Fiercombe Manor by Kate Riordan

Author:Kate Riordan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

There was no date, but suddenly there was a little girl of a year old. Elizabeth had been right about carrying a girl, after all. I turned to the next entry, realising that time passed unevenly in the diary, with whole months frustratingly lost. Not that she had written it to be read, of course. Guilt stabbed me then, as I recalled the feeling that I was being watched in the manor, that eyes other than mine might have read my own private thoughts. It didn’t stop me from reading on, though, as I had with the note in the sewing box. I couldn’t help it.

I have come again to the little summerhouse. My pencil is still lost and I forgot to bring another, so I must write in ink once more. I wonder if someone has been here and moved things. But who would think to? Who knows that an old chaise longue was once stored here and then forgotten, abandoned in the topmost room? No one has seen me bring over some of my books, and a couple of small pictures filched from the walls of my rooms. I am so careful when I come.

And I felt I must come today, or else I would scream at the servants to leave me be. It was Ivy today. I came upon her because it was so icy in the yellow parlour that I missed my wrap and went upstairs to fetch it. It is bitterly cold here in the valley, the sky iron grey—weather that has always made me despondent, but so much more so in this sequestered place.

When I got to my rooms, I could hear some noises within, but I presumed it was Edith. In fact I discovered Ivy, who of course had no business to be there at that hour. I caught her at my dressing table, rooting around in one of the small drawers. My brushes and combs had been moved and no doubt tested. I asked her what she was doing, but she only stammered something unintelligible and then went off in tears.

I rang for Edith, when I know it should have been Mrs. Thornbury, now that she has been promoted to housekeeper after Mrs. Drummond’s blessed leaving, but I couldn’t bear it somehow, not today. Edith believes the whole thing to be nothing more ominous than a housemaid having developed some sort of fascination with me—that she simply wished to touch my things. It is true that she seems harmless enough, a village girl who is not yet fifteen and whose great-aunt worked for the Stantons at the old manor for years.

Even so, I can’t help but wonder if Edward has asked her to watch me. I confided as much to Edith, and she gave me a peculiar look before she could stop herself. She does not know my husband as I do, though. And yet . . . I look at it again with a more dispassionate eye and I see nothing but a village child playing at being a lady between blacking grates and sweeping ashes.

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