His gaze was intense. “It’s taken me half a lifetime to find you.”
“Has it?” She looked up at him. “Half a lifetime?”
He reached out to brush her hair back. “It has.”
&nb
sp; She didn’t know what to say to that. “Well, then.”
“So, you must take care. So, I can spend the second half of our lifetime making up for lost time.” He kissed her lips swiftly.
She hesitated. “I like that you looked out for me this evening. Even after we disagreed.”
“I will always look out for you, Audrey,” he told her softly.
When Audrey entered the stillness of the cottage, she immediately went to check on Frances, who was sleeping like a baby. She always slept heavily, and Audrey envied her little sister. She went downstairs to collect the names and the diary and then returned to her room.
The moon was low in the sky. She sat upon her bed. She had been rash. Too rash and her heartbeat quickened just thinking about the trip to the mortuary and the subsequent voices in the hallway. What did it all mean? Obviously, Marguerite had stumbled upon something, but what was it? It irritated her to know that she knew even less now than when she had first found the diary.
She began to undress for bed and thought about the evening. Henry. Even when she didn’t expect him, he was there. He was a guardian indeed. A guardian angel watching over her. Protecting her from harm. She liked the feeling of his protective nature, and her cheeks grew warm at the thought of his kiss.
She pulled her mourning gown over her head and placed it over the back of the chair. She remembered the odd visit from Joseph, who had come to the cottage out of the blue. He had not wanted tea so the intention had not been to stay. Or maybe that was the case because she had told him she was expecting someone else. He seemed to have something on his mind, and Audrey frowned as she recalled their brief conversation.
I wanted to make sure you were all right. Your mother as well. I know things have been difficult for you.
It was strange that he had chosen this time, this night, to come to her cottage to ask her about her mother’s wellbeing. Why tonight?
Then she recalled his mood had switched when talking about the cottage and the painting and then just as rapidly he had said, “I heard your mother saying some wild things. She was talking about a man. A shadow man. What do you think she meant by that?”
Audrey pondered the words for several minutes. She shivered at the thought of them. The shadow man. The man wandering the orchards at night. The man her mother had seen. The man who could be perfectly innocent except for everything else she now knew. The names in a diary of dead people. The voices in the mortuary hallway. Marguerite and Alistair dead.
What did it all mean? What did Joseph’s visit mean? Was she trying to tell herself that Joseph was mixed up with this somehow? Rubbish!
But he had visited her cottage that night and then she had heard those voices in the hallway at the mortuary. Surely, she would have recognized his voice… But not necessarily. There had been a wall between them, and the voices had been faint.
She was making too much out of this. She saw a villain everywhere she looked now. He had been concerned about her. That was all. Nothing nefarious or devious—
She heard a creak somewhere in the house and stood up. A creak in the house. Someone was in the house!
She opened the door to her room and walked to the landing above the stairs. She listened keenly to the sounds around her and heard nothing. It was the creaking of an old cottage settling. She was imaging all kinds of things and would drive herself mad!
She checked once more on Frances and then returned to her room. Dressed in her simple white shift, she got into bed. She must not drive herself to think all sorts of crazy things. She must rely on facts and only facts. It would do no good to exaggerate items with no basis in reality.
She sat in bed with her knees folded and her arms around her knees. The list of the dead names could be verified, and that was where they must start. She would ask Henry tomorrow to see about obtaining the information she’d been unable to get tonight in the mortuary. The house creaked again, and this time she ignored it.
As she drifted off to sleep, she thought again of the skeleton-like trees in the orchard outside and how they appeared to look like a nightmare army guarding some unknown entity.
That night, Audrey slept fitfully and when she woke, she felt tired and lethargic. She fixed a small breakfast of porridge for herself and her sister. Even though they were fed by the workhouse, the meals could be scant, and she wanted to give her sister a good start for the day.
She sipped her tea thoughtfully, and when ready, she and Frances walked up the small path to the workhouse classroom. Audrey had trouble concentrating that day. Her thoughts were in a hundred different places, and when the students had quiet time of reading to themselves, she took a sheet of paper and began writing.
Her list was simple. She wrote down the names and surveyed them. It was her list of suspects. These were people who had access to the workhouse and could easily be involved with what might be going on. She placed a star next to Della and Nanette Keene because they were not true suspects, as they had no access to the workhouse, and she crossed out Theodocia entirely.
Cuthbert Meacham, Master
Elspeth Meacham, Matron
Dr. Samson Beesley, Doctor