I hold the mean little thing and a tear drips onto it. I’d not realised I was crying. How had we come to this, my cousin and I? When we were twelve, there was a boy. Rian, the son of one of the tenants, the Widow O’Meara’s only child, and so handsome. Charming, too, and he liked me. And although nothing ever happened between us, it was sweet and exciting and secret – a secret of my own. Nothing but that one single kiss down on the shingle just that one day. Who would I share such a secret with but my cousin Brigid… and who but Brigid would run and tell my grandmother? There are marks on my skin that have never gone away. Unlike Rian O’Meara who disappeared one morning, never to be found, soon after the night Aoife beat bloody furrows into my back.
I blink to clear the tears and assess my work. It’s an ugly little thing, lumpen and imprecise in its shape, but the magic is there and it will work. I carefully remove a glove, then take out Óisín’s pocketknife to prick the tip of my thumb. I press hard against it with my pointer finger so three droplets weep out and drip onto the doll’s head; I whisper an ill-wish for Brigid, then carefully bandage the cut on my finger. I wrap the dolly in a shawl and hide it in the blanket box at the foot of my bed.
Then I get ready to go down to dinner.
* * *
Aidan is already seated in the small dining room when I arrive. At the head of the table as though it’s his right. He smiles when I enter the room, but as I’ve not bothered to change into one of the pretty dresses Aoife bought and make myself presentable, the expression is hard for him to maintain. He gestures to the place laid opposite him. It’s a small table, this one, only meant for four, so the distance between us isn’t really enough for my liking. Yri serves our first course, but doesn’t meet my eye. She leaves as soon as she can.
‘We will need to get you a new wedding dress,’ is how Aidan begins as if we’re taking up a conversation only recently interrupted. ‘I know it is soon after so much bereavement, but your grandmother would have wanted us to go ahead. It will be a small wedding in Breakwater, the archbishop has agreed to preside as a personal favour.’
‘Aidan, our engagement was purely to please Aoife. She is gone.’
‘But you will want to marry. You will want position and money. You will want the house restored.’ He gestures to the faded curtains, the air of decay that still hangs in spite of Yri and Ciara’s cleaning efforts.
And I shake my head. I love this house but it’s not worth the cost of my freedom. It’s not worth the cost of marrying Aidan Fitzpatrick. Whatever soul I might have, O’Malley though I might be, it is mine and I’ll not sell it at any price.
‘Aidan, thank you for your kind offer, but I will remain here with Malachi and Maura. The house devolves to me as per my grandparents’ wills. I will live out my days at Hob’s Hallow and when the time comes, the O’Malleys will be gone.’
‘You are very anxious to throw your young life away, Miren,’ he says evenly. ‘Upon what do you propose to live? There will be no funds to cover your expenses even after the ships are sold – if they ever return to port. And you cannot fail to remember how much I have done for you. How much I have spent on you and your grandmother.’
I pull the giant pearl ring off my heart finger, where it never belonged, and I slide the thing across the shiny dining room table so it hits Aidan’s dinner plate with a ting.
He stares at it as if it had addressed him in perfectly formed sentences. Aidan reaches out and picks up the hefty thing, weighs it in the palm of his hand as if he doesn’t very well know its value.
‘Yri,’ he says, then clears his throat. ‘Yri told me what happened when you were watching Aoife.’
I freeze, think that I should simply have murdered the girl to stop her mouth rather than trusting her. She’s not here to work for me. She’ll answer to Aidan, who pays her way. Still, it smarts to have been so stupidly trusting. Aoife’s in my head, smugly smiling.
Aidan continues, ‘She told me about the marks on your grandmother’s throat and that you and Aoife had argued in the morning, rather violently.’
I swallow.
‘I would hate to think that I needed to report these matters to either the Church or the authorities. Not when you stand to inherit everything now Aoife is gone.’
There are no authorities anymore, I think, but I say, ‘There have been strangers in this house, Aidan. All the new staff. One of the footmen is missing...’
The thought is there suddenly like a dagger.
He raises an eyebrow curiously. ‘There was only ever one footman, Miren. Ugly chap, looks like a potato.’
I stare. I cannot tell if he’s lying or not. But then, who else would send the green-eyed man here? Why else would he have disappeared so thoroughly? Unless he too is dead, lying in some as yet undiscovered location around the estate, at the foot of the cliffs, in another garden, or in the well in the cellar? But why would he have gone down there?
I open my mouth to say ‘But Maura and Malachi saw him,’ then I stop. If Aidan’s behind this, I won’t put their necks in
