Mr. Ridley by Delilah Marvelle

Author:Delilah Marvelle
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

She couldn’t sleep.

It felt like the longest night she had ever lived.

As if she were compiling thirteen lifetimes into one single gulp.

Despite too many minutes passing, Jemdanee could do nothing but eye the lone oil lamp she had left burning. She did so in a childish attempt to ease her imaginings which were accented by countless shadows that were becoming too menacing to look at.

What made it further impossible for her to sleep was that the tightly laced and overly small corset was digging into bare skin. With no chemise beneath it and no way to reach the lacings tied and tucked and knotted to the stretch at the back, she ached with discomfort.

Still curled against the sunken mattress of the massive four poster bed overstuffed with pillows, she tugged up the layers of linen to her chin in an attempt to shield herself against the coolness of the night that penetrated her skin.

She eyed the cavernous room whose gilded and ornate furnishings reminded her of items pulled from the palaces of European kings she had seen in illustrations from books Peter had kept on his shelf back in Calcutta.

The wardrobe, which had been left open, seemed to be held into place by an unseen hand that sat in the darkness of the chest within.

She had never been one to believe in ghosts.

She thought it childish.

And yet…

Dark shadows shifted against the sparse light that fingered across the uneven floorboards and illuminated the heavy, velvet curtains around the bed. The wind caused branches beyond the window to rustle and sway, looking like countless witch-like arms attempting to find souls to drag in and eat.

Occasional creaks within her room as if someone were walking toward her bed made her do something she rarely did: panic.

Flipping aside the linen, she scrambled out of the bed and darted across the room. Jerking open her door, she peered out, her pulse roaring. The lurking shadows were even worse in the corridor, heading out to countless blackened rooms with smeared doors that no doubt housed things she dared not fathom.

Bones. Lots of them.

She bustled back toward the landing of the stairwell and thudded down the stairs toward the study, refusing to be alone. It reminded her of too many nights spent hidden beneath a manure cart buried in foliage in an effort to remain hidden from sight and keep others from grabbing her whilst she’d slept.

Skidding into the study, she paused at finding it empty. “Mr. Ridley?” she whispered hoarsely as if he would somehow emerge from the hip-high piles of papers and books that filled the room.

Where was he? “Mr. Ridley?”

No answer.

Eeeeeee. Though he had never once said it, she knew his father had been butchered in this house. And he was living in it. Living. In. It. Like a morbid king requiring a skeletal throne.

What if she was sleeping in the room where it had happened? What if that body and its pieces had spattered the bed and the walls of…

Jemdanee shuddered and swung around.

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