‘That’s as maybe, but you see it’s not appropriate. You are the housekeeper and I am the governess. We must maintain the proprieties. For the sake of the children’s education, you understand.’
Mrs Grouse bridled. She was not one to be walked over. ‘Miss Whitaker was quite happy with the arrangement.’
Miss Taylor raised an eyebrow. ‘Ah yes, but I am not Miss Whitaker.’
Mrs Grouse left the room. The three of us sat down. A moment later a very red-faced Mary came in and began removing the crockery and cutlery from the fourth place. Miss Taylor smiled up at her. ‘You may serve the food now,’ she said.
That night I couldn’t sleep. Outside, the wind howled like a wild beast stalking round the house looking for a way in. And within me, too, there was a howling, one that I couldn’t block out by pillowing my ears. It feared me to sleep that I would dream again of poor Miss Whitaker and the day she died, but my waking anxiety was a shadowy thing I couldn’t quite see or put a name to, and all the worse for that. In the end I decided to do what I often did at such times, to sneak down to the library and read there for a couple of hours until I should be tired enough for sleep, though there was an increased risk that I would be caught now that Miss Taylor was here, of course. Although the wind huffed and puffed without, within the house was quiet as the grave, save for the ticking of the clocks and the occasional creaking of the joists as Blithe settled itself down for the night. But then, if I were caught, all I had to do was pretend to be on one of my nightwalks. It much more difficulted to reach the library in this fashion than it had to sneak down to Mrs Grouse’s sitting room. The library far-ended the house, whereas the housekeeper’s room bottomed the stairs, being almost directly below mine. My main problem, as always, lay in not being able to have a candle to light my way, for that I never had on my nightwalks. In the darkness I had to careful not to stumble against some piece of furniture, some random occasional table, for example, and so wake the whole household; also I must map in my mind where I was. It would be all too easy to wrongturn and so end up wandering the whole night until dawn showed me the way.
Still, as this was not a nightwalk, I was able at least to blindman my arms and so feel ahead of me for any obstruction. In this manner, slowly I reached the long corridor. There was no light coming in through the windows there because the night was unmooned, a fact which unlikelied, but not impossibled, a nightwalk, although I wasn’t concerned about that. It was when I penetrated a little further and was not far from the staircase that would take me down to the first floor that I heard something. I stood still and listened, all my senses alert. At first I took it for the wind blowing a tree branch against some part of the house, for it was exactly the sibilant sound of leaves brushing against something. But then I realised the noise was not fixed but in motion and that, moreover, it was coming toward me. A moment later I recognised it for what it was, the swishing of skirts against floorboards. Whoever it was was, like me, uncandled, but nevertheless able to move at a considerable pace, so that she – it could only be a woman, that noise – must soon be on top of me. It wondered me any normal woman could move so fast in this pitch black. What kind of creature could it be, other than a cat? She could be no more than ten feet away from me, and rushing toward me, so that we must at any moment collide. I instincted to flatten my back against the wall and, as luck would have it, found space behind me, a shallow alcove let into the wall. I pressed myself into it and held my breath. The woman was right on top of me now and, suddenly, the swishing stopped, and it was as if whatever creature this was had sensed my presence, or scented me, as a cat will a mouse or a dog a rat. All was quiet, even the wind seemed to have died down as though in league with this other nightwalker to enable her to better hear. I heard a small sound, a sharp intake of breath, followed by a lengthy pause as the breath was held while the breather listened, followed by a long, slow exhale. I sensed she was turning this way and that, sniffing the air like a predator seeking its prey. My lungs were near bursting from my own long breath-holdery but I dared not let it out, not only because of the noise but because my fellow nightwalker would then feel it on her face as I felt hers upon mine.
At last, just when I thought the game was up and I should have to breathe now or never would again, there abrupted a swish as if the woman had turned sharply and then the swishing resumed in the same direction as it had been headed in the first place, but now, thankfully, growing quieter and quieter until finally it whispered away. I gasped out my breath and sucked in air like a swimmer surfacing after a long dive. I had but one thought, namely to put as much distance as possible between me and this woman, if woman it were and not ghost, and so I felt my way along the corridor and down to the first floor and thence to the library. There I lit my candle and built my nest and curled up in it, although I was too disturbed now to have any hope of sleep and so fretted my way through the rest of the night until light began to finger its way around the edges of the drapes and I was able to fast my way back to my room.
I lay in my bed exhausted and troubled. Who had the woman been? The obvious answer was Miss Taylor, for I had encountered nothing like what had occurred last night ever before and it too much coincidented that she had just arrived in the house. As I recalled the incident now it seemed to me there had been something of her scent in the air, that scent I had noticed about her when we first met, and I all-at-onced what it was, the smell of lilies, which I remembered so well from Miss Whitaker’s funeral, their ugly beauty upon her coffin. But perhaps all this was simply now my imagination, that love of embroidery I have, the makery-up of my mind. Then again, if what had passed me in the passage last night was not the new governess, what was it? Could it have been a ghost or some other supernatural thing? For what woman, especially a stranger so newly arrived, could so swift the house in the dark? And if it were not of this world, if it were one of the Blithe ghosts, what was it seeking here? Ghosts I knew were often troubled spirits unable to make their way in the next world because of the manner in which they had left this one. I understood all too well then who such a being might be. For had not poor Miss Whitaker tragicked a sudden and early death with no opportunity to make her peace with her maker? Might she not be tossing and turning beneath the earth in the local cemetery because of the fashion in which she passed away? I so frighted myself with these thoughts that I worried for Giles and had to rise from my bed, exhausted though I was, and sneak the corridor to his room, where I found him blissfully, ignorantly asleep. I stretched myself out beside him, folded one arm over him, and fell straightway into a deep and heavy slumber.
In the morning, when Giles and I arrived downstairs for breakfast, the table in the breakfast room was once again set for three. As I sat down, I saw, through the open door to the kitchen, Mrs Grouse seated at the table there, over breakfast with Meg and Mary and John. When she heard me she wistfulled me such a look that I was near too guilty to eat. For all her faults, Mrs Grouse was at heart a kindly soul and also easy for a little finger twistery. Some part of me already knew Miss Taylor would not be at all like that.
Speaking of that devil (for such she was, as you shall see), at that moment she arrived. She good morninged Giles and me and walked to the kitchen door and good morninged all the servants and Mrs Grouse too. Meg and Mary flummoxed about, scraping their chairs to rise from their own meal and hithering and thithering to supply us with oatmeal and eggs and waffles and syrup. I wondered at this, for Miss Whitaker had been treated somewhat as a kind of servant, albeit on another level, along with Mrs Grouse. Miss Taylor occupied the same position and yet, already, by some force of will, had everyone behaving toward her as if she were royalty. How had that happened?
As we nervoused our food we did not speak and carefulled not to let a fork tinkle against a plate, and in the silent setting down of our milk glasses upon the table, for both Giles and I feared to draw attention to ourselves as if, by our very existence, we might somehow offend. It would have been a good time for pin droppery if you happened to have one you were having difficulty holding on to, because you would surely have heard it loud and clear. It was Miss Taylor who broke the silence. ‘Giles,’ she said, then took a swig of her coffee and set the cup back down, ‘Giles, we do not eat in that manner.’
Giles gulped. ‘What manner would that be, Miss