In her dream Melanie smiled, because she knew that back in her own time Nathaniel was lying beside her on her bed.
She lingered a moment longer and then she continued on. There was a door and when she opened it there was another corridor, leading to the servants’ bedchambers.
She realized then that her wanderings had a purpose. She was looking for someone, and she knew that this was where she would find him. Melanie floated—walked was too mundane a word for what she was doing—down the long, bare corridor. No need to make servants’ quarters pretty.
She could hear it now, getting louder. The sound was rhythmic and familiar, and she knew exactly what it was. She instructed her dream feet to stop, to turn back, but they wouldn’t listen to her. It was like swimming too near to a riptide and then not being able to get out again. She was being drawn closer and closer in.
A door stood ajar, a wedge of pale candlelight spilling out. Melanie could hear voices now, the man’s low and rumbling, and the woman’s softer and gasping. They were making love. She watched her hand reach out and press open the door another inch, just enough so that she could see into the room without having to enter it.
Pengorren’s broad naked shoulders all but hid his partner. His breeches were unbuttoned and pulled down over his muscular buttocks. The girl was smaller, slighter, her head thrown back, her face slack with ecstasy, her fair hair a tangled mass of curls covering the pillow. Her white thighs were open, cradling him, but her arms were bent above her head, her hands clasped about the brass rods at the head of her bed.
Melanie remembered her. It was one of the servants she had seen on her first visit into the past, one of the giggling, whispering girls carrying the food to the supper room and wishing Major Pengorren was hers. Well, it looked as if she had got her wish.
“Doan’ stop,” the girl whimpered. Because Pengorren had stopped moving and was observing her flushed face.
“Then ask me nicely,” he said.
“I asked you already, sir.”
“Not nicely enough, it seems. Come on. Or have you had enough…?”
“No,” she cried. Melanie saw her throat move as she swallowed, seeking for the words that would please him, while he watched her with a cold attention at odds with their situation. “Please, sir, I do love ye. I want ye more than…more than…”
“More than what, Dorrie?” he mocked, and twisted a corkscrew curl of blond hair about his finger, giving it a cruel tug.
“More than my ma or pa or my brothers and sisters.”
“Hmm, not enough.”
“Oh, sir, ye know I love ye!”
Pengorren chuckled. “I know that.”
“I love ye more than life itself.”
Evidently that was what he was waiting for, because Dorrie squeaked as he began to ride her again. And it wasn’t gentle, there was a brutality to his movements that made Melanie, who wasn’t easily shocked, feel queasy. But there was also something about the way Pengorren had made her beg, as if he wasn’t making love to her at all or even having mutually pleasurable sex.
He was exerting his power over her.
Melanie began to back away as silently as she had come.
Pengorren raised his head. He looked surprised, and then his teeth flashed white as he smiled, like a lion about to make a kill. Here was the ruddy handsome face and piercing blue eyes she remembered so well; the feeling of being sucked into a dazzling vortex.
“Melanie?” he whispered. “You’re stronger than I thought.”
She spun around and began to run, back down the corridor. He knows my name, she thought. He knows who I am.
And then, fear pounding in her chest: Is this really a dream? It doesn’t feel like a dream.
She reached the stairs, but they were gone.
Ravenswood was gone, and it was no longer 1813.
Melanie was alone on a beach, that same beach where Suzie’s clumsy boyfriend had smashed her sand castle and made her cry. Cautiously Melanie looked down at herself and saw those skinny goose-bump-covered legs and the hideous pink bathing suit. She was a child again, and it was that summer in Cornwall, after their parents had lost everything. Her mother and father had spent the whole time arguing bitterly over her father’s poor investments, and a short time later had divorced. Her mother had gone to France to “find herself” and her father had rarely been home. Just Suzie and Melanie, really.
Melanie looked around her now, at the stretch of sand and the blue water, and tried to breathe calmly.
“I can stop this dream anytime I want to,” she told herself. “I can wake up. I can.” But her voice was small and weak, like a child’s.
There was a shadow by the cliffs where the sand ended. Melanie peered across at it, holding her hand up to her eyes to cut out the glare. As she looked, the shadow moved and turned into a man. Unknown to her, he’d been standing by the rocks all this time, watching her.
Melanie had been told often enough to keep a lookout for strangers, so she kept a wary eye on him as he approached, muscles tensed and ready to run if he showed the least sign of trying anything nasty. But he was smiling, and there was a beauty to his smile, a dazzling beauty, like the sun in the morning, all golden and new. She found herself gaping up at him, everything else forgotten.
“What’s your name, child?” he asked, in deep voice that seemed to vibrate through her skinny body.
“Melanie Jones,” she said, pleased it was her name he wanted and not any of the other girls on the beach. That it was her he had singled out.
“Jones.” He thought a moment, and then sighed. “So many. I can’t remember them all. I am getting old.”
“You’re not old!” she retorted, because that was what adults always wanted you to say. But he was. There were lines in his face, and his eyes were tired-looking, as though he’d seen lots.
He laughed at her attempt at flattery, then his face grew serious, his gaze intent. “Melanie.” He bent down on one knee and put his hands on her skinny shoulders. Immediately, she began to tremble, and her legs went all wobbly, as if the strength were being pulled out of her. Those blue eyes were boring into hers, filling her world.
“You’re mine, Melanie Jones,” he said, and his voice was booming in her head. “All mine.”
She felt frightened, but she also felt as if what he was saying was right. She was his. And to be his, she must be special and wonderful. It was nice to be special for a change, instead of being the one no one wanted to be bothered with.
And then Suzie spoiled it all.
“Get away from her, you dirty bastard!” she screeched, as she came down on them, a fifteen-year-old fury.
The beautiful man fell over in the sand.
“Dirty old bastard,” Suzie said again, spitting at him, and then she snatched up Melanie’s hand and began to drag her away.
“Let me go! I want to stay! Let me go!”
But Suzie didn’t let her go. “Don’t you know any better than that?” she shrieked, panting, her eyes wild.
“I hate you,” Melanie said. And she did, but she loved her, too, because special and wonderful as the man on the beach had made her feel, he had also frightened her. She had felt, when he touched her and looked into her eyes, as if he was taking something from her. Something very important to her.
That night she crept into Suzie’s bed and cuddled up against her for comfort, and for once Suzie didn’t tell her not to be a baby.
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” Suzie asked sleepily. “I’ll kill him if he did.”
Melanie made a sound that meant “no.”
“Well, we’ll be going home in the morning anyway, so you don’t have to worry. He won’t find you again, Melanie, I promise.”
And Melanie believed her. Suzie was her big sister, and big sisters had the power to make everything all right.
Only this time Suzie was wrong, he had found her again.
Because the man on the beach all those years ago had been Major Pengorren.
&nb
sp; For a moment after she woke, Melanie didn’t know where she was. The incident on the beach was so long ago, she hadn’t thought of it since, maybe because it was so strange and creepy. Suzie had been her hero in those days. No matter how deserted she’d felt by her mother or her father, she had believed that Suzie would always be there for her.
Melanie felt a twinge of guilt. It was a long time since she’d thought of her sister as more than an irritation, or a blood-is-thicker-than-water responsibility she would rather avoid.
The guilt turned into a hollow sensation in her stomach as the face of the man on the beach rushed back to her.
Instinctively, she turned to look beside her, but Nathaniel was long gone, leaving only the hollow in the pillow to tell her where he’d lain.
When her cell phone rang, it was almost a relief to suspend her thoughts and answer it.
“Hello?”
There was a pause, a heartbeat.
“Miss Jones?” the croaky old voice was faintly familiar, although she couldn’t place it until he spoke again. “This is Mr. Trewartha. You rang me yesterday evening. About Ravenswood? It is about Ravenswood, is it not? Naturally, I had heard the sad news about Miss Pengorren’s passing.”
Melanie relaxed back against her pillows; it was the antique dealer who lived in Launceston. “Oh yes…I’m sorry, I…” Slept in? She peered at the window and saw that the sun was high.
“Nothing to be sorry about. You’re probably enjoying the weather.” His voice dropped to little more than a whisper, and Melanie wondered if there was something wrong with his throat. “I’m afraid I’m semiretired these days, but I do know of Ravenswood. If it would suit you, I could come around and take a look. If that helps you at all? No strings attached. As I said, I am semiretired, but in this case I admit that I’m curious. It isn’t very often that one of our oldest and grandest houses comes up for sale.”
“I suppose not.”
“Will you be staying long in Cornwall?”
“Only a week, although I’ll probably need to come back again later to oversee things, when the arrangements for the auction have been made. Thank you for offering to take a look at the place, I’m very grateful, and naturally we’ll pay you for your time and expertise.”
“If you insist, Miss Jones. I assure you, though, I don’t need your money. Coming to Ravenswood will be enough of a treat for me.”
He was a bit of an old sweetheart, thought Melanie with a smile. “I’ll look forward to meeting you.”
“I’ll make my arrangements and let you know when to expect me. Good-bye, Miss Jones.”
Well, at least she’d managed to do something related to her job. She should have been up hours ago, eaten, dressed, gone for her run. What was happening to her routine? Hard to believe that all these years she had worked so hard at making herself safe, and after just two days it was all beginning to unravel.
Sixteen
When Melanie got down to the kitchen she found the cavernous room empty, although there were signs that someone had been here earlier. Whoever it was—and she had a good idea—had eaten most of the toast and marmalade. She made do with a crust with marmite and a cup of instant coffee, and wandered outside. The sky was hazy; the air still and humid.
Her dreams left her feeling strangely distant from her surroundings, although she had recovered from her almost-fall down the stairs and that nasty moment with that…well, whatever it was. She wanted to believe that was part of the dream, too, but even before she glanced at the fading mark on her hand she knew it wasn’t. It was real, just as Nathaniel Raven was real.
Maybe they had brought it with them from the between-worlds? Maybe it latched on to them like a burr, and now it was here, inside Ravenswood? But even if that was so, what did it want? Her soul? Or just to send her out of her mind?
“Too late,” she murmured.
Melanie squinted at the sky again.
There’s going to be a storm, and the old oak tree in the park is going to fall over.
The vision of the tree, blackened and broken on the ground, was so clear she could have reached out and touched it. But the next moment she was backing away from it, denying it, telling herself she had enough problems and to stop this right now.
She was so busy refusing to listen to her own inner voice that it wasn’t until she looked down at her feet that she realized she was walking. She was on the weed-strewn path that meandered past the house, in the direction of the cliffs. Melanie hadn’t been near the cliffs yet, although looking out of the windows she’d noticed the shaky-looking railing and steep stairs that led down to the small half-moon beach just below Ravenswood. The tide was out at the moment, leaving the pale sand uncovered, glistening and virgin, and very tempting.
“I should be working,” she said aloud to herself. “I have so much to do.”
But Melanie didn’t feel like working; she didn’t feel like being responsible and serious. In fact she didn’t feel like being Melanie Jones, from Foyle, Haddock and Williams. She wanted to sit on the sand and breathe in the smell of the sea. She might even roll up the legs of her navy blue cotton pants and wade in.
You’ll have to think about Pengorren soon.
But Melanie didn’t want to think about Pengorren, or the weird dream she’d had of him and the servant girl, Dorrie. You are more powerful than I thought. And then there was the dream/memory from her childhood holiday here in Cornwall, the man on the beach who asked her name and put his hands on her shoulders and made her feel as if she was special. Her practical side was telling her it couldn’t possibly be the same man—Major Pengorren died in the nineteenth century, drowned in the sea, probably from this very beach. Her subconscious must have twisted the real memory into a false memory, using the face of the man she saw at the Yuletide Ball. Just as she dreamed about him and the servant girl, building on what she already knew and guessed, and making something completely imaginary from it.
Oh yes, she could rationalize it all. And if walking on the sand helped her to put all this craziness behind her, then maybe she shouldn’t fight against it. Ravenswood would still be here in an hour or so; it wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was she.
Cautiously, meticulously testing each footstep, Melanie began her descent to the beach.
Nathaniel had gone over the entire house, from cellars to attics. Apart from there being a great many more bits and pieces than he remembered—there were plenty of trunks of musty old clothes, and he helped himself—he could find nothing that shouldn’t have been there. No thick dusty book with, What Really Happened! written in his father’s handwriting. No letters pointing the finger at Major Pengorren.
How was this going to help him? Nathaniel thought in sudden despair. On the surface his father’s death was nothing more than a tragic accident, and then his mother’s death had compounded it. Pengorren had been nothing if not kind and generous. That’s what everyone thought at the time, and what they still thought, if one believed The Raven’s Curse. Nathaniel’s memories of Spain, his suspicions about Pengorren, were unproven, and now there were hints that he was insane.
Maybe what he’d actually come back to learn was that Pengorren had won.
That’s right, Nathaniel, you’d like to give up and die, that’s your way out, isn’t it, when things get tricky?
“No, that’s not true, I won’t give in.”
Angrily, he brushed the dust off his new black trousers and stood up as best he could beneath the low attic ceiling. Teth had left pawprints in the dust on the floor, but the hound was gone now. After patiently following Nathaniel about for hours he’d suddenly lifted his head, as if someone—or something—was calling him, and then bounded off. He hadn’t returned.
Nathaniel looked through the warped and cracked glass of the attic windows, toward the sea, and saw that at least that hadn’t changed. There was a movement below, and he dropped his gaze down to the edge of the cliff. Melanie was standing there, her hand on the railing, staring anxiously at the old steps th
at led down to the beach. The railing looked as if it had been replaced many times since Nathaniel was a boy, but the stairs were cut into the stone cliff, worn down by the tread of countless feet.
They needed to talk about last night. He had to know what was happening here at Ravenswood and what part Melanie was playing in it. She hadn’t told him the whole story, and he meant to convince her to do so.
When he’d found her on the stairs, she’d been terrified. Whatever it was she’d seen in the room, he felt it, too, or the essence it left behind. He’d seen many horrors in the between-worlds, and he knew that terrible things happened to good people, but the thought of something attacking Melanie…
He had his suspicions. The sense that Pengorren was aware of Melanie at the Yuletide Ball bothered him. Would the queen of the between-worlds really use Melanie as bait? He wouldn’t put anything past her, not really. Was there more going on than either Nathaniel or Melanie realized?
Despite being a soldier who had fought Napoleon, who many a time had taken aim with his pistol and sent his enemies into oblivion, this time he had no current plan of action. And it was driving him mad with frustration.
Then again, perhaps the frustration came from another source.
Why had he resisted climbing into bed with her last night? He’d wanted to, she’d been receptive, and once he would have taken advantage of her without a second thought. But he’d stopped himself. He’d lain chastely on top of the covers while she slept, all warm and soft and desirable underneath them. He’d pretended to fall asleep himself, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her or imagining what he’d like to be doing to her.
Why did he do that? Why was he wasting time? They could enjoy themselves now, live for the moment, just as he’d always done.
Except that Nathaniel no longer wanted to live like that.
Melanie began to step down the cliff, slowly and carefully, one hand on the railing. He was surprised she would attempt it at all. She was stubborn and strong, yes, but she resisted anything risky. He found himself tensing, fingers gripping the sill, and praying that the cliff steps were dry and the railing sound.
Immortal Warriors 02 - Secrets of the Highwayman Page 12
