in one corner. She had been waiting almost an hour for the carriage from Edinburgh, the carriage that was carrying her two new wards.
Their names were Gully and Radha, twins, and they had come a great distance to reach the institute. She knew only what Mrs. Harrogate had told her upon arrival: they had come from Calcutta, purchased by Mr. Coulton from a spice trader, and they understood almost nothing of their talents.
Mrs. Harrogate had seen them in London, the morning of their arrival; their luggage had been delayed at the customs house at Grave-send, and Mr. Coulton had agreed to see them to the train when at last it was delivered.
As a general rule, Abigail Davenshaw did not like children to travel unaccompanied—one does not invite trouble into one’s home, as her grandfather would have said—but it had been done like that since before her time at Cairndale, and there had never yet been any child lost or delayed, and so who was she to demand a chaperone be present?
She lifted her face. There came the sound of heels crossing quietly toward her.
“Mrs. Harrogate,” she said.
“Miss Davenshaw,” replied the older woman. “I have been looking for Dr. Berghast. He has not passed this way?” She paused. “What is it. The new ones? Have they still not arrived, then?”
Abigail Davenshaw inclined her head. “As you can see.”
“Well. I am certain the carriage will arrive soon. It is Mr. Bogget, after all. He has been driving our new ones up from Edinburgh since, well, since my late husband’s time. And he has not failed us yet. He has perhaps had some trouble on the road, or with the horses. He will be here. I am confident.”
“Hm,” she replied. For Mrs. Harrogate didn’t sound confident, not at all, not to Abigail Davenshaw’s practiced ear.
A long, uncomfortable silence passed. There came the faint rumble of children running along the corridor upstairs. The older woman made a sniffing noise, and then Abigail Davenshaw felt a hand on her sleeve.
“How late are they?”
“Fifty-six minutes.”
“Ah.” Mrs. Harrogate cleared her throat. “Where is Mr. Laster? Not at the gatehouse, I have just come from there. If there has been any word, he will have received it.”
“There has been no word, Mrs. Harrogate. The carriage is simply … late.”
Abigail heard steel in the older woman’s voice when she replied. “You may choose to wait for word, Miss Davenshaw,” she said. “But I do not care to sit idly by, doing nothing. I shall inquire of Mr. Laster. And inform you if there is news.”
Abigail Davenshaw inclined her head. A long silence followed.
“Good evening to you,” said Mrs. Harrogate, at last.
“Indeed.”
Abigail turned her face as the older woman’s footsteps crossed the foyer, heading outside toward the courtyard, toward Walter Laster’s gatehouse beyond. She breathed calmly. Only when the front door had boomed shut, and she was certain she was alone, did she allow herself a quick, unhappy grimace.
The carriage was never late.
* * *
Impatiently, Walter Laster shut the gatehouse door behind him, locking it fast. Then he hurried across the courtyard to the delivery entrance, casting wary looks all around. It was growing dark.
No one saw him go. He was watching for that woman up from London, the Harrogate woman, the one in black with her veiled face, who seemed always to be observing him. As if she knew. At the delivery entrance he paused, quickly crushing a handkerchief to his mouth, muffling his cough. He felt his body spasm with pain. When he took the cloth away, even in the faint light from the manor house, he could see the blood flecking it. His mouth and lips tasted of iron.
The carriage up from Edinburgh hadn’t arrived. That had been the sign. His heart was pounding, he shook his head weakly as he worked through the ring of keys, finding the right one. He had to hurry. If all would happen as he’d been told, then Jacob would be coming within the hour.
At last he found the key he was looking for, and slipped inside the delivery entrance, and stood listening. No one was near. He hurried through the back halls and down the steps into the cold cellar, finding the old lantern he had hidden behind a shelf. He struck a safety match, lit the oil with his back to the cellar.
Jacob, Jacob. His dear and only friend.
Walter had always been small, crooked due to a childhood injury, a loner who suffered for being alone. He had long greasy hair cut by his own hand with a pair of shears borrowed once a month from the gardener’s shed, and small hands, and two teeth out in back. He watched the kids at Cairndale cautiously, keeping clear of them, disliking the way they laughed around him, knowing the unnatural things they could do. But most of those at Cairndale paid him no mind—he was just queer Mr. Laster, who lived in the gatehouse and took care of any arrivals or departures that came through.
But Jacob hadn’t been like that, no. Jacob, when he was at Cairndale, had immediately been drawn to Walter, or Walter to him—it was hard to know exactly—and it wasn’t only that they were both different from the rest, or friendless in the same way. No, it was a deeper bond, not like friendship, more like what brothers could be. Or so it had always felt to Walter.
When Jacob had gone missing and not returned, Walter’d known something bad had happened. He’d watched that Mr. Coulton depart in a coach for Edinburgh, scarcely able to conceal his dislike. Maybe the man had abandoned Jacob, or killed him even, left his body in an alley somewhere. Certainly Coulton was the kind capable of it.
That was around the time the disease made itself felt. Consumption. He’d coughed sharply into his hand one winter and his hand had come away wet with blood and he’d seen it and known what it meant. Give him one year, give him five, it didn’t matter. It would kill him sure enough.
But then came the dreams.