An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [63]
I saw the surprise on his face. His mouth fell open. Then I saw understanding creep into his eyes. He knew I'd heard everything.
He slid his gaze in the direction of Uncle Valentine's office, where the others were still talking, then back to me. He shrugged his shoulders. He gave a little smile.
I did not breathe. Neither did I smile back. I would enter into no conspiracy with him now. And he wouldn't have seen my smile, anyway. Because somebody was there in the hallway between us.
The ghost of Marietta.
He knew it and I knew it. So I dropped my gaze to my hands in my lap. If I was to be perceived as having feminine scruples, well then, I would put them to good use.
I was angry with him. I had every right. For his being in on this, for keeping it from me so I was left eavesdropping like a naughty child. But most of all because I knew now that he'd traveled with Marietta before. And admired her for it.
He knew I'd heard that along with everything else. Now he expected me to smile at him?
I looked at him again. Was he going to tell Uncle Valentine I was here? Well, go ahead, tell, I thought. See if I care.
I saw the uncertainty in his face, the look in his eyes. As if he were pleading. For what?
For some kind of understanding.
In that moment I knew he would not give me away. He nodded his head at me, almost curtly, then turned without even a whispered word, and went out the front door.
I felt a great sob forming inside me. Something had just happened between me and Robert, but what?
And then I knew. A deal had been struck between us.
My understanding, for his silence.
I never said I'd give my understanding, did I? And I never asked for his silence, either. I turned with a strangled sob, pushed my way past Addie, and ran up the stairs.
"Now you know," Addie was saying, lumbering behind me on the wide upstairs landing. "Now you know, doan you?"
"Leave me alone!" I whispered savagely.
I knew nothing. I knew less now than before. Only that I'd been betrayed somehow by both Robert and Uncle Valentine; I did not even know the exact nature of the betrayal. I knew that everyone in the house but me understood what was going on.
I knew that Myra was probably right. But I had no proof. Everything that had been said could have two meanings. It was the way they talked to each other in this house. In codes.
I knew that I'd lost Robert, before I was even mindful that I'd wanted him. Just like I'd lost Annie. And Puss-in-Boots. I went into my tower room, where I belonged, like the miller's daughter, and closed the door.
18. I Didn't Like the Arithmetic
FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS I walked around in a kind of daze. I took part in things but did not feel part of them. After a while I felt like Addie must feel and thought I must be going mad.
How does one go mad? Is Addie mad? If she is, she does not know it. If you don't know it, does it count?
One minute I'd be so sure Uncle Valentine and Robert were involved in the snatching of bodies. Everything pointed to it. The way Robert and the Spoon and the Mole had jumped so fast on that steamboat accident. Robert going there as a brother of one of the victims. And taking Marietta along as the wife of a neighbor. Why couldn't Robert have gone as an assistant for Uncle Valentine, if they were to bring back live bodies?
Uncle Valentine saying it was always better to have a woman along because they invited less suspicion. Suspicion of what?
Merry saying Maude should go along to act as a grieving mother. And how good she was at it. Was that why Maude went to so many funerals here in Washington? As a grieving mother? To claim the bodies? Was that why she went only to funerals of the impoverished or the forgotten?
It was all starting to add up, and I did not like the arithmetic.
Then the next minute I would look around me at the ordered