Dark Soul Experiments by Bre Hall

Author:Bre Hall [Hall, Bre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

chapter

16

SHE FELT HER HEARTBEAT FIRST, thrumming hard and fast, like a marching band’s drumline passing close by. Her vision slowly adjusted to Lizzie’s world. A distant chatter. Mary’s breathing on the back of her neck. A bobbin rattling in the keyhole of a door at the back of a Georgian house on Sackville Street. It belonged to a high-society family, one who hadn’t floated among the others and flooded to the suburbs.

“Where are we?” Mary whispered.

Lizzie turned the bobbin gingerly to the left, then the right. She wriggled it up and down. “Mr. and Mrs. William Doherty’s city dwelling.”

“How do you know that?”

“I used to come here a few times a week when I was a messenger,” she said. Before they started cutting back on the number of messengers around the city that is. “I remember they had a daughter a year or two older than us.”

“We’re going to rob her wardrobe?”

“Borrow,” she said. The lock finally clicked and she turned the knob. “Without returning the dresses, of course.”

“You’re mental,” Mary said.

“Are you afraid?” Lizzie asked, swinging open the door to the basement. All was dark and cool from the constant damp.

“No,” said Mary, dropping her voice to a whisper. “But won’t they catch us?”

“They’re gone,” Lizzie said.

“Then nothing will be left.”

“Not gone, gone,” she said. “They’re at their summer home in County Mayo. They go every year.”

“And the scullery maids?” Mary asked.

“They go along,” she said. “The Dohertys cannot be expected to cook and clean for themselves.”

“Of course not,” Mary said, trying her hand at the more refined accent of the aristocrats. “That would be preposterous.”

Lizzie laughed and stepped into the basement. “Still, let’s be swift.”

They tip-toed through the basement and up the stairwell to the ground floor of the house. Lavish settees trimmed in stained, pinewood were sprinkled around the sitting room. Across the corridor, in the dining room, was a hutch filled with crystal bowls and plates, all decorative, of course.

“Wouldn’t they have covered the furniture?” Mary asked. “Wealthy folks always cover their furniture when they go away.”

“How would you know?”

Mary shrugged. “It’s what I’ve heard.”

They started up the main staircase that led to the upper floors. The banister was shiny, all of the spindles intact, unlike the one falling apart in their building on Henrietta.

On the first floor a square of open space was surrounded by two closed doors and a room between, with the door cracked open, revealing a library. As Mary poked her head into the rooms shut out of view, Lizzie peered through the gap and into the library. She had never seen so many colorful book spines in her life. Mary tugged silently at her shoulder—no luck—and the girls kept moving to the second floor, where every single door was shut.

“Do you think her bedroom is on the third?” Mary asked.

“In the nurseries?”

“Just a thought,” Mary said.

“We’ll just have to look inside.” Lizzie cautiously turned the doorknob on the room closest to the staircase. The curtains were drawn, making the room nearly pitch dark, but she could make out a writing desk in the corner, a wooden pipe propped near it.

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