Bella nodded at him and then slipped out the door with the key in hand.
Rodney was waiting, just outside the door. He had a corner he liked to lean in, waiting until Winterborn needed him. On a low table in front of him was a heap of suits that needed mending. Rodney had a needle and thread and was patching up rips.
“Is this what you do, then?” Bella asked him.
“The master has a habit of tearing his clothing in his tempers,” he said after he’d plucked the needle from between his teeth. “One of my many trusted duties is to fix them for him.” Then he raised an eyebrow at her. “How did it go in there? Are you fired?”
“I would have thought you could hear from out here,” she said. She’d been able to when she was eavesdropping.
“It’s all muffled shouting, or conspiratorial whispering, I’m afraid.”
“Apparently, I’m his new aide.”
“The new Vincent?” Rodney looked surprised. “You have some big shoes to fill. Mister Robledo has been here for decades. He had a thousand different duties and performed them unasked.”
“I’ll muddle through, I’m sure. Or Winterborn will devour me whole after I spill a drop of ink on the floor. One or the other.” Bella tried out a smile, but there was no warmth to it. She’d kept her fear mostly in check in the presence of Winterborn, but now in a somewhat safer space, it rushed into her. She wanted to cry, to run, to hug Rodney just to feel some human warmth. But she didn’t. She could cry later, when she had her own room.
Something savage and dangerous lived under Winterborn’s skin.
Bella hefted the key. “I’m moving into the big house,” she said. “Do you have any room recommendations? Agatha’s isn’t too bad. I could take the neighboring room.” And then I’d be near people, she added silently.
Rodney shook his head. “You can’t live downstairs. You’re an upstairs girl now. This place may seem lawless right now, but there are proper ways of doing things. If you try and move in next to Agatha she will pick you up in her teeth and carry you back up here. It’s time for you to spread your wings and fly, little bird.” Rodney turned over the suit and worked at it in a blur of activity. His hands passed over the rips in the shoulder—the seams were split—and like magic he stitched them up.
“I guess I’ll check the eastern wing. Find a room with a view of the grounds and the rising run.” The western edge and northern edge of the house were built straight into the mountain, otherwise she would have enjoyed a sunset view. According to Chloe—or the spirits she talked to—the house had secret passages that went into the bones of the mountain, down to hidden chambers full of mystery or treasure, not that Chloe had ever been able to find them.
‘Excellent choice, miss,” Rodney said.
Things had changed between them. She outranked him on the domestic scale now and he knew it. The man may have had a flirtation or an affair with a maid, but Winterborn’s personal whatever-she-was was off limits.
Bella held the key up and examined it in the light. What she had taken for bat wings were clearly dragon wings, with the shaft of the key making up the body of the dragon. There was a rough spot at the tip of the grip, where a dragon head used to be, so now it was headless, condemned forever to have its winding tail and ass inserted into keyholes. Served it right.
“That’s a nice key,” Rodney said, his voice dripping with insinuation. “Though I think I prefer mine.” He reached into his jacket and withdrew a twin of Bella’s key, but his looked almost new. The gold hadn’t flecked off the shaft from overuse and the dragon head was still attached. “Look, if you happen to stumble upon anything valuable and, shall we say, shiny and round in the back rooms, bring it to me. We can split the take and both of us can get out of this life while we’re still young.”
Bella had opened her mouth to refuse his offer when a bellowing roar split the air. “Rodney!” was the gist of it. In the blink of an eye the young man was up and through the door, doing whatever Dorian needed him for.
And so Bella took the folder down to the kitchen to read with some coffee and perhaps a taste of whatever Chloe was cooking that day. She’d seen Vincent do it several times, so it must be allowed.
The smell of something sweet and buttery baking greeted Bella as she entered the kitchen.
“Strawberry scones and sweet cream,” Chloe said before Bella could even ask. “They said you might need them.”
“The spirits have been spying on me?” Bella asked, taking a seat at the low table in the kitchen and spreading the folder out to examine the contents. There was a cup of coffee waiting for her, light and sweet just like she liked it.
“They’re always watching, y’know? And they like being helpful. Really, they’re friendly. Not like the other ones.”
“What other ones?”
“In other places, I mean. Last Halloween, when I met my boyfriend? There was this really nasty spirit that tried to get me killed. Some are like that. Just these like vibrations of anger and pain. But the spirits here are different. They aren’t angry. Or in pain. They’re just kind of sad and want to help out.”
Bella wasn’t sure if she believed Chloe. Because, ghosts? Really? She wasn’t superstitious. She’d walk under a ladder just to prove a point. Black cats were the cutest of all cats. And the number thirteen was a perfectly good and ordinary number. But she couldn’t deny that Chloe seemed to know things, or that she had a spooky air about her. But Bella desperately wanted to be friends with the girl, so she kept all the doubt she felt out of her voice.
And anyway, Chloe was busy. She had the kitchen all to herself. She may have only had to cook for a handful of people, but the recipes were not simple and the cleaning was not easy. The kitchen was one of five in the mansion, but it was the largest by far.
Bella could feel her old instincts returning as she read through the sheaf of papers from Dorian. How long had it been since she’d really used her brain? Most of the lawyering work she’d done had not been complicated, but rather glorified scribe work. Taking a client’s needs and transcribing them into the formal language of the system, and then taking the formal responses and translating them back into ideas and words that the clients could understand, preserving as much nuance as possible. It was not satisfying work, by and large.
She fell into the work, though. Her mind had been starving. Even with the great library—why was it a separate building?—she’d been unchallenged. That all changed with the new position.
After hours of reading and drinking coffee and nibbling at the simply incredible scones topped with thick dollops of sweet cream, Chloe interrupted her.
“Okay, break time,” she said, nibbling at a hunk of cheese like a blue-haired mouse. “What’s this thing you’re reading here?”
Bella almost said, “The spirits didn’t tell you?” but she caught herself. She couldn’t tease Chloe or challenge her. The girl’s identity was wrapped up in her self-image of being a psychic. To poke at it would be to lose a friend, so instead she said, “There’s a lot here and I’m not a trained accountant, like Vincent was, so some of this I’ll need to google to understand, but the gist is that the estate is broke.”
“But, how?” Chloe said. “It’s so big.”
“It has no income and massive expenses.”
“You should fire Rodney. That’d save some money,” Chloe laughed. “But then who would grope our asses when we weren’t looking?”
“True,” Bella agreed, feeling a momentary stab of jealousy that she wasn’t the only one he flirted with. “Our asses would go sadly ungrabbed and unfondled.”
“We could grab each other’s asses,” Chloe said. “But I’m straight, so I don’t think I’d do it right.”
“Maybe we could hire someone cheaper? A dedicated part-time ass grabber?”
“Do they have those?” Chloe asked, her head tilted slightly like she was listening to some distant music. “Is there an Uber for ass-grabbing?”
“An AirBnB for sexual harassment?” Bella j
oked, then sighed. “But no, firing all of us wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket. The estate hasn’t paid taxes in forever and there are other debts referred to in here, but I’m having a hard time figuring out their sources. But it’s a helluva lot of money. I can see why Winterborn is so stressed out.”
Chloe gave her an odd look.
“What? What did I say?”
“Nothing, it’s just. I mean, I’ve only been here like six months myself. But they say he’s been like this awhile. Not always, but years. It got worse when his father disappeared. But it isn’t stress that makes Winterborn act like that.”
“Then what is it? Illness? Brain damage?” Bella had eaten three scones and she was eyeing a fourth. Getting in shape had really been part of her post-firing plan, but Chloe’s cooking made it damn hard.
“I thought it was obvious,” Chloe said, her eyes focusing on something just above Bella’s shoulder. “He’s cursed.”
“What do you mean cursed?”
Chloe shrugged. “I only know what the spirits tell me, and they scatter when Winterborn shows up. But they say he’s cursed. That’s why he acts like that.”
“What do you mean cursed? Curses aren’t real.”
“Yeah, right,” Chloe snorted. “And ghosts aren’t real either.”
Bella was admittedly undecided on the ghost issue at that moment. Chloe was too accurate to be lying and she didn’t seem to playing some weird long con. “What can you tell me about the curse?”
Chloe broke off a chunk of scone and picked it apart with her fingernails, popping tiny crumbs into her mouth as she spoke. “The ghosts, they don’t like talking about it. They’re terrified of the old man. If I say his name, they all vanish. But a few of them told me, when I pressed.”
Bella leaned forward. Chloe leaned forward until their foreheads were nearly touching.
“They say that the old man got seriously pissed off at Dorian one day—though I don’t know why—and the old man hired a witch to curse his son.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he was a monster. Literally.”
Bella shook her head. “What’s the curse do? Assuming I believe in curses, that is.”
Chloe held up the last scone and ripped it in two. “It split him, or locked away part of him. It was supposed to be temporary, the ghosts say. A lesson, to teach him to respect his father’s power. But then his father died in that fire, and the curse has been growing stronger. He’s all out of balance and if the curse isn’t lifted, he’s going to explode.”
Bella stared at Chloe, waiting for her to break into laughter or wink and say just kidding. But she didn’t. The girl was serious. “Look, I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me either, it’s cool. But, like, don’t get attached to him. The boy ain’t long for this world.”
CHAPTER 5
Having her own bedroom made all the difference in the world. She didn’t worry if she was making too much noise for her father, or if he’d appear in her room all of a sudden on some pretext—usually grabbing a book off the shelf—all glowering and silent. No, the library was across the grounds from where she stayed now, with a giant hedge maze in between them. It was better that way. She didn’t know what he expected out of her, or how to get through to him. She’d tried talking to him and asking about his day, but the man just grunted or answered with as few syllables as possible. Frankenstein, indeed.
Chloe gave Bella directions to the perfect bedroom. The closet was even already full of clothes that were her size. Chloe said that the former occupant passed them on to Bella with her blessing and that she’d been an artist in residence in the eighties.
The walls had paintings on them of the Winterborns, but they were all pastels and jagged lines of blazing color with mixed media items pasted or glued on. One of the paintings showed the former Lord Winterborn, Octavian, standing before a great flame done in neon oranges. Shadows erupted from the man’s back like wings. Bella didn’t know what the deal was with the dragons—probably it was some old family sigil, like rampant lions or griffons playing patty-cake.
The closet was absolutely overflowing with clothes. And yes, they were her size. Maybe Chloe really was psychic. With every day it was easier to believe. Or maybe she just knew from Agatha or Vincent or some other employee long gone where everything was. It didn’t matter. She’d come through again. A selection of dresses, suits, blouses and hosiery greeted her. Most of it was well preserved or still in the dry cleaning bags, though some sweaters had lost a long war with moths.
For the first time since she’d arrived at Winter’s Breath, Bella slept through the night without nightmares.
In the morning, dressed in a teal eighties dress with massive shoulder pads, and with a belly full of Chloe’s french toast, Bella met with Winterborn and he laid out the plan. They needed to find some way to pay off the debts, and soon, or he’d be forced to sell off the estate. His father had hinted that real treasure lay somewhere within the house, but aside from antiques and trinkets, Winterborn had no luck finding it.
Vincent had suggested selling off family heirlooms, but the price was so low compared to the debts that it would not have been worth it. They—Bella and Winterborn together—were going to catalogue the contents of the estate and prepare the whole of it for sale. They’d get more for it that way than selling it off bit by bit to grubby dealers around the world. Better to find some new billionaire desperate for the glory and legitimacy that came with owning an estate such as Winter’s Breath—at least that was the plan.
Bella could have brought the estate to her old firm. She could have delivered it to them on a silver platter and begged for her job back, but Charles Edward Heath was still a client of theirs and she couldn’t be anywhere near that man.
“You may only go to the third floor in my presence,” Dorian said. “I don’t mean to be dramatic, but this is very important. Some of the rooms up there are intensely private. My father had unusual tastes that I will not subject you to. Nor anyone else for that matter. Those particular rooms I’ll take care of on my own.” He seemed more reasonable in the mornings, as if the sun banished his madness, or perhaps it was later-day fatigue that brought it on. Bella sought to understand it better so that she could avoid his wrath at all costs.
“What if you marked the rooms that I should’t enter?” Bella suggested. She half expected Dorian to rage at being spoken to or influenced. Truth be told, she was testing him, seeing what would make him jump and what would make him twist. And maybe even what would make him grin at her.
She didn’t ask about the curse, but the thought of it preoccupied her.
“Excellent idea,” he said with a smile. “That would make things easier, wouldn’t it?” He smiled at her, a warm smile, an everyday smile, and Bella’s spine melted inside her. It liquified into molten gold and flowed down through her, making all of her feel hot and wet and languid.
The rages were one thing, but his smile was the real danger. Working for a man you fear is easier than working for a man who turns your blood to fire and your bones to pudding. Hate is uncomplicated. Lust is not.
Dorian led her to a twisting metal staircase located deep within the east wing. As they walked, he told her about the house. The third floor was the private residence of his father and mother, and other wives Octavian Winterborn had taken. He’d been married six times and had thirteen sons. Dorian was the youngest of them all and the only child his mother had borne.
“Why isn’t your name on the paintings?” Bella asked. “Or Wikipedia? Or anywhere?”
“Have you been checking up on me?” Winterborn asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“What kind of attorney would I be if I didn’t?”
“Yeah, fair enough. Come check this out,” he said, taking her hand and leading her into a second floor bedroom. His hand burned in hers, like he was fevered. And at his touch, she burned, too. The bedroom had a four poster bed draped in thick red cloth. Her heart beat out of control at the s
ight of it. What was going on? What was he going to show her.
“Here, right here.” Winterborn guided her across the room, to a photograph on the wall. He stood behind her and leaned close, pointing out everyone in the picture. It showed Octavian Winterborn, scowling at the photographer like he wanted to throttle him, surrounded by women and his sons. “This is my father, of course. And my brothers and their mothers. We used to gather here every August. All of us. And this beautiful woman here on the end, is my mother. That little bundle in her arms is me.”
Bella examined the handwritten names on the photo. “It says here, Valdemar Winterborn and Mother.”
Winterborn nodded. “My given name, though I’ve never used it. My mother hated the name and it was always a sore point. They divorced when I was very young and she changed my name. He never forgave her for it. As if twelve Winterborn sons wasn’t enough, y’know? If you want to look me up, try Dorian Hastings. Though no one around here calls me that, for obvious reasons.”
He was so close to her, she could almost lean into him. She could do it as an accident, stumble and fall into his arms. There was chemistry between them. It was undeniable and strange. They’d barely just met and she felt an attraction like she’d never known before.
“Well, we should get to work,” Winterborn said brightly and lead her out of the room.
The third floor was less ornate than the second because it was private. But the decor was more disturbing. Animal heads lined the hallways—lions and tigers and other great cats down the western hallway and wolves, bears and a moose head down the eastern. Hundreds of heads, all stuffed and mounted on plaques with copper plates listing the location and date of the slaughter.
“Your father was a hunter?” Bella asked, desperate for some explanation. The gallery was comical at first, and then grotesque.
“His whole life. Besides amassing wealth and making more sons, hunting was his passion. The more dangerous the game, the better.”
Was there a room with other trophies in it? Human heads on the walls? Or the heads of less acceptable animals to kill? Rhinos and elephants and other protected species? She hadn’t given a second thought to Octavian’s private chambers before—she’d assumed it was a sex thing and the last thing she’d wanted to see was the sex dungeon of a hundred-year-old man—but now that she’d seen his trophy wall, she had darker thoughts. And she did want to see his hidden rooms, very badly. What if the same murderous impulse lurked in his son? What if the need to kill was in Dorian’s blood, and denying it had led him to his bouts of rage?
Chained: Reckless Desires (Dragon's Heart Book 1) Page 7
