Page 112 of The Shadow Key

It was cruel, unfair. Can she truly trust no one?

Plas Helyg’s old floorboards creak. A sharp breeze whips the air, making the trees outside sigh like forlorn maidens. Linette turns her face to the window, marks the mackerel sky. She should go and see her mother. She longs to see her mother, but Enaid will undoubtedly be with her and she cannot bear to see the housekeeper, not yet. But she cannot continue to lie here and let bitter thoughts drown her in wasted hours.

She simply must get out of this room!

A walk, Linette thinks as she dresses, and in consideration of the weather that looks wholly unfitting for June shrugs into one of her father’s old hunting coats. She pulls on her worn walking boots, treads carelessly over the green silk gown she ripped from her body in anguish the night before. A sharp crack sounds as her heel presses down into a bone of the corset, and with a little smile of vindictive pleasure, Linette imagines it to be Julian’s spine.

Linette follows the footpath down to the valley west of Plas Helyg’s lands. On a low knoll she comes to a stop, sinks cross-legged onto the ground amongst slug trails that glisten on the grass like silken thread. The copper mine is a bank of ugly stone, but the distant mountains behind it are starkly green against the sky, and rippling clouds weave above Yr Wyddfa like spun wool. Linette takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, smells on the air that all too-familiar scent of gorse and grass, the sweet pungency of manure, a hint of salty sea.

But still her heart thumps so wildly she fears she might choke on it. All Linette has are questions. All she has are secrets, with no means of discovering the truth of them. They tumble over themselves like butterflies trapped in a bell jar – Julian, her mother, Enaid, Dr Evans, Henry – so many of them, all with different-coloured wings. For minutes she sits staring into the valley before lying down on the grassy knoll, the ground warm against her cheek, and at length her heart begins to slow to a calm, steady beat …

‘Miss Tresilian?’

Linette opens her eyes, realises with a start that the sun has moved far across the sky; there is a crispness in the air which denotes the afternoon’s shift to early evening and, indeed, shadows have lengthened across the valley. Blearily Linette leans on her elbow, looks up to find Rowena Carew standing above her.

Unbidden, a lump forms in her throat. She feels the hot swell of tears at her eyelids and angrily brushes them away.

‘Still here, I see,’ she mutters.

A pause. Awkward. Shy.

‘Might I sit?’

‘If you must.’

The younger woman hesitates in the face of Linette’s cold response, then gathers her skirts, settles down on the grass, leaving a polite distance between them. In silence they watch the clouds shift lazily across the sky.

‘You disapprove of me,’ Miss Carew says eventually.

Linette picks at a blade of grass.

‘In truth I do not know what to think of you. You’ve ingratiated yourself into my life and appear to know more of it than I do myself. Can you blame me for being wary?’

‘I cannot,’ Miss Carew replies. ‘I should feel the same.’

Linette nods, does not know what else to say. None of this, she grudgingly admits to herself, is Miss Carew’s fault.

The sun appears from behind the great bank of cloud, piercing a patch of grass on the valley floor, and together they watch it – its single golden beam – until it disappears. Miss Carew tucks her chin under her knees.

‘My mother died when I was a young girl. My father had suffered some misfortune, drove himself to drink.’ Miss Carew pauses. ‘He used to beat her. For years, my father ruled with his fist until she could stand it no longer.’

Linette stares. ‘What happened?’

‘She hanged herself.’

‘I … I’m so sorry.’

‘Yes,’ Miss Carew says, as if she had divulged nothing more interesting than the weather, ‘it was rather terrible. It’s a dreadful thing for a child to grow up without a mother. But at least, in some way, you had someone to love you in the absence of yours.’

Enaid’s name hovers between them. Linette feels her stomach twist.

‘She lied to me,’ Linette whispers. ‘Is that love?’

‘Is it not?’ Miss Carew counters, finally turning to look at her. ‘You and I both witnessed your mother’s fit last night. She is clearly a danger when she’s like that. I see that bruise on your jaw.’ Involuntarily Linette touches it. She has forgotten it is there. ‘Perhaps it isn’t right to keep her this way,’ Miss Carew continues, ‘but I think your Enaid did what she did out of love. To protect your mother. To protect you. To help you both find some measure of peace.’

Linette is silent a moment, her thoughts tangled like a fly caught in a web. Some measure of peace. Is that what she has here at Plas Helyg? Peace? It feels to her more like a kind of purgatory. As much as she loves her home, not once has Linette ever felt at peace in it.

Not once.

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