Chapter Nine #2
“And just what good would it have done to dump all this on you after it was over? Cleo and I went downstairs and had a lot of wine. Because we won the battle, Trey. We stood up to her, and we won.”
“It won’t be the last battle.”
“No, and it’s not going to be the last where you’re not right here to fight it for me or with me. I want you in the war with me, Trey, just like I want you to trust me to fight.”
“I do. I’ve seen you fight. That doesn’t mean I have to like thinking about you facing off against her with a rock.”
Visibly calmer, he moved back to her. “I don’t want or need nights off from you. Being with you’s what I want. No, I can’t be here twenty-four seven, but I want you to call so I can be here. I want to know you will.”
“If I had, you’d have dropped everything and come. Both you and Owen.”
“Of course we would.”
“And if I had, it would lessen my considerable victory. Plus, and I think it matters, I’d look weak to her, and that would give her one.”
“It’s not about keeping score.”
Astonished, she threw her hands in the air.
“Oh, hell yes, it is. At least on one small, petty hand it is. I hurt her, Trey. I saw pain on her face, and I’m holding on to that.
That rock landed, and I think—I’m going to sound like Cleo because she put this in my head over wine—I think the intent behind the throw landed just as much.
I wanted to hurt her, wanted to give her a scare, and I did.
“Come at me and mine, bitch, I’ll come right back at you. Jones got a piece of her dress—and good dog, Jones. But I made her bleed. And if I get the chance, I’ll do it again.”
She took a breath, a steady one.
“She knows it now. She can worry about me now.”
“You want me to say kudos, and I do. And I do want to see the rock you threw so I can get a nice, clear picture in my head of you throwing it. But I’m allowed to worry.”
“You are, and I know you do. I didn’t want you to worry last night. When it was over? I knew it was over for the night. I saw it in her face. I saw it, and I just … felt it.”
“All right.”
“All right?”
“Being annoyed you didn’t call isn’t at all the same as not trusting you to take care of yourself. And being glad you did.”
She had to sigh, as this, this reasonable was why he rarely lost an argument.
“You weren’t annoyed. You were pissed.”
“Semantics.”
“Lawyer.”
“Irrelevant.” He laid a hand on her cheek, and those deep blue eyes looked into hers. “Just understand, you’re my first priority. Not work, not poker, not this house, not some curse. You. You’re what matters.”
“How am I supposed to stay irritated with you when you say that?”
“You weren’t irritated. You were pissed.”
“Correct. Now I’m not.”
Sonya rose on her toes, put her arms around Trey’s neck, and proved it with a long kiss.
Then she stepped back and picked up the pink dress. “This is Lisbeth’s. She wore it the night I saw her in the music room.”
Sonya brushed a hand down the skirt.
“When I first got here, and looked through some of the trunks, I thought all these wonderful clothes, packed away so beautifully. Historical. I thought I should donate them. A museum, a fancy costume shop or something, I don’t know. Now I can’t do it.”
“Because you saw her wearing it.”
“Yes. I can’t have someone wearing it to a party or for dressing up. Or just behind glass or whatever at a place that doesn’t know who she was. Who they were.
“Maybe it’s stupid.”
“I don’t think so. They’re not just clothes, they’re memories.”
“That’s how I feel, and they belong here. So once I go through them, I’ll pack them up beautifully again.”
“You could display some of them. You’ve got plenty of room.”
Intrigued, she brushed a hand over the dress again. “I could, and that’s a really good thought. Maybe see if I can pick one from each decade or era. Sort of a history through fashion. I’ll think about that. Meanwhile I just can’t pack this away. So I’ll hang it downstairs until I figure it out.”
They worked together another two hours, found small things tucked away. A single white glove with a pearl button, a set of onyx studs, a little box with a lock of dark hair tied in a blue ribbon.
Sonya opened the drawer of a secretaire.
“Trey, come see this! A wedding invitation. Agatha’s. Agatha and Owen. Still inside the double envelope. Look how beautiful. Gorgeous paper, elegant design. And the calligraphy. I couldn’t do better with the tools I have today.”
“Fancy,” he agreed. “I wonder who saved it, and why?”
“I don’t know, but it’s the first thing of hers—that we know for sure was hers—we’ve found. You know, we’re going to find something from all of them. Depending. I could get shadow boxes, one for each bride. And we’d have a way to display again, a way to represent each one.”
“Owen and I could build those.”
“That would make it even better. This box is full. I don’t want to overload it. Let’s take it down. I could use a Coke, and we should let these guys out for a while.”
“Got it. Let’s go, guys.”
Trey hefted the box, and Sonya glanced back as they started out.
“We’ve made good progress here, but there’s so much. We haven’t gotten to the ballroom, much less downstairs, but still, good progress.”
“You’re good at making a plan, then following the steps, so that’s what you’re doing. Where do you want the box?”
“The Gold Room, but that’s way down the list of the plan. I think the Quiet Place. We can use that space to sort through, organize, figure out how we’ll display what we’ve found.”
At the third floor, she paused briefly.
“She put a lot into that display yesterday. Collin never talked about her doing that sort of thing while he lived here?”
“No. Ghosts? Common knowledge, the whole lost bride thing, local lore. But I never sensed he was afraid here—the opposite, it was his home. And he never said anything about incidents like what you’ve had.
“But,” he continued as they started down the staircase, “Collin was a man.”
“Hey, looking for another fight?”
“No, so hold any feminist punch. Collin was a man, so she could consider herself mistress of the manor.”
Sonya stopped at the base of the stairs. “Why the hell didn’t I think of that?”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“Am I the first woman to live here alone? Plenty of other mistresses, so to speak, over the last couple hundred years, but now it’s just me.”
“And it’s just you after a long stretch of none.”
“That’s right, that’s right. She scared Patricia off, then had the place to herself for a generation before Clover and Charlie moved in.”
Foo Fighters expressed Clover’s thoughts with “Home.”
“It was and is yours,” Sonya said. “But Dobbs, then Patricia Poole, changed that. And the manor was empty again until Collin came of age and made it his.”
Trey set the box on the floor of what they called the Quiet Place, and looked at the old grandfather clock, its hands, as always, held on three o’clock.
“Then Johanna made the seventh bride, and Collin lived alone.” He turned to Sonya. “And now you.”
“The brides were obstacles, enemies, like you said. I’m more … competition. You remove an obstacle, you just have to beat the competition.”
Thinking it through, she walked with Trey, leading the pets, to the kitchen. Opened the back door for the quick stampede outside.
“She’s stuck in the past, right? In 1806, when she jumped to her death off the seawall. She exists after that, but her mind-set, her … culture? That’s stuck in a place where women didn’t own property, weren’t in charge. I think…”
“I’d like to know what you think.” Trey handed her a Coke.
“She wanted the first Collin Poole because he would own the manor. He’d inherit it.”
“She made sure of that by killing his father.”
“She tried bespelling Collin first, getting him to sleep with her, using that as her way to Poole Manor. But it didn’t work, there was Astrid. So she removed the first obstacle, Arthur Poole.”
Watching her, Trey nodded. “Why wait until after the wedding to kill Astrid, remove that obstacle?”
“I…” Sonya glanced up. “Let’s walk outside, out front, sit on the seawall.”
“Sure.”
When they closed the front door behind them, Trey took Sonya’s hand. “You don’t want her listening.”
“I’m not sure she can or does hear everything, but. And I like to keep an eye on her windows off and on. Anyway, I think she either needed or wanted the wedding ring. Cleo would say there’s power in symbols, and she’s not wrong. She took the ring, wears the ring.”
“Because in her warped mind, it makes her a bride, and mistress of the manor.”
“You’ve thought of this, too.”
“Played around with it some.”
He nudged her down to sit on the stone wall. The breeze whipped at her hair, and the strong summer light seemed to deepen the green of her eyes.
Poole-green eyes, he thought.
“Keep going.”
“Still, it didn’t work. They caught her, would have hanged her, but she got away long enough to come back here, stand on this wall, and with her own death seal the curse for generations to follow.
More, she stayed, in her mind, mistress.
Then in grief, Collin kills himself, his twin Connor inherits, marries Arabelle. ”
“But she didn’t kill Arabelle.”
“Same generation, plus, Arabelle would provide her with the next bride. She’s got all the time in the world, right? Being dead. So there’s Catherine. Another generation, another bride, another ring.”
Sonya looked up at the windows. “Rinse, repeat. They all became obstacles in her mind, or steps to power. Brides—like Astrid. Pooles by blood or marriage. But me? I’m at best competition, at worst an interloper.
An unmarried woman, living here alone. Well, with a friend—a female friend.
As long as I stay that way, I’m a nuisance, but safe. Relatively.”
She looked back at him. “Does that sound right to you?”
“It’s logical, yeah. There’s no guarantee Dobbs will follow logic. And I can tell you if he’d known there was this kind of risk, my dad would’ve done all he could to talk Collin out of the terms of his will.”
“Then I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have this place.” She took his hand again. “I wouldn’t have met you. Don’t you think Collin knew, or strongly believed, when he made that will that the curse could be broken, and that I’d have the best shot of doing it?”
“I don’t know, Sonya, but I know he was determined to give this to you.”
She looked back at the manor, turrets rising, stones sturdy, a timeless, enduring beauty that held shadows and light.
“My father came here. Through the mirror, the way I’ve gone back to the past. I know he did. He painted the manor. But he never knew he’d been born here, that the woman who gave birth to him loved him, that he had a brother. A twin.
“But I know it, Trey, I know all of it, and Dobbs will find out I’m not just a nuisance, not just a competitor. I’m—and let’s be dramatic. I’m her goddamn doom.”
“You make me believe it because you do.”
“And I do. I have moments, but I always come back to that. My house, my heritage, my job to do.”
So he would worry, Trey thought. And he’d admire.
“You don’t give up on things easy.”
“I’d say we share that trait, and no, I don’t. My mother pulled herself up after my dad died, and, God, it had to be hard. Brutal. But she did it. She did whatever had to be done and never quit.”
“She’s beautiful, your mom, in every way.”
“Hundred percent. There are things I should’ve given up on before I did.
Brandon for one. I was letting myself coast into a marriage part of me knew, just knew, wasn’t right and never would be.
I should probably have left By Design before I did, no matter how much I cared for Laine and Matt and them for me.
Because I knew he’d never, ever stop undermining me there. ”
“I think you’re wrong.”
Surprised, she pushed her blowing hair back to study him. “Do you?”
“Yeah. I think you did all you could do in both of those cases until it was clear you needed to do something else. Then you pulled yourself up, and did it.
“It’s admirable.”
“Well…” A little flummoxed, she managed, “Thanks.”
“It is. I’ve never had to fight that way, or change course like that. By and large, my journey’s been pretty steady.”
“It might help you’re a steady sort of man. I’ve come to depend on that.”
The dogs barked, then she heard the rumble of someone driving up the road.
“The rest of us are back.” She pushed off the wall. Turning, she smiled at Trey as the dogs and the streak of the cat came around the side of the house.
“You know what else I’ve come to depend on with you?”
He sighed, but didn’t really mean it. “Moving furniture.”
“Got it in one.” Then she waved as Cleo made the turn to the manor with Owen just behind her.
“How’d it go?” she called to Cleo.
“Absolutely great. Corrine was happy, so I’m happy. Plus, I got a nice little sail out of it.” She waited for Owen to climb out of the truck. “Above all, we looked fabulous.”
“Right.” Owen looked at Trey. “Do you see me sailing, ever, in an outfit like this?”
“No.”
“But thousands would,” Cleo said, then pinched his biceps below the sleeve of the rash guard. “Stud.”
“I’m going up, getting out of it.”
“I’m doing the same, since I don’t want to wear this to go on the hunt. Did we miss anything?”
“Nothing from our resident lunatic,” Sonya said as they walked toward the house together. “But we found Owen and Agatha’s wedding invitation.”
“Big score. I want to see it.”
“And the vanity I saw Catherine sitting at, plus the chair, and the hairbrush her mom used that night.”
“Saw what, where?” Owen demanded, and opened the front door.
“I didn’t have time to fill you in on yesterday. I’ll do that while we change. You’ll want the vanity back where you saw it, and them. We’ll need to rearrange some to make that work.”
“I do, and we will. Meet you back up there when you’re ready.”
Before Trey and Sonya reached the third floor, Cleo came running.
“You have to see this. It’s Pye. I found it on the bed.”
She held out the sketch for Sonya. “Jack. What a sweetheart. She looks appropriately slinky.”
“And regal. The way she’s stretched out in the window of my studio, he got her proportions, and the perspective. But he really got her ’tude. I love it.”
“Me, too.”
“We’ll be up in five. I swear, I love this house.”
“Me, too,” Sonya said when Cleo dashed away. She looked at Trey, then took his hand again, squeezed. “How could I quit?”
Clover serenaded them with Freddie Mercury’s powerful voice as they climbed past the third floor and to the attic.
“The Show Must Go On.”