“And he chose differently for you,” Grayson answered. “He loved you.”
“He freed me from the world he’d created,” Severine said, sniffing. Mr. Thorne handed her a handkerchief and she didn’t pretend that the occasional tear wasn’t escaping her. “Now what shall I find here, I wonder? What further evidence shall there be of his behavior?”
Grayson Thorne cleared his throat. “I wonder why you are confiding in me, Miss DuNoir?”
“You seem to understand a little better than the others.”
“I am, however, a stranger.”
The unsaid part of that was surely she had a confidant? Not really. Not in the United States.
Severine smiled, hating her thoughts. “Pathetic answers do not become me, but I suppose in the face of near-death and stark honesty, I’ll admit the truth. I don’t have anyone else. We might not be lifelong friends and allies, but at least you have no motive to want me dead or driven to madness.”
“Mad?” Grayson looked at her as though she might have already dabbled a little in the state.
“Noises in the walls. While I slept off my over-indulgence, Lisette was terrified.” Severine laughed. “My being drugged. If I hadn’t drunk quite so much wine, perhaps I would have been confused and terrified with Lisette. Maybe the drugs weren’t intended to kill me. Perhaps they just wanted me suggestible. The villain has designed his or her game for someone like Florette.”
“Did the nuns change you so much? Aren’t you both daughters of rich men, raised in girls’ schools until you left?”
“They did change me. Of course.” Severine laughed and she surprised herself with true, unadulterated humor. Things had been so dark lately, a real laugh was like a fresh breeze in a bog. “It wasn’t anything the nuns did to me. It was the nunnery itself.”
Grayson frowned his question.
“It’s simple, Grayson. Use your imagination. An ancient nunnery, no electricity, I got over strange sounds in the darkness before I had been there a month. Noises in the walls? Hardly something that would pause me now, but if it had been Florette? We’d either have been screeched awake or one of you rich, chivalrous fellows would have found yourself a damsel in the witching hour.”
She laughed at the look on his face at the idea of Florette pounding on his door, seeking help for scratching sounds. “Was it so bad at the nunnery?”
“No,” Severine said. “It was fine. Cozy. Idyllic, even. I miss them.”
She opened the drawer in front of her, looking for her treasure, raking her memories for Father’s secret places.
“It gets better,” he said. His words felt a little like a vow, and she looked up surprised. “The grief and the guilt for surviving? It lessens in time.”
Severine examined him with his good looks, his fine suit, his intelligent eyes, and she had to ask, “Do you know that for yourself?”
He nodded.
“Is that why you are so intrigued with spirits?”
He paused. “I had an experience I cannot explain. Quite a life changing one. I seek answers. I find charlatans.”
She examined his face for a long minute before turning away. His experience, whatever it had been, might have changed him. But surely he felt that someone else’s ghost wouldn’t solve his riddle. Not a problem for today, Severine reminded herself. Today was about finding evidence against the one who was trying to kill her and preserving her place outside of the graveyard or asylum.
Severine glanced over the contents of her father’s desk drawer and then rose. She turned to face the desk and the portrait of herself surprised her. Pale skin. Too little time outdoors, she thought. She was pale now, but not so ghostly. Not after all her walking in the Austrian woods.
Her childhood self had hair in tight braids and her dress was an unbecoming color of pink. It would have looked well on Florette and perhaps it was Florette that Severine’s mother considered when she’d ordered it.
Severine remembered those hours of standing by the globe, playing with it, and being ordered to remain still. A sudden memory flashed before her eyes, and she turned, crossing to the globe where once she’d stood to be painted. She ran her fingers over the globe and her memories served her well. She found the catch and opened the secret compartment in the globe.
There before her were her father’s master keys for the house. There were but two and each was engraved with an eye on the head of the key. They were laid side-by-side, and they were more powerful than the full ring that Mr. Brand had given her. The full ring held keys to every room individually. The master key with the engraved eye on the head of the key would open any door in all of the property. Severine took her father’s desk key off of the ring from Mr. Brand, put the ring of keys in the globe, and then slipped one of the master keys into her pocket.
When her father had purchased the globe, he had asked her what to put there, and she had suggested a good half-dozen things before he’d agreed to the keys. Next to the keys, she found a piece of folded paper which she pocketed without examining.
To Grayson, Severine flashed the master key and his eyes widened.
“What are those?”
“Master keys,” Severine said easily. “Father had the locks changed when we moved. Some brilliant master keysmith. None of the locks can be opened or picked easily.”
“And now? What do you intend?”
“Mr. Thorne,” Severine said mischievously. “I suggest we unashamedly break into bedrooms and search through the things of my hangers-on.”
He lifted a brow and then his head cocked. “I suppose a part of me immediately rejects such a notion, but we are talking murder here, aren’t we?”
“The bullet hole you found in my automobile does say so.” She grimaced
