“Did you tell her?” James asked Miriam.
Miriam seemed startled by the question. “No,” the housekeeper said solemnly, placing a hand over her heart as though taking a pledge. “I didn’t say a word.”
James nodded. “Will you excuse us for a minute or two, Miriam? I think I should speak to my niece alone.”
“Certainly.” Miriam set the plate of food down on the table in front of me and scurried out of the room.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my discomfort growing by the second. It was way too early for me to be rocking the boat.
James held up a finger and waited until Miriam’s footsteps faded in the distance, before he finally continued. As I watched his finger, I could see it trembling, and I wondered if James might be ill. “I was hoping I wouldn’t need to tell you until you’d settled in. There’s a story about the mural in the rose room,” he said. “If you live in Louth, you’re bound to hear it. You might as well hear it from me.”
I almost laughed at my luck. Of course there was a horrible story. I should have expected it.
“There’s a girl in the painting,” James said. “Did you see her?”
“Yes,” I said, bracing myself. “Who is she?”
“Her name was Grace Louth.”
“Louth? Like the town?”
James nodded. “Her father built the manor. The town is named after him. The rose room belonged to Grace while she lived here. In 1890, she drowned herself in the Hudson River. She was only eighteen years old. It was a terrible tragedy.”
That was the last thing I’d been expecting to hear. “She killed herself? Why?” I could picture the girl’s radiant face. I’d imagined her racing toward something wonderful. I was devastated to learn that she never made it.
James shrugged. “Why did girls drown themselves in rivers back then?” he asked, as if the answer were obvious. I couldn’t figure out what it might be.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why did they?”
“Heartbreak,” he informed me. “Grace was planning to elope with a lover, but her father found out and bribed the fiancé to leave town. According to the legend, the painting shows Grace in her wedding dress, heading for the river the night she died.”
I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes. If it was true, I’d been wrong about everything. The Grace Louth I’d seen on the wall was euphoric. Everyone else saw a desolate bride rushing toward her death. Either something was wrong with me—or with them.
“So don’t be surprised if you hear people claim that the manor is cursed.”
I cleared my throat and blinked my eyes. I could hardly believe the word had just left my uncle’s lips. “Cursed?”
“A few days after Grace drowned, her father, Frederick Louth, was found dead of a heart attack in the rose room. People say Grace’s ghost came back for revenge, and some believe this house has been cursed ever since.”
“I don’t believe in curses,” I told him. I didn’t believe in ghosts, either.
“Nor do I,” James agreed emphatically. “I want you to know that. But there’s been a great deal of gossip in town since Dahlia died. People think the curse was responsible for the fire that killed my wife. It wasn’t, of course.”
He paused for a moment, and I assumed that was the end of it.
“But her death did have something to do with the mural,” he said.
That got my attention. “How?”
James stared down at the table before looking back up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “My stepdaughter, Lark, chose the rose room when she came to live here with her mother.”
I felt a rush of excitement. We’d chosen the same room.
“Her father came from a family with a history of mental illness, and Lark had already begun to show signs of it when I met her. After Dahlia and I married, Lark’s condition deteriorated. By the time of the fire, she’d gone mad.”
“Mad?” The word caught me off guard. I knew he meant “crazy,” but outside of a nineteenth-century novel, I’d never heard anyone actually use the word “mad” that way before.
“I’m sorry,” James said. “I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I don’t know how else to describe her condition. Lark was always a little…unusual. But she didn’t show many outward signs of mental illness until the end. About a month after she moved to the manor, she became obsessed with the girl in the mural. She spent hours and hours locked in her room, writing about Grace Louth. At night, she’d come out and wander the house. It was all so macabre. Eventually, Dahlia decided to send Lark to live with her father. We both hoped her mental state would improve after she left the manor.”
“But it didn’t?” I asked.
“No. The night the north wing burned, Lark broke into the manor while her mother and I were sleeping. The fire department believes the blaze started when a candle she was holding ignited a pair of drapes.”
“So the fire was an accident?” I asked.
“It was ruled an accident, but I have my doubts. All we know is that the fire trapped Lark in a room in the north wing. Dahlia—” He stopped for a moment, too choked up to continue. Tears flowed freely down both sides of his face. “While I was phoning 911, Dahlia must have heard Lark’s cries and run to help. Lark jumped from a window to escape the fire, but Dahlia never made it out. She died of smoke inhalation. The firemen found Lark wandering the grounds, raving about dead girls. When her condition didn’t improve after she was released from the hospital, her father was forced to have her committed.”
I took a moment to think it through.
“You think your stepdaughter burned your house down?” I just wanted to confirm that that was his account.
“I wish there were another explanation, but that’s the only one that makes sense.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Uncle James.” I was. Very sorry.
“Thank you.” He wiped his tears on his shirtsleeve before reaching across the table and taking my hand. “It helps to have you here. I know you have a lot on your plate, Bram, and I know bad things have happened. Your mother told me her side of the story, and I’m sure you have yours. I don’t want you to think you have to deal with my worries, too. This should be a time of healing for both of us.”
I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t come to heal. The damage that had been done could not be reversed. Still, I nodded.
“You can choose any room you like. After everything I’ve told you, are you sure you still want to stay in the rose room?”