The Mercer's House (Northern Gothic Book 1) by Antonia Frost Page A

ask about one’s wife, of course.’
    Zanna took a sip of wine to dispel the chill that had spread through her body after the story she had just heard, and wondered how much to say.
    ‘I don’t know a lot,’ she said at last. ‘My dad never mentioned her until just before he died. He said they’d never had much in common. He was a solicitor, very strait-laced, and she was a free-spirited type. I think she probably irritated him. He was the sort of person who hated to see a thing out of place.’
    ‘Yes, I can see why she would annoy him, in that case,’ said Alexander. ‘Helen wasn’t the tidy sort. Her mind was always elsewhere, I think. The artistic temperament, I suppose you’d call it.’
    ‘She had paint under her fingernails, like you,’ said Corbin suddenly.
    Zanna glanced at her hands.
    ‘I’m not very tidy either,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s the artistic temperament in my case, though—just laziness.’
    Corbin gave a lop-sided smile. Zanna could sense Will looking at her again, but would not turn her head to meet his eye, and instead concentrated on trying not to feel self-conscious. She took another sip of wine. The glass had been sitting in the sun while they had been indoors, and it was warm.
    ‘Didn’t Helen say anything at all to you about her family?’ she said after a moment.
    Alexander looked uncomfortable.
    ‘She wouldn’t tell me anything about them,’ he said. ‘She said she’d come up here to escape them.’ He hesitated, then said apologetically, ‘I’m afraid I rather got the impression they’d been abusive.’
    ‘Her parents?’ said Zanna.
    ‘Everyone, I think,’ said Alexander.
    The only other person in the family had been Jonathan, Zanna’s father. So Helen had hinted that her family had harmed her, had she? That squared with what Zanna had been told, and it explained why Alexander had never pressed her for more information. He must have thought it would upset her. He had probably assumed she would open up to him in her own time, but it sounded as if she never had.
    ‘My grandparents died before I was born,’ said Zanna. ‘I take it Helen didn’t give any further details?’
    ‘She used to say they’d kill her if they found her, but I rather took that as an exaggeration,’ said Alexander. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to talk about your family like that. Perhaps it’s best if we don’t talk about it any more. I dare say she only said it for effect.’
    But Zanna knew Helen had not said it for effect.
    ‘Were you surprised when she left?’ she said. Again she was treading on personal ground. Despite her family connection with the Devereuxes, she had to remember that she hardly knew these people.
    ‘Why, yes, I was,’ replied Alexander. ‘At least, perhaps not at her running off, but at the fact that she took Rowan and never got in touch.’
    ‘I wonder whether she was depressed,’ said Zanna carefully. ‘Depressed people don’t always act sensibly.’
    ‘It’s possible,’ said Alexander, his head on one side. ‘We already know she liked to keep secrets, so I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if it turned out she’d been feeling down and not told anyone. Happy people don’t tend to run away, I suppose.’
    He might have been considering the political decisions of a long-dead king rather than the disappearance of his wife and stepson, for all the grief he showed. Or so Zanna thought, until she noticed that Corbin was looking at him with something like sympathy, from what she could tell through his frozen features. Perhaps he could read emotions in his twin brother that she could not see.
    Will, meanwhile, was looking at Corbin. His face, which had before seemed almost friendly, again wore that closed expression. Zanna wondered what they were all feeling. She longed to ask about Rowan, and whether they missed him, but she had no idea how to introduce the subject. They were all so determined to move on with their lives, so determined to ignore the