Chapter Nine
Jerome returned to the house from his interview with Mrs. Pennyweather deeply disturbed by the implications of what he had learned.
He felt in his bones that his long held suspicion that his father had been instrumental in his mother’s death was all but confirmed.
He found himself climbing the stairs and turning to the east wing where his mother’s bedchamber was located. He reached her door and paused.
The door was slightly ajar, and with a deep breath he pushed it open.
The room had two big floor-to-ceiling windows that faced the sea.
Between them was a large four poster bed, from which all the bedding and hangings had been stripped.
The curtains had been removed from the windows too, and the wallpaper that he remembered as gold and cream was stained and peeling away from the walls.
Dust coated the floor and the room had a stale, damp smell.
He was about to cross to the nearest of windows, both of which had balconies, when he noticed faint footprints in the dust leading to the bed.
He trod over to the bedside and crouched down to examine the prints.
And that is when he saw it: a loose floorboard, sitting up a fraction at one end, as if it hadn’t been reseated properly.
He pried at it with his fingers and the floorboard came up easily enough, revealing an empty space beneath.
He put his hand in and felt around only to confirm that it was empty.
Odd. With a frown he returned the floorboard to its position and rose.
All the other furniture that he remembered from this room had been removed.
Only the bed remained. He trod over to the left side window and wrestled with the latch to open the balcony doors.
He inspected the deck of the balcony and decided it might be rotted, so he didn’t step out onto it.
Leaning against the door frame he crossed his arms and looked out at the ocean.
The sea breeze was less buffeting than last night, but it was still strong enough to tousle his hair and cool his cheeks as he took in several lungfuls of salt-laden air.
He closed his eyes a moment and tried to sense if his mother’s spirit still lingered in this place but felt nothing.
He was not going to find absolution here.
Nor was he going to get more answers than he already had.
Stepping back, he shut the windows and left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
While his interview with Mrs. Pennyweather had not been absolutely conclusive, he was certain in his heart that whatever had transpired on the balcony twenty-two years ago, his father was at least partially responsible. The thought gave him little comfort.
Unable to shake off his dark thoughts, Jerome drank steadily after dinner. It was near midnight when a loud banging on the front door brought him out of a near doze in his chair by the fire in the library.
A second set of loud raps of the knocker convinced him it was the front door where the racket was coming from, not a loose casement banging in the wind or a ghost haunting him.
Struggling to his feet, he made his way out of the library and downstairs.
The McClellans would have retired to their cottage some hours ago and the rest of his new servants had gone home to their beds in the village.
He was alone in the house, and the storm that had raged all evening was still showing no sign of abating.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and realized belatedly that he had removed his boots some time ago, as the cold marble floor struck his bare feet.
He was wearing breeches and a shirt under a thick brocade banyan against the cold.
His hair was mussed, his shirt creased and open at the neck.
In short, he was less than his usual sartorially elegant self.
But who the devil would be banging on my door at this time of night in a raging storm anyway?
His head was spinning from too much whisky, and he clutched a lamp to light his way across the vast entrance hall, toward the door from which a third set of bangs emanated.
“All right, I’m coming,” he muttered. Reaching the door eventually, and setting down the lamp on the side table, he pulled back the latch, and the door flew backward with the force of the wind and rain, almost knocking him off his feet.
With the weather came a small, wet figure that pitched toward him with a cry, dropping a hurricane lamp clutched in one hand.
He caught it against his chest and staggered.
Righting himself and the shuddering body in his arms, he stared down into a dear and familiar face, white as chalk and all wide eyes glittering darkly in the poor light.
“Jerome!” she said softly and went limp in his arms.
“Ava!” What the bloody hell? Am I asleep and dreaming?
He scooped her up and, using his shoulder, fought the door closed and shoved the latch back into place with his elbow.
She was sodden and, he guessed, freezing.
He grabbed the lamp and almost ran back up the stairs to his bedchamber on the second floor, where a fire was lit.
That and the library were the only two rooms in the house with a fire, and he needed to get her out of her wet clothes before she froze to death.
As he set her down in the chair by the fire, she began to come around and started to shiver. She blinked at him. “J-Jerome?”
“What the bloody hell are you doing here? Like this?”
“J-Jerome!” Her face was wet from the rain, her hair plastered to her head and water dripping down her face, but he could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she stared at him. A shudder convulsed her whole frame, her teeth chattering like dice in a box.
“Never mind,” he muttered. “Let’s get you warm first.” He stripped off her sodden cloak and set about trying to unlace her gown, but the soaked laces seemed to pull into knots.
Eventually he gave up and, finding a penknife in his desk drawer, sliced through them.
She sat shivering throughout as he ripped off her clothing with little thought about what she was going to wear tomorrow.
His mind was fuddled with too much whisky and the conviction that this was all a dream anyway, and he would wake alone, sore, sick, and miserable in his chair in the library in the morning.
Having got her naked, he bundled her into his banyan, stripped off his shirt, and rubbed her hair with it to get the worst of the water out of it. He found the warming pan by the hearth and stuck it under the sheets to heat them. Then he scooped her up and shoved her under the covers.
“Stay there!” he said, swaying slightly.
Fuck, I am drunker than I thought. Turning, he staggered out into the hall.
Why the fuck do I feel like the floor is moving?
He made his way back to the library, picked up the decanter of whisky and the glass, took a swig straight from the decanter and staggered back upstairs to his bedchamber.
She was still there. Huddled under the covers shivering, her pale, dear, familiar face peering at him from the depths of the bedclothes.
He approached the bed unsteadily and poured some whisky into the glass. “Oops! Bit much!” he said, grinning like an idiot and offering her the almost full glass. “Drink up! It’ll warm you!”
She reached out with a small, white hand and took the glass. She swallowed several mouthfuls before he took it back. “Aye, not too much! You’ll be half-seas over!” He staggered and chuckled, “Like me!” and swallowed the rest.
He set the decanter and glass down on the bedside table. Everything was a bit out of focus by now. Ava—it is Ava, isn’t it? Yes! My darling Ava. What the hell she’s doing in my bed I don’t know. Must be a dream.
He shoved down his breeches, almost losing his balance as he extricated one leg after the other. Then he climbed into the bed. A cold body moved toward him and plastered herself to him. She’s still here. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her closer.
“Ava?”
“Oh, Jerome,” she burrowed into him, and he rolled toward her.
“Ava,” he murmured with satisfaction. And kissed her.
*
Ava responded to his kiss, like a plant to sunlight, curling around him, opening up, and pulling him into the best kiss she had ever experienced.
Even better than the passionate kisses they had exchanged last year.
Those kisses had been punishment. These were warm and giving.
He tasted of whisky, and his jaw was stubbled.
He’d looked like hell when he’d opened the door to her, with his hair all tangled, his jaw darkened, and his eyes wild, his shirt gaping at the neck showing the dark hair she had always suspected would be there. But he was also the sweetest, most wonderful sight of her life. I reached him at last.
During the nightmare journey from Newcastle on foot in the relentless rain, the dark held back only by the hurricane lamp the stable boy had given her along with instructions on how to find Ravenshaw, she had been certain at times that she would never make it and they’d find her body in a muddied ditch by the side of the road.
But she had doggedly put one foot in front of the other and kept going, and eventually she was finally there, banging on his door, sodden and frozen to the bone, but too happy that she had reached him to care.
And then the darkness had rushed in, and when she was capable of being aware again, he was ripping off her clothing.
I have fantasized about him doing that. I must be dreaming.
A shudder had convulsed her. I am so cold!
She couldn’t stop shaking. She hadn’t recognized this room, and the heat from the fire paradoxically made her shiver violently, her teeth clattering madly.