The Lady in Yellow: A Victorian Gothic Paranormal Romance

Thirty

Thank God, Janet was gone! After what she'd just seen, Veronica couldn't bear to face anyone.

The maid had kindly laid a good fire in the hearth and lit up a tall, many branched candelabrum that she must have found in the treasure room. Everything smelled clean and fresh, as if she'd sprayed the air with lavender water. Grateful but still agitated, Veronica strode across her bedroom to the French doors, tore them open, and stepped out onto her balcony.

It was getting dark. An early moon was rising, a full, white disk ghosting through the trees. She paced up and down, squinting to see as much as possible of the wishing well, but all that was visible in the gloaming was mist curdled in the bowl of the spring.

Something was going to happen tonight. Something... awful. She could feel it.

Leaving the French doors open, she went back inside, then, went slowly into the other, séance side, of the room.

Janet had worked hard. Even in the dark, wood gleamed and mirrors sparkled. That dreadful Ouija board had been put away, the broken glass removed, but the horrible furniture was still there. The box of photographic negatives remained on the shelf of the cabinet.

What was she going to do? Mrs. Twig would never stand to be confronted about what Veronica had just seen. Oh, no. This had been going on for a long time. This was the source of all their secrecy. It was worse than anything Veronica could ever have imagined: shape shifting, witchcraft of the blackest kind.

Perhaps the books in the séance room would enlighten her further. Were there more like the one she'd found in the library, that Dragon Rouge? If so, she would know for certain what she was up against.

Of course, having figured out that Veronica did not like occult things, Janet had locked the cabinet doors. But curiosity was one of Veronica's most potent drivers. Let it not be my undoing, she prayed. She'd seen Auntie pick the lock on the back door of the neighboring pub enough times to know how easy it was. Pulling a long pin from her hair, she fiddled with the keyhole until the doors swung open.

The books were old and fine, but their spines were difficult to read in the dark. On one of the lower shelves she found a flat folder wrapped around a sheaf of rag-edged parchments. That looked interesting. She took it into her bedchamber, and under the light of the candelabrum, rifled through the parchments.

Some of the pages were yellow with age, others looked quite new. They were notes, written in a neat, precise, masculine hand that gave them an air of great importance.

Perusing one of the sheets, a strange word jumped out at her: Ectoplasm.

Tonight Our Lady successfully drew forth an astonishing quantity of Ectoplasm within which a spirit began to take form. We queried it via the Ouija Board but the message was garbled, or perhaps communicated in a language unknown to us.

"That must be the mist oozing out of their throats," Veronica said aloud. Ectoplasm...

A dark mood fell over Veronica. She wasn't sure she wanted to know these things. Why had she, a girl raised in a convent, been sent into this godforsaken house? Was this Mr. Crowe's idea of a joke?

Setting the parchments on the divan, she sat in the easy chair and put her head in her hands. She should leave. Just go. Life had never been easy for her, but this was more than she'd bargained for.

The specter of Saint Mary's rose up before her mind's eye like a prison sentence. Nuns. Spinsters. She could never live that life, not after what Rafe had awakened in her. His voice, his scent, his touch, the expression on his face when he looked at her, told her what she wanted out of life. She would never be content without a man. It would be wrong to go back to Saint Mary's and pretend she'd been called to devote her life to God. It would be the height of hypocrisy.

But then, she laughed to herself, Rafe didn't want her, so what did it matter?

Out of sheer frustration, she wept.