Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

Chapter 20

September 20, 1846, Blaugdone Island, Rhode Island

Merritt couldn’t wrap his head around how well things were going. Not just with the house, which had been kinder to him ever since he’d learned its name, but . . . Hulda.

The very thing that had made his own father throw him out, she’d barely batted an eye at.

He’d come to terms with it all—his disinheritance, the abandonment—or so he liked to think. He could go days without thinking about it, though when he did think about it, it stung like a fresh wasp bite. Ebba, especially. The disintegration of his world had revolved around her. Around their mistake. And yet Merritt had been determined to pick up the pieces, to marry her and raise their child together. To move on as a family. He’d proposed, she’d accepted, and train cars were slowly aligning on the track. So when she’d abandoned him, too—apparently with an empty womb—he’d been . . . shocked wasn’t a strong enough word for it. Words were his business, his trade, and still he wasn’t sure an adequate descriptor existed. She hadn’t even said goodbye. He’d found out from her parents. There’d been no note, no farewell, no explanation.

She’d left the ring. Fletcher had pawned it on Merritt’s behalf.

Merritt’s father had always viewed him with disdain, so his abandonment had seemed almost natural. But Ebba had loved him, or so he’d believed. And not knowing why she’d ripped him off like a coarse scab still haunted his dreams at night.

And yet.

Merritt sat at his desk, pen in hand, but had not written for several minutes. Twilight was descending, acclimating him to the darkness. He needed to light another candle, but something about the blank wall in front of him magnified the scattered thoughts he needed to sort through.

Finding that forgotten, mud-encased grave had struck a chord within him. A note that still rang, even now. He felt empathetic for a house, for the person within its walls that he couldn’t see, couldn’t really talk to. He felt connected to him, like they were two novels of the same series.

If Owein hadn’t reached into his soul so readily, he might not have told Hulda his story. Outside of Fletcher, he’d told no one. Fletcher’s family knew, of course, but not from Merritt’s mouth. And suddenly, thirteen years later, he’d vomited his shame and anguish onto his housekeeper, of all people. He’d truly thought she’d be offended. That he’d wake up this morning to see her bags packed, her replacement already notified.

Instead, she’d offered to wash his cravat and asked for his dinner recommendations.

She was a puzzle. So prim yet . . . utterly unruffled by his delinquencies. By his outcast status. In truth, he’d never met a woman like Hulda Larkin.

Who are you?

He’d been equally surprised by her willingness to talk about this Silas Hogwood. Merritt had a vivid imagination; it had felt as if he were standing beside her as she witnessed those horrors in her vision. The bodies. Surely that had to trouble a person. Surely not even someone as strong as Hulda could shake it off. He’d wanted, badly, to comfort her. To reassure her. If she hadn’t already done so, Merritt would have made his own inquiries regarding the man.

He heard her voice passing by his door with a second set of light footsteps that had to be Beth’s. “—not a bother. You’re smaller than I am; take the bath first. I’ll carry up the water. I need the exercise—”

Merritt wiped his hands down his face before resting his chin in his palms, trying not to let his thoughts wander to the bath. Corsets aside, Hulda was a well-shaped woman, and—

There was some rule against this, wasn’t there? Moon-eyeing your staff.

He groaned and leaned back in his chair, filling his eyes—and brain—with the shadowed wall in front of him. There had been plenty of nice women in his life. He’d taken a few to dinner, even. One had gotten awkward around him when she learned he had no family ties, but she’d been a snob, anyway, always wearing mountains of lace even on the hottest summer days. Then there was the mess with Fletcher’s sister, who’d turned him down outright, and he’d had to avoid her while living in the same house for months. The woman he’d fancied during his undercover employment at that steel factory had not been happy with him when his article put her job in jeopardy.

Sometimes he wondered if his father had placed a curse on him, stripping him of not only his past family, but any chance of a future one as well. He didn’t think about it much, but that was because he didn’t want to. He’d dug his graves for the loved ones torn away from him long ago, occasionally adding more soil to top them off.

His thoughts drifted back to Hulda. She was so rigid it was comical, but sometimes she softened, showing her humanity as if by accident. When she’d taken his cravat. When he’d mentioned Ebba, the girl he’d been ready to marry. When he’d told her she was safe.