CHAPTER FOUR
Carmen
For a moment, I think it’s the peacocks screaming again, but then there’s another loud screech, the sound of Asher pushing his chair away from the dining table.
Carolina has gone pale.
Another scream.
Definitely human. Unmistakably so.
Asher throws his napkin on the table and rises from his seat without a word for any of us, leaving me, Carolina, and Nathaniel sitting there as another bloodcurdling scream echoes throughout the house.
Good Lord—what could have happened to prompt someone making a noise such as that one?
Carolina’s fork falls, the heavy silver hitting the fine china. She rises from the table, too, her skin pale. Her hands tremble.
Carolina was always prone to what our mother referred to as “nerves”—a malady that seemed to encompass all manner of ills.
I expect Carolina to follow her husband outside, but instead she heads for the staircase without a backward glance for me or Asher’s friend Nathaniel, leaving us sitting awkwardly in silence before Nathaniel speaks—
“Excuse me, I’m going to see if I can be of assistance.”
There’s something equally strange about his motions, how smoothly he seems to be handling this bizarre situation, such that I can do little more than stare at him in shock, attempting to make sense of the tableau before me.
That scream—
When Nathaniel exits the dining room, I’m right behind him.
I follow Nathaniel to the front door, where a crowd of the staff has gathered, whispers rising to a fever pitch. It’s impossible to see what they’re all looking at, and by the size of the group gathered, it’s clear it takes a great many people to run Marbrisa. I don’t envy Asher or Carolina the task.
Mrs. Morrison stands near the front, too far away for me to hear what she’s saying, but she’s the closest to Asher, her position in the household clearly an important one. He says something to her, and she gives him a clipped nod.
As she turns away, our gazes connect.
Her mouth is drawn in a thin line, her cheeks flushed, her shoulders ramrod straight. I can feel the fury and tension emanating from her body all the way across the patio. For a moment, it seems like I’m glimpsing the personal side of Mrs. Morrison beneath the facade, a woman who is rattled and angry rather than the competent housekeeper who seamlessly glides down Marbrisa’s corridors ensuring the house runs without a hitch.
She turns away from me.
“What happened?” I ask one of the workers standing near me.
He says nothing, making the sign of the cross over himself before walking away.
I scan the crowd—
Nathaniel has disappeared.
I slip through the throng to the front where Asher stands, his back to me, his shoulders hunched. His body blocks much of what is on the ground, but a peacock’s plume peeks out, the colors instantly recognizable.
Asher whirls around.
“Don’t look,” he instructs, his voice grim.
“What happened?”
“One of the birds. It’s dead. One of the maids found it.” He pauses for a moment. Swallows. “It died badly.”
I glance over his shoulder to a spot where the maid stands, her hands clutched to her chest, another woman’s arm around her.
I can imagine that would be a horribly disturbing thing to find, but surely on an estate this size, animals die of natural causes. By the sound of those screams, I feared something far worse had happened.
The crowd shuffles uneasily, looking as though they’ve been collectively seized by something unpleasant.
“Not another one,” someone mutters behind me.
I feel as though I have stepped into the middle of a play, and everyone knows the role they are supposed to adopt except for me. There’s a familiarity to everyone’s interactions, a resigned weariness.
What on earth is going on?
The house’s front steps seem like a strange place for a bird to be injured. Did it fall?
“What happened to it?” I ask Asher.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Go back inside. Please.”
“Does this often occur?” I ask, ignoring his instruction. “Do animals frequently die at Marbrisa?”
Asher takes my arm, drawing me gently away from the crowd.
“It occurs more often than it should.”
There’s something in his manner, in the paleness of my sister’s face, in the maid’s trembling body, in Mrs. Morrison’s anger, in the crowd of onlookers—
“Do you think someone killed the bird?”
Asher is silent for a beat until I am sure he isn’t going to answer me, and then he gives me a clipped nod. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that the animals at Marbrisa have a way of meeting nasty ends.”
Suddenly, Nathaniel pops into view up ahead. I’ve no idea where he came from, but he’s locked in conversation with the maid who first found the peacock. They’re close enough to where Asher and I stand on the steps for me to make out pieces of their conversation over the din of everyone else.
“I didn’t see anyone,” the maid murmurs in response to whatever question Nathaniel’s asked her, her shoulders shaking with a sob.
I yearn to inch closer to their conversation, to overhear what they’re saying. Once again, Nathaniel seems to have taken control of the situation, and I wonder at Asher’s willingness to let him.
I study my brother-in-law more closely. “What else has happened?”
He’s silent for a beat, and then he answers—
“At first it was lizards. Some snakes. Then an alligator. Now this.”
“How gruesome.” There’s something particularly heinous about someone killing the local wildlife and displaying their trophies about the estate. What sort of person is capable of such a thing?
Is this what they’ve been living through? Why didn’t Carolina say something? Is that why she’s been acting so strangely?
“How long have these things been happening?”
“Too long. Well over a year. Maybe longer? It all sort of runs together at this point. At first, it was easy to dismiss the deaths as accidents, but then they became more frequent, harder to explain away. Almost like the culprit is thumbing their nose at us, daring us to ignore the behavior.”
“You think it was intentional?”
“It’s one too many coincidences for my liking.”
“You should call the police.”
“I have.”
“And?”
“It’s not like there’s much they can do. We live among wildlife. These things happen.”
He sounds as though he is parroting someone else’s words rather than his own.
“Is that what you believe or what the police said?”
“It’s what the officer who came out to investigate told us. He seemed more annoyed than anything else. This place—the locals are wary of it. It’s infamous around here.”
There’s something almost wistful in the way he says the word “infamous,” the way he scans the vast property like a man who can’t quite believe his luck, that makes me reassess my earlier impression of Asher. He wears his wealth like he was born to it, but the hint of longing makes me wonder if he didn’t have to work for what he has.
I know so little about the man my sister married—where he’s from or how he came to own this great big house. At the time that Asher and Carolina became engaged, I was too young to be privy to much of the conversations that occurred before our parents gave their consent for the two of them to marry. Truthfully, Carolina was right—I think in a way they were eager to see her set on this new phase in her life, grateful they had so far sidestepped a major scandal given her often audacious behavior. Whatever they saw in Asher met their approval, I suppose, and it was clear that Carolina was never going to be satisfied with her life in Havana, that she was looking for something else.
They pinned their hopes on Asher making her happy, which from where I’m standing is beginning to look like a mistake.
“Who lived here before you and Carolina? There’s a picture in my room of a woman at Marbrisa—Anna Barnes?”
“This has nothing to do with Anna Barnes.”
“I wasn’t suggesting it did. I just saw her name and thought—”
The rest of my words are cut off by the wind as Asher glances away from me, his attention on the area where the staff has gathered surrounding the poor bird’s body.
He strides toward the group, and they part for him. He exchanges a few words with Nathaniel, the maid gone, and then Asher bends down, scooping the animal up. He turns, and our gazes connect for an instant. Gone is the version of Asher I saw earlier by the dock, the one who looked tired and worn down by the world. This Asher seems alight with fury; it emanates from him as though the peacock’s death is a personal wrong that must be avenged.
I can’t bear to lower my gaze, to see the poor animal in his arms.
Asher pivots, heading toward the gardens, and even though it is warm outside, there’s a chill in the air, a sensation of rot and decay settling around Marbrisa and all her inhabitants.
“I’m surprised you’re not halfway to Havana by now.”
I glance up from my sandwich, irritation filling me at the sight of Nathaniel strolling into the kitchen. It would figure that he would enter just as an errant piece of turkey doused in mayonnaise escapes my lips. I surreptitiously wipe at the offending poultry, hoping he didn’t notice the small indignity.
No one returned to the dinner table after the peacock’s discovery, and while I couldn’t fathom having an appetite in the immediate aftermath, considering I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, hunger has overridden any squeamishness now that the midnight hour nears.
Thankfully, I found Marbrisa’s kitchen to be well stocked and blessedly vacant when I came downstairs this evening.
Unfortunately, Nathaniel evidently had similar plans.
I swallow, carefully rising from my crouched position over the kitchen countertop, realizing how unladylike I must appear scarfing down the turkey and cheese sandwich.
He’s still dressed in the same shirt and pants he was wearing hours earlier at dinner, but he’s shucked his jacket and tie.
“I’m not easily scared off,” I reply.
“Hmm. You’d be alone in that, then,” he replies, heading for the refrigerator with the comfort and ease of someone who has clearly helped himself to a midnight snack or two in this kitchen before.
“And yet, you’re not halfway to Boston.”
Nathaniel smiles. “No, I’m not. I suppose you can say that I’m not easily scared off, either.”
He pulls some leftover fruit salad out of the refrigerator, silently helping himself to one of the spoons from a nearby drawer.
Our house in Havana paled in size to the manse that is Marbrisa, and while my parents employed a staff—and a cook among them—our kitchen was still where we spent time as a family. My mother occasionally cooked, teaching me the basics so I would know my way around the kitchen. It was a warm, comfortable space. Marbrisa’s kitchen would rival a kitchen in a hotel and then some. Whoever built this place clearly did so with a great deal of entertaining in mind. Now it looks deserted, only a fraction of the space in use. There’s no warmth, none of the little details that make a house a home.
Once again, I can’t help but wonder how Carolina would feel at ease here. I cast a sidelong glance at Nathaniel, hoping that the comfort he’s displayed at Marbrisa thus far translates to an intimate knowledge of its secrets.
“The maid you spoke with earlier—the one who found the poor bird—she certainly seemed shaken by the entire business,” I say.
Nathaniel stops eating, his spoon hovering in midair. “You’re not like your sister, are you?” he asks, entirely sidestepping my comment.
I can’t tell if he means it as a compliment or an insult, or understand how he could arrive at such a conclusion so quickly.
“What do you mean?”
My tone is as cold as an icebox.
“You’re more direct than Carolina is,” Nathaniel replies.
“I’m not sure I agree with you there. Carolina has always said exactly what came to mind with little concern for the consequences. It’s one of the things I envy most about her.”
And one of the things that frustrates me the most.
“The version of Carolina you’re describing isn’t the one I’ve gotten to know here.”
“Do you know my sister well? I thought you were a friend of Asher’s not Carolina’s.”
He laughs. “Like I said. You’re direct.”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“I didn’t realize I owed Carolina’s little sister any explanations.”
What an odious, arrogant man.
“Do you intend to stay here for the whole of the winter?” I ask, changing tack.
“Eager to be rid of me?”
“Not at all,” I lie.
He smiles again, and I get the sense that he finds me amusing, as though I am a pantomime for his entertainment.
Infuriating.
“I do not intend to spend the whole of the winter here, no,” Nathaniel answers after a beat. “I come and go as I please, as my affairs call me away.”
“How fortunate you are to have such gracious hosts in Carolina and Asher.”
“I am indeed. And you? Now that we’ve settled on the matter of you not leaving Marbrisa, what are your plans?”
“School. Work.” None of your business.
His brow rises. “Work? No plans to follow your sister and undertake the bonds of holy matrimony?”
“You can hardly blame me, considering the example before me.”
“You’ve picked up on the tension between them, have you?”
I hesitate, torn between my dislike for him and my desire for more information. “It’s unmistakable. Things are—”
“Strained between them,” he finishes.
I nod, unhappy with the prospect of Nathaniel finishing my sentences.
“Has it always been like this?” I ask him.
“I would think you would know better than anyone. After all, you’re uniquely placed to be your sister’s confidant.”
“I’m not. And I don’t know.”
My words must betray some of the emotions churning inside me because he seems almost mollified by my response, as though he’s remembered why I’m here, the tragedy lurking in my past.
“It’s been like this since I’ve known them,” Nathaniel finally replies, surprising me for the candor in his response when I had given up on him answering me at all.
He seems truly concerned, but I’m hesitant to trust him. There’s something about him that gives the impression that he’s trying just a smidge too hard. Whether it’s merely the fact that he’s potentially on the grift, enjoying the fruits of Asher’s generosity, or my suspicion that he and Carolina could be having an affair, I have a feeling there’s something about Nathaniel Hayes that isn’t as it seems, and I’ve likely wrung as much of an admission of anything as I’m going to get out of him this evening.
Time for bed.
I sweep past him, taking the sandwich with me.