Chapter 8 #3
Jenna jumped violently, startled out of her time-travelling experiment. Owen was standing in front of her. She could only imagine, judging from the quizzical expression on his face, just how weird and out-of-it she must have looked. She could feel herself reddening.
‘Owen! Sorry, I was in a world of my own…’
‘I could tell.’ Owen was smiling now. ‘What are the chances?’ he added. ‘I hardly ever come to Winterhill and yet the last two times I’ve been, I met you. If I was superstitious, I’d say it was fate.’ For all the lightness of his tone there was a look in his eyes that made Jenna catch her breath.
‘I hardly ever come here either,’ she said hastily, ‘but I didn’t get to see the hall last time so, as I was passing, I thought I’d drop in.
’ She knew she didn’t need to explain why she was here – it was guilt, she supposed, because she was hiding things.
‘I’d forgotten how beautiful it was,’ she said.
‘So light and airy and full of all this exquisite plasterwork—’ Too late, she realised what she had said and stopped abruptly, but the damage was done.
‘I hadn’t realised you’d been inside the house before,’ Owen said. ‘It wasn’t open to the public until recently.’
‘Oh…’ Jenna tried to sound vague and suspected she just sounded even more suspicious. ‘It must have been a school trip, or a private visit, or something. Anyway, I’d better head off.’
‘I’ll show you out.’ Owen seemed to have accepted her explanation and she felt relief flood through her. She hated keeping secrets. It felt especially difficult to lie to Owen. Even though she had only met him a few times, that persistent sense of recognition tripped her up every time.
‘Is there really a haunted room?’ she asked as they left the gallery behind and headed down the corridor towards the stairs.
‘Only in the last five years,’ Owen said dryly, ‘since the marketing manager thought it would be a good idea.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Jenna said. ‘It feels like a happy house rather than a haunted one.’ She stopped thinking that this was not perhaps the most tactful thing to say given that Owen and Rachel had evidently not been happy here.
But Owen smiled and drove his hands into his pockets.
‘It was a great place to be a child,’ he said.
They’d reached the top of the main staircase and he bent down beside the oaken newel post. ‘Look here…’ he said, pointing to an exquisitely carved scorpion that was scuttling up the side of the stairs ‘I loved all these birds and animals when I was a kid. Rachel and I would spend hours searching for them all amongst the carved leaves and flowers.’
Jenna ran her hand over the smoothness of the wood.
She had a memory – Marris’s memory – of the oak being much paler 500 years before, of the smell of freshly sawn timber and the slippery treads beneath the soles of her slippers…
She blinked. ‘It’s stunning,’ she said. ‘Quite magical.’ She squatted down too, to trace the shapes of the flowers, ivy leaves and bees.
She felt strange, nostalgic, trying to grasp and hold on to the fleeting memories of the past…
Then she felt a tear slide down her cheek and, horrified, put up a hand to rub it away.
It was too late; Owen had seen. ‘Jenna?’ He sounded concerned. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ Jenna said. She scrambled up. ‘Sorry, it reminded me of something.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry.’
‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ Owen said.
He brushed his thumb across her cheek, erasing the last trace of the tear.
His hand was warm, his touch comforting.
Jenna found herself turning her cheek against his fingers in a caress.
He was standing close, and his presence felt solid and reassuring, just as Will had done…
She reached up and brushed her mouth against his. Owen made a sound of surprise but then his arms came about her and he was kissing her back and the moment changed from one of comfort to something very different.
Her mind caught up with her body and she stepped back, mortification rushing through her. Owen let her go at once.
‘Oh God.’ She could feel herself turning bright red. ‘I am so sorry. I—’ But she had no idea what to say or how to explain herself.
Owen ran a hand through his hair. ‘At the risk of repeating myself,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing to apologise for.’
He waited a moment and then, when she didn’t move, he leaned in and kissed her again.
He was not holding her – she had every opportunity to walk away if she wanted – but she didn’t want to.
This time she knew what was happening, she knew it was Owen she was kissing.
It was brief and hot, and enough to make her forget to breathe. Then he stood back.
‘Just so there was no misunderstanding,’ he said. There was a smile in his eyes that made her heart, which had finally stopped racing, do another cartwheel.
He waited to allow her to descend the stairs ahead of him.
She was grateful for the space it gave her.
She still felt like a prize idiot; for allowing the house and all its memories to get to her, for confusing her feelings for Owen with Marris’s for Will, for kissing Owen…
Actually, the last bit was a lie. She turned to look at him as they reached the tiled entrance hall, and he put a hand on her arm, gently drawing her away from the curious gaze of the receptionist.
‘May I have your number?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to see you again.’
‘Oh…’ Jenna fumbled for her phone, since she never remembered her own number. ‘Yes, of course. That would be nice.’
Nice? As she drove away, she chided herself for behaving like a gauche teenager, though actually most teenagers she knew had far more self-confidence than she’d shown.
She’d almost forgotten about the missing pearl necklace and it gave her a sudden jolt to remember that it was the reason she had gone to Winterhill in the first place.
Immediately her spirits dropped. Secrets and lies. They surrounded her and she hated it.
* * *
Owen watched Jenna’s car out of sight and then turned back to the hall to see that Rachel was standing on the top step, smiling at him.
No, make that smirking. It was a definite grin and he knew why.
She’d seen him with Jenna. Very probably half of the staff had seen them since they’d been at the top of the stairs right outside the Swan Power admin office.
He had to admit he hadn’t been thinking about that when he had kissed Jenna – or she had kissed, him, or both, or either.
And it was all very well for Rachel to look so smug, but she wasn’t the one experiencing a strong, inexplicable attraction to someone who felt known in that bone-deep, heart-deep way that he felt about Jenna.
It had been a surprise to see her standing in the window alcove in the gallery, and he’d been caught out by the way his heart had missed a beat.
She had looked almost insubstantial, illuminated from behind, her golden red hair like a halo.
She’d opened her eyes and smiled at him as though he was the only person in the world.
He’d felt a rush of emotion then, even though he had had the strange sensation that she had been seeing him as someone else entirely.
It had been clear that she’d been inside Winterhill House before, although he suspected that the hastily concocted story about a school trip was a complete lie.
She’d given herself away not just by the way she had spoken so familiarly about the Long Gallery but also simply with the expression on her face when he had first seen her.
He couldn’t describe it precisely but it was a mixture of longing and recognition, as though she was absorbing every last particle of a memory that had been special to her…
And then later, when she had cried, it hadn’t been pretence; she hadn’t even realised she was crying at first. Something had moved her, thrown her off balance.
Of course she had not told him. Despite the kiss they were almost strangers, and he respected that she wasn’t the sort of person to confide easily.
He could tell there were barriers there, and that was okay.
He could wait. He knew she was fundamentally honest. He sensed it.
He also knew what he felt for her was different.
His previous relationships had been fine if not earth-shattering, and perhaps that was why he was alone now, because they had been good enough but no more than that.
This thing with Jenna, though, whatever it was, mattered to him. It mattered a lot.
‘All right?’ Rachel had come over to him. The smile was gone. She was all business. ‘I was looking for you,’ she said.
‘What’s the problem?’ Owen wrenched his mind away from Jenna.
‘You were right,’ his sister said, a little grimly. ‘That tipoff you gave me yesterday to check the accounts – someone has been siphoning money off. Not just that, there are some items of inventory missing as well. Someone is stealing from the Foundation.’