‘If you want to put it like that. But we’ll work up to it, remember. I’m not going into it cold.’
‘Cold is the last thing you’ll be,’ promised Jason. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll stock up on lube and stuff. You’ll be good and ready by the time the show comes round. You might even want it sooner.’ He winked.
‘Don’t hold your breath. It’s a big idea to get used to. I’m not as grossed out by the thought as I used to be, though.’ She didn’t add that she was secretly highly aroused by it. Best to let him think she was nervous, so that he took it as slowly and gently as possible.
‘You won’t regret it,’ he said, drawing her into ecstatic kisses of gratitude.
Withdrawing, sleepy-eyed again despite their having only recently woken up, he said, ‘Speaking of regrets.’
‘Oh? What? What are you regretting?’ Jenna’s eyes opened wide from the near-slumber into which she was so pleasantly falling.
‘Not me. I’ve got no regrets, believe me.’ He kissed her again. ‘I was thinking of our ghost mate. Her from a hundred and f
ifty years ago. I’m going to be listening out for funny noises again tonight, now that I know a bit about her. We still don’t know how she ended up as a pile of bones in the cellar.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose that’ll be in her diary, unless the killer adds an entry of their own.’
‘No, but there’ll be clues. I mean, already she’s got a weirdo husband, two stepdaughters who hate her guts and none of the servants are very friendly either.’
‘I thought Lawrence Harville said it was a suicide.’
‘Well, if it is, the diary’ll let us know, yeah? She’ll sound all depressed and start talking about ending it all, I suppose. Give us a look. Did you unpack it?’
‘I think so.’ Jenna reached an arm over to the bedside table and scrabbled in the drawer until she found the fabric bag in which she kept the book.
‘So we’d got to the wedding night?’ she said, trying to chase away the blur in her brain and remember their last reading.
‘Yeah, and he was a bit weird and she felt weird about it too,’ contributed Jason.
‘So that was March . . .’ She flipped through the pages. ‘Oh. Nothing now until May. Here.’
May 3rd
I had resolved to keep this diary no longer. As a married woman, I thought it behoved me to make my husband my confidant and recipient of my deepest thoughts and feelings.
But there are things I cannot tell him – that he is deaf to – and so, with reluctance, I take up my pen once more.
I have done what I consider my best to please him and be a good wife. I have always been patient and considerate of him and the burden of responsibility he carries. I am highly sensible of my good fortune in being chosen as his bride.
But I can no longer remain silent on the subject of his daughters. My daughters, as I suppose I must call them. But their behaviour prevents it. I cannot see them as children of mine at all, for they are so filled with hate and spite that I make it my study to avoid them whenever possible.
They have cut up my dresses, filled my escritoire with worms and snails from the garden, emptied my scent bottle and refilled it with spirit vinegar. Yet I have shielded them on each occasion, telling myself that they are overset by the sudden change in domestic circumstances and are to be more pitied than censured.
Yesterday, however, I could no longer contain myself.
The day being sunny, I took myself into the garden with my needlework while D kept to his study, as he so often does. I had ordered a little tisane and some light sponge cake from the kitchen and the girls offered – unusually, but I took it as progress – to bring it up for me.
I promised them cake if they were kind enough to do this, and they went to the kitchen with a great show of enthusiasm. Before they left, Susannah even called me ‘Mother’. ‘We should be pleased to, Mother.’ I was as happy as I have ever been in these weeks since my marriage, wondering if at last the difficult days were past and we could look forward to peace and family unity hereafter.
You will perhaps have already grasped that this was not to be so.
The tray was brought out with great care and ceremony, the prettiest china plate used for the cake. My tisane, in its delicate bone cup, looked a little paler than I was accustomed to, but I supposed the infusion may have been more than usually hurried by the girls in their excitement.
They sat with me at the wrought iron table, watching eagerly as I divided up the cake and poured them pink lemonade from a jug they had asked to be made up whilst on their errand.
Then, as I raised my own cup to my lips, their eyes were avid, almost gleaming, and I felt suddenly rather disturbed.
‘What is it, girls?’ I asked.