The second floor of the manor contains what are traditionally the family quarters. I lived there, once. But when my father began traveling more and more, suddenly Helen needed a whole room for her art studio, and my bedroom had the best light.
Here is where you live now, Joyce’s voice echoes back to me as I stand at the threshold of the dark hall that leads to my room. I light a nib of candle—one I took when replacing those in my sisters’ rooms. It illuminates the cracking plaster of the halls. The crumbling stone that tells the truth of this manor.
It’s too much. There’s not enough money to keep it in repair, not really. I do my best for the memory of my mother…and so that if Father ever returns he has a home to come back to. But all Joyce cares about are the common areas and her rooms. There’s money enough for those. For the facade. Everything else, I think she would let burn.
My bed takes up the entire back of the room at the end of the hall, filling the space with wall-to-wall blankets and pillows. My old bookshelf, also far too large for this room, is mostly empty and the sparse objects that fill the shelves are practical ones only. My prized possession is the lute leaning against it. I go to pick it up and immediately think better of it. Someone is certain to hear me if I try to play now. I think Helen has trained hearing, like dogs, for the sound of my strumming. She protests whenever she is “forced to endure” a single note.
Once in a while, though, Laura will listen. I will miss the nights she finds the bravery to sneak down here and hum along to my playing. The only one who has heard my music in years.
Sighing, I turn to the wardrobe, surprised to find a new dress within. Well, it’s not technically a “new” dress. I recognize it as Helen’s from the springtime ball two years ago. It was only worn once, so the satin is still in pristine condition. I run my hands over the buttery smoothness, so different from the regular clothes I wear. The high neckline hides the scars on my back. No doubt intentional.
I dare to use the upstairs bathroom. It’s a small form of protest. But it feels better than the hot water stinging my skin. Most days I am the one heating and gathering the water for everyone else’s bath. At the end of it all I don’t have the energy to haul up my own. When I’m finished washing, I even dare to look through Helen’s cosmetics, selecting a soft rouge for my cheeks that accents the stormy gray of my eyes and a deep red for my lips that brings out the darker rusty notes of my brown hair.
I emerge a new woman. My hair has been brushed and carefully pinned in a cascade of curls that even Joyce would be proud of. I wonder if I would have looked like this every day had my father never married that woman.
Joyce was a widow before she married my father. It was a smart match on the outside: they both had young daughters in Helen and I, and were of a similar economic background—she had inherited a good deal of wealth from her previous husband in the form of rare silver mines to the north. The same mines that only my father’s ships could reach.
I caught on to her game early. But my father never saw it. Not even up until the very end, when he last left. He loved her. She had been the one to “save him” from the depths of despair following my mother’s death. Then Laura came along, the light in both of their eyes, and the “glue,” as they would say, to our dysfunctional little family.
Treading lightly across the squeakier portions of the floors, I sneak into my old room. It overlooks the front of the manor and gives me a view of the drive that connects us to the main road we take to town. Sure enough, there are three carriages parked along the front. I see a man in a top hat emerge from the main entrance of the manor. He exchanges a few words with his driver and speeds off.
I wonder how he feels about marrying a woman he’s never even met. Clearly he’s fine enough to come here and make an offer.
Then again, maybe we have met. Maybe the man I will marry is someone I’ve crossed paths with in town or at a ball. I shudder thinking of the lecherous Earl Gravestone and how he would look at me and my sisters in our dresses during our first seasons out among society. I pray that he does not come calling for me, or them when their time comes. There are some evils I can’t even wish on Helen.
I creep out of my sister’s art room before I can be found. Instead of taking the main stairs I take a side stair wedged between the primary bedroom and the wall. It’s a servant’s access that takes me back down to the kitchens. From there, I sneak through the house using other such hidden halls. One thing that my mother and sister never realized was that by making me their servant, and demanding I act the part, they also allowed me to learn all of the passages built long ago into this decaying home.
The wall of the sitting room adjacent to my father’s study glides open on hidden, silent hinges. I creep across the room, footsteps muffled by the carpet. At the far end, I press my ear against the wall and hold my breath. It’s thin enough that I can hear the conversations happening in the other room perfectly clearly.
“…and her dowry will be the north runner ships in the Applegate Trading Company,” Joyce says.
I bite my lip. There are no north runner ships, not anymore. Those waters are treacherous, and my father had one of the few captains in the world that could sail them. She was an incredible woman; I met her only once but was utterly enthralled for every second of our brief discussion. She was only a year older than me and had been captaining ships for two years already. Perhaps it was reckless youth that enabled her to chart a course that not even the hardest, most salt-crusted sailors would dare to try across those choppy waters to access a rare vein of silver.
But even her luck had run out, as all of ours does sooner or later. She went down with her ship, my father, too. I didn’t realize that Joyce had kept my father’s disappearance quiet. She’s trying to fully control the Applegate Trading Company, I realize. My nails dig into the wall. With my father disappeared—but not declared dead—she can assume control without question.
“That’s a very interesting proposition,” an old and weathered voice says.
I hope it’s not too interesting to whoever this man is. Because if he marries me for ships, and then finds out there are none, I am the one who will suffer. I have no doubt that Joyce will concoct a clever lie if she needs to, saying the ships went down just after the wedding. Calm down, poor fortune happens to everyone, I can imagine her saying.
“Indeed,” Joyce says. “So as you can see, this isn’t what one would think of as a normal marriage. I recognize that it is customary for the bride to bring her dowry. But I’m a shrewd businesswoman, and I know the value of my daughter and what I’m offering. As such, I am asking all potential suitors to let me know what they would give me in return for the benefit of her hand.”
There is a long pause. “My master has no interest in ships,” that weathered, weary voice says. “You can keep them.”
Master? Does that mean the man speaking is not my would-be husband? What type of man would send a servant to negotiate for me? I did not want love, but I had dared to hope for dignity. But if the man can’t even be bothered to come now, then how will he treat me once I am in his care?
“Then what is it that your master would like as a dowry?” Joyce seems absolutely flummoxed that someone would refuse the ships. Though I can hear the delight at this making her voice tremble.