The Fate of Mercy Alban (19 page)

Climbing out of the car, Flynn pushed the thick blond hair out of his blue eyes as he flashed me a wide grin. He looked the picture of a typical Ivy Leaguer, wearing a cream-colored cable-knit sweater with navy-blue trim around its V-neck; a blue button-down shirt underneath, tails untucked and hanging below his sweater; khaki pants; and loafers without stockings. This boy was to the manor born, no doubt about it, but the way he was laughing and shaking hands with the staff, he didn’t show it.

“Mary-Ruth!” He grinned, pulling a formidable-looking woman into his arms. “Give us a hug, lassie!”

“Welcome home, my boy. We’ve missed you, so we have.”

“It’s good to be home,” he said, resting his head on the old woman’s shoulder for a moment.

Flynn turned to me, then. “Mickey, meet one of the best women on this or any other planet, Mary-Ruth McBride. She runs things, and I do mean everything, here at Whitehall. Mary, here’s my much ballyhoo-ed roommate, Michael Connolly.”

“Ma’am, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, bowing low.

But the woman had eyes only for Flynn, placing one hand, red and worn from a lifetime of working in the kitchen, delicately on his cheek. A moment of tenderness between herself and the boy, now a man, that she had obviously raised since childhood.

Just then, the two massive front doors burst open and the family appeared, right on cue.

“Darling!” Flynn’s mother held her arms wide for her son, and he flew into them as his father beamed and patted Flynn on the back. Hugs and laughter all around. I thought back to the chilly relationship I had with my own parents, especially my father, and I was, not for the first time, envious of Flynn. Wealth, privilege, and happiness, too. It didn’t seem quite fair, somehow.

“Mom, Dad, this is Michael Connolly—soon-to-be world-famous novelist, currently crew captain and pool shark.” Flynn smiled, winking at me. “Mickey boy, my parents, Donny and Honor Brennan.”

“We’re delighted you could join us for the summer, Michael,” Honor cooed, taking my hands in hers and giving them a squeeze. “We do so enjoy having the children’s friends here. Life, laughter, love, that’s what we’re about here at Whitehall. The more, the merrier!”

I can’t explain why, but I felt an odd tingle in my hands when she touched them. A slight jolt of electricity passed between us and she shot me a look with her steel-gray eyes that made me decidedly uncomfortable. Those eyes did not evoke life, laughter, and love. Just the opposite.

“Thank you so much for having me,” I said quickly, pulling my hands from hers and brushing my hair out of my eyes. “I’m starting my first novel, and I’m hoping to get some good writing done over the summer before the fall term puts an end to all that. Flynn convinced me this was just the place to do it.”

Flynn’s father patted me on the back as we all walked through the doorway and into the house. “Writing, you say?” he said. “A novel, is it?”

I suppose I should’ve responded with more than a grunt and a smile, but my words sifted down into a gasp when I stepped through the threshold and took in this place my roommate called home. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. Towering ceilings, a grand staircase, an enormous stained-glass window, one full story tall, overlooking the gardens and grounds. I had hoped to hide my rather pedestrian awe, but I’m afraid I stood there like a lump, mouth agape, eyes wide.

“What a beautiful home you have, Mr. Brennan,” I murmured.

“It’ll do, son.” Flynn’s father smiled. “It’ll do. And please call me Donny. Mr. Brennan was my grandfather.”

He led me into the drawing room next to the foyer, a decidedly masculine, dark-paneled room with a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on one wall and a wood-burning fireplace on another with leather armchairs, couches, a scattering of end tables and ottomans grouped around it. The staff had laid the fire earlier and now it was blazing, just the thing to take the chill out of an early June night here on the shore of Lake Superior.

Donny walked over to the sideboard, where decanters of scotch, chilled white wine, a bucket of ice, and various glasses had been arranged. As he began pouring drinks, I heard laughter, and looked up to see two girls come running down the grand stairway, arm in arm. I knew one of them from the family photographs that Flynn displayed in our dormitory—she was his younger sister, Prudence. Pru, he called her. The other girl, an auburn-haired beauty, I had never seen.

The girls swept into the room, bringing an air of fun and vitality with them that caused everyone to smile.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Pru sniped at Flynn while flashing me a big smile. “This whole house has been in an uproar for
days
about your arrival. You’d think the pope himself was making an appearance.”

“I thought I smelled something foul when I walked in, and here you are!” Flynn retorted, making a show of sniffing her hair and wincing.

“Welcome home, I suppose.” She sighed, her eyes settling on me. “At least you brought someone interesting with you this time.”

“He’s quite interesting, my dear sister. He intends to write novels. Those are books with big words in them.” Flynn shot Prudence a look and turned to her friend. “Now the lovely Lily here reads all the time, so she knows what I’m talking about.”

He wasn’t kidding about the lovely part. Lily was delicate and had a soft way about her that contrasted with Pru’s boldness. She blushed, glancing shyly at me.

“With all this talk of books, I hope we’re not going to be sitting around reading all summer long,” Pru said. “What a bore.”

I laughed out loud, bowing slightly to the girls. “Perish the thought, Miss Brennan. Flynn tells me you ladies play a mean game of croquet.”

“That’s right.” Pru brushed the wispy blond hair out of her eyes and flashed a smile. Then she hooked her arm into Lily’s and began leading her out of the room, giving me a backward glance. “We play for money here, Mr. Connolly. Are you up to it?”

“I think I can hold my own.”

The girls giggled and disappeared under the archway. “They really are good fun, if we can’t find anything else to do with ourselves,” Flynn said. “Pru’s a horrible flirt, though, so watch out for her.”

“What’s Lily’s story?” I asked as Honor and her husband joined us, handing us each a glass of scotch. I took a sip of the amber-hued drink—it was spicy and smooth on the way down, and from the first taste, I could tell it was a damn sight better than the swill we students bought back home.

“She’s Prudence’s friend,” Honor said. “The girl is with us so much, she’s like family now. She loves nothing more than to sit in the garden and sketch. So we’ll have an artist and a writer in the house this summer. How grand!”

“Tell me, Michael.” Donny cleared his throat. “You say you intend to write here at Whitehall. What’s the novel about, if I may ask?”

I grinned and looked down into my glass. “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I confessed. “I’ve had a horrible case of writer’s block for months now.”

Flynn sank into a leather wing chair by the fireplace, swirling the ice in his lowball glass of scotch and propping his feet on the nearby ottoman. “Dad, I told Mickey that if it’s inspiration he’s after, there’s no better place to find it than Whitehall.”

Donny slung an arm over the back of his son’s chair and nodded. “Indeed. ‘If these walls could talk,’ as they say.”

“Lots of history here, I imagine?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“History, scandal, suspicious deaths, ghosts around every corner,” Prudence said, reentering the drawing room with Lily by her side. “Haven’t you heard, Mr. Connolly? Whitehall is cursed.”

As I read those words, I shuddered and put the papers down in my lap. I had goose bumps.

“So that’s what David Coleville thought of his first experience at Alban House,” Matthew mused.

“I can see the real-life people easily corresponding with the characters in his story,” I said, looking down at the page. “Flynn is obviously my dad, Johnny Alban. The characters Donny and Honor are my grandparents John James and Charity Alban. Lily is my mother.”

“And Prudence is your aunt Fate,” Matthew finished my thought, leaning his head back against the door. “The character seems so vivacious and feisty and full of life. Even on paper, her character took over the scenes, commanding attention. She reminded me a little of Scarlett O’Hara from
Gone with the Wind
or Lady Brett Ashley in
The Sun Also Rises
. A stark contrast to the woman we met yesterday at Alban House, isn’t it?”

I thought of my poor, bewildered aunt Fate, who had spent her life in a mental hospital and was now locked away on the third floor of Alban House.

“Makes you wonder what happened that she ended up in an institution, doesn’t it?” I said. “More now than ever before.”

“Read on.” He smiled. “Maybe we’ll find out.”

Chapter Two

A shaft of moonlight illuminated my darkened bedroom, so bright that it woke me from a fitful sleep. I stretched and rubbed my eyes, repositioning the pillows that surrounded me on the king-sized bed. I had remarked on its massive, intricately carved wooden headboard and footboard earlier in the evening when one of the staff had shown me to this third-floor room.

“It’s the kind of bed I’d imagine King Henry the Eighth sleeping in,” I had said, running my hand over its deep red bedspread.

“Fit for a king, indeed,” the girl had replied. “It may well have belonged to royalty, now that you mention it. Old Mr. Brennan, the man who built this house, imported it from Britain around the turn of the century.”

I noticed that my suitcases had been brought up and were standing near a cherry-wood armoire. “Is much of the furniture in the house antique?” I asked the girl.

“It is,” she said, chattering away as she opened the shutters to reveal a sweeping view of the lake, which was choppy and tumultuous on this windy night. “I’m charged with polishing it, all the furniture on the second and third floors. I tend to the tapestries as well. Some are said to have come from ancient castles in Britain, so there’s your royalty for you.”

The girl finished opening the shutters, turned to me, smoothed her white apron, and asked, “Shall I get you unpacked, then, sir?”

I frowned at her.

“Unpacked, sir,” she said again. “Shall I put your clothes away?”

“I think I can manage, thank you.” I smiled, and she took her leave. As I hung up my shirts and put my socks into a drawer, I thought about how living in a household with servants was going to take some getting used to. Put my clothes away indeed.

I rolled over and punched my pillows a bit and closed my eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. I kept thinking about the curse Prudence spoke about earlier that evening—what could she have meant? From where I stood, the Brennans had the world by the tail—great wealth, success, a happy and healthy family. The only curse I could see was what to do with it all.

I lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling as the glow of the moon lit up the room. It was too bright, I thought, so I pushed off the covers and padded over to the window, intending to close the shutters. But instead I stood transfixed by what I saw on the lakeshore below.

Flames crackled in a fire ring on the beach. A girl wearing a white nightgown—or was it a dress?—was dancing around the fire, turning in circles with her arms held wide. I squinted through the distance and darkness to make out who it was. Lily? No, her hair was longer than this girl’s. Was it Prudence? One of the servant girls, perhaps? I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t see clearly—reality seemed to be hazy, as though the window itself was warped. But I was mesmerized by the girl’s movements, slow and wavy, as though she was moving her arms and legs through water. Or a dream.

Then I heard her voice, soft and low, through the open window. I could make out faint strains of a verse but couldn’t understand the words. They were strange, guttural sounds, like an ancient language from a different time.

I stood at my window until the girl stopped and snapped her head in the direction of the house. Did she see me? I jumped away from the window, my heart beating hard and fast in my chest. I smiled to myself, feeling like a little boy who’d been caught spying on girls through a peephole.

I peered out the window again, but … it couldn’t be. The girl was gone. The fire was out, the lakeshore was empty, and there was no sign of anyone, anywhere. What had just happened here?

I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers around me, but the gnawing in my stomach chased sleep away. Little by little as the hours passed, the reality of what I saw eroded in my mind. When the sun finally came up again, I wasn’t at all sure that the whole thing hadn’t been a dream.

I shivered and was suddenly aware of my dark and dusty surroundings. I was about to turn the page to the next chapter when I heard a loud rapping at the door.

“Reverend Parker! Are you in there?”

“Yes!” Matthew shouted. And we exchanged a look of relief.

We both jumped up, and he rattled off the combination to the janitor as I placed the manuscript back into the box and stood up, hurrying to smooth my dress just as I heard the lock click. The door popped open, and there stood one of the janitors looking slightly bewildered.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Matthew said, brushing the dust off his jeans. “We were in here retrieving a family heirloom of Miss Alban’s, and the door latched shut. I tried to call someone to get us out of here but my phone didn’t have any service.”

The janitor eyed the two of us. “I got suspicious when I saw your car in the lot and the lights on leading down here,” he said.

“Thank God you did, Pat,” Matthew put a hand on the man’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Heaven knows how long we might have been trapped in here if not for you. I was beginning to get more than a little claustrophobic.”

We hurried out the door, and he leaned onto it, shutting it with a thud. Twirling the combination lock a few times, he said, “Let’s get back upstairs.”

We made our way through the crypt and were halfway up the stone stairs when Matthew and I both stopped short. He turned to look at me and said aloud what we were both thinking.