by Jane Godman
“Old houses have their own moods, don’t they? Sometimes they can seem sad,” I said, strolling forward to greet him.
Another smile—the eager expression with which I was familiar—dawned instantly. “Indeed. But this one, I feel, does not suffer that fate. It is something of a treasure.” He cast another swift glance upward as we stepped inside.
Dinner was surprisingly successful. Anika had made a pie and cooked a variety of vegetables, and Ceri’s cake was tasty if a little lopsided. Shucky disgraced himself by being overly familiar toward Matthew all through dinner. He seemed to think they were destined to be great friends, a feeling Matthew clearly did not share. When Matthew tried to get up from the table, Shucky made a gleeful lunge toward him.
“Scheisse!” The unfriendly look I had seen on Matthew’s face when he looked at Shucky earlier that day returned. It was even more pronounced now. Vidor was summoned to forcibly remove the errant hound, and Matthew confessed ruefully that he had always been rather nervous around dogs. They seemed, he said, to sense his discomfort and were inclined to adopt a superior stance toward him.
“What did you say to Shucky?” I asked him as we left the table.
“He said ‘shit’,” Ceri informed me before Matthew could answer. “In German. I know because I learned to speak it in Austria. They didn’t teach us to swear at school, of course, but Daddy’s driver used to call him a scheisse, and I found out what it meant.”
Matthew ducked his head sheepishly. “I’m sorry. My mother was German, we visited family there often during my childhood. Every now and then, the occasional word comes back to me. It was unforgivable of me to swear in front of you both in any language!”
After dinner, the three of us played cards—with much outrageous cheating from Matthew and outraged protest from Ceri—until it was time for Ceri to go to bed. Matthew got up to take his leave. Looking back later, I couldn’t quite figure out how it happened, but he stumbled clumsily on the edge of the rug where it met the polished floor. He fell hard and his right knee hit the wooden floorboards with a sickening thud. I hurried forward, but he waved away my attempts to help him up. It soon became apparent that he could not get to his feet and that he was genuinely injured. I managed to get my shoulder under his arm, and leaning heavily against me, he struggled upright and hobbled over to the sofa. I regarded his strained face and closed eyes with some concern.
He refused the glass of brandy I proffered. “I will be fine if I rest here for a few minutes,” he assured me. A contrite smile lit his eyes. “I was always an oaf! My mother used to say I could trip over an ant. As a child I was permanently bruised and injured.”
I left him reclining on the sofa while I saw Ceri up to bed. She was thoroughly overexcited after her enjoyable evening and, in the gruesome manner of childhood, intrigued at the prospect that Matthew might have sustained a serious injury. Consequently, it took even longer than usual for her to settle. When I returned to the parlour, Matthew was still sitting where I had left him. His head was back and his eyes closed, but he sat up as I came in, unable to hide the wince of pain that shot across his features.
“You need a doctor,” I informed him decisively.
“No, no!” He straightened. “Really, I don’t want to cause any fuss. I’m sure I can make my way slowly up the hill, and after a good night’s sleep, I’ll be right as rain again. You’ll see,” he promised in answer to my dubious expression. Biting his bottom lip, he rose stiffly from his seat. When he attempted to move, however, a sharp hiss of pain escaped him, and he collapsed back onto the sofa.
“Damn!” he muttered, throwing me a look of abject apology.
“That settles it,” I told him. “You can sleep here tonight, and if it’s no better in the morning, I will send Vidor to fetch the doctor. Now, for the Lord’s sake, drink this brandy and stop trying to be noble.”
Since he was unable to navigate the stairs, I brought down blankets and pillows and made up a bed on the parlour sofa. His constant apologies and expressions of gratitude were starting to irritate me. I decided I much preferred a curmudgeonly, silent sort of man. A pair of dark, unfathomable eyes sprang unbidden into my mind.
I bade Matthew good night and closed the door on him. To my surprise, I found Shucky positioned, sentry-like, just outside the parlour door. Refusing my order to shift himself, he heaved a long-suffering sigh and lay down, nose on his outstretched paws, golden-brown eyes fixed on the parlour door.
“Aren’t you neglecting your post up at the Slater’s Arms? Mr. Fisher is not as keen to further this acquaintance as you appear to be,” I informed him, ruffling his head before making my way up the stairs. I felt considerably less tolerant toward him as the night wore on. Four or five times I was roused from sleep by his low growl, which was followed by a series of angry barks and, on one occasion, what sounded like a ferocious attack on an unspecified target. After this disturbance, I tiptoed halfway down the stairs to scold him, but I found him in precisely the position I had left him. He spared me a brief glance and then turned back to his silent vigil. With an impatient groan, I returned to my bed.
In the morning, Matthew appeared much improved. He still had a pronounced limp and some of his usual affability appeared to have deserted him. Explaining that he had slept poorly, he refused breakfast, hobbling off down the drive after another—perfunctory this time, I felt—thank-you.
I folded his blankets thoughtfully. Ceri helped me, saying, “What a crosspatch Mr. Fisher is in the mornings! I don’t think you should marry him, after all.”
I laughed. “Whatever gave you the idea that I might marry him?”
“Well, you have to marry someone, don’t you?” she pointed out reasonably. She paused, looking at the blanket in my hand. “I didn’t know Mr. Fisher’s knee was bleeding,” she said, pointing.
I frowned and turned the blanket over. Sure enough, there were a few splatters of blood on its straw-coloured surface. But Matthew hadn’t cut his knee, had he? And I knew the blankets were clean when I brought them down from the laundry cupboard. Perhaps the stress of his fall had brought on a nosebleed. It would be just his luck, I thought with a wry smile.
I carried the blankets out to be washed and paused as I stepped over the threshold. There, on the polished boards of the hall floor were three large, almost dry, drops of blood, each about the size and shape of a penny. Perhaps his plan had been to steal up the stairs to my room. That would certainly explain Shucky’s noisy intervention.
“You are a social liability,” I informed the miscreant, as he followed me hopefully into the kitchen. He grinned delightedly at me, his long tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth. “But,” I added, having given the matter some consideration, “I suppose it’s nice to know you are here to look after us, even if you are somewhat misguided in your perceptions. I think I can protect myself from Matthew, you know.”
Chapter Twelve
Something, some feint of movement, attracted my eyes away from my sewing. I had not yet drawn the parlour curtains over the darkening landscape. It was a hushed, still twilight when at last the tints of day had died and the stars trembled into life. Silver ribbons of cloud were tied around the gift of a bright, new moon. The branch of candles was reflected in the sleek black glass like a row of cat’s eyes.
The high, distressed cry of an animal startled me, and I wondered if the movement I had seen was a nocturnal predator crossing the lawn. At first the second noise I heard was a minor buzz of annoyance, like a persistent fly. It grew in intensity, softly slithering like butterfly wings on glass, becoming the rattle of a die cast by a palsied hand or the snapping of tiny bones. My fortitude was flayed to breaking point. Jumping up, I cast aside my needlework. In that instant, both of the full-length windows began to rattle violently. Hurrying over, I checked the latches to reassure myself that they were locked. My hands reached for the curtains and were stilled. The darkness beyond the pane
s was too dark. Yet, even within that Stygian gloom, there were shades—ebony and coal, sable and tar—that burned and blurred my vision. My eyes turned the inky shadows into life forms. Sly, cavorting, lumpy creatures with seething eyes of restless red watched me hungrily, licking their lips in gleeful anticipation.
One of the shapes plodded toward the house. With a long exhalation of breath, I recognised Shucky’s lumbering gait and unlatched the door to let him in. He thrust a cold nose into my hand in welcome, and I laughed at my own foolishness.
“Have you been terrorising the wildlife?” I asked him, glad of a rational explanation. A slight movement—this one more graceful, more human than the feral monsters my mind had created—on the periphery of my vision made me stare once more into the hellish night.
“I’m letting this old place get to me,” I told Shucky. He seemed to feel a reply was in order and offered me his paw. Without another glance back into the darkness, I closed the curtains and returned to my sewing.
By the time I made my way up to bed, Shucky had gone off to engage in whatever urgent nocturnal matters were calling him. The house made old-house noises, wood sighed, pipes pinged and joists settled. A little bit like my body, I decided ruefully. My imagination had fired up my heart, jangled my nerves and set my mind racing. Only now were these returning to normal. If I didn’t manage to cultivate a more cynical, less skittish approach, I would fret myself into a nervous frenzy.
I placed my candle on the locker and reached out to pull back the bedcovers. My hand stilled in midmotion. An animal skull, daubed with vivid red blood had been placed in the middle of my bed. A folded piece of paper was clamped between the lifeless jaws. With a shaking hand, I withdrew the note, which looked like it had been written by a crude finger dipped in blood.
Get out now while you still can.
Blood on a devil worshipper’s altar, a skull in my bed. The note was an unnecessary embellishment. The message was clear enough without it. Someone really didn’t want me here.
* * *
The atmosphere is a blue-tinged fug of smoke hanging at waist height. The club is full. The “old boy”-punctuated conversations are conducted in a roar that hurts my ears. The mingled scents of champagne and Aroma de Cuba cigars fill the air. Rosy Portal is sitting in the lap of a police superintendent. Her crimson mouth resembles a gaping knife wound as she shrieks with silent laughter.
Gethin raises his glass in a silent toast, but I don’t respond. Where is she?
Maxie stands in the middle of a group of men. He says something to them and looks across the room at me. They all follow his gaze. The Hunter stands next to Maxie, one hand resting lightly on the shorter man’s shoulder. His face is in shadow. When I look back at my own table, Gethin is gone. The Hunter advances purposefully toward me.
Although it was a nightmare, it was unlike any I had experienced before. For one thing, the location—the Felicia—was known to me. My dark dreams usually took me to unspeakable, unfamiliar places. There were also people I knew in the dream. Maxie and, of course, Gethin. But the oddest thing was that it did not include Ceri. I had never had a nightmare in which she was not present. I did not like to dwell on what it might signify.
“Where were you?” Ceri asked me the next day.
“At the club where I used to work,” I said, the dream still vividly imprinted on my mind.
“I looked everywhere for you. I was scared,” she said solemnly.
“So was I,” I admitted. “Tell me about your dream.”
“It wasn’t anything, really,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “It was dark, darker than anything ever was before, and I was just waiting for you. But you didn’t come.”
“Did you see the Hunter?”
She shook her head. “I kept watching for him to be there, but he wasn’t. Oh, Lilly…” Her face brightened. “Do you think he has gone away? Like the hunters in the lights?”
I paused. I couldn’t hide my thoughts about the Hunter from her. It didn’t matter what I said, she would know he was in my dream. Closer than ever. Before I could speak, we were distracted by the sound of a car on the drive. A few minutes later, Gethin came in. He was wearing a dinner suit, but his bow tie hung loose and his hair was dishevelled. Stubble shadowed his chin, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He looked like hell. With a curt nod in my direction, he went straight to his room. He must have been driving for most of the night. I wondered what compunction had brought him back here.
That afternoon, the kitchen had the hot, soapy smell of washday, and I helped Anika to hang clothes on the line while Ceri sorted the washing into coloured piles. Gethin sat on the garden bench, reading. Ceri, her nose wrinkled in distaste, held up a crumpled blue-and-white handkerchief. From its size it was clearly a man’s, but it wasn’t Gethin’s. His were all monogrammed with his initials.
“Mr. Fisher must have left it when he stayed the night,” Ceri said.
I think I may have groaned aloud. “It’s really not what you are thinking…” I began, with a glance at Gethin.
Gethin’s face was stony. “You have absolutely no idea what I’m thinking,” he replied curtly before retreating back into the safety of his book. Soon after, he rose and went back into the house.
Anika struggled to find the words she wanted. “My mother she say that jealousy, this is the right word, yes?” I nodded. “It is the only feeling that men can never hide.” She let that sink in before adding, “Go to him, Lilly.”
I sighed. “He isn’t jealous,” I explained. “He is angry because he thinks I’m…light…easy, you know?” I had told Anika about how I came to be doing this job, so she understood. “But you are right, I do need to speak to him.”
Gethin’s expression was guarded when I entered the study. After my never-to-be-sufficiently-regretted change of heart in the lake, I didn’t know if I would get another chance to break down the barriers between us. “Matthew Fisher came to dinner,” I launched straight into the speech I had been rehearsing. “Perhaps that was wrong, and I’m sorry if it was. He hurt his knee and had to sleep on the sofa in the parlour. That was it.” I drew a shuddering breath. “Despite what you think, I’m not a tart.”
“You seem to know a great deal about what I’m thinking,” he said harshly. He was standing close, so that I had to tilt my head up to look at him. His eyes roamed ravenously over my face. “I have no right to care, Lilly Divine.” My heart made a wild attempt to escape. Could Anika have been right?
“What are you thinking?” I asked breathily.
“I was thinking of something that might bore you.” His eyes crinkled into one of his rare, fascinating smiles, and I gasped. Remembering my attempt to convince him I was a sophisticated femme fatale, I was left in no doubt about his meaning. And then, we both just stopped pretending. I moved into the circle of his arms as naturally as if we had been lovers for years, and they tightened around me possessively. In that moment I needed the gift of his hands and the touch of his lips more than I needed to breathe. I was not disappointed. His mouth swooped down on mine, and there was nothing left of gentleness or caution between us. It was the most brutal, aching, wonderful kiss, and I rose on the tips of my toes to taste him more and draw him even closer. In response, his fingers fumbled urgently at the fastenings of my blouse, and laughing against his mouth, I helped him. Wriggling briefly free of his embrace, I slid out of my blouse and undid the cumbersome fastenings of my brassiere. This found instant favour with Gethin, and his warm hands immediately claimed my breasts. As he tormented me by lightly grazing his thumbs across my rock-hard nipples, I tugged his shirt out of his waistband and started to undo the buttons.
“I want to feel your skin on mine,” I whispered, and he groaned. The crisp hair of his chest tormented my already maddened flesh, and I gasped. It felt like a million meteors were flying and burning and exploding in my nerve endings. If I’d had the time or the inclin
ation to pause and look at my hands, I really do think I’d have seen sparks of light shooting from my fingertips.
Gethin lifted me onto the table, rucking my skirt up around my waist. His hands were demanding but gentle on my thighs as he parted my stockinged legs. Our gazes locked together. His fingers moved aside the lace-edged material of my panties and slid into the moist warmth within.
“Do you want to go into the bedroom?” he asked shakily. I could barely concentrate on the words he was saying because of the things those magical fingers were doing.
I shook my head. “I can’t wait,” I said huskily, and his eyes darkened. “I need you right now.” I undid his fly and slid my hand inside. Opening my legs wider, I drew him toward me.
“And you are quite sure this is what you want?” he asked, his lips pausing at the hollow of my throat. It was reminder of my words in the lake, and I loved that he could ask that question in spite of the fact that I was sliding my hand down the silken shaft of his cock and holding him pressed hard against me.
“More than I have ever wanted anything in my whole life,” I assured him. Something in my voice must have resonated, because he raised his head and stared into my eyes again for a long, slow second.
And then he was there. Just inside me, making me throb with a unique, maddening feeling of mingled agony and joy. My head fell back in ecstasy. “You don’t have to be gentle,” I told him hoarsely, feeling the shudder that rippled through him at my words. He gripped my buttocks hard, preparing to drive himself fully into me. At that precise moment, Ceri’s cry of “Lilly!” rang out from the hall, and we sprang apart like a pair of guilty schoolchildren. By the time she burst into the room, we were both fully clothed again and several feet apart.
