Free The Dark Unwinding by Sharon Cameron

two of them was not likely to be a pleasurable experience, but I had a feeling it was wise to take food at Stranwyne when offered. I eyed the fourth plate. “Will my uncle wake in time for breakfast?”
    “Mr. Tully don’t come to the house to eat,” Mrs. Jefferies snapped, “and when people are going and getting him upset, he’s …” She stopped the rise of her voice. “I hear he’s a bit peaky this morning, that’s all. The other plate’s for Davy, of course.”
    I had not noticed until then the brown head and tattered jacket in the corner by the fireplace, Bertram placid at his side. While Mrs. Jefferies busied herself with the pan, I set the bonnet on the table and went to the hearth. I bent down, reaching out one finger to stroke the rabbit, but Davy scooped him up and scooted quickly in the ashes of the hearthstone, putting his back to me. I knelt down.
    “Davy,” I whispered, hoping the noise of the cooking would be enough to fill the ears of Mrs. Jefferies. “I want to tell you I’m very sorry that I frightened you. I was quite frightened myself at the time, so I rather think I know how it felt.”
    His back hunched, hovering over the rabbit, but other than that, he did not acknowledge me.
     
    Lane came, dark, silent, and with no mention of our previous conversation, and ten minutes later I was having the oddest breakfast of my life. Mrs. Jefferies served bacon, ham, tea, toast with marmalade, and a kidney pie in a room that tinkled with the clink of cup and plate, while fairly crackling with a strain that was more sensed than heard. I hardly cared; I felt as if I hadn’t eaten properly in a fortnight. I polished off a second plate, four pairs of eyes watching every raise and lower of my fork, three of those pairs wishing me rather more ill, I fancied, than not. The rabbit, surely, could have no opinion in the matter. When I finally sighed and set down the utensil, Mrs. Jefferies cleared her throat, and looked hard at Lane. He broke the silence.
    “Aunt Bit and I have a right to know what …” Lane stopped himself and, like his aunt earlier, adjusted his tone. Politeness, it seemed, was the new policy of the morning. “We would … appreciate knowing your plans, Miss Tulman.”
    “Can you tell us … how much time we’re likely to have?” Mrs. Jefferies added. Her voice was trembling.
    Now I understood the breakfast and even the tablecloth. I made lines in it with my fingernail, counting the stripes. The moment was upon me, and I did not know what to do with it. At length I said, “I cannot tell you my plans, because … because I do not know them myself.”
    Lane leaned forward in his seat. “Then you are undecided.”
    I made more stripes. There was nothing to be undecided about. My plans were clear, or at least they should be. But there was still so much that I did not understand, even the simple fact of whether Robert would inherit a fortune or a derelict pile of stone that came with nine hundred paupers. And the sight of my uncle’s sleeping face, my father’s only living brother, my only blood relative besides Fat Robert, had unsettled me.
    “Then agree to a bargain,” Lane said quickly. “Wait one month. Thirty days until you go to your aunt, and after that, tell her what you will.”
    “And what will change after one month, Mr. Moreau?” I looked him full in the face. “I could go back to London and tell them that Frederick Tulman is a respectable old gentleman on the verge of a peerage, and my aunt would still find out the truth in time. Nothing will change.”
    “I know it,” he replied. “We’ve all known it, one way or another. The relatives will come, the law will come, Mr. Tully will die. It cannot last, unless …” The gray eyes met mine, his face expressionless. “But you could buy us time. Maybe years, even. You might come to think that worth the lie.”
    I bit my lip. He could not know the slow suffocation those years would be to me. But then a new thought