Chapter Three #2
But Nicholas asked, and he made my heart give a flutter.
“I think so,” I said, wishing I could ask him to stay a while. Maybe sit with me, until I fell asleep to the sound of his deep, peaceful voice...but that would be ridiculous.
“Then goodnight, Grace,” he said, giving a gentle bow before he passed me and left, closing the door softly behind him.
A strange but beautiful scent followed him, like sandalwood, a men’s cologne, only gentler.
It settled around my head as the door closed, and for a moment I felt he was still with me.
Though I was overwhelmed by the long journey and the terrible cold snap I’d waited in outside, I’d been warmed by the fire and Nicholas’ acceptance of me.
Exhaustion had finally caught up with me.
There would be no time for a bath if I was to get any sleep at all before waking.
I got the impression Nicholas was an early riser, as well as a poor sleeper.
I used to be, before mother died, when I tended the animals first-thing.
Since Tom took over, I’d become used to a muddled existence, waking and sleeping at odd hours, in-keeping with mother’s fitful sleeping in the last few weeks of her life.
Since she’d been gone, there’d been nothing to wake up for, except to make funeral plans.
Now it was all over, and I had run away, and I was here, in this magnificent room.
This beguiling funeral home. My mind wandered to the mortuary, and what awaited me, with a tingling of excitement in my gut.
I thought of the people in their eternal slumber, and wondered what they’d be like, compared to the bodies of my mother and father.
As I pulled back the heavy duck-down duvet and the thick embroidered quilt, my body gave a shiver.
I undressed to my threadbare knickers. How long since I’d been into the town to buy myself anything new?
Ordering online was out of the question, with our remote location.
I felt the chill of the room turn my nipples to tight buds.
My breasts were small, and firm. I found myself wondering if Nicholas liked breasts that way, small with pink nipples.
I wondered, long after my eyes fluttered closed, what his hands might feel like as he explored them. Then I explored myself, his scent still in my nostrils. As my climax built, my breaths became slow, and I fell away into sleep.
I dreamed of him, instead.
?
A gentle rapping came on my bedroom door.
Confused, I dreamed of mother’s frail hands knocking on the wooden floor with her stick – the lightest rapping, because of her muscle wasting, which would travel to find me in any dream or deep sleep.
It was usually followed, if I wasn’t fast enough to rise and call out to her, by her impatient groan.
But not today. Not ever again.
A soft voice came today, calling my name like a fantasy-mother I’d made up in my mind. The voice I would have liked to hear when I was little, instead of the voice I had been given.
“Grace, dear – it’s Maggie, from housekeeping. Can I come in?”
I sat up, blinking into the darkness. A shard of light broke through the drapes. My heart surged to see that I wasn’t in Heather House, and I hadn’t dreamed it all.
A slight panic soon followed. I covered my bare chest with my bedsheets, and remembered the tree that had fallen through the window of our home. I’d been so frightened, so adamant on running...and the tree branch had smashed it right through.
How could I have left Heather House in that state, and fled from all my responsibilities? The window, and the rest. The animals. Tom. Oh god, Tom. He’d hate me.
The door came open after I didn’t reply, and in stepped an older woman with soft hazel eyes and wildly curled hair which bounced around her ears as she moved.
She was dressed all in black, with tights and a skirt to her knees, and an official-looking ID clipped to her breast pocket to denote her as staff.
She looked professional, while I looked. ..small, pale. Half naked.
“Oh, there you are!” she said, sounding startled. Her voice was cockney-sounding, like people from the soap operas they watched in the pub back home. I softened to her instantly. “I thought you must be in the bathroom. Would you like a dressing gown?”
Blushing, I inched the bedclothes up higher over my chest, though there wasn’t much to hide.
“Yes please,” I said, the heat throbbing in my cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, walking briskly to the en-suite and returning with a thick, towelling robe with stripes that matched the colour scheme of the room. I wondered, immediately, if I would be the first woman to wear that robe, or if it had warmed someone else’s skin before.
I was surprised as Maggie held up the bath robe and looked away toward the long window drapes, waiting for me to tuck my arms into it. It was so like something I’d do for mother that it unnerved me, but I looped my arms in and drew it around myself all the same.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Another foggy day out there,” she said, clucking her tongue. “The pavements are wet. Nick says you arrived very late last night. You must have been chilled down to your bones with this cold-snap.”
“I was,” I said, feeling awkward as I sat there in my bed, while Maggie was fully dressed. But she smiled kindly down at me, like I was a child in her care, and I felt safe, even if I couldn’t quite relax.
“I’ll run you a lovely deep bath, how’s that?” she asked. “Do you like bubbles?”
I could hardly believe the question. My eyes moistened, and a lump came to my throat. To think anyone would bother to ask me how I liked my bath. It was so, so unusual. Even though it made me feel like an infant, I felt stirred-up inside, excited...I said yes, please. Eagerly.
“Right then,” she said. “I’ll start running that while you eat your breakfast by the window. Or would you prefer it in bed?”
She returned to the bathroom and I heard the thundering sound of the tub filling.
When she came back, she hummed a soft tune as she fetched a gold trolley from the hallway and wheeled it in.
There was a cloche on top! An actual silver dome, like something from Downton Abbey; they watched that in the pub, too, and I enjoyed it.
There was a fancy tea pot with a cup, saucer, and a little jug of milk.
They were a set, with a floral design and a gold rim around the edge of each piece.
“Come on, sleepy-head – make your mind up,” she said. Her expression dissolved behind the blur of my tears as I hunched over and cried, sobbing into the beautiful duvet cover. Her arms were around me before I could even catch my breath.
“There, there,” she said softly, hushing me as she held me over her shoulder. “Nick told me you’d lost your mother. I’m so very sorry.”
But it wasn’t that. It was everything else, only I couldn’t express it properly. I blurted it all out in one go, sobbing between confessions, and now I really did resemble a child. A stupid, lost child who was in a whole heap of trouble.
“Oh dear, that does sound like a pickle,” said Maggie. “Let’s hope nobody has managed to break in, if the window was smashed through.”
“There’d be nothing to take,” I said, still spluttering. “Only I...I just left it there, to rot. I ran away.”
Maggie handed me a soft white napkin to dab my face with, which I took gratefully.
“Then there’s no real harm done. It doesn’t sound like it was habitable. You did the right thing to come here,” said Maggie. She stood and took the cloche off the breakfast plate, before setting the tray up on my lap.
It was a simple but delicious breakfast of two steaming crumpets, with two silver pots; one filled with butter, and one filled with jam.
There was another napkin, and an expensive-looking silver knife and spoon, and another small bowl filled with chopped seasonal fruits and winter berries.
The berries glistened in shades of crimson, with a light dusting of icing sugar on top.
“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked, helplessly.
Maggie poured my tea and made it milky, offering up the sugar pot, too. I nodded and she scooped in one spoonful, then two, and I nodded to indicate that was enough. She even stirred it for me.
“I like spoiling people,” she said. “Ask young master Nicholas – though he isn’t quite so young any more, I suppose. He’s still a baby to me. Anyway, it’s him you should be asking. This is his kindness, really.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, taking a tentative sip of my sweet, hot tea. It was liquid gold on my tongue, soothing me from the inside out with its nourishing warmth. I was beginning to feel right at home.
“I’ll thank him profusely when I meet with him this morning,” I said, though I wasn’t sure why I felt any need to reassure Maggie of that. She wasn’t really my mother. I couldn’t imagine having had a mother like her.
“And you’re to tell him all about that tree falling through the window, and anything else you’re worried about,” said Maggie, putting her hands on her hips. “He can come across as quite stern, and sometimes abrupt, or a little insensitive. But beneath it all, he’s a very decent man.”
I wondered at those comments about how stern he could be, and insensitive.
I hadn’t experienced that at all. A little thrill rippled through me, for some reason, at the thought of him raising his voice in punishment to me.
The heating was on, the room was warm; but my nipples tightened again, as if a chill had returned.
I shifted the duvet up under my arms to ensure Maggie didn’t see, and sipped my tea.
“He’s been incredibly kind to me,” I said. “Too kind. And so have you.”
Maggie watched me closely as I buttered my crumpet, and heaped on a generous helping of jam.
“You’re a very old soul, aren’t you?” she asked, with a voice that sounded miles away, like she was contemplating something. “I’ve not met anyone like you in a very long time.”
“It’s the dales,” I said, after savouring my mouthful of hot buttered crumpet, with the sweet sting of the tart jam coming soon after, and swallowed. “They weather you, like the landscape.”
“No, it’s not the way you look – you look fresh out of the womb yesterday. You’re still wet behind the ears with nappy marks on your bum. It’s your voice, the way you speak. You’re old before your time,” said Maggie, chucking me under the chin. “I’ll finish up your bath.”
After a long soak, I realised time must be getting on – but I hardly wanted to leave the luxury of such a deep, hot bath.
Never could we have managed one this deep at Heather House.
It would have taken hundreds of trips to the stream, and hours to boil that much water – which would be cold by the time we’d boiled the next lot.
Shallow, luke-warm baths were the best we could manage.
Only when the water started to cool did I force myself out of the tub. I put the robe back on and left the steamy bathroom. I needed to find something suitable to wear from my jumbled-up suitcase.
That’s when I saw him there, dressed in a white shirt and a black tie, with a brocade waistcoat and his hair styled in loose waves. I screamed to see him, so startled by his sudden presence. I cupped my hand over my mouth, feeling foolish.
“Good morning, Grace,” he said, smiling politely as his eyes dropped to the floor. His hands were casually held behind his back, but I could see the tension in his shoulders.
“Good morning, sir,” I said, all too aware of my nakedness behind the robe.
My hair was sopping wet and hanging around my shoulders, and I knew my skin would be blotchy and red from the hot water. I didn’t mind a bit. For the first time in years, I felt alive again, like the hot bath and the bed and the beautiful breakfast had warmed my ice-cold blood up again.
“You don’t have to call me sir, Grace. I’m not your headmaster. You can call me Nicholas, or Nick.”
“Nicholas,” I said, enjoying the way the syllables played over my tongue.
“I can see you’re still getting ready. I’m sorry about that. I’ve got a busy schedule today – every day, actually – so we’d better have our chat before I get waylaid. Will you be all right, making your way downstairs to the room we spoke in last night?”
“Of course,” I said, holding the robe close around my body. I could feel every inch of myself, my skin, every sensitive part of me pulsing gently in pleasure at seeing him.
“Good. Right, then,” said Nicholas, and he bowed his head and left the room again.
Breathing out in one go, I felt suddenly faint, as if I hadn’t been able to breathe properly with him in the room.
The cleft between my legs was throbbing insatiably, moistened with longing that surprised me and left me shaking.
I leaned over the bed – which Maggie had freshly made, I realised – and gathered my strength.
The little bud inside my folds pulsed away, intensifying as I remembered the sight of him in his waistcoat, looking so elegant and expensive.
And so mature.
My hands felt inside the robe and held one firm breast, squeezing it, before my thumb found my nipple. No man had ever brought this out in me before; only men I imagined in my mind, when I was falling asleep. I’d never even been with a man romantically. Before Tom, I’d never even kissed one.
My body was falling between such extremes that I could hardly comprehend them.
What was this man, and this house of death, doing to me?
Like a moth emerging from its chrysalis, I was assaulted by these new sensations, feeling my nervous way toward a new beginning.
I was meeting Grace Lockett, away from Heather House, for the very first time.