A Shiver of Blue

by Everly Frost

  I pushed it back onto the hanger, scooped up my own clothes, and scurried toward the manhole. Tripping down the stairs, I sobbed as I tried to push the steps back up into the ceiling, but they slid toward me and whacked me on the side of my face.

  Ignoring the pain, I shoved at the dressing table, crawled up onto it and pulled at the stairs, heaving with all my strength and pushing upward. There was a click and I lowered my shaking arms. Thankfully, it stayed closed.

  My body shook and my teeth chattered. I looked around the blue room, seeking somewhere to hide, while I huddled on top of the dresser. It was blue everywhere and I had to get away from it, get away from this room, from the memory of that scream and the indigo light flickering in my eyes.

  I jumped off the dresser, not caring that I was half naked as I ran for the door and rushed through my father’s room.

  Beyond the room, there were footsteps.

  Before I could reach the door, it creaked open.

  Chapter 13

  IT WAS NATHAN. His face came into focus and I couldn’t understand why he was suddenly there.

  He took one look at me. “Whoa, Caroline, you’re pale as a—”

  “Don’t say it! Don’t say that word.”

  “Okay…”

  He stepped toward me, his arms outstretched as though he would help me, but then he stopped. He coughed and averted his eyes, staring past me through the wide open door into my mother’s room.

  He shuffled his feet and folded his arms. “That is a very blue room.”

  I turned red all over, but my need to escape overtook my inhibition. In a voice I didn’t recognize, I whispered, “I have to get away from here. Right now. Please take me away.”

  He hesitated before he took my hand, focusing on the floor and the walls, everything but my near-nakedness. I clutched my clothing up against my body with my free arm, my shoes slippery and my skirt trailing and slapping my legs, but I didn’t care how much he saw.

  He led me from the room and down the hallway, checking that nobody saw us as he hurried me to my room. I pushed on the door with relief, rushed inside, and closed it behind us.

  “What was that about?” He forgot to stare at the floor, his hand suddenly hovering, as though he’d touch my chin. “You have a bruise…”

  My jaw smarted and I remembered the stairs hitting me. I didn’t answer as I struggled to pull on my shirt. I couldn’t seem to find the armholes. One of my arms made it through the neck of the garment before I realized it was inside out. I dropped to the bed and tried to take a deep breath.

  To my horror, I started to cry, instead.

  Nathan knelt on the floor in front of me and took my hands. “Caroline, listen to me. Something’s upset you. And I want to help. But…”

  He glanced at the door. “If anyone comes in and finds us both here with you undressed like that, we’d be in a lot of trouble. A whole lot of trouble. Do you understand? So I have to go, but I’ll get Rebecca.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I’ll say, but I’ll get her to come here straight away. Okay?”

  His words sank in and the part of me that had blushed bright red was lecturing me now on what a dangerous place I was in with him here in my room and me half-dressed.

  The other part of me, the part that was memory and feeling, still heard the scream. It was an echo, dull and distant now, but I couldn’t let it come back.

  His touch had banished her before, forced the other me to creep away somewhere dark. Every time he’d touched me, the other me had disappeared—her voice, her feelings, her memories—shoved into the dark recesses where they belonged. He could do it again.

  Nathan was the only one who could make her go away.

  I pushed him backward onto the floor and he was so surprised that, despite his strength, he let me.

  My shirt fell onto the floor and my body rested on his before I knew it. I pulled at the buttons on his own shirt, needing to have his skin against mine. I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew that I needed that sound to go away and the only way to do that, was to do this.

  But he used his strength to push us up to sitting—me with my willful legs wrapped around him and him with his hands capturing mine and making me stop. He waited for me to look at him. My breathing was irregular, my chest heaving, but he kept his eyes on mine.

  “Caroline.” His voice was gentle and brought fresh tears to my eyes. “We’re going to get into a lot of trouble.”

  “I don’t care,” I started to say, but the look on his face stopped me. Because I did care.

  What if they sent him away? He was the only one who could make the coldness inside me stop; chase her away with a simple touch. But if I was honest with myself, it wasn’t just because he made me safe. It was the way his skin felt against mine. The way his touch was both comforting and exhilarating at the same time. I stared at him while confusion swirled around inside me.

  My voice became a whisper. “I’m sorry. I just… I don’t…”

  “It’s okay.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and stood up, so that I had to unfurl from around him.

  I stayed very still, feeling ashamed and not understanding the force of the feeling inside me. I’d succeeded in undoing a few buttons and there was a part of his chest that pressed against mine. As I rested there, his heartbeat thudding in my ears, all of me was burning. The coldness had dripped away, replaced by glowing heat.

  He put me away from him, picked up my shirt, and gently ordered me to put my arms up, slipping it over my head. Turning me around, he did up the buttons and loops at the base of my neck with surprising ease and within seconds I was fully clothed.

  He only half looked back at me. “I’m going to get your sister.”

  Then he was gone. I dropped to my bed and stared at my feet and felt like I was on fire. I waited for the other me to return. To punish me like she had the first time he’d banished her, but inside my mind there was only warmth and the quiet murmuring of distant thoughts.

  He helped me. He helped us.

  And then: His hands are gentle.

  I sensed her confusion matching mine, her distrust not gone but thawing at the edges.

  A commotion outside the door drew my attention and Rebecca burst into the room a few moments later.

  “Sweetheart.” She rushed to the bed and took my hands. “Nathan said you were in the hallway looking really sick. What’s wrong? Is it your ribs? Your face?”

  As she spoke, she feathered my cheek with her soft fingers, searching for any sign that the wound had opened.

  “No, Rebecca, no. I’m not hurt, I just felt lightheaded all of a sudden.” I thought fast. “And I knocked my chin against the door jam. I’m just… I think I felt overwhelmed by everything. It’s all happening so fast.”

  She wrapped her arms around me, surrounding me with the scent of flowers. Another posy from Robert’s garden was tucked in her hair—a little pink one that matched her dress.

  “I’m glad Nathan found me before I passed out,” I blurted. “But Rebecca, what was he doing up here?”

  She drew back. “He was getting Dad’s gun.”

  “His gun. What for?”

  “I thought maybe you heard and that’s why you were feeling sick.” Rebecca watched me carefully. “There were two little calves… mauled out in the paddocks last night.”

  I knew why she was looking at me like that. “It was a wild dog, wasn’t it?”

  “They found the calves—Dad and Mr. Buckland did—on their way out. Poor things were savaged. Dad thinks a third is lost because there are three cows wandering around bellowing for their babies. He sent the Bucklands back with the message for Nathan to bring his gun.”

  My voice constricted. “Have they caught the dog?”

  “I don’t know, Caroline. It doesn’t seem like it, but maybe there’s a trail they can follow. The Bucklands didn’t want to talk about it. I guess it must be a bit shocking to people from the city.”

  “What was
Dad doing, taking them out on a day like today?”

  “He wanted to show them the water catchment. The rain makes it perfect to see the water flow and where it gathers. I don’t think they were going to stay out in the weather for long. Dad said he was taking them to the cabin.”

  “Cabin? What cabin?”

  “Oh, Caroline, you know the cabin.” Her voice lowered. “The one in the woods, way past the dam… You don’t go in there anymore, do you?”

  The dark woods. I shook my head, no.

  She bit her lip a moment, never taking her eyes from my face, her voice a whisper. “You remember when Dad would go out with the men and not come back at night? He’d stay in the cabin—a halfway point between the outskirts of the ranch and the house—so he had a place to shelter if he couldn’t get home in time. It has crooked steps…” She suddenly stopped, biting her lip.

  I waited for her to go on. “Rebecca?”

  She twisted her hands. “Do you remember, Caroline?”

  I stared out the window, honing in on the pattering rain. “The night Mom died. The night I…”

  “He was on his way back from the cabin and that’s how he found you. Wrapped up in vines. He found you just in time.” She sucked in a breath like she wanted to suck the life out of the memories.

  I remembered it now—dangling in his path—like I was a tree branch half lopped off, hanging by green threads.

  Dad’s face was so pale, so gray. I remembered it like I was looking through water. It rippled when I tried to reach for it, expanding, blurring, unreachable.

  Shaking my head, I ran away from the memory as fast as I could. “Do you think they’ll stay longer, now? The Bucklands, I mean. Now that it’s raining so hard.”

  Rebecca took my hand. “I know it’s a lot to happen so fast, but we both need to get out of here, Caroline. We aren’t meant to stay here our whole lives and that’s what will happen if we don’t do something about it—now.”

  “I know, but…” I cast around, desperate to take the focus off myself. “Is anyone coming for you? I mean, it feels like Kenneth Buckland is supposed to be my instant boyfriend, but what about you?”

  She smiled for the first time and took a deep breath. “In a few days. Aunt Alice said that there are a number of “nice young men”—as she puts it—coming to visit for the dance, together with their sisters, so I’m hoping to meet someone. Of course, two weeks is hardly long enough to meet someone and run off with them…” She laughed at the idea.

  “It is?” I had a sudden swell of relief. “So you mean that Kenneth Buckland won’t be getting down on one knee in a week’s time, then?”

  “Of course not. Caroline, just the thought…” She smiled at me. “But, if things go as they should, then after they leave, Dad has promised to set us up with Internet access and our own email accounts and we can see how things pan out.” Her voice lowered, her expression serious. “I know Dad won’t let us leave unless we have somewhere to go.”

  “Someone to go with, you mean.”

  She met my eyes and started to speak, but there was a tap at the door and Victoria hovered in the doorway.

  Rebecca bit her lip. “I guess lunch will be ready soon. We’d better get dressed.” She dropped a kiss on my cheek and studied the spot on which her kiss had landed. “You have some color back now, so that’s much better.”

  I resigned myself to Victoria’s careful ministrations and then went downstairs.

  After some manipulation by Aunt Alice, it was decided that the Bucklands would stay that night, but would head out the next day for a place to stay in town. They invited us to join them for afternoon tea the next day. At least they wouldn’t be sleeping under the same roof much longer.

  I survived the rest of the day and lay wide awake in my bed, wishing for their departure, trying to focus on them and not on the image of black hair across bloody lips. I couldn’t stop my mind returning to the blue room at the end of the hall and the attic above it, and fell asleep with blue eyes burning me, just like Nathan’s hands.

  The next morning, I shot a watchful glance at the kitchen door, listening for approaching footsteps as I rummaged through the scrap bucket on the bench. Mrs. Drew hadn’t taken the fruit and vegetable peelings out to the chickens yet.

  I salvaged a number of fresh chunks of apple that hadn’t made the cut for the pie cooking in the oven, as well as some hefty pieces of carrot that had escaped being eaten for lunch—perhaps they weren’t the perfect shape? The horses would love them. I dropped them into a metal bucket and rinsed my hands.

  The Bucklands were leaving in another two hours, the rain had eased off, and I was determined to avoid spending those last painful hours trapped in meaningless conversation with Kenneth Buckland. I tiptoed down the hallway to the back door, trying not to make a sound, and grinned when I reached it without a single creak.

  Then I bumped into Kenneth, walking inside from the garden. “Oh.”

  “Caroline. I was looking for you.”

  I swallowed my disappointment and nodded in his direction, hiding the bucket of scraps behind me.

  “Would you like to come with me to the piano room? Your sister’s going to play for us before we leave.”

  I shook my head and a long curl dropped onto my shoulder. My hair had come loose while I was scuffling about in the kitchen. “Thank you, but I was on my way to take a treat to the horses.”

  I stuck my hands out to show him the pail full of scraps, hoping the sight would scare him off. “I really should be going.”

  I skipped past him, ignoring the flush that rose to his cheeks.

  Then I had a thought. “Would you like to come with me?”

  He stared at me.

  “I realize Dad’s already shown you the stables, but there’s nothing like seeing it all in action, is there? So much more interesting, don’t you think?”

  He frowned. “Thanks, but I prefer to see horses from a distance.”

  “Oh? But I thought—”

  “I’m sure your sister will be disappointed if you don’t come.”

  “Ye-es, I guess so. Well, then, I won’t be long.”

  I turned on my heel and hurried away, picking my boots out of the mud. My puff was gone by the time I reached the stables. I skulked into the nearest stall and wallowed there, while Magenta snuffled at my offerings.

  “Caroline?”

  I wasn’t sure how long Nathan had been standing close by. My cheeks burned as I remembered the day before, his hands on mine, my skin against his.

  “Why aren’t you up at the house? Aren’t they leaving soon?”

  “Yes, thank goodness. They will be gone very soon, and I can stop worrying about that boy trying to corner me.”

  “What? Kenneth Buckland?”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s apparently going to be the great love of my life. Or, failing that, just my future husband, because it doesn’t matter how I feel about it.”

  Nathan gave me a hard look. “Caroline Rayburn.”

  His voice was a throaty growl, and I noticed for the first time his rolled-up sleeves and the sheen on his arms. “Don’t you think it’s time you grew up?”

  His words stung all the way into my heart. “So you think I should just fall at his feet and beg him to take me away? Some puffy city boy who doesn’t know the first thing about horses and just wants my father’s money? Yes, he would be a really great choice, wouldn’t he?”

  “At some point, you’re going to have to leave.”

  “And go to the city? To suffocate in dresses and become someone’s ornament?”

  He gave a loud bark of laughter. “You really don’t know anything about the world, do you? You think the worst thing that can happen is that you would have to leave this place and go live in a mansion somewhere with staff to look after you?”

  “I can look after myself. I don’t want staff. I know how to cook and clean and wash—”

  “Is that really as far as your imagination takes you? You really can’t
see what’s waiting for you outside the life you know? You have every opportunity ahead of you and you’re spitting at it.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was making fun of me or angry with me. “I don’t know any other life.”

  He leaned toward me, his eyes flashing dark emerald, pulling me in. I inhaled the scent of his skin—earthy, warm, drawing me closer. But his next words cut through me, pushing me away.

  “You’re going to have to learn fast, Miss Caroline. Because there’s a lot of dark in this world. And I’m a part of it. So go on believing that the worst thing that will ever happen to you—the worst thing—is that you might have to stand around at parties looking pretty.”

  I took a step back. “I don’t understand…”

  “Of course, you don’t, because you refuse to see what’s out there.”

  I pulled away from him and the cold entered my face, the wound on my cheek burned as though it were new and raw. I heard that scream again. Felt the press of vines against my throat, sucked into a black void, the cut across my cheekbone, ripping me apart.

  I said, “You’re wrong. I’ve seen the dark.”

  Not just seen it. I carried it with me. It followed me like my own shadow.

  He was wrong. He wasn’t the most dangerous thing in my life.

  My lips frosted. She writhed and smiled inside me. She’d known all along that he would be cruel to me. They always are.

  Now I understood why she’d been quiet for so long. Why she’d left me alone. She was waiting for him to hurt me.

  She was waiting for me to find out for myself that nobody could ever care about me. Not really.

  I pushed past him, knocking my pail against the side of the stall and strewing apples and carrots all over the clean hay. The bucket clattered out of my hands and rolled out of view. I tried to clamp down on the sudden chattering of my teeth as her cold breath rose up through my lips. She was glad he was turning me away. I didn’t need him or want him, after all.

  At the last moment, he focused on the scar on my face. The scar he never looked at. He seemed to remember it now.

  His anger faded, but it was too late.