by Amberlee Day
“No, I don’t think so. I’d expect a lot more titles, especially gothic romance and mystery. There wasn’t anything like that in the library.”
Ned rolled his eyes. “Of course you would notice that.” Their plates were served just then, though the restaurant was busy so the waiter hurried off right away.
“Of course I would notice, yes,” she said. “Those are my favorite types of books.”
“Tell me, do you just have fiction in your bookstore?” He took a bite of his salad.
She cocked her head to one side, her eyes mocking and wide. “Naturally. Bodice rippers or mysteries with creepy lettering, that’s all I sell.” She speared a bite from her own plate and ate it.
“Funny.”
“And they all have to be pink. Even the thrillers. I only sell pink books.”
“I bet.”
They each took another bite, and Beverly suddenly wondered why she ordered crab cakes when she didn’t even like them. It took her a moment to realize she had the wrong plate, and her eyes met Ned’s just as he picked up on the mistake as well. They burst out laughing.
“I guess I should be lucky you’re not a restaurant reviewer,” he said, passing Beverly’s plate to her and taking his. “That would make for a nasty headline, especially if you were allergic to crab.”
“It would. Be glad it’s not my sister Lavinia sitting here. She writes travel guides, and a poor rating for a restaurant in her book is the kiss of death.”
Ned laughed. “Seriously? Sounds like your sister wields a lot of power.” His fork was halfway to his mouth when he froze. “Wait a minute. Lavinia. Lavinia Tune?”
She nodded until she’d swallowed her bite of chicken. “Yes. Lavinia’s the famous member my family doesn’t talk about. She talks about herself enough without us helping.”
Ned made a sound that was probably meant to be a laugh, but clearly he hadn’t connected Lavinia to her family yet. Hopefully he wasn’t thinking of asking her to convince her sister for a write-up in one of her books. No, that had a false ring to it. Ned wasn’t that type of person.
“You know,” she said, “when I first met you at Trenforth, I really thought you were some flirtatious playboy.”
He took a drink, the smile creeping up at the corners of his mouth. “I know. You told me.”
Beverly cheeks warmed. “Oh, that’s right. I did. Sorry.”
“You may have been wrong about that, but you were right about me stalking your aunt with an ulterior motive.”
“It’s true,” she said, pretending to be proud. “I was right. And I know I’m right about your mother’s books.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Really! I bet they’re around somewhere. Maybe packed away in boxes, something like that.”
“I’m sure they’re sitting where she left them, on the bookshelves in her room,” Ned said, completely unaware of the impact of his words on Beverly.
“Her room?”
“Yes. My mother had an office with all her things in it. My father cleared out anything involving Demander and legal issues, but then he just kind of closed it up.”
“Closed it up,” she repeated, the possibilities of a locked room tantalizing her imagination. Surely not skeletons in the closet, but papers, maybe? A lost will, or at least an old journal.
“Are you alright?” Ned asked. “You sound sort of lost.”
“Just thinking what that would be like,” she said. “What part of the house was your mother’s office in?”
A tender smile crossed Ned’s face. “It’s in the tower.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Fourth floor. I guess that was part of my mom’s romantic sensibilities, taking the tower as her own.”
“I’m surprised your father didn’t reclaim it after she passed, use it as a selling point. ‘Rent the castle tower room,’ that sort of thing.”
“I am too, now that you mention it. Although there are matching rooms on the floors below it. They’re tiny, but they do sell out first.”
As they fell silent over their meals, Beverly’s earlier imaginings of Philip Sterling as a wicked villain flashed through her mind. Maybe the reason Ned’s father didn’t touch his wife’s tower room had less to do with honoring her memory and more to do with guilt.
Once the thought settled in Beverly’s mind, no matter where their dinner conversation went, she couldn’t quite get it out.
Ned walked Beverly back to her room after dinner. He liked that she took his arm on her own, and talked about her bookshop as they walked down the hall and up the stairs. When they reached Room 218, Beverly faced him with that beautiful smile. “This was really nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. And I like hearing about your bookshop. That—and, I guess, seeing my mother’s book again—makes me realize I owe you an apology.”
“You do? Why?”
A long curl of hair had worked its way out of Beverly’s braid, and he gave in to desire and tucked it back into place. The way her eyes grew large and darkened made him draw closer. “For giving you a hard time about your love for fiction. You reminded me that I used to read a lot more novels.”
“Why did you stop?”
He loved that Beverly’s jawline curved into a delicate square. Barely touching her skin, he ran his finger from just below her ear to her chin, as he’d done that morning. When her mouth opened a fraction, he told himself it was too soon to kiss her. They still barely knew each other. “I guess when I started focusing on the castle more, I stopped reading for pleasure.” It was a pleasure being so near Beverly; that was for sure.
“Sounds like you need a little balance in your life,” she said, her voice softening.
“Maybe you could give me some recommendations.”
She smiled. “Book titles?”
His hands wandered to her arms, remembering their smooth suppleness when he held her the previous night, trying to keep her warm. “That would be a good start.”
Oh, he really wanted to kiss her. She’d thought he was a player when they first met at Trenforth. He didn’t want her thinking that again, not when she’d just started to trust him. No, a kiss would have to wait.
When he felt himself pulling her closer anyway, he took a step back, rubbing a hand over his eyes to try and keep his cool. “I’d better go.”
“Alright,” she said, and his desire to kiss her rose at the disappointment in her voice.
Get a move on!
He walked backward down the hall, laughing at how nervous he felt. How long had it been since he didn’t trust himself around a woman? Actually, he didn’t remember ever feeling like this before. He’d held Beverly all night without trying to kiss her, and now …
“Good night,” he said, but he tripped over an enormous fake plant and nearly fell.
“Are you okay?” Beverly laughed.
“Yeah, fine.” He laughed too, but felt stupid.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she called softly down the hall, but he stopped. They’d had such a good time, he’d forgotten his plans tomorrow.
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I have to go to Victoria tomorrow.”
“What, Canada?” He could see her surprise from all the way down the hall, and he smiled.
“Yes, Canada. It’s a hotelier thing. A conference. I’ve been booked to give a presentation for months.”
Beverly nodded, her smile making his stomach tight even from a distance. “You must be very popular.”
“I am,” he said, giving her a wink that was cooler than he felt, but he loved the look on her face when he did it. Her reaction got him every time, right from the first time she’d looked at him and for some reason he’d winked at her. “I have to be there a couple of days, so I won’t be back until late Tuesday. I won’t see you until the day after.”
“Okay.” She raised her hand in a wave. “See you.”
He kept walking backward until he reached the stairs. She was still in front of her door, smiling at him
, when he went around the corner. He was going to have a hard time sleeping tonight.
Chapter 15
Beverly paced back and forth along the flower-lined sidewalk, occasionally giving the rosebush a dirty look as she passed. She wouldn’t have looked that direction at all, but she wondered if Aunt Affie would knock on the library window wanting her to come back in.
“The thing is, Julie,” she said into the phone, “even Ned thinks his mother’s room is pretty much just as she left it.”
“Like a time capsule.” Julie never could resist a good mystery, and Beverly could almost hear the wheels turning in her friend’s head. Probably a locked room would appear in Julie’s next novel. “How can you stand it? It’s like it’s just sitting there waiting for someone to open it.”
Beverly felt a tinge of adrenaline. This was why she’d called her friend. She knew Julie would talk her into what she already wanted to do. “Do you think I should do it, then?”
Julie took longer to answer than Beverly had expected. Finally, she said, “Tell me again about Ned.”
Beverly stopped in front of some white gardenias, their perfect petals spiraling out like miniature fans. She smiled. “Ned’s making a good impression.”
“Now.”
Beverly laughed. “Right. He didn’t at first, that’s for sure, but he’s kind of grown on me, you know?”
“I’m trying to picture it. The last guy you dated even sort of seriously was the guy who gives out shoes at the bowling alley.”
“Ritchie? No, that wasn’t serious.”
“He wanted you to make a pact to marry each other if you were both still single at thirty.”
“He was just teasing,” Beverly assured her. “And I told him no, just in case.”
“So how is Ned different from Ritchie? You can’t be too serious about him. You haven’t known him long enough.”
Beverly had to think how to answer. She knew how she felt around Ned: He was easy to talk to but never what she expected. The more she got to know him, the more she saw that much of what she didn’t initially like about him had to do with his myopic focus on the castle … which, when he stepped back and wasn’t so desperate about it, wasn’t a bad thing. It was admirable, really, and showed old-fashioned values. And he definitely had old-fashioned values, or he would have kissed her last night outside her room. She hadn’t exactly discouraged him, and the way he touched her face, and looked at her lips …
“It just feels different,” she told Julie for lack of the right words. “There’s something about him. I can’t explain it, but I really like him.”
“And you said he smells like orange trees?”
Beverly giggled. “He does. I know it sounds weird, but it’s really nice, especially when they’ve been baking in the dungeon and the whole place smells like vanilla mixed in.”
“Orange trees, cooking in the dungeon, and vanilla. Okay,” Julie said. “That’s a little weird, granted. Just take it slow, okay?”
“I will. But what do you think about his mother’s room?”
“You said he’s gone for the day?”
“Uh-huh. Until sometime tomorrow.”
“And his father’s gone too?”
“For several days, apparently.”
“Then I’d totally go for it,” Julie said, sending thrills of scared excitement through Beverly.
“Plus, don’t you think someone should see if she left a diary?” Beverly bounced on her toes. “In case she was afraid of her husband, anything like that.”
“Absolutely! Especially if what the guy you met at the bookshop said holds any truth, that her death was too sudden to not be suspicious.”
Beverly nodded. “That’s my thinking, too.”
“Are you going to do it then?”
Beverly knew she couldn’t seek out Susanna Sterling’s room just because Julie told her to. No, having her friend’s approval helped, but if she was going to do this, it needed to be her decision. And really, she’d already made it before she called. “Yes, I am. Or I’m going to try, anyway. It’s probably locked, and I might not be able to get in. But I’m going to go find it, and if I can, I’m going to see what secrets Ned’s mother left behind.”
Beverly’s initial scheme was to wait until Aunt Affie took her afternoon rest, but fate had a different plan. That talkative but very helpful local historian showed up with an armful of albums and files to share. While the two of them focused on that, Beverly took the journal she was currently examining and went to her room …
… where she left the journal, and ventured up to the castle tower.
While she didn’t officially know where the tower was, she knew where it had to be. That first day at Demander when Ned had caught her exploring the fourth floor, she’d been very close. She could tell by standing outside the castle and counting windows over to the tower. Though it hadn’t looked any different in the hallway, that dark passage where she couldn’t find a light and worried she’d tumble down a stairway had to lead straight to the tower room.
Broom closet, my Aunt Affie.
This time she came prepared. Taking the stairs first up to the third floor—where she passed a boisterous family with several young children heading to the beach—and farther up to the fourth floor, she kept to the edges of the steps and the passageways. She’d learned in the past week that if she didn’t want the floors to creak so much, it was best to stay near the walls.
All the lights were off on the fourth floor today, so even the main hallway was dark. She wondered what the other rooms were up there. Maybe residence rooms for Ned and his father? It made sense. Maybe she could tackle that mystery another day.
She went straight for the passageway, and stopped for a moment, remembering standing there with Ned, him blocking the way and teasing her. She’d been angry, but mostly mad at herself for being attracted to him. Now she just smiled at the memory, and wondered if they’d ever get to a point where he actually kissed her.
Last time she’d been in this hall, she’d remembered too late that her phone had a flashlight app. This time she turned it on, and the shorter hall flooded with light.
The space here was shaped like a miniature cul-de-sac with three doors in the circle. Probably Ned had been telling the truth about there being a broom closet there, and likely one of the doors was a bathroom, the way these rooms were laid out. That meant the last one was probably the tower room, most likely the door in the middle.
She tried the handle, but the door was locked. From the looks of the knob, it was likely one of old Nathan Demander’s originals. While it wasn’t a pocket door like the library, Beverly wondered if Ned’s trick of lifting the door would work to unfasten this old lock, too. She put a toe under the slight space beneath the door, and used both hands to push up on the panels. It took a minute, but finally Beverly heard a click. Before releasing the upward pressure, she tried the handle again. This time it turned.
Ned slammed his car door shut and jogged up the steps to the castle side door. If he’d been thinking clearly—which, of course, he wasn’t, because who could think clearly about work when they could be thinking about Beverly?—he would have uploaded the presentation online so it didn’t matter that he forgot his laptop. As it was, he’d been almost ready to board the ferry north to Victoria when he remembered and had to turn back. He’d really be hard-pressed to arrive in time for his slot this evening.
He was just pulling open the heavy wooden door when someone behind him called his name. “Ned!” Natalia hurried toward him coming from the path that wrapped around the back of the castle.
He scowled. “I guess I don’t have to ask where you’ve been.”
“Ned, can we just talk for a minute?”
“I don’t have time. I told you I have to be somewhere. I had to come all the way back already from—”
Natalia pulled him away from the door, presumably to get him out of the path of a family apparently on their way to the beach. He smiled at them—hospitality first—
then followed Natalia closer to the library window and that ridiculous rosebush. He squinted at the glass. If Beverly or Dr. Tune were there, he couldn’t tell.
“I spoke to him,” Natalia said. Despite her raised chin and perfectly coordinated outfit, she looked nervous.
“That’s your choice, Natalia. I keep telling you, I have no control over Adam.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “You don’t understand. I told him it was over.”
Ned’s eyebrow rose. “Really? Why do I doubt that? This has been going on for years.”
“I told him I’ve had enough. If he wants to date every girl in Grantsport, he’s welcome to. I don’t care anymore.” Tears were beginning to form in her eyes, but she blinked them back.
“You really did tell him, didn’t you?”
“I did. And I’m glad I got to see you, so I could say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?”
“I mean, you’re always welcome at Trenforth, but I’m not coming back here again. I’m done, and I think it’s for the best.”
Ned nodded. “I do, too. Good for you, Natalia. I know you really cared about him.”
The path here had several steps, and because Ned was at the bottom looking up at Natalia, movement from one of the high windows caught his eye. He frowned.
“What is it?” Natalia swiped at her eyes and turned to look up. “I don’t see anything.”
“I think someone just opened the curtains in the tower,” he said.
“You mean on the fourth floor? I thought you kept that room locked.”
“We do,” Ned said. His father was already supposed to have left on his trip, but Ned couldn’t remember if his car was in the lot or not. “I’d better go up and see what’s going on.”
With the curtains open, the tower room filled with dusty light, and Beverly turned in a slow circle to take it all in. It was smaller than she’d expected, but there was still room for a desk and a red velvet settee. Bookshelves lined the walls between the windows and doors, and when she read the shelves, Beverly found what she expected to see: the Brontës, Jane Austen, Daphne du Maurier, Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Woman in White. Also lots of old Ann Radcliffe novels, likely the inspiration for the name of Susanna’s own novel. It was all there, several hundred gothic romance novels both from centuries ago and Susanna’s own lifetime.
