Chapter 22

The flames give off a scorching heat in the traditional brick wood-burning oven as Mora bustles around the kitchen in the dim basement. Morris is whistling under his breath as he tidies up some items in the pantry. I asked him if he needed help, but he shooed me away.

“If it weren’t for this beauty, you wouldn’t be able to pay me to come down here,” Mora mutters, referring to the oven, her blond hair fashioned into a bun at her nape.

She’s in her mid-fifties and has worked at the estate for the last thirty years, ever since her predecessor passed away from a heart attack.

I chuckle before replying, “It is a bit creepy, huh?”

The traditional kitchen is well maintained, with simple gray walls, yellowed with age, well-used wooden cabinetry and prep island, and dark, vintage cast-iron stove and ovens, complete with a concealed grate.

A sole small window lets in the barest amount of dim daylight from the outside, the sun having long disappeared behind the clouds as the evening creeps in.

“Mom makes me come with her every time she uses the ovens down here.” Melody snickers as she hovers over her notepad on the counter.

We are meeting here to start the gala planning—after all, Melody used to work for a large corporation as their event planner, so it makes sense for her to help lead the charge with the charity gala.

It’s also a good distraction from the almost kiss that’s replayed itself in my mind for the last two weeks since the night I bumped into Maxwell in the kitchen .

“There’s nothing wrong with admitting you need company,” Mora huffs and mock glares at her daughter, but her eyes shine with warmth.

My heart pinches at the obvious affection between the mother and daughter, wishing I had the same relationship with my mom.

But it doesn’t matter. There’s no use in pining over the past. I’m going to focus on the future—having children of my own so I can love them the way I wanted to be loved when I was growing up. This is why I’m doing this—this marriage.

But you can’t have kids unless he sleeps with you, Belle.

I groan inwardly—part of me wants to jump his bones and another part of me wants to strangle him. This maddening, exasperating man.

A strange howl whispers down the corridor, followed by the rumble of doors banging and creaking against the hinges. I shudder, the hairs on my forearms rising. It’s just the air circulating from the outside.

Mora says, “Tell me about it. I’m not one to believe in ghosts and curses until I started working here.”

Her words give me pause.

I lean over the wooden counter and ask, “Do you believe it? The curse?”

Mora chooses her words carefully. “I think science can’t explain everything in this world and this family has had a very tragic history.” She strains a smile as she kneads the dough for the flatbread she’s making for tonight’s dinner. “But it’s easy to blame misfortunes on a curse or the supernatural.”

Her words make sense, but her tone sounds unsure.

“Why are you going about spreading rumors, Mora?” Agnes sweeps in and levels a scathing glare at the chef. The two women have a silent standoff before Agnes hands Mora a bag of flour.

“Belle is the mistress, and she has the right to ask.”

“It’s better not to know sometimes.” Agnes shoots a glacial look my way. “Let the ghosts rest where they lie, Ms. Belle.”

Just as I’m about to ask her to stop being so difficult to talk to, her phone beeps. She retrieves it and her face pales .

“Is it Andrew?” Mora mutters, her face darkening. I look at her for clarification and she adds, “Her husband.”

“Is everything oka—”

“I’m fine, ma’am. It’s taken care of.” Agnes stomps off, her feet flying up the steps.

I turn my attention to Mora and Melody. They’re shaking their heads, pity shining clearly in their eyes. “What’s going on with her?”

“Don’t mind the old grouch. She’s been this way for as long as I remember. She used to be good friends with Ms. Julianna, Sir Linus’s wife, but ever since she passed away, she’s been like this,” Mora answers.

Melody leans in and whispers, “Her husband is a hardcore gambler. And not a good one too. Always owes people money, and Agnes is constantly worried about how to pay them back. These loan sharks aren’t kidding, you know?”

I wince, feeling bad for the poor woman. Maybe she has every reason to look pissed off all the time then.

“Anyway, about the curse, I think there’s something fishy going on. Women have been dying in this household since the eighteen hundreds. I mean, that can’t only be bad luck.” Melody plops a cherry into her mouth as she scribbles more notes about the gala on her notepad—the floor plans, the food options we discussed.

“The eighteen hundreds?”

“Melody!” Mora glares at her daughter. “You heard what Agnes said. Don’t spread more rumors.”

“It’s not a rumor if it’s the truth. You can pretend nothing fishy is going on by not talking about it, but the facts are there. A lot of women died within these walls, all at a young age.”

Acid churns inside my stomach as I take in her fervent expression. I’ve done some research on the Andersons and haven’t noticed anything unusual, but then again, they are a private family with significant influence on the press.

“You’re scaring Ms. Belle.” Morris steps back into the room and gives me a tight smile .

“It’s okay, I have been curious about the history. Melody, tell me more.”

Melody nods. “I grew up here, so I’ve heard the stories—things the family doesn’t share with the public. Have you been to the galleries yet?”

I shake my head. It’s on my to-do list today, to finally visit the galleries on the first floor and to poke around the closed west wing. Those are the mistress’s set of rooms, after all. There are so many rooms in this place, it’ll probably take me another month to see them all.

“Want me to show you, give you a guided tour?”

I nod, and she gets up from her seat and leads me to the stairwell. I turn back to say goodbye to Mora and Morris, only to find the butler’s eyes pinned on me, his brows furrowed with concern. My confusion must have shown on my face because he quickly smiles, but it seems forced somehow.

Melody takes me back upstairs, and we make a left at the hallway underneath the grand staircase.

“This door on the left is the art gallery—you know, Rembrandts and Monets.”

I’m so coming back here later. I can hardly contain my excitement.

“We’re going here instead—the family gallery.” She opens an ornate door on the right and flicks on the light.

My mouth drops open at the opulence in the room. There’s a vintage lavender tufted sofa, the intricate wood carvings gleaming under the early evening light filtering in from the large lattice windows.

But what has me most in awe are the rows and rows of family portraits lining the three walls of the room not occupied by the windows.

Melody strides toward a photograph on the nearest wall and points to it. “This is a family portrait taken shortly before Sir Maxwell’s mother passed away.”

I peer at the photograph of a beaming family standing in front of the rose garden, the garden I still can’t bring myself to visit. It just feels too heavy .

A tall, striking man with dark hair, clearly a younger Linus, has his arm around a beautiful woman with warm eyes and a bright smile, who is staring at her husband with clear affection. She’s wearing a glittering key pendant around her neck and holding a baby in her arms.

In front of them are four boys, the dark-haired twins—Maxwell and Ryland, and while they looked more similar back then, I can still tell who is who, with Maxwell being the serious child standing tall, his lips quirked into a half-smile, baring the dimple on his cheek, and Ryland laughing as he nudges his brother on the side. Next to them is Rex, who’s smirking and pulling Ethan’s hair, with Ethan trying to push his older brother away, all the while sucking his thumb.

“They look so happy,” I murmur, smiling at the younger Maxwell while wanting to go back in time and tickle him or something—to do anything to make him laugh like Ryland in the photo.

“They were, but Ms. Julianna passed away a month later, and from what Mom told me, the house was quiet ever since.”

“How did she die?”

“She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. They said it was because Rex was playing with his marbles and didn’t clean up and she slipped.”

“How awful!”

“It really is. And what’s worse, Rex found her body.”

I gasp in horror at the image of a young boy finding his dead mother, and Melody sadly shakes her head.

“You see that patch of soil on the side of the photo? How no roses grow on it?”

I squint. She is right—there is a section of the rose garden that is bare, a large clump of dark soil. It’s the same plot of barren soil I noticed when I first arrived here.

“They said that nothing ever grows there—that it’s a sign of the curse. No life can survive in that spot. No one knows why.”

Goosebumps form on my arms as I stare at the area for a few more seconds, a niggling sensation in my mind—like a thought trying and failing to burst through .

Calm down, Belle. There has to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe the pH is off or something.

She moves on to another portrait, this one black and white, and explains to me this is Linus with his parents and siblings.

When I ask when Maxwell’s grandmother passed away, Melody replies, “It was a few years after Sir Linus was born, from what I heard. She had a heart attack, but she was so young, so it surprised everyone.”

Melody chats about the history of the family as she walks around the room, and I notice the photographs soon turn into oil paintings, the portraits clearly arranged in chronological order from the most recent to the oldest.

We move from portrait to portrait, Melody doing her best to tell me the stories behind them, and I’m fascinated by the little tidbits of history I’m learning and the changing fashions of the times, from elegant sheath dresses to the fringes of the twenties to the thick petticoats of the nineteenth century.

However, the levity of our conversation is dampened whenever she mentions the fates of some women in these portraits. There is an eerie pattern of seemingly random accidents culminating in their deaths, particularly the wives married to the older sons. Carriage mishaps, accidental drowning, influenza, tuberculosis, food poisoning—women dying after a series of events attributed to bad luck.

Melody whispers, “I mean, sure, everything could’ve been random, but then, what about the tree branch? No one can explain that .”

I frown. “What tree branch?”

She slaps her hand on her forehead. “You need to know this stuff. So, apparently, before each of these unfortunate deaths, there’s always a tree branch shattering a window in the estate. It always happens shortly before the deaths and usually during a storm.”

My veins turn into ice as I shiver. This stuff can’t be real.

Melody cocks her brow, as if she knows what I’m thinking. “All I’m saying is, it’s a strange, specific pattern, and one can’t help but think it’s an omen. ”

Finally, we stand in front of a large oil painting of a family of four from around the late eighteen hundreds, lovingly preserved behind a glass frame. There are two boys who look to be around ten years old, their postures ramrod straight and faces unsmiling, common for portraits around that time. They’re standing in front of a regal couple, a beautiful woman with blonde hair arranged in an elegant updo, wearing a lavender gown with sashes and adornments I assume were at the height of fashion back then.

But it’s the man standing next to her who gives me pause, who lodges my breath in my throat.

He looks like Maxwell.