The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

‘I’ll have them fly to India for gold, / Ransack the ocean for Orient pearl, / And have them search all corners of the new-found world / For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.’

Eleanor closed her eyes. What would she ask for, if she had such a powerful servant at her beck and call? Gold. Diamonds. Piles and piles of jewellery, so that if she tried to wear it all at once she wouldn’t be able to stand up. A magic carpet that would take her all around the world, past the palaces of India and the pyramids of Egypt. She would glide over forests and oceans, whirling beneath her in a blur of green and blue, and at night she would lie back in the sky and sleep in a nest of stars. She could draw the universe around her like a cloak with a servant like that, robing herself in rainbows and moonlight and the shine on soap bubbles and a thousand other lovely, impossible things.

When she opened her eyes, there was a woman sitting opposite her.

The woman’s light brown hair was pulled back into a neat bun, threaded with silver. She was middle-aged and plump, not short, not tall. Her printed calico dress looked soft and clean. The woman would’ve looked perfectly ordinary if it hadn’t been for her eyes. They were all black, like holes through her face.

‘I do hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said, her voice gentle and almost familiar.

The key was on the arm of Eleanor’s chair, where she’d left it. The door was closed. She knew the room had been empty when she’d locked it. She blinked, hard. The black-eyed woman still sat there.

She’d been discovered. The black-eyed woman must’ve been hiding in the shadows when Eleanor came in, blinded by her tears. Eleanor snatched up the key and crammed it under a cushion, heart pounding. Had Mr Pembroke placed her here? What was she going to do?

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Eleanor said.

‘Well, dear,’ the woman said, smiling pleasantly, ‘you shouldn’t be here either.’

All the heat leached out of Eleanor. She couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s flat, black eyes. They were totally empty, as though someone had poked a finger through the eyes of a painting.

‘Don’t be alarmed, Eleanor. I only wish to talk to you,’ the woman said.

Eleanor clutched the book like a shield. ‘How do you—’

‘I know all sorts of things, dear child. I know that your name is Eleanor Rose Hartley. I know that you turned seventeen last month. I know what brought you here. You are right to be worried, though you know that already. Your downfall has already been set in motion.’

It was as if the black-eyed woman had cracked open her skull and rifled through her thoughts. Fear wrapped its tendrils around her. ‘Did Mr Pembroke send you?’ she whispered. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. Not really.’

The woman sighed. ‘My dear girl, surely you don’t think so little of me! I have come here to help you. You need protection, Eleanor – especially now Lizzie Bartram has taken the money in your top drawer. What would you do with a child in your belly, and no way to put a roof over your head?’

Eleanor stared at the black-eyed woman. There was no way she could have known that it was Lizzie who had robbed her. She hadn’t even mentioned Lizzie’s name to Mrs Fielding.

In the dark, it was impossible to tell how many shadows the black-eyed woman had. Now three, now seven, now one that was far too small for her. Eleanor blinked again, trying to force herself to see properly. The black-eyed woman stayed exactly where she was, smiling comfortably in her padded armchair. Her shadows did not. Eleanor relaxed. This, she could make sense of.

‘I don’t believe you’re real,’ Eleanor said.

The woman laughed. ‘Oh, dear! And I thought you’d be so pleased, after you called me. Not in the usual way,’ she said, as Eleanor began to protest, ‘but I’m sure you’ve worked that out.’ The woman nodded to the book in Eleanor’s hands.

Confused, Eleanor flipped through it and saw the spot of blood on the frontispiece. ‘This? I don’t understand. It’s just a play.’

‘And fairy stories are just stories, and not lessons for careful children, or escapes for girls with nowhere left to run. Nothing is ever only one thing, dear girl. If that were so, then you would be just a housemaid.’

Eleanor bristled. She brandished the book at the black-eyed woman. ‘But this is a play. Actors speak these words all the time and nothing happens. Surely you don’t mean to say you pop up at every production of Faustus.’

‘Dear me, no. I should never get anything done. But you are right. Four years ago, when you were perfectly content, I should never have had the pleasure of your acquaintance even if you chanted those words in Latin by the light of a full moon. I require something a little stronger. Blood, of course, and wanting. That is all magic is, at its core. And you want a great many things, do you not, Eleanor?’

Eleanor shifted in her seat and put the book down, avoiding the woman’s black eyes. She was all wanting. Good food; a warm, soft bed; hot baths and beautiful clothes; the simple pleasure of a day with no work stretching ahead of her. Her mother, Mrs Pembroke, both of them strong and healthy and ready to gently lift her problems out of her hands. Eleanor tried to be good, she tried to be kind, but she wanted so many things that she could feel them gnawing at her from the inside.

The black-eyed woman leant forward. ‘I can help you leave this place.’

‘I can—’

‘Leave on your own? Of course you can. But when? How? What kind of position do you think you will be in, when you leave Granborough House?’

Eleanor remembered Leah, one hand on the garden gate, that awful expression on her face.