A Haunting at Hartwell Hall by Rachel Bowdler

Author:Rachel Bowdler [Rachel Bowdler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rachel Bowdler
Published: 2022-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

9

Time for a Séance

The damp cold had bled into Blair’s bones by the time Felicity invited her into her private room. It was nothing like Nancy’s, but then, Blair hadn’t expected it to be. Though slightly more lived in, with clothes piled on a chair and books collected on a shelf, it was more like one of the guest suites.

Felicity lit a candle on her dresser with trembling, rain-reddened fingers and then another on the mantle of the hearth. Blair was glad it was the only light they had. She wasn’t sure she could have handled seeing the fear flickering across Felicity’s features otherwise.

“Let me find you something dry to wear,” Felicity offered, breaking the eerie silence. Outside, the storm was moving away, the thunder a mere murmur rather than a rumble now. The room still lit up with lightning flashes every so often, giving Blair clearer glimpses of Felicity’s pale face.

“Oh, that’s not necessary….” Blair couldn’t imagine that she would fit into any of Felicity’s clothes, but Felicity was already rooting through a tall wardrobe. She pulled out a long, lacy-sleeved nightgown.

“This was my mother’s. It should fit.”

“Is she…?” Blair didn’t dare finish the question, but Felicity seemed to understand all the same.

“No, she’s not dead. Just away.” She offered the nightgown out and then pulled a robe that had been draped across the back of her chair. “You may change in the bathroom. It’s just through that door. There are towels by the sink.”

Felicity motioned to a door in the corner, and Blair lifted her brows in surprise. She had her own bathroom. Blair didn’t think she had met anybody with an en suite before. She was used to five-minute baths in a rusty old tub and then a swift departure when Mrs. Collins began banging at the door because of her weak bladder.

She was still too rattled to say so, though. Instead, she went into the bathroom and found the fluffy bath towels in a pile on a small stool. Her hair was still sopping, so she wrung it out in the sink and then patted her face dry before slipping out of her shoes and peeling her dress and tights from tingling, chapped skin.

The nightgown was too large for her, an occurrence that happened rarely, and it soothed Blair to know that not everyone in the Hartwell family was so perfectly slim. Still, it brought warmth back to her limbs, the lace chafing her elbows and the silk draping across the swells of her chest and hips. The robe was an even better fit. Blair hadn’t noticed that Felicity had a distinct smell before now, but she caught lemony perfume as she slid into the robe and felt her presence immediately.

She found she quite liked it.

Without daring to glance at herself in the mirror, Blair folded her wet clothes and left them on the radiator before emerging back into the bedroom.

She hadn’t anticipated that Felicity might be half-naked… and yet there she stood, buttoning up her own nightgown, legs bare and undergarments visible beneath the thin white.

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