3. The Spirits Of The House

The wind blew the hair in her forehead. Waves danced around her as her eyes shone brightly without her being able to avoid it. Her parents didn't let their smiles out, knowing that she liked to keep it for herself, so they allowed her to seize the moment her way. 

The least they could do was at least grant her those small pleasures. Sitting in the window, and having it wide open as she rested her forearms on the windowsill and her head in her arms.  

That was the freest she had felt in a very long time, and her parents rejoiced with the sight.  

Doctor Marsh was right, she needed the change of air, and, even if the trip was a little tiring, her mood was lighter and less gloomy that day. 

Hours later, the carriage was expecting them on Exeter's station and would take them to the Villa. 

For once, Annabelle rejoiced in feeling the warmth of the sunlight and even let a shy smile on her lips.  

Nobody mentioned how good that smile suited her, they worried that the comment could take it away, so they peacefully enjoyed it while it lasted, as calmly and peacefully, as that same smile was. 

The villa was big. The black tiles on the roof and the very light gray walls of stone extended on the hill.  

The two-story edification had wooden floors, rounded classical windows, eight full guest rooms, and the two main rooms, one being Annabelle's parents' room, and the other one, Annabelle's.  

Additionally, there are the common areas of the house, kitchen, terrace, dining room, living room, the downstairs library that was mostly her father's office when they were away from London, which mostly was filled with books about business. 

The gardens were large, like everything else in the house, and full of trees and flowers, in a similar style than their London house, especially the roses.  

The Abraham Darbys, fluffy and peach-colored adorned the surroundings of the house. Still, when they arrived in mid-October, they were able to rejoice in the view and smell of the beautiful rose bushes flowering. 

The house had many windows, beautifully rounded and finished with Burr Walnut wood. The location and the way it was built allowed much more sunlight inside the house, a very marked difference regarding the place in which Abbie has lived for all her life. 

In her criteria, though, the best place of the house was on the second floor almost at the end of the hall, and right beside the entrance of the tower. 

Annabelle loved her room.  

She had good reasons for it to be her favorite place, even though she could not go around and have long walks, and was better without much of people's interaction, yet she could watch the world through that room. 

As easy as by peeking through the window, she could see the sea, the bay, and the ships full of merchandise and passengers that came to the coast, especially commercial vessels coming and going for the wool trade.  

She could spend hours looking through that window, seeing how people moved around, and how the ships seemed to fade away in the distance. 

She could almost feel the way they slid in the surface of the water, leaving a mark as if softly letting themselves slip over a piece of the best quality silk, in direction to where the sun dawned. 

The door after hers, that actually was the last door of the hall, opened to the tower, and it was the space that held most of the memories of Annabelle's childhood in that house.  

You could almost see her going through that door as if it was the gate to a different dimension or a parallel universe.

Her parents have adapted the space as a library for her when she was a kid, as they did with her playroom in the London Estate.

For them, it was the best way to keep their daughter safe and happy while she had no other option but to remain indoors. 

Of course, most of the books were fantasy, and she had a window seat at the very top where she used to unwind herself on the view inside and outside of her head. 

This, obviously, due to the possibility of her having a crisis at any minute, could be done only if she was being watched all the time by one of the trained helpers, who usually had an additional seat on the other side of the tower space. 

Checked all the time, as much when she was a child, as when she was an adult. 

The books were placed in circular shaped shelves that covered the walls, with the only exception of Annabelle's spacious and padded window seat. Besides that, there was an armchair and a sofa, both dark brown leather, high-backed, and very comfortable, made with oak wood, and served as the usual spot in which the helper in turn, spent as much time as Annabelle chose to stay there. 

Sometimes a couple of hours, some other times ten minutes, depending on how thin was the young woman's patience that day on being watched. 

The family, along with the helpers arrived at the house in the late hours of the afternoon, around five, and just in time for tea. 

An exquisite tea set of the finest china was on the garden table. 

The small feast was set with small cucumber sandwiches, scones, pastries, cookies, and, of course, Devonshire cream. 

The helpers went and moved the many large chests that the family had packed for their stay in the Villa, while the Archer family went to the garden and sat for tea.  

They were actually considerate people, compared to other aristocrats, which didn't care much if their helpers ate or slept enough.  

They allowed them to have tea in the kitchen table, with the same kind of food they had, and the same applied for any other meal during the day.  

It was not allowed either that any helper that worked for them was around the house, working, after eight at night.

They were fair, and their employees liked to work with them.

The last rays of sun glared on the young woman's eyes as she sat with her parents outside the large house to eat, and it had been many years since the last time she shared something like that with her family. 

Things that she couldn't take for granted, especially when she knew that she had passed her expected survival age.  

Happily, that day had been a gift. 

After the tea, Annabelle went inside and two of the helpers were waiting for her, ready to unpack and arrange her room with her belongings. 

Abbie went upstairs followed by the two ladies, and all the way up the stairs, she saw a little girl with very long, black hair in a half-ponytail, slowly going up, and when getting all the way up, panting to get air back in her lungs.  

As cute as the image was, of the little girl, pale, with cheeks rosy for the effort, she also felt a slight pain for her, at a time that she still didn't know what she had, and wanted so much to hug her, to embrace herself as a little kid...

The girl continued walking towards that favorite place of hers, as Annabelle saw. She got to the magical door, slowly opened it, and she saw the bright, golden light of all the places and characters that lived passing that threshold. 

So many stories that she rearranged and mixed up when she was a child. 

The helpers behind Abbie stood there wondering what was she seeing, still standing at the top of the stairs, moving her head and slightly smiling at whatever she was seeing.  

Those peculiar episodes that Abbie had since she was a kid, with her favorite characters, at that time, gave way to many legends among the helpers, stories that should not be heard by their employers, about how the girl, the little heir of the house, was seeing ghosts running through the halls to the library on the second floor. 

How the girl that nobody explained how she still was alive, could see spirits, and how those spirits might be coming to take a soul with them. 

How the very lonely girl had not yet died because she had made friends with the grim reaper itself. 

And last, but not least, there were some that said how they, and others in the house, had heard, not only in the house at London, but after their arrival in Exeter, tired steps and running around the house, but mostly all of them, pointing to Abbie's library in Exeter. 

The house was full of spirits, that was true, most of them, only Annabelle could see, all her friends and foes from her magical books, herself as a kid, but mostly so many memories of times in which life was much more simple, times in which she had no worries and her parents still expected for her to be the proud heir of all they had worked for, one day married and with her own children.  

Days much simpler, much happier, where she was a normal girl, and not a porcelain doll that could break at any minute in the hands of a physician, one of her own parents, or even lonely, in the darkness of her own room.