Midnight Rose

by Shelby Reed

  “Tell him to come down and eat a little something to settle his nerves,” Betty called after her. “And you join him. You’re awfully skinny these days, Ms. Kate.”

  Kate was breathless by the time she reached the top of the east wing stairs. The corridor before her was shadowed, haunted by Jude’s absence. She paused by the teenager’s bedroom door, wondered why it was closed. Maybe Gideon couldn’t stand the sight of his son’s empty bed, the abandoned possessions. How would he survive if Jude didn’t come back? And why wouldn’t he tell her the truth about why Delilah had the boy in the first place?

  She knocked gently at Gideon’s double doors and waited for a response. Nothing. Her hand hovered over the knob, heart pounding. He was her lover, for God’s sake. She had every right to open the door and peek in.

  Steeling herself, she did just that, and found the room empty, the bed rumpled and cold to the touch, as though Gideon had risen hours ago. She set down the juice glass and glanced in the walk-in closet, where his clothes hung in neat, organized segments. Below on a wooden rack, his shoes were lined side-by-side. Not a pair seemed to be missing, not even his running shoes. Where would he have gone, barefoot?

  With confusion pounding in her temples, Kate left his room and headed downstairs to search the other rooms. In the library, she found the cinders still smoldering in the massive fireplace. The curtains that usually blocked the damaging rays of the sun hung askew. When she parted them and peeked out, cool morning air brushed her cheeks. The window was open.

  Puzzled, Kate closed it and stared through the glass, her gaze sweeping the verdant grounds and the rolling landscape beyond the estate’s parameters. Her attention fell on the pool house. Something wasn’t right. There. One of the glass doors was ajar.

  Shoving aside an odd sense of dread, she headed back to the kitchen and found Martha Shelton coming in for the day.

  “Gideon didn’t find Jude,” she told the older woman, and Martha’s face seemed to collapse a little.

  “Oh, dear. Gideon’s beside himself, isn’t he?”

  “I haven’t talked to him since yesterday. He’s so withdrawn.” Kate paused, looked beseechingly at her. “You’ve known him a long time.”

  “Yes. A very long time.”

  “The way he’s just…pulled into himself, where no one can touch him…is that typical?”

  Martha sighed and set her purse on the counter. “Kate, nothing about this situation is typical. I’ve never seen Gideon so distressed, except of course when Caroline died. I can guarantee you it’s not because he doesn’t want your comfort. If anything, he needs you now more than before. Trust me,” she added, touching Kate’s hand. “He won’t push you away if you seek him out. He just doesn’t know how to ask for it.”

  Kate drew a shaky breath and nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Shelton.”

  “Call me Martha,” the older woman said with a rueful smile. “After all we’ve been through together, I think friends should address each other by their first names.”

  “I agree,” Kate blinked back an unbidden rush of tears. “Thanks, Martha.”

  Outside, the morning mist had dissipated with the warming touch of the sun. She crossed the lawn, breathing in the scent of honeysuckle and freshly mowed grass. Birds chattered and trilled in the nearby trees. The day ahead would be beautiful.

  She paused midway and stared at the greenhouse, but no sign of life stirred around it. A few feet from where she stood, the pool house door creaked, buffeted ever so slightly by the gentle breeze.

  A woman’s murmur, low, husky, floated from within.

  Kate’s eyes narrowed; her pulse picked up speed. Swallowing a sense of disquiet, she approached the small brick building and pushed the door open with a finger.

  The sight that greeted her drained the heat from her body.

  Delilah lay sprawled on a wicker settee, while Gideon, half-naked, leaned over her, his mouth fastened to her wrist. The blonde writhed with pleasure beneath him, her fingers clutched in his hair, holding him with the same possessiveness as a mother feeding her child.

  It took an inordinate amount of time for the picture to permeate Kate’s astonishment. When it did, she must have made some choked comment, some breathy sound of horror, because instantly Gideon’s head jerked up. “Kate!”

  Delilah withdrew from him, stretched her arms languidly above her head, smiled. “Kate. How good to see you again.”

  In the silence, a tiny lighthouse clock ticked off the seconds.

  “I…” Kate tried to speak, and when that failed, tried to wrap her mind around the realization that Gideon had been engaged in some sort of sexual act with the blonde. Mind spinning, she backed up, bumped against the door.

  Gideon got to his feet. “Kate—”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Insult retrieved her voice from some deep, steadied place within her. “I just wanted to be sure you were okay. I guess…” She shifted her gaze to Delilah, then back to Gideon, dry-eyed, too devastated to emote. “I guess you’re more than okay. So I’ll just…”

  Moving on automatic pilot, she stepped out of the pool house and somehow made it as far as the wrought iron fence before her knees began to wobble.

  Voices drifted on the breeze behind her; Gideon’s, low and angry, followed by Delilah’s soft, tinkling laughter.

  Kate braced her hands on the iron bars and fought back a wave of nausea. She was sickened to her soul. She’d been humiliated, hurt, and disappointed many times in her thirty-two years, but never before so skillfully betrayed. In a moment, as soon as she could trust herself to walk, she would return to the house, quickly pack her bags, and call a cab without explaining anything to anyone. If God were on her side, she wouldn’t encounter Mrs. Shelton’s discerning eyes, or Betty’s warm concern, or the housekeeping staff, silent but always watching.

  But what did it really matter? Nothing, nothing could make her stay in this haunted house another day.

  Chapter Twenty

  Before she could recover, Gideon’s voice knifed through her from behind. “Kate.”

  “Absolutely not.” She held up a hand without turning to face him. “You heartless son of a bitch. There’s no excuse for what I saw.” She paused, too enraged to breathe, to think. “How could you? How could you make me believe in you all this time? I thought you were good…decent.”

  “Look at me.” The sharpness of his tone brought her around. He stood in the blazing morning sun, wearing white drawstring pajama bottoms, eyes concealed behind a pair of infuriating, reflective lenses. Her reflection in those sunglasses stared back, angry features warped like in a fun house mirror.

  The absurdity of the situation brought a misplaced giggle to her throat that didn’t quite escape. “I don’t suppose you could stand here and scramble around for excuses without the sunglasses, just this once.” The words shot from her lips, seething with outrage, but Gideon didn’t seem to hear them.

  “Delilah brought Jude home. That’s why she’s here.”

  Kate trembled with a chill brought on by shock and injury. “Oh, I see. And you were thanking her in your own special way. Is that what you’re going to tell me? Don’t bother.”

  “Let’s go inside. We need to talk.”

  Kate lifted her chin, defiant. “I’ll talk to you in hell.”

  A humorless smile curved his mouth. “I see you finally recognize your surroundings. If you’ll come with me to the library, I’ll explain everything.”

  “Oh, come on, Gideon. I’ve heard it all before. Just admit you’re screwing around with Delilah and be done with it. Let me off the hook. I’ll take my things and leave, no fuss, no games. How does that sound?”

  “Miserable.” He grasped her wrist, and the contact unleashed within her a surge of outrage so potent, it surprised both of them.

  She wrenched against his grip. “You son of a bitch. You jerk! Who do you think you are?”

  “All of the above. Come inside and I’ll tell you what else I am.” He didn’t reli
nquish his grasp, even when she twisted against it. The muscles in his arm didn’t even constrict with the attempt to hold her. He wasn’t attempting. He was succeeding, unbelievably strong and intent on having his way.

  “Let me go!” She followed behind him like an errant child being dragged from the scene of a temper tantrum. “You can talk all you want, Gideon, but it’s not going to change the truth. I trusted you, but you’re the worst kind of monster. Beautiful on the outside but heartless within.”

  A muscle clenched in his jaw, his stride forceful and unrelenting. “Is that right? You can pass down a sentence that quickly without allowing the guilty party to defend himself?”

  “That’s right.” To her horror, he veered toward the kitchen door and paused outside without releasing her, waiting with infuriating patience while she squirmed and tugged in a panicked frenzy.

  “I’m not going into the kitchen with you, Gideon! Betty and Martha are in there. They’ll know we’re fighting.”

  “They might know, but it’s not their job to show it. Quit struggling, Kate, because you’re not going to win.”

  The tears that stung her eyes had absolutely nothing to do with heartache and everything to do with frustration. He obviously didn’t view the past few weeks as the same monumental, loving experience of a lifetime she had, so why couldn’t he just let her go?

  Gideon rapped hard on the kitchen door, a warning that sunlight was about to flood the room in case Jude was inside. Martha cracked the door and stuck her head out, her smile fading almost instantly when she read the firm set of her employer’s jaw and the hot outrage on Kate’s face.

  Wordlessly she stepped back and allowed them into the kitchen.

  “Is that the boss?” Betty said from the stove without turning around. “Want coffee?”

  “No, thanks,” Gideon replied with forced cheerfulness as he hauled Kate across the brick floor and up the stairs.

  When they reached the dining room and he paused to throw open the doors to the billiard room, she glared at him. “I may not be that strong, but I could bite the hell out of you.”

  “Not as hard as I could bite you,” he said grimly. “Trust me on this.”

  They swept past the pool table and through the conservatory, doors now opening before them unassisted and slamming behind them as though shoved by an invisible hand. Kate threw a bewildered look over her shoulder, then at the chaotic tremble of the massive brass chandelier overhead as they headed for the library. The entire house was shaking.

  When they reached the library, Gideon finally released Kate’s wrist, removed his sunglasses and stalked toward the fireplace. Flames shot like a mini-explosion inside the hearth, and she leaped back with an alarmed cry. “Oh, my God! What’s happening?”

  “Sit down, Kate.”

  Panicked, she backtracked toward the conservatory, but the doors slammed as she reached them, the force shuddering through her. The heavy, rolled blinds on the trio of windows to her right crashed down by themselves, boom, boom, boom, throwing the room into dimness. Curtains whisked closed, lights flickered on and off. Phantoms everywhere. Vibrating with horrified disbelief, desperate to escape, she yanked wildly at the doorknobs. They held fast.

  “I said, sit down.”

  Instantly her feet seemed to dissolve beneath her. Invisible fingers wrapped around her arms and tore a scream of sheer terror from her throat as she found herself being lifted and thrust ignobly into a nearby wingback chair.

  Gideon, who’d never moved from the fireplace, seemed impassive to the fact that someone—something—had picked her up and slammed her down as if following his direction.

  Kate could think of nothing else to do but burst into tears. Burying her face in her hands, overwrought with misery and fear and confusion, she sobbed, huge, gulping, wretched sobs, until she was nearly too weary to draw a breath.

  While she cried, Gideon crossed to a nearby coffee table to retrieve a box of tissues and returned to linger beside her, his words husky, pleading. “Please, Kate. Please don’t cry. Don’t be scared.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said weakly, accepting the tissues with a trembling hand.

  He watched her dry her tears, his throat moving with unspoken words, until she sighed and eased back on the chair. Then he paced before her a few steps, dark head bowed. “Will you listen to me now?”

  She gave a tearful, hiccupping laugh. “Do I have a choice?”

  The look he gave her would have broken her heart if he hadn’t already made neat, efficient work of the deed.

  Kate glanced toward the high, arched windows. Shards of light crept in around the curtains, like the wisps of realization sneaking through her wounded perception. “This house is haunted.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We all are. All of us, haunted.”

  She couldn’t think. Fear and uncertainty constricted her chest, made it hard to breathe. “Delilah…she brought Jude home?”

  “Yes.”

  “And…and he’s okay?”

  Gideon didn’t answer right away. He dropped to the footstool by her chair and finally said, “He looks well enough.”

  She blew her nose, her features crumpling under a fresh wave of tears. “Did she leave, now that she’s spread her special brand of joy?”

  “She will when the sun goes down.”

  Why wait? she wanted to ask. The damage was done. The end of Kate’s relationship with Gideon was all tied up in a neat little bow, and wasn’t that what Delilah wanted in the first place?

  “Tell me…” She paused, tried again, determined to get through this without sobbing. “I don’t want to know details. Just…do you love her, Gideon?”

  “Love her?” His features softened. “No, Kate. No. She’s dangerous. She takes pleasure in other people’s pain.”

  “That’s why she laughed.”

  He gazed at her, black eyes troubled. “What?”

  “She laughed. After I left the pool house, I heard her.”

  Gideon shook his head and rubbed his hands against his thighs, the firelight dancing across his bare shoulders, touching them with gold. “I don’t remember. I only knew I had to stop you from running. You have to listen to me, Kate.”

  “I won’t listen if you say you haven’t been screwing around with Delilah. I know what I saw.”

  “Ah, but you don’t.” A sad smile curved his lips. Those beautiful, chiseled lips. They’d brought her such pleasure…and apparently Delilah, too. Kate reached for another tissue to hide the fresh tears welling in her eyes, and Gideon waited, watching her with pain furrowing his brow.

  “You can’t leave here without knowing the truth, Kate. My truth. Jude’s.” He motioned to the portrait of father and son that hung above the fireplace. “Look at the boy in that painting.” When she shifted her bleary attention in that direction, he continued. “He was born in 1850 into a wealthy New England family, an only child. The jewel of his parents’ life. They were older, and had waited a long time to have him, and he didn’t disappoint them.”

  He got to his feet as though too restless to sit, rubbed the back of his neck, his bare torso limned in firelight. “He went to the finest schools, graduated with a law degree from Harvard. Never missed a beat. When he turned thirty-three, he developed a blood disease. They tried bleeding him, then went the opposite direction and administered transfusions, but nothing worked.”

  Kate clutched her tissue, recovered enough to stiffen under a fresh surge of anger. “That’s a sad story, but it’s not helping any.”

  “Please.” He gave her a pleading look that silenced her. She brought her knees to her chest and hugged them, listening in lingering misery and growing confusion as he went on.

  “His father was desperate. He finally sought the help of alternative doctors. Witch doctors, he called them. It became his mission to save his son, his obsession, even though it was obvious that the illness was incurable. In 1884, as a last-ditch attempt, the father booked passage for his now-dying son to a small, Sl
avic country near the Czech border. When they got there, he left his son in the hands of a tribe of nomads with renowned abilities to heal even the gravest illness.

  “The father waited in a nearby village without any word, forbidden to observe the treatment. After a few days, the son miraculously returned, healthy and strong. They sailed back to the states and resumed their lives as if uninterrupted. The man never asked his son what the nomads did to heal him; they had a silent understanding that neither would discuss the rituals that took place, and so the father lived a few more years and died believing that his son’s health had been magically restored.”

  Gideon paused and turned to regard the portrait. Only the crackle of the flames rent the hushed silence.

  In the brief respite, Kate stirred and swallowed against the lingering urge to cry. “Why are you telling me this? What could this possibly have to do with what I saw you and Delilah doing in the pool house?”

  He knelt in front of her. When his hand cupped her cheek, cool and loving, she didn’t jerk away. Something had happened to her anger. Maybe weariness had drained it; Kate didn’t know. Tears squeezed between her lashes as she breathed in the scent of his skin, hating him…loving him.

  “Let me finish this story before you leave me, Kate. Please.” His fingers slipped from her cheek and he groped for the footstool behind him, situated himself, and drew a breath. “How can I say this without sounding like a madman? Presenting it outright has never worked before. I always get the same reaction. Hysteria.”

  “Try me,” she said with a hollow smile. “I’ve seen some things today that really test my grasp on reality. Why should this be any different?”

  He leaned his forearms on his knees and dark concentration overtook his features. Kate found herself staring at him, enthralled by the dance of emotion she saw there. Why would he have so much passion about a story that happened over a century ago? Why choose now, when their affair had splintered into a million pieces, to talk about it?