18. Winnie
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WINNIE
Mum: Winnie, if Ken tries to talk to you about the dolls, don’t listen to him. He’s overreacting as usual. He told the council I was terrifying local children. Can you imagine anything so absurd?
I got an amazing deal at Savemart – cans of peaches for 30p each! I got two boxes. Remember when we stayed on that farm during the holidays and you were obsessed with climbing that peach tree? I kept losing you and you’d be stuck in the branches, giggling away, but you wouldn’t come down unless your father carried you. I’ll save a box of peaches for when you get back.
I wake with a cry and a deep, cold unsettling sensation in my body. I reach down to slap at the imaginary bugs crawling over my legs, the dream memory of real bugs that had plagued my childhood. But as I slap my skin, I realise it’s cold and clammy, and the sensation that woke me up is a pounding headache and a burning in my lungs like the air is made of razor blades.
My eyes adjust and I look around me. I’m not in my bedroom, but slumped in my usual chair beside the roaring fire. I shiver despite the blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Alaric’s chair is empty.
I jump as Reginald appears at my side. He holds out a silver tray containing a steaming mug. “Hot chocolate, ma’am. It will help warm you up. You gave us a nasty scare.”
As I reach out to take the hot chocolate, I shriek.
I’m naked.
Why am I naked?
Did Alaric and I…?
No, that was just a fantasy. It’s perfectly normal to fantasize about people you find devastatingly attractive but absolutely should not sleep with.
It’s not perfectly normal to wake up beside their fire completely starkers, wrapped in a blanket with a butler bringing you chocolate?—
Oh no. The water.
It all comes back. I was playing with Mirabelle around the fountain and I fell in. Too late, I realised that the fountain is more like an enormous fucking subterranean crater.
Who has a fountain that deep?
I remember falling down, down, down into the darkness, the panic clawing at my skin, and two strong, cool hands grasping me, holding me steady. I remember a deep, rich voice calling for me in the darkness…
Alaric saved me.
I glance over at his empty chair, the cushion hollowed by the ghost of his body as my own chest feels hollowed out.
He saved me. Again.
He pulled me out of the water.
I choke back the sob swelling my throat closed. All those years growing up with my mother’s hoarding, I wished for some knight in shining armour to ride in and take me far away to live in his castle. But the knight never came, and I had to get myself out. And ever since, I’ve had to clench my fists and keep a tight grip on my life to keep myself safe…
And all the time, the knight in the castle was here …and he’s saved me, again and again, in almost every way a person can be saved. And now I’m naked by his fire and I should be terrified but all I want is to fall into his arms…
I swipe at my eyes, determined not to cry.
Where is he now?
“Can I see Alaric?” I ask Reginald.
“Lord Valerian is resting. He may not wake for some days.”
What?
“Is he okay?”
The butler shakes his head. “He has a condition. He cannot be in the sun for long. He is very ill.”
What?
My heart stutters.
That explains why he does everything at night, and why the castle windows are tinted and the drapes are always drawn.
But he went out in the sun and made himself sick to save me.
Oh, Alaric. I’m so sorry that you’re sick because I was playing a silly game with your cat. I can’t believe you hurt yourself to save me.
I have to see him. I need to tell him that…that he’s saved me in more ways than one.
I rise to my feet. “Take me to him.”
“You cannot see him, Ms. Preston. He will not allow it. He needs complete rest and cannot be disturbed.”
My emotions jam in my throat. He’s hurt because of me. “Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
“You focus on staying warm and feeling better. Let me take care of Lord Valerian. I know what he needs. I shall bring you some hot soup.”
As Reginald reaches out to take my empty hot chocolate, I notice a bandage on his wrist. Blood has soaked through the gauze. Did he hurt himself rescuing me, too?
The two butterflies in my stomach dance a waltz as I think about the times Lord Alaric Valerian has swooped in to rescue me.
But then I think of Danny O’Hare murdered in the alley behind the pub.
What else would Alaric do to keep me safe?
No matter how many times I beg Reginald, he won’t tell me where Alaric’s room is. “My lord will not wish you to see him in such a state, Ms. Winifred.”
So I get back to work. Some of my supplies were delivered today, so I set about assembling the shelves in Alaric’s study and packing his various projects into their corresponding project boxes. His winter scent clings to everything I touch, and when I place the first box on the shelves, I discover I’ve installed them all crooked.
I can’t focus. I can’t stop thinking about his cool, steady arms around me, dragging me from the water, or the fact that he’s somewhere in this castle, hurt, because of me.
I forget the shelves and move on to his desk. His paints and palette I leave out on the table. As I’m arranging his pots in colour order, I notice that he’s turned his latest artwork towards the wall.
I turn it around.
It’s another moonscape framed by the open gothic window – a view along the valley towards the village. But unlike his other paintings, this one has a human subject. A woman sits in the window, her face turned towards the view, a little black kitten with white socks curled in her lap.
She looks a little like me.
Actually, a lot like me.
I think of the other day when Alaric caught Gideon flirting with me, and the way he reacted. I thought at the time that maybe he felt something for me, but then he did nothing about it. Gideon left and Alaric went back to his same aloof self.
And now…
You’re imagining the likeness. You want to believe that Alaric might be interested in painting you.
But he thinks of you as the annoying professional organiser his manservant hired to tidy up after him, the one he has to constantly rescue from disaster.
And you’ve gone and set yourself up for another broken heart.
As I touch these objects and projects that Alaric has collected, treasured, and obsessed over, I wonder if maybe I’m not the only one who is nursing a broken heart. As if living in an actual castle is not enough, Alaric has walled himself off with stuff. Perhaps he’s trying to keep his heart safe.
I can’t believe he’s allergic to sunlight. I hope he’s going to be okay.
I’d better not tell the ladies in the Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven about this, or they’ll be even more convinced that he’s a vampire.