Virginia returned to her room after her chat with Charles feeling rather giddy. She'd completely forgotten how frightening he had seemed when she first met him.
She found that she really liked talking with him. He seemed so rigid and reserved before, but when they talked he proved to be an emotional and deep thinker. Virginia thought it never hurt for a man to be in touch with his emotions.
She quite appreciated it.
Seeing as she still had several hours in the evening to kill, she decided to take a nice long bath. Plus, some alone time in some warm water usually helped her unwind and calm down.
She wasn't feeling particularly wound up at the moment, but Eliza's warning did keep invading her mind. Maybe Eliza was one of those girls who seemed crazy and uncouth, but she was really just a hopeless girl who spewed empty threats.
After her bath, Virginia changed into her blue silk pajamas and sat in the lounge chair by the window. She watched how the landscape changed as the evening light began to redden and dim. She thought some more about her family. About her sister.
Her sister was to be married soon, and that was good, so she tried to focus on that. She hoped she would get to see, or at least talk to, Janice soon. Virginia grabbed a pen and a notebook and moved over to the writing desk and began to write down some ideas for the wedding.
Focusing on the wedding kept Virginia busy for a while, but the more she sketched and wrote, the sadder she got. She wished she could have shared these ideas with her sister immediately. What if she didn't like a single one of them? What if she'd already chosen the colors? What if she was doing all the planning without Virginia, or even on her own?
Virginia slid the pen and notebook away from her and leaned back in the study chair. She scanned the room, looking for inspiration for what to do next. The sun hadn't even begun to set yet.
Soon there was a knock on her bedroom door. Virginia sprung up and smoothed out her pajamas. She wasn't sure who it was, but part of her hoped it was Charles.
It was not.
Angela stood patiently at the door. Her maid's uniform was a bit wrinkled. Her hair, which had started out in a low bun, had strands of hair hanging loosely all around her face. Her under eyes were a strange yellow, and Virginia spotted a drop of blood on her white apron. She held a small silver serving platter.
She looked like she'd had a rough day. "Is everything all right?" Virginia asked.
"Yes, yes," Angela said with a wave of her hand, "Everything is as usual."
"Is that blood?" Virginia asked. She pointed at the spot on the apron.
Angela looked down at it and scratched at it with her fingernail. "Sure is." She smiled and shrugged.
Virginia laughed nervously.
"Sorry I didn't come back. I had to have a talk with a certain someone after some other certain someone had a talk with her."
"You mean Eliza?" Virginia asked.
Angela sighed. "Unfortunately, yes. She's just being a stubborn girl. I don't think she'll be any trouble though."
This was a little nerve-wracking for Virginia to hear. Angela didn't seem too concerned about Eliza, though she did seem frazzled with the situation.
"Anyway!" Eliza said enthusiastically, "I'll give you your assignment in the morning. You should eat before it gets any later. You're probably starved."
Virginia took the platter in her hands and thanked Angela for coming by.
"I'll see you in the morning. You better get some rest!"
She called out as Angela entered her own room.
The platter was light and Virginia sat it on her bed. She'd forgotten to eat lunch, as she was preoccupied with Charles and now that food was mentioned, she was feeling hungry.
She lifted the lid off to find another sandwich. She thought that as fancy as this place was, they'd have made something more interesting and expensive for dinner.
Or maybe she only received a sandwich because she was a servant.
Either way, she was glad to have food in front of her and she ate it quickly. By the time she was done eating, the sun had sunk down under the horizon. The sun was only a vague glow.
Virginia brushed her teeth and crawled into bed with a book. She had started "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson a few days before after hearing that it was one of those books that made you think about it for a long time after you've finished it.
It was a psychological mystery and horror, and as Virginia got deeper into the book, she began to regret having started reading it. It was the wrong genre to be reading at night in a mansion like the Princes'.
After a couple of hours of reading by the lamplight beside her bed, Virginia decided to try and get some rest. She thought about the strange occurrences in the book and with the light finally turned off, she began to experience her own strange occurrences.
Virginia closed her eyes and tried to trick herself into sleep, but she kept hearing her doorknob rattle. It wiggled loosely at first but soon began to shake wildly.
She couldn't help but shoot up in bed and grasp one of the throw pillows.
A couple of moments later, Angela's door opened and closed. Maybe she was just tired and out of sorts or had the wrong room, Virginia thought.
She reclined back in bed and was almost to sleep when she felt a cold chill against her cheek. Her eyes shot open and she searched her room for any signs of a breeze. The windows were shut tight, and she didn't even have the fan on, so she wasn't sure what it could have been.
She took a couple of deep breaths and closed her eyes again. She buried her face into the space between two pillows and focused on counting her breaths: one, two, three, four, five, six in, and one, two, three, four, five, six out.
Virginia has awakened again when she heard a strange kind of tapping on the window. She curled into a ball under the covers and tried to ignore it. She squeezed her eyes shut and refused to look.
The tapping became an awful sort of sharp scrape, like someone was dragging a sharp rock across glass.
Virginia's eyes popped open and she swore she saw something outside the window perched on the roof.
She told herself it was just her imagination, a terrible mix of the paintings on the walls and the book she was reading before she went to bed. She was exhausted but decided to face her fears. Otherwise, she wouldn't sleep at all.
She threw off the covers and marched over to the window. The dark shape seemed to swish from the roof to a nearby tree and onto the ground. Virginia stared at it, not having the slightest idea what it could be.
It was a large figure but still smaller than her by quite a bit. Perhaps it was some kind of animal. A large cat of some sort?
She wasn't sure what it was, but even after crawling back into bed and burying her head under the pillows and blanket, she still felt paranoid. She slept lightly, though she did manage to have one dream.
She dreamt that she was in the middle of a large field with a circle of trees around her.
It was dark and there were blue fireflies lighting up around her. She tried to catch the fireflies, but they burned her hands, or rather, they left frostbitten-like spots on her hands.
The trees began to sway and blur and move in on her. And then there was a small black creature with bat wings and razor-sharp talons flying down at her and letting loose a high-pitched screech. She tried to run, but the branches of the trees were pulling her hair and her feet kept getting tangled in the roots. She fell down and down, as the ground disappeared from underneath her.
And all of a sudden, she was in a man's arms. The man's skin was hard and shone like a raw diamond. He cradled her and whispered in her ear. She felt a cool kiss on her cheek and looked at the man. It was Charles. He held her face gently in his hands. It was Charles but his eyes were brown, like moist earth. Around them, the trees are still shaking, but the world was quiet.
When Virginia awoke, she was sweating ...
Her feet were twisted up in the blankets and her hair was matted to her face. She looked out the large window and seeing that it was still dark outside, she closed her eyes again.
She still felt unsettled, but having Charles in the dream made her feel a bit more at ease but knowing he was in the house, made her feel even better.