Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
TAMSYN
“What’s happened ?” Lucien doesn’t bother to hide his incredulity or his thundercloud face. “We were just about to come looking for you.”
“What?” I glance around again, and it all makes sense. The collection of grim faces now looking relieved. The cars. The urgency. The only things missing are lit torches and the pack of baying bloodhounds I feared earlier. “What are you talking about? Why on earth would you need to come looking for me?”
“Because you’ve been gone all day, Tamsyn,” he says, his voice rough. “And you haven’t answered your phone.”
“My phone? I’ve been checking my phone all day.” I pull it out of my back pocket to show him that there have been no messages whatsoever. “I checked right before I started back and— Oh, no . The battery is dead. I didn’t get to charge it last night with the power out.”
“You don’t say,” he says, his scowl deepening.
“Sorry about that,” I say, taking inventory of the crowd. “But I told Ted and Maddie where I was going, right?”
Ted and Maddie nod.
Unfortunately, Lucien does not seem to be in a forgiving mood. “You don’t know the area, Tamsyn. Anything could have happened.”
“ Anything? ” I say with a disbelieving laugh. I don’t know what’s in the air out here at Ackerley, but I’m quickly discovering that rich people and their minions are C-R-A-Z-Y. “I basically rode in a straight line out to the main road, a straight line through the town and then retraced the path back here. I’m a lifelong New Yorker. I’ve been navigating Brooklyn and Manhattan by myself for over a decade. What could happen on these country roads? You think one of the horses was going to jump a fence and attack me?”
There’s a long pause while he stares me down. “I like to be vigilant,” he says, his voice deathly quiet now. “We have a painful history of women disappearing without warning around here.”
The words linger in the air for an agonizing beat or two before crashing down on my head. Now I feel like an asshole. A sheepish asshole. “Oh my God. I get it. I’m sorry.” I focus on the crowd at large again. “I didn’t mean to worry anyone. I just went into town.”
“Okay, gang.” Lucien ducks his head, clears his throat and runs his hand over the back of his neck. When his head comes up again, he’s got two patches of bright color on his cheeks and avoids making eye contact with anyone. “Stand down until the next crisis. Let’s put the cars away and call it a day. Thanks.”
The crowd disperses with a few parting murmurs, leaving me and Lucien to stare at each other in a wary silence. He looks much the worse for wear, I realize for the first time, with rumpled hair and a badly wrinkled linen shirt, neither of which are the normal, polished Lucien look. The sharp edges of his five o’clock shadow are beginning to dull because he hasn’t had the chance to shave. Worst of all are the purplish hollows under his eyes that give him a haunted look.
“Lucien…”
“You’re really okay?” he says, voice husky.
“ Yes, ” I say, forgetting about my noble but godforsaken pledge to keep things at arm’s length between us for now and reaching for him. “Come here.”
He’s already on his way, wrapping me up in those steely arms and pulling me up against his chest. I hold him as tight as I can, wrapping my arms around his trim waist and keeping my head up for his forehead kiss. He palms my head on either side, helping himself to handfuls of my hair. His big body shudders against me, and I feel his lungs expand as he lets go of all that tension and breathes again. And just for a second, as I close my eyes and linger here where it’s safe and quiet and he and I are the only two people in the world, everything feels okay again.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I say.
“You did.” I catch a glimpse of his flinty eyes as he comes in for another forehead kiss. “I don’t forgive you.”
This makes me smile. “It kind of feels like you’re forgiving me a little bit. Why don’t we find you a drink and see if we can get you to forgive me all the way?”
“Good idea,” he says with a final kiss as he pulls back.
“How is Ravenna?” I ask.
Those shadows take over his face again, tightening up his jaw. “Concussion, like we thought. They’re keeping her at the hospital for a night or two to run some more tests. I want them to do a full workup.”
“Good. How’s her memory?”
“The same,” he says, scowling. “So she says.”
“Hopefully it’ll come back to her now that she’s in familiar surroundings.”
A hollow smile from Lucien. “Spoken like someone who doesn’t know her the way I do.”
I can’t argue with that. “What about the police?”
“Fully briefed. They were there for a good chunk of the day. They’re doing what they always say they’re doing: looking into things.”
“That’s good. Maybe they’ll find some answers.”
“That would be a refreshing change. I was never able to figure out Ravenna’s next move. I keep hoping the professionals will. And that’s enough about Ravenna. Let’s put her on the shelf.”
My brows shoot up. “You want us to put the elephant in the room on the shelf?”
“Just for now. She’ll come off the shelf in the morning when I go back to see how she’s doing and meet with the doctors. Deal?”
“Deal. Now let’s get you that drink.”
I head toward the house with the idea of hitting the enormous bar area in the main entertaining area—I want to call it the living room, but that’s not a grand enough name for that kind of space in a house like this—but he takes my hand and tugs me toward a little path I’ve never noticed before. It works its way around the house, toward the back.
“Don’t we need the bar if we’re getting drinks?” I ask.
“I’ve got a better idea. I want to show you something. So we can kill two birds with one stone.”
He’s got an intriguing glint of mischief in his eyes, but it doesn’t strike me as sexual, thank God. “This sounds interesting. Please tell me it includes something for dinner.”
His dimples make a fleeting appearance as he flashes me a sidelong look. “When have I ever let you go hungry?”
“I’m glad you brought that up,” I say, submitting as he takes a fork in the path that leads away from the house toward a clump of mature trees at the edge of the sculpture garden. “What have you told your staff about me?”
“Nothing,” he says warily. “Why?”
“Because they’re watching me like a hawk, that’s why,” I say, scowling. “I tried to carry my own luggage to the cottage, and it caused some sort of code-red emergency. There was all kinds of consternation with people appearing out of nowhere. Then I wanted to go into the kitchen and get something to eat, but I decided against it because I didn’t want Chef or someone else to call the police on me. We’ve had enough drama around here.”
His expression clears. “I told them to take good care of you. Glad to hear they took it to heart. And…?”
“And I appreciate the hospitality, but there’s no need to make a fuss about me. I’m sure they’ve got their regular duties to keep them busy.”
“That’s right,” he says with a hint of bemusement. “And their main regular duty is doing whatever the fuck I tell them to do. And what I told them to do is to take care of you.”
“Yeah, but I’m not a spoiled princess. And I don’t plan to become one.”
“Understood. But you work hard. You deserve a little pampering. I plan to do it. Get used to it.”
I don’t know why, but this conversation makes me intensely uncomfortable. It takes me a minute to piece together why. “Dad always trained me to be self-reliant. I did my own laundry. Made my own lunches for school. Did the dusting every week while he did the vacuuming. Cleaned the bathroom. I never dreamed of having anyone else do that sort of stuff for me. Dad never dreamed of it either.”
“Maybe not, but Big Ralph isn’t here anymore. I’m here. I plan to take excellent care of you, and I have the resources to do it.”
“Yeah, but?—”
Indulgent smile. “There you go with the money thing again. You’re exhausting. Let it go. Do it as a favor to me. It makes me happy to spoil you a little bit. And now that we’re not having sex, it’s the only pleasure I have left in life. Okay?”
I turn away, grinning and rolling my eyes as my cheeks heat up. “Fine. As long as you understand that I’m a very independent person. None of this extravagance comes naturally to me.”
“Understood. Right here.”
He gestures to the base of a giant tree. I take a closer look.
“Wait a minute,” I say, pointing at the sturdy wooden slats nailed up the trunk of the tree. “Is that a ladder?”
“It is.”
I glance up, and the full picture begins to take shape. “Oh my God,” I say, noting the large and perfectly camouflaged structure hidden among all the leafy branches. It’s as though the house itself was an organic growth, the same as the bark and the roots. “How did I miss this? It’s huge . This isn’t a treehouse. It’s a tree mansion. Although I don’t know what else I expected at a place like Ackerley.”
He seems pleased. “You like it?”
“Like it? Can I go up?”
“That’s why we’re here. We’re having a treehouse date.”