Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling Read Online Free Page A

the morning they found me still clutching my husband’s body, the trees and grass around us suddenly withered and dead, though the fire had never made it to the forest.
    With each passing year I became more convinced that it was as Jonathan had said; for whatever reason, Death made himself known to me as he took the souls of my loved ones to the Other Side. I said none of this to Mrs. Norman. Instead I met her gaze and replied: “I believe that the world is far more complicated than we could ever possibly understand.”
    â€œSo you’ll believe me if I tell you that you’re in danger?”
    â€œWhat sort of danger?”
    â€œThe same as Nanny Prum. A man waits for you. He watches you.”
    My face suddenly grew very hot, though I could not decide if it was due to panic or anger. Susannah had seen a man dressed all in black. If it was the same one that I had encountered, then was I being stalked by Death? And if so, then who might he take next? I was nearly shaking.
    â€œHow do I stop him?”
    â€œBe careful. Be watchful.” She lifted the trunk from the bed and took it out of the room, providing a knowing look in my direction, and then said nothing more on the matter. We put everything else away, into boxes and cloth sacks, and left them in the hallway. Roland would load Nanny Prum’s belongings into the wagon and take them to the church. There would be a bazaar at the start of winter, and the people of Blackfield would pick through Nanny Prum’s things, dispersing her memories like seeds on the wind.
    In the days that followed the funeral, I moved into the room connected to the nursery and filled the empty spaces with pieces of myself. I couldn’t help but wonder, in the morbid way of all people who have lost more than once, what would be made of my things if I were to die before my time. There was the wedding ring I placed in a drawer of the table next to my bed, unable to wear it any longer, the weight of the thing too great a burden to bear; a lock of my mother’s hair, bound in a thin blue ribbon, her scent intact, that I used for a place holder in the book upon my nightstand; my father’s pipe, with a crack in its bowl, a dried husk of Sunday afternoons in his study, on his lap, reciting poetry, now with my mother’s jewelry in a small box in the wardrobe. This was where I kept my memories, ensconced in little tokens that would be meaningless to anyone else. I wondered how people would remember me, what might cause them to stop, many years later, and pause for a moment to recall a woman named Charlotte.
    To remember Nanny Prum I kept an ivory brooch that she used to wear about her throat, engraved with the image of a woman. Perhaps it was her mother or her grandmother? I never asked. Perhaps she had bought it secondhand at a bazaar, or took it to remember a lost friend as I did. It was elegant in a simple way, and it reminded me of the time we first met, during my first day at Everton.
    Jonathan had not been the only one to perish in the fire. Six members of the household staff had died as well, leaving families with no means to support themselves. Against the wishes of our lawyer, Mr. Croydon, I used what wealth I had at my disposal to provide them with an element of comfort, though it could never have replaced the loved ones they had lost. I could not have lived with myself otherwise, and the thought of making a new home for myself, orphaned, widowed, and alone, was too much to bear. I still had my father’s military pension. It was not enough to continue the kind of life I had been accustomed to, and so Mr. Croydon begrudgingly agreed to find me some kind of employment as a governess, where I could insert myself into someone else’s life and family, if only for a little while.
    Within a matter of weeks I found myself wandering the hallways of Everton, admiring a painting of a bleak, gray landscape, the signature of the work an enigmatic “L.