The Shadow in the Glass JJA Harwood (book recommendations for young adults txt) 📖

these secrets to her chest, and if she’d known she’d never have privacy again she would have held on so much tighter.

Eleanor stared at the edges of her reflection, looking for movement in the shadows.

Secrets were not all the black-eyed woman saw. She’d seen that Eleanor’s baby would have been a boy. She had seen something of Mrs Pembroke and Eleanor’s mother, and they had been dead for years. Eleanor wondered how the black-eyed woman saw time. Did the past and the future echo back to the present? When she was not there, was the black-eyed woman hovering above them all, in some place where time and form and distance did not matter?

The wind wailed. Eleanor looked into reflected darkness and saw nothing. She was not foolish enough to think that meant there was nothing there.

There was a knock at the door.

Eleanor leapt up and sprinted to the window. It was too dark to see; the lamps had gone out in the wind. Close to the glass, she could feel the chill of the wind, every spatter of rain, but there was something else there – a strange, magnetic feeling that made the hairs on her arms stand up. She tugged on her shawl and picked up the candle, heading for the stairs. It guttered in the draught, throwing twisted shadows on the walls.

The knock came again.

Bessie stumbled out of her bedroom. ‘For God’s sake,’ she muttered. ‘This had better not be one of your bloody callers.’

Eleanor ignored her and went downstairs. Whoever was on the other side of the door had been brought here by the wish. She knew that they would tell her that Mr Pembroke was dead, with a certainty that was as cold and final as death itself.

She needed to hear the words. A strange longing pulsed under her skin. When she heard those words her future would unfurl before her, a shining path with nothing in her way.

Bessie hurried after her. ‘Come away! Don’t play the fool on a night like this!’

Something was wrong. Instinct picked out all the colours in the darkness and made every bump in the floor sharp beneath her feet. Cold air rushed around her ankles. On the other side of the door, someone was rattling the doorknob.

‘Miss!’ Bessie hissed. ‘I was only fooling. Of course you don’t have callers. For God’s sake don’t let in a stranger! No one’ll hear us in this weather!’

Eleanor hesitated. There was always something. She had done what the black-eyed woman asked for and told her what she wanted, but Eleanor knew that would not be rewarded. What sharp and nasty thing would be coiled around her wish?

She set down her candle and snatched up an umbrella. Holding it like a club, she yanked the door open.

Charles stood on the doorstep. He was drenched, his lips pale. Stubble sprawled across his cheeks, and shadows lingered under his eyes. He reached towards her with shaking fingers. From the look on his face, he expected his hand to pass right through her.

His cold, wet hand brushed her cheek, burning like ice.

‘Eleanor,’ he whispered.

The umbrella slipped out of her hand. He clung to her, sobbing.

‘It’s Father. He’s dead.’

Eleanor did her best.

She hung up Charles’s clothes to steam in front of the fire. She sent Bessie out for tarts and gilded gingerbread with a few precious shillings. She held his hand. All the while, hot lumps of guilt burned in the pit of her stomach. She’d killed Mr Pembroke, and Charles was holding her as if she could save him from drowning.

It shocked her to see him this upset. There was nothing in their way now; they could finally be together. Surely he would see that, soon. She stroked his hair, and said nothing. In time, he would realize what a blessing Mr Pembroke’s death had been.

Charles returned the next day, armed with roses. Next to his drawn face, they looked garish, insincere. She arranged them in a battered jug and told herself to be patient. He’d come around soon enough.

‘Eleanor,’ he said, ‘I want to thank you. The comfort you have brought me … I …’

He was crying. Eleanor kissed him on the cheek.

‘I’m sorry. Damned childish behaviour.’

She pushed him into a chair. ‘You’ve every right to be upset.’

‘There’s no use mewling about it. There’s so much to be done. The expense, the inquest, and then there’s the house, and the servants, and the will, and – God! Oh God!’

He buried his head in his hands. Eleanor slid an arm across his shoulders.

‘You don’t have to bear this alone. Let me share your burden. You know how I love you. Let me help you.’

Charles seized her hand and pressed it to his lips. Tears slid across her fingers.

‘Leave everything to me,’ she murmured. ‘There’s no need to concern yourself with the details, not when you’ve so much to bear already. This … this inquest …’

‘You’re an angel.’

They sat together for a while, Charles staring into the fire while Eleanor stroked his hair, the word ‘inquest’ rattling around her head. She asked, but Charles would not discuss it. Later, she began planning the funeral. She wrote letters to undertakers, to the rector, to mourning warehouses. She ordered black-edged writing paper and material for armbands. She made enquiries about horse-drawn carriages, undertakers’ mutes, and plumes for the horses, and cringed at the cost. With each scratch of the pen, she buried Mr Pembroke. She imagined shovelling ink-black soil onto his coffin, and felt nothing.

When Charles and Eleanor sat beside the fire and worked together, they might have been man and wife. While Eleanor reviewed the undertaker’s bill, and Charles looked at the cartoons in Punch, nothing could touch them.

Charles turned a page and snorted with laughter. ‘Good show! Eleanor, look here.’

He held out the magazine. Eleanor leant over to look at the cartoon as someone knocked at the door. From the kitchen, Bessie swore and clanged some pans together. Moments later, she yanked open the drawing-room