Chapter Twelve

“We waste our lights in vain, like lights by day.”

(Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 4)

It took me a long time. The day was almost over, the sun sinking in a purple haze when bedraggled and smudged and tired, I found the portrait of Octavia Jericho. Worst, I found the room where the portrait was hung.

I’d saved the floor with the west landing mirror for last. Somehow I’d known. I hadn’t even opened every door. I’d walked right to the one. I’d reached for the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it had turned beneath my fingers.

Like the setting for a Victorian horror movie, the furniture was draped in moth-eaten silk and cobwebs. Puffs of dust rose from the ragged Persian rug, but it was the footprints that caused my breath to catch and my stomach to plummet as if I were falling and falling with no hope of landing safely.

Feet larger than mine had been here, often. They had crossed the dusty floor. A path was worn though the dust to a pile of dried and shriveled wildflowers beneath where the portrait hung. Octavia was faded. The drapes over the windows had deteriorated so badly to shredded, sagging rags that the setting sun fingered its way through to patchily light her face.

She had been stunning, once. This painting showed it more than the one downstairs. This was a younger Octavia. The one who had caught a dashing captain’s attention. I could tell even though the thick oil paint that had rendered her likeness was crackled and cracked. In places it had come free to fall on the floor with the moldering petals.

Had it been Michael who had walked here? How many times had he brought flowers to this room only half aware of his actions?

Doomed romance.

How many times had I played Tristan’s violin?

There were probably historical treasures in the wardrobe and the drawers of this room, but I could only see neglect and decay. I could only smell rotten fabric and brittle petals and mold.

I stayed long enough to look into Octavia’s eyes. Why had she killed herself all those years ago? Had she been seeking to escape a man who wouldn’t let her go?

Octavia’s room frightened me. It caused me to doubt Michael and Mrs. Brighton. How could they allow that neglected spot in the house—beyond dust, beyond time—to fester and decay? But worse than that, the room reminded me of Tristan’s package. I thought of it, hidden away in the bureau, unopened. As if not opening it would change what had happened both before and after he’d left.

Someone had closed off this room and left it virtually untouched for decades.

But had that changed the past?

The room was a decaying memorial. The person who had left it unchanged after her death hadn’t stopped her from dying, but maybe they had kept her from resting in peace.