They all agreed and made their way downstairs, Charlotte and Mr. Mallery going a bit slower than the rest.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what I was … I don’t know.”
“Mrs. Cordial, I do not care to hear an apology from you. You are the one coerced into running blind through an unfamiliar house. In the dining room, I should have realized that you were genuinely agitated. I should have put a stop to this before it went too far.”
He thinks I’m crazy, she thought. He thinks I was so terrified of the game that I imagined a dead body in a disappearing room.
And perhaps, in fact, she had.
Mr. Mallery stopped on the landing and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“I feel like an idiot, but I’m fine.”
“Get some sleep. And I promise you a more peaceful day tomorrow.”
He took her arm, walked her to her chamber door, bowed, and left.
Colonel Andrews lingered at Miss Charming’s door, whispering. He kissed her hand before departing to his room. Miss Charming placed a hand on her bosom and sighed.
“ ’Night, Mrs. Cordial.”
“Goodnight.” Charlotte stayed where she was. Outside her circle of candlelight, the house was excessively dark, and in the wind it creaked like a ship. Charlotte pictured the night as an ocean, and imagined that she alone was floating in that vastness. Lost at sea in the midst of a storm.
Miss Charming popped her head back out her door. “Hey, Charlotte?”
“Hm?” Charlotte took a few steps closer, only too glad to stall in the presence of another human.
“Do I look pale to you? Kind of sickly, like I’ve been half-choked or something?”
“No … why?”
“Because you do, and I wondered if everyone looks like that in candlelight.”
Charlotte laughed. “I really, really spooked myself tonight.”
Miss Charming gestured for Charlotte to follow. “Come on, honey lamb. There’s room for two in my bed. Nothing hokey—I don’t swing, thanks. You just look like a sad little puppy tonight.”
“You don’t mind?” Charlotte ran back to her room, shivering as she entered the darkness, as if she’d passed through a cold, wet veil. She grabbed her nightgown from a hook in her bathroom and was back in Miss Charming’s room in a flash.
“My kids …” Charlotte stopped, knowing she wasn’t supposed to speak about the real world. She chose her words carefully, so that she might have been speaking as Mrs. Cordial. “My children are of sturdier stuff than I am. When she was little, my girl loved thunderstorms, and I’d pretend to as well so that I wouldn’t scare her. But sometimes I wished she was a little scared so she’d snuggle in bed with me at night.”
Miss Charming sniffed. “I’m not offering a snuggle.”
Charlotte smiled. “I accept all the same.”
“You sleep left or right?”
James had slept on the right, Charlotte cramped up on the left, afraid to move and disturb his fragile sleep. “You point to a spot, and I’ll sleep there all night without so much as a snort or rustle.”
Miss Charming put her hands on her hips. “Is that right?”
“If I have one superpower, Miss Charming, it’s silent, motionless sleep. You’d almost think me dead.”
“Well, if we’re going to sleep together, Mrs. Cordial, you’d better call me ‘Lizzy.’ ”
They took turns helping each other out of dress and corset and jumped into bed. Charlotte pulled the covers up to her chin. A giggle started in her belly and tickled up her throat.
“What’s funny?” Miss Charming asked, giggling too, as if she couldn’t help herself.